Bavius

• a stupid poet, an enemy of Virgil and Horace: qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carmina, Maevi, Verg. E. 3, 90 (pro poenā ei contingat, ut diligat Maevium pejorem poëtam. Nam Maevius et Bavius pessimi fuerunt poëtae, inimici tam Horatio quam Vergilio, Serv.; cf. id. ad Verg. G. 1, 210, where is found the attack of Bavius upon Verg. for using hordeum in the plur.; cf. also Philargyr. Verg. E. l. l., and Weich. Poët. Lat. Rel. p. 308 sq.).

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): Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Maevi, 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, B. C. 35.

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 Nudus ara, sere nudus some one of the audience completed the verse by exclaiming: habebis frigore febrem. Works Upon the Son of Aesopus the Tragedian

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. Antibucolica

And to them also have been ascribed the Antibucolica, two pastorals written expressly as a parody upon the Eclogues soon after their publication. Further Information

Donat. Vit. Virg. 7.28, 16.61; Weichert, Poet. Lat. Reliqu., &c., p. 308, &c. [W.R]

A dull poet who, with Mevius, attacked Vergil, Horace, and other Augustan writers. See Verg. Ecl. iii. 90; v. 36; Horace, Epod. x. 1; and the article Vergilius.