Virgil

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This article is about the ancient Roman poet. For the grammarian, see Virgilius Maro
Grammaticus. For other uses, see Virgil (disambiguation).

Virgil

Bust depicting Virgil

Born Publius Vergilius Maro

15 October 70 BC
Near Mantua, Cisalpine Gaul, Roman Republic

Died 21 September 19 BC (age 50)

Brundisium, Italy, Roman Empire

Occupation Poet

Nationality Roman

Genre Epic poetry, didactic poetry, pastoral poetry

Literary movement Augustan poetry

Publius Vergilius Maro (Classical Latin: [ˈpuːbliʊs wɛrˈɡɪliʊs ˈmaroː]; traditional dates

15 October 70 BC – 21 September 19 BC),[1] usually
 called Virgil or Vergil (/ˈvɜːrdʒɪl/ VUR-jil) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of
the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin
literature: the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid.
A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, are sometimes
attributed to him as well.[2][3]
Virgil's work has had wide and deep influence on Western literature, most
notably Dante's Divine Comedy, in which Virgil appears as the author's guide
through Hell and Purgatory.[4]
Virgil has been traditionally ranked as one of Rome's greatest poets. His Aeneid is
also considered a national epic of ancient Rome, a title held since composition.

Contents

 1Life and works

o 1.1Birth and biographical tradition
o 1.2Early works
o 1.3The Eclogues
o 1.4The Georgics
o 1.5The Aeneid
o 1.6Reception of the  Aeneid
o 1.7Virgil's death and editing of the  Aeneid
 2Later views and reception
o 2.1In antiquity
o 2.2Late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and after
o 2.3Legends
o 2.4Virgil's tomb
 3Spelling of name
 4See also
 5References
o 5.1Notes
o 5.2Citations
 6Further reading
 7External links

Life and works[edit]

Birth and biographical tradition[edit]
Virgil's biographical tradition is thought to depend on a lost biography by the Roman
poet Varius. This biography was incorporated into an account by the
historian Suetonius, as well as the later commentaries of Servius and Donatus (the
two great commentators on Virgil's poetry). Although the commentaries record much
factual information about Virgil, some of their evidence can be shown to rely on
allegorizing and on inferences drawn from his poetry. For this reason, details
regarding Virgil's life story are considered somewhat problematic. [5]:1602
According to these accounts, Publius Vergilius Maro was born in the village
of Andes, near Mantua[i] in Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy, added to Italy proper during
his lifetime).[6] Analysis of his name has led some to believe that he descended from
earlier Roman colonists. Modern speculation, however, ultimately is not supported by
narrative evidence from either his own writings or his later
biographers. Macrobius says that Virgil's father was of a humble background, though
scholars generally believe that Virgil was from an equestrian landowning family who
could afford to give him an education. He attended schools
in Cremona, Mediolanum, Rome and Naples. After briefly considering a career
in rhetoric and law, the young Virgil turned his talents to poetry. [7]
According to Robert Seymour Conway, the only ancient source which reports the
actual distance between Andes and Mantua is a surviving fragment from the works
of Marcus Valerius Probus. Probus flourished during the reign of Nero (AD 54–68).
[8]
 Probus reports that Andes was located 30 Roman miles from Mantua. Conway
translated this to a distance of about 45 kilometres or 28 miles. [8]
Relatively little is known about the family of Virgil. His father reportedly belonged
to gens Vergilia, and his mother belonged to gens Magia.[8] According to Conway,
gens Vergilia is poorly attested in inscriptions from the entire Northern Italy, where
Mantua is located. Among thousands of surviving ancient inscriptions from this
region, there are only 8 or 9 mentions of individuals called "Vergilius" (masculine) or
"Vergilia" (feminine). Out of these mentions, three appear in inscriptions
from Verona, and one in an inscription from Calvisano.[8]
Conway theorized that the inscription from Calvisano had to do with a kinswoman of
Virgil. Calvisano is located 30 Roman miles from Mantua, and would fit with Probus'
description of Andes.[8] The inscription, in this case, is a votive offering to
the Matronae (a group of deities) by a woman called Vergilia, asking the goddesses
to deliver from danger another woman, called Munatia. Conway notes that the
offering belongs to a common type for this era, where women made requests for
deities to preserve the lives of female loved ones who were pregnant and were about
to give birth. In most cases, the woman making the request was the mother of a
woman who was pregnant or otherwise in danger. Though there is another
inscription from Calvisano, where a woman asks the deities to preserve the life of her
sister.[8] Munatia, the woman whom Vergilia wished to protect, was likely a close
relative of Vergilia, possibly her daughter. The name "Munatia" indicates that this
woman was a member of gens Munatia, and makes it likely that Vergilia married into
this family.[8]
Other studies[9] claim that today's consideration for ancient Andes should be sought
in the area of Castel Goffredo.[10]
Early works[edit]
Main article: Appendix Vergiliana
According to the commentators, Virgil received his first education when he was five
years old and he later went to Cremona, Milan, and finally Rome to
study rhetoric, medicine, and astronomy, which he soon abandoned for philosophy.
From Virgil's admiring references to the neoteric writers Pollio and Cinna, it has been
inferred that he was, for a time, associated with Catullus' neoteric circle. According
to Servius, schoolmates considered Virgil extremely shy and reserved, and he was
nicknamed "Parthenias" or "maiden" because of his social aloofness. Virgil also
seems to have suffered bad health throughout his life and in some ways lived the life
of an invalid. According to the Catalepton, he began to write poetry while in
the Epicurean school of Siro in Naples. A group of small works attributed to the
youthful Virgil by the commentators survive collected under the title Appendix
Vergiliana, but are largely considered spurious by scholars. One, the Catalepton,
consists of fourteen short poems,[5]:1602 some of which may be Virgil's, and another, a
short narrative poem titled the Culex ("The Gnat"), was attributed to Virgil as early as
the 1st century AD.
The Eclogues[edit]
Main article: Eclogues

