LIVING EPICUREANISM: VERGILIAN SENEX CORYCIUS, MAECENAS AND NAULOCHUS’ BATTLE1

Abstract

"is work aims to focalize what Tarentum, Corycos and the beautiful garden, mentioned in the passage of Georgics IV 116ff., could mean for Virgil’s contemporaries. Some
evidences spared along the text (the metaphor of vela, the epicurean image of the man protesting against the weather), some historical episodes of that period (Naulochus’ battle), not less than some lexical coincidences found in Elegia in Maecenatem (included in the Appendix Virgiliana) take us to the hypothesis that the horti Maecenatiani could be hidden in the shadow of the old man’s garden.