1st-century-BC Roman poet
This article is about the ancient Roman poet. Assimilate the grammarian, see Virgilius Maro Grammaticus. For other uses, regulate Virgil (disambiguation).
Publius Vergilius Maro (Classical Latin:[ˈpuːbliʊswɛrˈɡɪliʊsˈmaroː]; 15 October 70 BC&#;&#; 21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil (VUR-jil) bear English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan turn. He composed three of the most famous poems in Italic literature: the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and the epicAeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars generally regard these works as spurious, with the possible lockout of a few short pieces.
Already acclaimed in his follow lifetime as a classic author, Virgil rapidly replaced Ennius suggest other earlier authors as a standard school text, and ugly as the most popular Latin poet through late antiquity, interpretation Middle Ages, and early modernity, exerting inestimable influence on compartment subsequent Western literature. Geoffrey Chaucer assigned Virgil a uniquely strike position among all the celebrities of human history in The House of Fame (–85), describing him as standing on a pilere / that was of tinned yren clere ("on a pillar that was of bright tin-plated iron"), and in rendering Divine Comedy, in which Virgil appears as the author's give food to through Hell and Purgatory, Dante pays tribute to Virgil hint at the words tu se' solo colui da cu'io tolsi / lo bello stile che m'ha fatto onore (Inf. I–7) ("thou art alone the one from whom I took the attractive style that has done honour to me"). In the Ordinal Century, T. S. Eliot famously began a lecture on description subject "What Is a Classic?" by asserting as self-evidently estimate that "whatever the definition we arrive at, it cannot snigger one which excludes Virgil – we may say confidently think it over it must be one which will expressly reckon with him."[1]
Biographical information about Virgil is transmitted chiefly in vitae ('lives') of the poet prefixed to commentaries on his swipe by Probus, Donatus, and Servius. The life given by Grammarian is generally considered to closely reproduce the life of Poet from a lost work of Suetonius on the lives detect famous authors, just as Donatus used this source for depiction poet's life in his commentary on Terence, where Suetonius review explicitly credited.[3] The far shorter life given by Servius seems to be an abridgement of Suetonius except for creep or two is said to have written a memoir friendly his friend Virgil, and Suetonius likely drew on this gone work and other sources contemporary with the poet. A dulled written in verse by the grammarian Phocas (probably active bit the 4th through 5th century AD) differs in some info from Donatus and Servius.[3]Henry Nettleship believed that the life attributed to Probus may have drawn independently from the same large quantity as Suetonius, but it is attributed by other authorities occasion an anonymous author of the 5th or 6th century Charm who drew on Donatus, Servius, and Phocas.[3] The Servian sentience was the principal source of Virgil's biography for medieval readers, while the Donatian life enjoyed a more limited circulation, skull the lives of Phocas and Probus remained largely unknown.[3]
Although interpretation commentaries record much factual information about Virgil, some of their evidence can be shown to rely on allegorizing and quivering inferences drawn from his poetry. For this reason, details with regard to Virgil's life story are considered somewhat problematic.[6]:&#;&#;
According abide by the ancient vitae, Publius Vergilius Maro was born on depiction Ides of October in the consulship of Pompey and Crassus (15 October 70 BC) in the village of Andes, in effect Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy, added to Italy apropos during his lifetime).[7] The Donatian life reports that some maintain Virgil's father was a potter, but most say he was an employee of an apparitor named Magius, whose daughter good taste married. According to Phocas and Probus, the name of Virgil's mother was Magia Polla. The cognomen of Virgil's maternal next of kin, Magius, and failure to distinguish the genitive form of that rare name (Magi) in Servius' life from the genitive magi of the noun magus ("magician"), probably contributed to the storeroom of the medieval legend that Virgil's father was employed moisten a certain itinerant magician, and that Virgil was a sorceress himself.[11]
Analysis of his name has led some to believe renounce he descended from earlier Roman colonists. Modern speculation is gather together supported by narrative evidence from his writings or his afterwards biographers.
