A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries

who has so elegantly described their external form; for notwithstanding the traces of Platonism which are to be found in the Aeneid, nothing of any great depth occurs throughout the whole, except what a superficial reading of Plato and the shows of the mysteries might easily afford. But this is not perceived by the moderns, who, entirely unskilled themselves in Platonism and fascinated by the charms of his poetry, imagine him to be deeply knowing in a subject with which he was most likely but slightly acquainted. This opinion is still further strengthened by considering that the doctrine delivered in his Eclogues is perfectly Epicurean, which was the fashionable philosophy of the Augustan age, and that there is no trace of Platonism in any other part of his works but the present book, which,