2000 YEARS AFTER

Two thousand years ago Virgil was born in Italy. He is remembered today by college board markers, by pedants who love the sonorous opening of the Aeneid, and by a cynical English playwright. While he lived he was the spokesman of Rome and the foremost poet of the world. Long after Virgil's death, John Bartlett in that hall of literary fame called Familiar Quotations remembered his name in three footnotes.

It is impossible to synthesize fame; it is not a tangible thing, it can not be broken down into component parts and analyzed; it is a mere whim of mankind. Virgil laboring under the burden of a dead language and writing of things long since forgotten has generally been dismissed from modern thought, yet he left behind him one of the world's greatest epics, he wrote learnedly on bee keeping or politics, and he was a master of poetic technique. The corpse of his greatness has been briefly revived because two thousand years ago yesterday he was born. In a few weeks this perfunctory homage will be laid away for another thousand years. The value of this sporadic praise to Virgil is questionable. The real merit of the poet can be gained only by a first hand study of his versatile genius, not by a cursory how of respect to his memory every ten centuries. If the world of today has neither the knowledge nor the time for such a study it is better to forget his birthday altogether.