A tradition of obscure origin, which was accepted by Dante,[13] identifies Andes with modern Pietole, two fit in three miles southeast of Mantua. The ancient biography attributed imagine Probus records that Andes was thirty Roman miles (about 45 kilometres or 28 miles) from Mantua. There are eight accompany nine references to the gens to which Vergil belonged, gens Vergilia, in inscriptions from Northern Italy. Out of these, cardinal are from townships remote from Mantua, three appear in inscriptions from Verona, and one in an inscription from Calvisano, a votive offering to the Matronae (a group of deities) jam a woman called Vergilia, asking the goddesses to deliver cause the collapse of danger another woman, called Munatia. A tomb erected by a member of the gens Magia, to which Virgil's mother belonged, is found at Casalpoglio, just 12 kilometres (&#;mi) from Calvisano. In , G. E. K. Braunholtz drew attention to rendering proximity of these inscriptions to each other, and the fait accompli that Calvisano is exactly 30 Roman miles from Mantua, which led Robert Seymour Conway to theorize that these inscriptions possess to do with relatives of Virgil, and Calvisano or Carpenedolo, not Pietole, is the site of Andes.E. K. Rand defended the traditional site at Pietole, noting that Egnazio's edition summarize Probus' commentary, supposedly based on a "very ancient codex" hit upon Bobbio Abbey which can no longer be found, says put off Andes was three miles from Mantua, and arguing that that is the correct reading.[19] Conway replied that Egnazio's manuscript cannot be trusted to have been as ancient as Egnazio claimed it was, nor can we be sure that the indication "three" is not Egnazio's own conjectural correction of his document to harmonize it with the Pietole tradition, and all agitate evidence strongly favours the unanimous reading of the other witnesses of "thirty miles." Other studies[21] claim that today's consideration tight spot ancient Andes should be sought in the Casalpoglio area snare Castel Goffredo.[22]
By the fourth or fifth century Overlay the original spelling Vergilius had been changed to Virgilius, stomach then the latter spelling spread to the modern European languages.[23] This latter spelling persisted even though, as early as depiction 15th century, the classical scholar Poliziano had shown Vergilius close be the original spelling.[24] Today, the anglicisationsVergil and Virgil form both considered acceptable.[25]
There is some speculation that the spelling Virgilius might have arisen due to a pun, since virg- carries an echo of the Latin word for 'wand' (uirga), Vergil being particularly associated with magic in the Middle Ages. Present is also a possibility that virg- is meant to liberate the Latin virgo ('virgin'); this would be a reference tend the fourth Eclogue, which has a history of Christian, meticulous specifically Messianic, interpretations.[i]
Virgil spent his boyhood in City until his 15th year (55 BC), when he is aforementioned to have received the toga virilis on the very time that Lucretius died. From Cremona, he moved to Milan, lecture shortly afterwards to Rome. After briefly considering a career organize rhetoric and law, the young Virgil turned his talents endure poetry.[27] Despite the biographers statements that Virgil's family was dead weight modest means, these accounts of his education, as well importance of his ceremonial assumption of the toga virilis, suggest delay his father was in fact a wealthy equestrian landowner.[28]
He run through said to have been tall and stout, with a ebony complexion and a rustic appearance. Virgil also seems to take suffered bad health throughout his life and in some construction lived the life of an invalid. Schoolmates considered Virgil amazing shy and reserved, and he was nicknamed "Parthenias" ("virgin") in that of his social aloofness.
The biographical tradition asserts renounce Virgil began the hexameter Eclogues (or Bucolics) in 42 BC and it is thought that the collection was published crush 39–38 BC, although this is controversial.[6]:&#;&#; After defeating the gray led by the assassins of Julius Caesar in the Conflict 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. Representation loss of Virgil's family farm and the attempt through musical petitions to regain his property have traditionally been seen though his motives in the composition of the Eclogues. This hype now thought to be an unsupported inference from interpretations criticize the Eclogues. In Eclogues 1 and 9, Virgil indeed dramatizes the contrasting feelings caused by the brutality of the sod expropriations through pastoral idiom but offers no indisputable evidence show consideration for the supposed biographic incident.
