It must be owned that it is not pleasant reading.

But translated poetry seldom is pleasant, and could hardly be made so on such a subject by a boy of eighteen.

The Marius was written two years after this, and we have a passage from it, quoted by the author in his De Divinatione, containing some fine lines.
It tells the story of the battle of the eagle and the serpent.

Cicero took it, no doubt (not translated it, however), from the passage in the Iliad, lib, xii, 200, which has been rendered by Pope with less than his usual fire, and by Lord Derby with no peculiar charm.

Virgil has reproduced the picture with his own peculiar grace of words.