and MAE'VIUS, whose names have become a by-word of scorn for all jealous and malevolent
poetasters, owe their unenviable immortality solely to the enmity which they displayed towards
the rising genius of the most distinguished of their contemporaries, and would probably never
have been heard of but for the well-known line of Virgil (Ecl. 3.90):
, the Epode of
Horace where evil fortune is heartily anticipated to the ship which bore "rank Maevius" as its
freight, and a caustic epigram by Domitius Marsus, in which one and probably both are wittily
assailed. Upon the first of these passages we have the remark of Servius, "Maevius et Bavius
pessimi fuerunt poetae, inimici tam Horatio quam Virgilio, unde Horatius Epod. x. etc." and
again, upon the " serite hordea campis," in Georgic. 1.210, the same
commentator observes, " sane reprehensus Virgilius dicitur a Bavio et Maevio hoc versu
Hordea qui dixit, superest ut tritica dicat,"
from which it would appear, that their attack was in the form of a poetical satire, and was
moreover a joint undertaking. Philargyrius, in his exposition of the third Eclogue, after
giving the same account of these personages as Servius, adds, that M. Bavius was a " curator,"
a designation so indefinite, that it determines nothing except the fact that he enjoyed some
public appointment. Finally, St. Jerome, in the Eusebian chronicle, records that M. Bavius,
the poet, stigmatised by Virgil in his Bucolics, died in Cappadocia, in the third year of the
hundred and eighty-sixth Olympiad, that is,
To one or other of these worthies has been attributed the practical joke played off upon
Virgil, who, when rehearsing the first book of his Georgics, having chanced to make a pause
after the words
some one of the audience completed the verse by exclaiming:
Porphyrion (ad Hor. Sat. 2.3. 239) tells us, that Maevius was the
author of a work upon the son of Aesopus the tragedian, and his luxury; the old Scholiast
published by Longinus (Epod. x.) observes, "Maevius poeta fuit inimicus
Horatii, obtrectator certe omnium virorum doctorum, ipse sectator vocum antiquarum," and an
early annotator upon the Ibis (1. 525) asserts, that Maevius is the person there spoken of
who lampooned the Athenians, was thrown into prison in consequence, and starved to death;
but this story has not found credit among scholars, although many disputes have arisen as to
the individual actually referred to.
And to them also have been ascribed the
Donat. Vit. Virg. 7.28, 16.61; Weichert, Poet. Lat.
Reliqu., &c., p. 308, &c.