Virgil's Italian Homes. 213 



But later in life he was at least as much in 

 Southern as in Northern Italy. That the first 

 three Georgics were written, or at least thought 

 out, on the lovely bay of Naples, is certain from 

 the lines at the end of the fourth Georgic : 



Illo Virgilium me tempore dulcis alebat 

 Parthenope, studiis florentem ignobilis oti. 1 



Here were all the sea-birds, and the wild-fowl 

 that haunt the sea ; here, as we shall see, the 

 summer visitors might land on their way from 

 Africa. Here, from the sea and all its varying 

 life, the poet's mind would enrich itself with sights 

 unknown to him in the flat-lands of the Padus, 

 and grow to understand more fully day by day 

 the impressions often dull ones which Nature 

 had made on the poets who had sung before him. 

 Rome he never loved, though he had a house 

 there : perhaps he had seen enough of the huge 

 city during the years given to the dreary rhetorical 

 education of the day, after first leaving his home. 



1 I Virgil then, of sweet Parthenope 

 The nursling, woo'd the flowery walks of peace 

 Inglorious, &c. 



