VERGIL 192 VERHAEREN settling them on confiscated lands throughout Italy. Vergil's farm was part of the confiscated territory of Cre- mona ; but his reputation as a rising poet had already brought him under the no- tice of the governor of the district, Asi- nius Pollio, himself a distinguished man of letters. By PoUio's advice he w^ent to Rome, with special recommendation to Octavianus; and though his own prop- erty was ultimately not restored to him, he obtained ample compensation from the government, and became for a few years one of the circle of endowed court poets who gathered round the prime min- ister Maecenas. In 37 B. c. the "Eclogues," a collection of 10 pastorals modeled on those of Theocritus, were published, and received with unexampled enthusiasm. Soon af- terward Vergil withdrew from Rome to Campania. The munificence of M»cenas had placed him in easy and even affluent circumstances. He had a villa at Naples, and a country house near Nola, within easy reach of it; and he seems to have lived almost entirely in this neighbor- hood during the seven years in which he was engaged in the composition of the "Georgics," or "Art of Husbandry," This poem, which is in four books, and deals with tillage and pasturage, the cultivation of trees, especially the vine and olive, and the breeding of horses, cattle and bees, appeared in 30 B. c, and confirmed Vergil's position as the fore- most poet of the age. The remaining 11 years of his life were devoted to a larger and in some respects more uncongenial task, undertaken at the urgent and re- peated request of the emperor, the com- position of a great national epic. Dur- ing these years he lived a secluded life, chiefly in Campania and Sicily; he seems also to have traveled in Greece, and to have paid occasional visits to Rome, where he had a house in the fashionable quarter on the Esquiline. The subject he chose was the story of .(Eneas, the Tro- jan, the legendary founder of the Ro- man nation and of the Julian family, from the fall of Troy to his arrival in Italy, his wars and alliances with the native Italian races, and his final estab- lishment in his new kingdom. By 19 B. C. the "JEneid" was practically completed, but Vergil had set apart three years more for its final revision. In the sum- mer of that year he left Italy with the intention of traveling in Greece and Asia; but at Athens he fell ill, and re- turned only to die at Brundusium a few days after landing, on Sept. 21. He had almost completed his 51st year. In his last illness he expressed a wish to burn the "iEneid," and he left directions to that effect in his will. By the command of Augustus these directions were dis- obeyed, and it was published as we now possess it. At his own wish he was buried at Naples, on the road to Poz- zuoli, his tomb for many hundred years after being worshiped as a sacred place. Besides the three works already men- tioned, a few juvenile pieces of more or less probable authenticity are extant un- der his name. These are the "Culex" and the "Moretum," both in hexameter verse, the former an "epyllion," or short poem of narrative and description in the epic manner, the latter an idyll freely translated from the Greek of Parthe- nius; the "Copa," a short elegiac piece; and 14 little poems in various meters, some serious, others trivial, which come under his name at the head of a collec- tion of minor Latin poetry incorporated in the Latin anthology. These pieces are not printed in most editions of Ver- gil, nor are any of them certainly au- thentic, though some of them passed as his among scholars within a century after his death. The "Ciris," a piece of the same kind as the "Culex," is now agreed to be by a contemporary imitator. VERGNIAUD, PIERRE VICTUR- NIEN, a French orator ; born in Limoges, France, May 31, 1753. Turgot, then intendant of the Limousin, nominated him to a bursarship at the College du Plessis at Paris. He studied divinity aim- lessly at the Sorbonne, but soon grew tired of it, next took a post in the civil service at Paris, but ere long threw it up and retired to his bankrupt father's house at Limoges. But a brother-in-law helped him to settle as an advocate at Bordeaux in 1781, and he quickly gained a great practice, and was elected a deputy to the National Assembly in 1791. His splen- did eloquence, the charm of his person- ality, made him the leader of the Giron- dists, but he was too indolent and un- ambitious to care for political intrigue, and indeed he was far more of the ora- tor than the statesman. Sent to the Con- vention by the department of the Gi- ronde^ he supported, in the question of the king's trial, the proposal of Salle to make an appeal to the people. When the decisive moment came he voted for death, and as president it was his duty to an- nounce the result. In the struggle with the Mountain he made a splendid effort, but too late. He was guillotined Oct. 31, 1793, the last of the 21 who died to- gether. VERHAEREN, EMILE, a Belgian poet and writer, born in Saint Amand, near Termonde, in 1855; died in Rouen, in train accident, in 1916. Until the out-