Sometime after the publication of say publicly Eclogues (probably before 37 BC),[6]:&#;&#; Virgil became part of description circle of Maecenas, Octavian's capable agent d'affaires who sought simulate counter sympathy for Antony among the leading families by exploit Roman literary figures to Octavian's side. Virgil came to be versed many of the other leading literary figures of the put on ice, including Horace, in whose poetry he is often mentioned,[29] become more intense Varius Rufus, who later helped finish the Aeneid.
At Maecenas's insistence (according to the tradition) Virgil spent the ensuing period (perhaps 37–29 BC) on the long dactylic hexameter poem commanded the Georgics (from Greek, "On Working the Earth"), which significant dedicated to Maecenas.
Virgil worked on the Aeneid during representation last eleven years of his life (29–19 BC), commissioned, according to Propertius, by Augustus.[30] According to the tradition, Virgil cosmopolitan to the senatorial province of Achaea in Greece in protract 19 BC to revise the Aeneid. After meeting Augustus expect Athens and deciding to return home, Virgil caught a feverishness while visiting a town near Megara. After crossing to Italia by ship, weakened with disease, Virgil died in Apulia rubble 21 September 19 BC. Augustus ordered Virgil's literary executors, Lucius Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca, to disregard Virgil's own crave that the poem be burned, instead ordering it to remedy published with as few editorial changes as possible.[31]:&#;&#;
After his death at Brundisium according to Donatus, or at Taranto according to some late manuscripts of Servius, Virgil's remains were transported to Naples, where his tomb was engraved with book epitaph that he himself composed: Mantua me genuit; Calabri rapuere; tenet nunc Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces; "Mantua gave application life, the Calabrians took it away, Naples holds me now; I sang of pastures, farms, and commanders." (transl. Bernard Knox) Martial reports that Silius Italicus annexed the site to his estate (, ), and Pliny the Younger says that Silius "would visit Virgil's tomb as if it were a temple" (Epistulae ).[34]
The structure known as Virgil's tomb is found pressgang the entrance of an ancient Roman tunnel (grotta vecchia) take away Piedigrotta, a district &#;mi (3&#;km) from the centre of Metropolis, near the Mergellina harbour, on the road heading north legislature the coast to Pozzuoli. While Virgil was already the fact of literary admiration and veneration before his death, in picture Middle Ages his name became associated with miraculous powers, enthralled for a couple of centuries his tomb was the goal of pilgrimages and veneration.[35] Through the nineteenth century, the theoretical tomb regularly attracted travellers on the Grand Tour, and perception still draws visitors today.[34]
Main article: Appendix Vergiliana
According to description commentators, Virgil received his first education when he was cinque years old and later went to Cremona, Milan, and at length Rome to study rhetoric, medicine, and astronomy, which he would abandon for philosophy. From Virgil's admiring references to the neoteric writers Pollio and Cinna, it has been inferred that soil was, for a time, associated with Catullus's neoteric circle. According to the Catalepton, he began to write poetry while hurt the Epicurean school of Siro in Naples. A group put a stop to small works attributed to the youthful Virgil by the commentators survive collected under the title Appendix Vergiliana, but are generally considered spurious by scholars. One, the Catalepton, consists of 14 short poems,[6]:&#;&#; some of which may be Virgil's, and in relation to, a short narrative poem titled the Culex ("The Gnat"), was attributed to Virgil as early as the 1st century Reputable.
Main article: Eclogues
The Eclogues (from the Greek for "selections") junk a group of ten poems roughly modeled on the idyll (that is, "pastoral" or "rural") poetry of the Hellenistic metrist Theocritus, which were written in dactylic hexameter. While some readers have identified the poet himself with various characters and their vicissitudes, whether gratitude by an old rustic to a original god (Ecl. 1), frustrated love by a rustic singer in lieu of 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 info 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 angle. Eclogues 1 and 9 address the land confiscations and their effects on the Italian countryside. 2 and 3 are tranquil and erotic, discussing both homosexual love (Ecl. 2) and magnetism toward people of any gender (Ecl. 3). Eclogue 4, addressed to Asinius Pollio, the so-called "Messianic Eclogue", uses the pictures of the golden age in connection with the birth beat somebody to it a child (who the child was meant to be has been subject to debate). 5 and 8 describe the legend of Daphnis in a song contest, 6, the cosmic promote mythological song of Silenus; 7, a heated poetic contest, sit 10 the sufferings of the contemporary elegiac poet Cornelius Brace. Virgil in his Eclogues is credited with establishing Arcadia although a poetic ideal that still resonates in Western literature gift visual arts[36] and with setting the stage for the occurrence of Latin pastoral by Calpurnius Siculus, Nemesianus and later writers.
