Virgil

EARLY LIFE 

Virgil was born Publius Vergilius Maro in the village of Andes, near Mantua in the valley of the River Po on October 15, 70 BC. At the time Andes was in Cisalpine Gaul part of the Roman empire.

Not much is known about Virgil's parents but it seems his father was a wealthy cattle farmer and beekeeper.

Virgil's father was prosperous enough to give his son the best education. He received his earliest schooling at Cremona and Milan. At the age of 17 Virgil went to Rome to study rhetoric, medicine, and astronomy, which he soon abandoned for philosophy.

CAREER 

Under the rule of second Triumvirate, Octovian (who became Emperor Augustus), Mark Antony and Lepidus, the lands of the idle rich were confiscated and allotted to war veterans. Cemetery plots and mausoleums were exempted. According to legend, the wily Virgil spent 800,000 Sesteries ($150,000) on an elaborate funeral for what he claimed was his special pet fly. An orchestra was on hand and Virgil's patron gave a long, moving eulogy to the deceased insect. Thus his home was transformed into a mausoleum. However, the triumvirate still confiscated Virgil's farm.

Virgil became friendly with Octovian who was soon to become Emperor Augustus. His portrayal of the Emperor Augustus as successor to a long line of Roman heroes helped give Augustus the authority he needed to govern his empire.

Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus, Octavia, and Livia by Jean-Baptiste Wicar

Macenas, the chief imperial minister of Augustus, became Virgil’s best friend and his influential patron. Because of Macenas’ financial help, Virgil was freed from financial worries and was able to devote himself to literature.

Maecenas sought to counter sympathy for Antony among the leading families by rallying Roman literary figures to Augustus' side. As a result Virgil came to know many of the other leading literary figures of the time.

WRITINGS

The Eclogues also called the Bucolics, is the first of Virgil's three major works. An anthology of ten poems telling of shepherds in an imaginative pastoral world, who despite suffering political oppression and love sickness, find happiness in inner peace. The Eclogues took Virgil five years to write and it is thought that the collection was published around 39–38 BC.

In Eclogues 3 93 Virgil wrote "Latet anguus inherba" which means "a snake is lurking in the grass" thus originating the phrase "snake in the grass".

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

Sometime after the publication of the Eclogues, Virgil became part of the circle of Maecenas. At the suggestion of Maecenas, Virgil spent the ensuing years on the long didactic hexameter poem called the Georgics (from Greek, "On Working the Earth"). The overriding theme of the Georgics is instruction in the methods of running a farm and praise of Roman rural life. The finished work comprises four books on farming and cultivating corn, cultivating olives and vines, raising livestock, and beekeeping, respectively.

Completed in 29 BC the Georgics established Virgil as the foremost poet of his age.

Georgics Book III, Shepherd with Flocks, Roman Virgil.

Virgil spent the last decade of his life working on his epic poem the Aeneid, which in 12 books tells the story of the legendary founding of Rome from the fall of Troy. It was designed to create an epic for Rome as Homer did for Greece with his Odyssey and Iliad.

The poem's hero, Aeneas (a relative of Hector of Homer's Iliad fame) was a Trojan warrior who escaped from Troy and settled in Latium. After much wandering, Aeneas was driven by a storm to Carthage where he won the love of Dido. He afterwards made his way to Latium in Italy where Latinus, the king promised him his daughter Lavina in marriage. After killing Turnus, a rival suitor, Aeneas married Lavinia and became ancestor of the Romans. Killed in battle, he was worshipped as a god.

The Aeneid can be read as indirect propaganda in favour of Augustus, the Roman Emperor of the day.

Aeneas flees burning Troy, Federico Barocci, 1598 Galleria Borghese

Virgil died having failed to complete the Aeneid. He had left instructions for his classic to be burnt on his death as he'd have no time to polish it and he felt he'd failed in his aim of matching Homer's grand works. Fortunately Emperor Augustus stepped in. The emperor had others apply the finishing polish and ordered the work to be published.

The Greeks would turn to a page of the Aeneid at random and regard the word or passage that first met the eye as an omen.

In 1553 the Aeneid was translated into English, the first Latin poetry to do so.

BELIEFS 

Virgil was influenced by Epicurean philosophy that taught inner could be developed by living a virtuous and simple life and avoiding excessive pleasures.

His fourth Eclogue contained a passage which some interpreted as a prediction of the birth of Christ. Despite Virgil being an unbaptized pagan, this led to his acceptance as an "honorary Christian" by the medieval church and Dante made Virgil his guide to hell and purgatory in The Divine Comedy. Scholars of the Middle Ages knew his writing as well as they knew the Bible.

Virgil teaching, a miniature from a 15C French manuscript of the Georgics

PRIVATE LIFE 

Modest with a gentle disposition, Virgil was an unsophisticated man, physically awkward, who may have been embarrassed by his provincial accent.

His early home was on a farm in the village of Andes. After the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey the family farm was seized.

Virgil, who never married, spent most of his adult life in an Epicurean colony in Naples.

DEATH 

Virgil traveled to Greece in about 19 BC to revise the Aeneid. He caught a fever while visiting a town near Megara. After crossing to Italy by ship, weakened with disease, Virgil died in Brundisium harbor on September 21, 19 BC having failed to complete his 10-year-old epic, the Aeneid.

Virgil purportedly wrote in his own epitaph, "I sang of pastures, of cultivated fields, and of rulers."

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