“verses written in Chalcidic strain”in the Eclogues. Again, had Horace no justification for coupling the name of Tyrtacus4 with that of Homer?
[56]
I think I hear
my readers on all sides suggesting the names of
hosts of other poets. What? Did not Pisandros1
tell the story of Hercules in admirable style?
Were there not good reasons for Virgil and Macer
taking Nicander2 as a model? Are we to ignore
Euphorion?3 Unless Virgil had admired him, he
would never have mentioned
1 A Rhodian poet of the seventh century B.C.
2 Nicander of Colophon (second century B.C.), author of didactic poems, Theriaca and Alexipharmaca and Metamorphoses (ἑτεροιούμενα). Virgil imitated him in the Georgics, Aenilius Macer, the friend of Ovid, in his Theriaca.
3 Euphorion of Chalcis (220 B.C. ) wrote elaborate short epics. See Ecl. x. 50. The words are, however, put into the mouth of Gallus with reference to his own imitations of Euphorion.
4 See Hor. A. P. 401. Tyrtaeus, writer of war songs (seventh century B.C.).
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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