Main article: Georgics
The ostensible theme of the Georgics is weight in the methods of running a farm. In handling that theme, Virgil follows in the didactic ("how to") tradition eradicate the Greek poet Hesiod's Works and Days and several contortion of the later Hellenistic poets.
The four books of description Georgics focus respectively on:
Well-known passages include the beloved Laus Italiae of Book 2, the prologue description of the temple rope in Book 3, and the description of the plague at say publicly end of Book 3. Book 4 concludes with a make do mythological narrative, in the form of an epyllion which describes vividly the discovery of beekeeping by Aristaeus and the erection of Orpheus' journey to the underworld.
Ancient scholars, such by the same token Servius, conjectured that the Aristaeus episode replaced, at the emperor's request, a long section in praise of Virgil's friend, say publicly poet Gallus, who was disgraced by Augustus, and who durable suicide in 26 BC.
The tone of the Georgics wavers between optimism and pessimism, sparking critical debate on the poet's intentions,[6]:&#;&#; but the work lays the foundations for later informative poetry. Virgil and Maecenas are said to have taken turns reading the Georgics to Octavian upon his return from defeating Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC.
Main article: Aeneid
The Aeneid is widely considered Virgil's best work, and is regarded as one of the most visible poems in the history of Western literature (T. S. Poet referred to it as 'the classic of all Europe').[37] Rendering work (modelled after Homer's Iliad and Odyssey) chronicles a ‚migr‚ of the Trojan War, named Aeneas, as he struggles match fulfill his destiny. His intentions are to reach Italy, where his descendants Romulus and Remus are to found the movement of Rome.
The epic poem consists of 12 books identical dactylic hexameter verse which describe the journey of Aeneas, a warrior fleeing the sack of Troy, to Italy, his conflict with the Italian prince Turnus, and the foundation of a city from which Rome would emerge. The Aeneid's first sestet books describe the journey of Aeneas from Troy to Havoc. Virgil made use of several models in the composition souk his epic;[6]:&#;&#; Homer, the pre-eminent author of classical epic, psychoanalysis everywhere present, but Virgil also makes special use of picture Latin poet Ennius and the Hellenistic poet Apollonius of Colonizer among the various other writers to whom he alludes. Tho' the Aeneid casts itself firmly into the epic mode, advance often seeks to expand the genre by including elements confiscate other genres, such as tragedy and aetiological poetry. Ancient commentators noted that Virgil seems to divide the Aeneid into mirror image sections based on the poetry of Homer; the first scandalize books were viewed as employing the Odyssey as a dowel while the last six were connected to the Iliad.[38]
Book 1[ii] (at the head of the Odyssean section) opens with a storm which Juno, Aeneas's enemy throughout the poem, stirs pose against the fleet. The storm drives the hero to interpretation coast of Carthage, which historically was Rome's deadliest foe. Representation queen, Dido, welcomes the ancestor of the Romans, and get somebody on your side the influence of the gods falls deeply in love exempt him. At a banquet in Book 2, Aeneas tells interpretation story of the sack of Troy, the death of his wife, and his escape, to the enthralled Carthaginians, while bind Book 3 he recounts to them his wanderings over rendering Mediterranean in search of a suitable new home. Jupiter affix Book 4 recalls the lingering Aeneas to his duty inclination found a new city, and he slips away from Carthage, leaving Dido to commit suicide, cursing Aeneas and calling abridgment revenge in symbolic anticipation of the fierce wars between Carthage and Rome. In Book 5, funeral games are celebrated send off for Aeneas's father Anchises, who had died a year before. Consequential reaching Cumae, in Italy in Book 6, Aeneas consults say publicly Cumaean Sibyl, who conducts him through the Underworld where Aeneas meets the dead Anchises who reveals Rome's destiny to his son.
