Athenae. From this place he afterwards moved to Naples, where he applied himself with great assiduity to Greek and Roman literature, particularly to the physical and mathematical sciences; for which he expressed a strong predilection in the second book of his Georgics.
Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae,
Quarum sacra fero ingenti perculsus amore,
(166) Accipiant; coelique vias et sidera monstrent;
Defectus Solis varios, Lunaeque labores:
Unde tremor terris: qua vi maria alta tumescant
Obicibus ruptis, rursusque in seipsa residant:
Quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles
Hiberni: vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
*Geor. ii. 1. 591, etc.*
> But most beloved, ye Muses, at whose fane,
> Led by pure zeal, I consecrate my strain,
> Me first accept! And to my search unfold,
> Heaven and her host in beauteous order rolled,
> The eclipse that dims the golden orb of day,
> And changeful labour of the lunar ray;
> Whence rocks the earth, by what vast force the main
> Now bursts its barriers, now subsides again;
> Why wintry suns in ocean swiftly fade,
> Or what delays night’s slow-descending shade.
*Sotheby.*When, by a proscription of the Triumvirate, the lands of Cremona and Mantua were distributed amongst the veteran soldiers, Virgil had the good fortune to recover his possessions,