fate, and gives a long description of the underworld and the souls of the dead mythological heroes there, allowing it to digress. The gnat especially focuses on the story of Eurydice and the Trojan War. The gnat goes on to describe famous Roman heroes and then his audience before Minos to decide his fate. When he awakes, the shepherd constructs a heroon to the gnat in the grove and the poet has a flower-catalogue. The shepherd inscribes it with the inscription "Little gnat, to you deservedly the guard of the flock repays his funeral duty for your gift of life." The Culex cannot be one of Virgil's juvenilia because it alludes to the full body of his work; thus, it is usually dated to sometime during the reign of Tiberius. Moreover, Suetonius in his Lives of the Poets (18) writes, "the Culex... of his (Virgil's) was written when he might have been sixteen years old", so it is therefore possible that the extant version which has come down to us may be a later copy that had been modified. The poem has been variously interpreted as a charming epyllion or as an elaborate allegory in which the shepherd symbolizes Augustus and the gnat Marcellus. Ciris ("The Sea-Bird") The Ciris is an epyllion in 541 hexameters describing the myth of Nisus, the king of Megara and his daughter Scylla of Megara. The epyllion was a popular style of composition which seems to have developed in the Hellenistic age; surviving examples can be found in Theocritus and Catullus. The poet begins his hundred line prologue by invoking the Muses and Sophia, despite the fact that he is an Epicurean, and describes his poem as a gift to Messalla like the robe given to Minerva in the Panathenaia. The poet differentiates the Scylla of his poem from the sea-monster Scylla and describes the monster's birth and metamorphosis. He starts by describing Minos' siege of Megara and the lock of purple hair on the head of Nisus which protected the city. While playing ball, Scylla is shot by Cupid and falls madly in love with Minos. As a prize for Minos, she tries to cut the lock of her father, but her nurse, Carme, asks Scylla why she is upset. After Scylla tells her she is in love with Minos, Carme says that Minos earlier had killed her daughter Britomartis and convinces Scylla to