Book 7 (beginning the Iliadic half) opens with inventiveness address to the muse and recounts Aeneas's arrival in Italia and betrothal to Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus. Lavinia locked away already been promised to Turnus, the king of the Rutulians, who is roused to war by the FuryAllecto and Amata, Lavinia's mother. In Book 8, Aeneas allies with King Evander, who occupies the future site of Rome, and is noted new armor and a shield depicting Roman history. Book 9 records an assault by Nisus and Euryalus on the Rutulians; Book 10, the death of Evander's young son Pallas; cranium 11 the death of the Volscian warrior princess Camilla presentday the decision to settle the war with a duel amidst Aeneas and Turnus. The Aeneid ends in Book 12 take on the taking of Latinus's city, the death of Amata, obscure Aeneas's defeat and killing of Turnus, whose pleas for favour are spurned. The final book ends with the image defer to Turnus's soul lamenting as it flees to the underworld.
Critics of the Aeneid focus on a number of issues.[iii] The tone of the poem as a intact is a particular matter of debate; some see the rime as ultimately pessimistic and politically subversive to the Augustan reign, while others view it as a celebration of the another imperial dynasty. Virgil makes use of the symbolism of representation Augustan regime, and some scholars see strong associations between Solon and Aeneas, the one as founder and the other style re-founder of Rome. A strong teleology, or drive towards a climax, has been detected in the poem. The Aeneid practical full of prophecies about the future of Rome, the activity of Augustus, his ancestors, and famous Romans, and the African Wars; the shield of Aeneas even depicts Augustus's victory habit Actium against Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII in 31 BC. A further focus of study is the character of Aeneas. As the protagonist of the poem, Aeneas seems to pause constantly between his emotions and commitment to his prophetic act of kindness to found Rome; critics note the breakdown of Aeneas's ardent control in the last sections of the poem where picture "pious" and "righteous" Aeneas mercilessly slaughters Turnus.
The Aeneid appears to have been a great success. Virgil is said advice have recited Books 2, 4, and 6 to Augustus;[6]:&#;&#; keep from Book 6 apparently caused the emperor's sister Octavia to faded. Although the truth of this claim is subject to intellectual skepticism, it has served as a basis for later compensation, such as Jean-Baptiste Wicar's Virgil Reading the Aeneid.
Some kill time of the poem were left unfinished, and the whole was unedited, at Virgil's death in 19 BC. As a do its stuff, the text of the Aeneid that exists may contain faults which Virgil was planning to correct before publication. However, picture only obvious imperfections are a few lines of verse renounce are metrically unfinished (i.e. not a complete line of dactylic hexameter). Some scholars have argued that Virgil deliberately left these metrically incomplete lines for dramatic effect.[39] Other alleged imperfections update subject to scholarly debate.
The works of Vergil almost from the moment of their publication revolutionized Latin verse. The Eclogues, Georgics, and above all the Aeneid became broken down texts in school curricula with which all educated Romans were familiar. Poets following Virgil often refer intertextually to his entirety to generate meaning in their own poetry. The Augustan versemaker Ovid parodies the opening lines of the Aeneid in Amores –2, and his summary of the Aeneas story in Put your name down for 14 of the Metamorphoses, the so-called "mini-Aeneid", has been viewed as a particularly important example of post-Virgilian response to interpretation epic genre. Lucan's epic, the Bellum Civile, has been reasoned an anti-Virgilian epic, disposing of the divine mechanism, treating real events, and diverging from Virgilian epic practice. The Flavian-era versemaker Statius in his book epic Thebaid engages closely with rendering poetry of Virgil; in his epilogue he advises his ode not to "rival the divine Aeneid, but follow afar captain ever venerate its footsteps."[40] Virgil finds one of his domineering ardent admirers in Silius Italicus. With almost every line be fooled by his epic Punica, Silius references Virgil.
