Search results
Publius Vergilius Maro (Classical Latin: [ˈpuːbliʊs wɛrˈɡɪliʊs ˈmaroː]; traditional dates 15 October 70 BC – 21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil (/ ˈ v ɜːr dʒ ɪ l / VUR-jil) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. [1]
- Overview
- Political background
- Literary career
Virgil was regarded by the Romans as their greatest poet, an estimation that subsequent generations have upheld. His fame rests chiefly upon the Aeneid, which tells the story of Rome’s legendary founder and proclaims the Roman mission to civilize the world under divine guidance.
Where did Virgil grow up?
Virgil was born of peasant stock in northern Italy, and his love of the Italian countryside and of the people who cultivated it colours all his poetry. The Georgics is a superb plea for the restoration of traditional agricultural life in Italy and contains practical instruction about plowing, growing trees, tending cattle, and keeping bees.
What was Virgil’s education?
Virgil was educated at Cremona, at Milan, and finally at Rome, acquiring a thorough knowledge of Greek and Roman authors, especially of the poets, and receiving detailed training in rhetoric and philosophy. It is known that one of his teachers was the Epicurean Siro.
How did Virgil die?
During Virgil’s youth, as the Roman Republic neared its end, the political and military situation in Italy was confused and often calamitous. The civil war between Marius and Sulla had been succeeded by conflict between Pompey and Julius Caesar for supreme power. When Virgil was 20, Caesar with his armies swooped south from Gaul, crossed the Rubicon, and began the series of civil wars that were not to end until Augustus’ victory at Actium in 31 bce. Hatred and fear of civil war is powerfully expressed by both Virgil and his contemporary Horace. The key to a proper understanding of the Augustan Age and its poets lies, indeed, in a proper understanding of the turmoil that had preceded the Augustan peace.
Britannica Quiz
Famous Poets and Poetic Form
Virgil’s life was devoted entirely to his poetry and to studies connected with it; his health was never robust, and he played no part in military or political life. It is said that he spoke once in the lawcourts without distinction and that his shy and retiring nature caused him to give up any ideas he might have had of taking part in the world of affairs. He never married, and the first half of his life was that of a scholar and near recluse. But, as his poetry won him fame, he gradually won the friendship of many important men in the Roman world. Gradually, also, he became a Roman as well as a provincial. (The area in which he had spent his youth, the area around the Po River known as the province of Cisalpine Gaul, was not finally incorporated into Italy until 42 bce. Thus Virgil came, as it were, to Rome from the outside. The enthusiasm of a provincial for Rome is seen in the first eclogue, one of his earliest poems, in which the shepherd Tityrus tells of his recent visit to the capital and his amazement at its splendours.)
Some of Virgil’s earliest poetry may have survived in a collection of poems attributed to him and known as the Appendix Vergiliana, but it is unlikely that many of these are genuine. His earliest certain work is the Eclogues, a collection of 10 pastoral poems composed between 42 and 37 bce. Some of them are escapist, literary excursions to the idyllic pastoral world of Arcadia based on the Greek poet Theocritus (flourished c. 280 bce) but more unreal and stylized. They convey in liquid song the idealized situations of an imaginary world in which shepherds sing in the sunshine of their simple joys and mute their sorrows (whether for unhappy love or untimely death) in a formalized pathos. But some bring the pastoral mode into touch with the real world, either directly or by means of allegory, and thus gave a new direction to the genre. The fifth eclogue, on the death of Daphnis, king of the shepherds, clearly has some relationship with the recent death of Julius Caesar; the 10th brings Gallus, a fellow poet who also held high office as a statesman, into the pastoral world; the first and ninth are lamentations over the expulsion of shepherds from their farms. (It was widely believed in antiquity that these poems expressed allegorically Virgil’s own loss of his family farm when the veteran soldiers of Antony and Octavian—later the emperor Augustus—were resettled after the Battle of Philippi in 42 bce. It was thought that he subsequently recovered his property through the intervention of his powerful friends. However that may be, it is certain that the poems are based on Virgil’s own experience, whether in connection with his own farm or with those of his friends; and they express, with a poignant pathos that has come to be regarded as specially Virgilian, the sorrow of the dispossessed.)
Special offer for students! Check out our special academic rate and excel this spring semester!
Learn More
But one eclogue in particular stands out as having relevance to the contemporary situation, and this is the fourth (sometimes called the Messianic, because it was later regarded as prophetic of Christianity). It is an elevated poem, prophesying in sonorous and mystic terms the birth of a child who will bring back the Golden Age, banish sin, and restore peace. It was clearly written at a time when the clouds of civil war seemed to be lifting; it can be dated firmly to 41–40 bce, and it seems most likely that Virgil refers to an expected child of the triumvir Antony and his wife Octavia, sister of Octavian. But, though a specific occasion may be allocated to the poem, it goes beyond the particular and, in symbolic terms, presents a vision of world harmony, which was, to some extent, destined to be realized under Augustus.
One of the most disastrous effects of the civil wars—and one of which Virgil, as a countryman, would be most intensely aware—was the depopulation of rural Italy. The farmers had been obliged to go to the war, and their farms fell into neglect and ruin as a result. The Georgics, composed between 37 and 30 bce (the final period of the civil wars), is a superb plea for the restoration of the traditional agricultural life of Italy. In form it is didactic, but, as Seneca later said, it was written “not to instruct farmers but to delight readers.” The practical instruction (about plowing, growing trees, tending cattle, and keeping bees) is presented with vivid insight into nature, and it is interspersed with highly wrought poetical digressions on such topics as the beauty of the Italian countryside (Book II. line 136 ff.) and the joy of the farmer when all is gathered in (II.458 ff.).
The Georgics is dedicated (at the beginning of each book) to Maecenas, one of the chief of Augustus’ ministers, who was also the leading patron of the arts. By this time Virgil was a member of what might be called the court circle, and his desire to see his beloved Italy restored to its former glories coincided with the national requirement of resettling the land and diminishing the pressure on the cities. It would be wrong to think of Virgil as writing political propaganda; but equally it would be wrong to regard his poetry as unconnected with the major currents of political and social needs of the time. Virgil was personally committed to the same ideals as the government.
- Robert Deryck Williams
Jun 12, 2017 · Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 BCE), better known to most modern readers as Virgil, was one of the greatest poets of the early Roman Empire.
- Donald L. Wasson
Apr 2, 2014 · Publius Vergilius Maro, known in English as Virgil or sometimes Vergil, was born on October 15, 70 B.C. in Andes, near Mantua, Italy. Born into a peasant family, the Italian countryside and...
People also ask
What is Virgil famous for?
When did Virgil die?
Was Virgil a great poet?
Where was Virgil born?
Aug 22, 2024 · Virgil’s poetry immediately became famous in Rome and was admired by the Romans for two main reasons—first, because he was regarded as their own national poet, spokesman of their ideals and achievements; second, because he seemed to have reached the ultimate of perfection in his art (his structure, diction, metre).
- Robert Deryck Williams
The son of a farmer in northern Italy, Virgil came to be regarded as one of Rome's greatest poets; his Aeneid as Rome's national epic. Over the past 300 years, much of Virgil’s long-standard ancient biography, based on hearsay and legends, has been challenged.
Aug 17, 2014 · The Aeneid, written by the Roman poet Virgil (70-19 BCE), is a twelve-book-long epic poem that describes the early mythology of the founding of Rome.
