is copied from Eratosthenes. The account of the signs of the weather, from i. 355 to 465, is taken from the { ~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER DELTA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} of Aratus, a work so popular at Rome, that it was not only imitated and almost incorporated in his poem by Virgil, but had been translated by Cicero in his youth, and was subsequently translated by Germanicus. Again, the description at iii. 425, of the dangerous serpent that haunts the Calabrian pastures, is closely imitated from the extant { ~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER THETA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH TONOS~} of Nicander; nor can we doubt that there were in the fourth Book imitations of the lost { ~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER MU~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH TONOS~} of the same author, who probably anticipated Virgil in the use which he made of Aristotle's observations on the habits of bees.
A comparison of the passages in the Georgics with those of which they are imitations produces the impression not only of Virgil's immense superiority as a poet over the Alexandrine Metaphrastae, but of the immense superiority of the Latin hexameter, as an organ for expressing the beauty and power of Nature, over the exotic jargon and unmusical jingle which those writers compounded out of their epic studies and their scientific nomenclature. To take one or two instances of Virgil's imitations from these writers:--in the passage Georg. i. 233-246, Virgil reproduces very closely scientific statements of Eratosthenes and Aratus. But of the five lines which follow--
Illic, ut perhibent, aut intempesta silet nox Semper et obtenta densentur nocte tenebrae, Aut redit a nobis Aurora diemque reducit; Nosque ubi primus equis Oriens adflavit anhelis, Illic sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper(305),--