6. In the Panegyric on Messala contained among the works of Tibullus we read (180)

" Est tibi, qui possit magnis se accingere rebus, Valgius, aeterno propior non alter Homero,"

from which it has been concluded that Valgius was the author of heroic strains. No epic poet of that name, however, is mentioned by Quintilian, nor is any notice to be discovered in the grammarians of a work which, if the above couplet be not ridiculously hyperbolical, must have attracted general attention. This circumstance, however, need occasion little surprise when we recollect that the piece in which these lines occur is believed by the best critics not to be the production of Tibullus but a rhetorical essay belonging to a much later period.