“Culex” is a pastoral poem, telling the tale of a shepherd who, falling asleep in the shade of a fountain, is about to be attacked by a huge snake when a gnat stings him on the eyelid. The shepherd starts up from his slumber and crushes the gnat to death, whereupon he sees the snake ready to strike. Suitably forewarned, the shepherd snaps off a tree bough and batters the serpent to a scaly pulp before driving his flock towards home. But later that night, the ghost of the gnat comes to him in a dream and upbraids the shepherd for his ingratitude. The gnat tells of its travels through the underworld, of meeting Cerberus and floating across the dark water of the river Lethe (as Aeneas had done in the Aeneid). Suitably chastened, the shepherd builds a monument for the gnat that he surrounds with marble, on which is written the epitaph:

O tiny gnat, the keeper of the flocksDoth pay to thee, deserving such a thing,The duty of a ceremonial tomb,In payment for the gift of life to him.

Most modern scholars cannot bring themselves to believe that Virgil wrote such lines. Peter Levi, Virgil’s most recent biographer, describes “Culex” as “a poem 414 lines long of mind-boggling silliness.” But whether Virgil’s contemporaries thought it silly, satirical, or the actual juvenilia of a genius, it stuck. The first link, albeit a tenuous one, had been made between Virgil and flies.