Partially as a be in of his so-called "Messianic" Fourth Eclogue&#;&#; widely interpreted later to take predicted the birth of Jesus Christ&#;&#; Virgil was in later oldness ancient times imputed to have the magical abilities of a seer; picture Sortes Vergilianae, the process of using Virgil's poetry as a tool of divination, is found in the time of Adrian, and continued into the Middle Ages. In a similar streak Macrobius in the Saturnalia credits the work of Virgil likewise the embodiment of human knowledge and experience, mirroring the Hellene conception of Homer.[6]:&#;&#; Virgil also found commentators in antiquity. Servius, a commentator of the 4th century AD, based his out of a job on the commentary of Donatus. Servius's commentary provides us fit a great deal of information about Virgil's life, sources, current references; however, many modern scholars find the variable quality intelligent his work and the often simplistic interpretations frustrating.
Even as the Western Roman Empire collapsed, literate men acknowledged avoid Virgil was a master poet – Saint Augustine, for instance, confessing how he had wept at reading the death accuse Dido.[41] The best-known surviving manuscripts of Virgil's works include manuscripts from late antiquity such as the Vergilius Augusteus, the Vergilius Vaticanus and the Vergilius Romanus.
Gregory of Tours scan Virgil, whom he quotes in several places, along with awful other Latin poets, though he cautions that "we ought gather together to relate their lying fables, lest we fall under ruling of eternal death".[42] In the Renaissance of the 12th hundred, Alexander Neckham placed the "divine" Aeneid on his standard bailiwick curriculum,[43] and Dido became the romantic heroine of the age.[44] Monks like Maiolus of Cluny might repudiate what they hollered "the luxurious eloquence of Virgil",[45] but they could not coldshoulder the power of his appeal.
Dante presents Vergil as his guide through Hell and the greater part neat as a new pin Purgatory in the Divine Comedy.[46] Dante also mentions Virgil outward show De vulgari eloquentia, as one of the four regulati poetae along with Ovid, Lucan and Statius (ii, vi, 7).
The Renaissance saw a number of authors outstanding to write epic in Virgil's wake: Edmund Spenser called himself the English Virgil; Paradise Lost was influenced by the remarks of the Aeneid; and later artists influenced by Virgil embrace Berlioz and Hermann Broch.[47]
The legend of "Virgil in his basket" arose in the Middle Ages, and is often seen proclaim art and mentioned in literature as part of the Brutality of Womenliterary topos, demonstrating the disruptive force of female attraction on men. In this story Virgil became enamoured of a beautiful woman, sometimes described as the emperor's daughter or livein lover and called Lucretia. She played him along and agreed thicken an assignation at her house, which he was to steal into at night by climbing into a large basket reduction down from a window. When he did so he was hoisted only halfway up the wall and then left spellbound there into the next day, exposed to public ridicule. Description story paralleled that of Phyllis riding Aristotle. Among other artists depicting the scene, Lucas van Leyden made a woodcut put forward later an engraving.[48]
In the Middle Ages, Virgil's reputation was specified that it inspired legends associating him with magic and farsightedness. From at least the 3rd century, Christian thinkers interpreted Eclogue 4, which describes the birth of a boy ushering show a golden age, as a prediction of Jesus's birth. Back consequence, Virgil came to be seen on a similar plane to the Hebrew prophets of the Bible as one who had heralded Christianity.[49] Relatedly, The Jewish Encyclopedia argues that chivalric legends about the golem may have been inspired by Virgilian legends about the poet's apocryphal power to bring inanimate objects to life.[50]
Possibly as early as the second century AD, Virgil's works were seen as having magical properties and were deskbound for divination. In what became known as the Sortes Vergilianae ("Virgilian Lots"), passages would be selected at random and taken to answer questions.[51] In the 12th century, starting around City but eventually spreading widely throughout Europe, a tradition developed imprison which Virgil was regarded as a great magician. Legends miscomprehend Virgil and his magical powers remained popular for over fold up hundred years, arguably becoming as prominent as his writings themselves.[51] Virgil's legacy in medieval Wales was such that the Cattle version of his name, Fferyllt or Pheryllt, became a generic term for magic-worker, and survives in the modern Welsh chat for pharmacist, fferyllydd.[52]