Page from the beginning of the Eclogues in the 5th-century Vergilius Romanus

The biographical tradition asserts that Virgil began the

hexameter Eclogues (or Bucolics) in 42 BC and it is thought that the collection was
published around 39–38 BC, although this is controversial. [5]:1602 The Eclogues (from
the Greek for "selections") are a group of ten poems roughly modeled on the
bucolic hexameter poetry ("pastoral poetry") of the Hellenistic poet Theocritus. After
defeating the army led by the assassins of Julius Caesar in the Battle of Philippi (42
BC), Octavian tried to pay off his veterans with land expropriated from towns in
northern Italy, which—according to tradition—included an estate near Mantua
belonging to Virgil. The loss of Virgil's family farm and the attempt through poetic
petitions to regain his property have traditionally been seen as his motives in the
composition of the Eclogues. This is now thought to be an unsupported inference
from interpretations of the Eclogues. In Eclogues 1 and 9, Virgil indeed dramatizes
the contrasting feelings caused by the brutality of the land expropriations through
pastoral idiom but offers no indisputable evidence of the supposed biographic
incident. While some readers have identified the poet himself with various characters
and their vicissitudes, whether gratitude by an old rustic to a new god (Ecl. 1),
frustrated love by a rustic singer for a distant boy (his master's pet, Ecl. 2), or a
master singer's claim to have composed several eclogues (Ecl. 5), modern scholars
largely reject such efforts to garner biographical details from works of fiction,
preferring to interpret an author's characters and themes as illustrations of
contemporary life and thought. The ten Eclogues present traditional pastoral themes
with a fresh perspective. Eclogues 1 and 9 address the land confiscations and their
effects on the Italian countryside. 2 and 3 are pastoral and erotic, discussing both
homosexual love (Ecl. 2) and attraction toward people of any gender (Ecl.
3). Eclogue 4, addressed to Asinius Pollio, the so-called "Messianic Eclogue", uses
the imagery of the golden age in connection with the birth of a child (who the child
was meant to be has been subject to debate). 5 and 8 describe the myth
of Daphnis in a song contest, 6, the cosmic and mythological song of Silenus; 7, a
heated poetic contest, and 10 the sufferings of the contemporary elegiac
poet Cornelius Gallus. Virgil is credited[by whom?] in the Eclogues with
establishing Arcadia as a poetic ideal that still resonates in Western literature and
visual arts, and setting the stage for the development of Latin pastoral by Calpurnius
Siculus, Nemesianus and later writers.
The Georgics