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In his formative years, which he most likely spent at some Jesuit school, the Tribune must have been made to read classic epics, such as Homer's ''Iliad'' or Vergil Maro's ''Aeneid''. He would later refer to the latter as "my friend Maro",<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verse 977</ref> even though he probably knew the <i>''Aeneid</i>''&#8202;'s plot from scholars' commentaries rather than from the epic itself. Mickiewicz too, no doubt, had to read the same classics, in their 18th-century Polish translations, as a schoolboy. And while he didn't think very highly of these translations' poetic value, they must have left a deep impression on his memory. Take, for example, this excerpt from Book XI of ''Pan Tadeusz'':