Virgil
70-19 BC
70-19 BC
Publius Vergilius Maro (October 15, 70 BC - September 21, 19 BC), later called Virgilius, and known in English as Virgil or Vergil, was a classical Roman poet, the author of the Eclogues, the Georgics and the substantially completed Aeneid, the last being an epic poem of twelve books that became the Roman Empire's national epic. A fictional depiction of Virgil was Dante Alighieri's guide through hell and purgatory in Dante's epic poem The Divine Comedy.
Virgil was born in the village of Andes, near Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul (Gaul south of the Alps; present-day northern Italy). Virgil was of non-Roman Italian ancestry, which he alluded to and defended in the Aeneid when he said that Rome will be of mixed blood.
Virgil received his earliest education at five years old. He later went to Rome to study rhetoric, medicine, and astronomy, which he soon abandoned for philosophy. In this period, while Virgil was in the school of Siro the Epicurean, he began writing poetry.
In 19 BC Virgil set out on a trip to Greece and Asia with the intention of revising his masterpiece, the Aeneid, already substantially completed, and then of devoting the remainder of his life to philosophical study.
A group of minor poems attributed to the youthful Virgil survive, but are largely considered spurious. One, the Catalepton, consists of fourteen short poems, some of which may be Virgil's, and another, a short narrative poem titled the Culex (the mosquito), was attributed to Virgil as early as the 1st century AD. These dubious poems are sometimes referred to as the Appendix Vergiliana.
In 42 BC, after the defeat of Julius Caesar's assassins, Brutus and Cassius, the demobilized soldiers of the victors settled on expropriated land and Virgil's estate near Mantua was confiscated. However, the first of the Eclogues, written around 42 BC, is taken as evidence that Octavian restored the estate, for it tells how "Tityrus" recovered his land through Octavian's intervention, and "Tityrus" is usually identified as Virgil himself.
Virgil soon became part of the circle of Maecenas, Octavian's capable agent d'affaires who sought to counter sympathy for Mark Antony among the leading families by rallying Roman literary figures to Octavian's side. After the Eclogues were completed, Virgil spent the years 37 BC- 29 BC on the Georgics ("On Farming"), which was written in honor of Maecenas, and is the source of the expression tempus fugit ("time flees"). However, Octavian, who had defeated Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and two years later had the title "Augustus" given to him by the Roman Senate, was already pressing Virgil to write an epic to praise his regime.
Virgil responded with the Aeneid, which took up his last ten years. The first six books of the epic tell how the Trojan hero Aeneas escapes from the sacking of Troy and makes his way to Italy. On the voyage, a storm drives him to the coast of Carthage, where the queen, Dido, welcomes him, and before long Aeneas falls deeply in love. But Jupiter recalls Aeneas to his duty and he slips away from Carthage, leaving Dido to commit suicide, cursing Aeneas as revenge. On reaching Cumae, in Italy, Aeneas consults the Cumaean Sibyl, who conducts him through the Underworld and reveals his destiny to him. Aeneas is reborn as the creator of Imperial Rome.
The first six books (of "first writing") are modeled on Homer's Odyssey, but the last six are the Roman answer to the Iliad. Aeneas is betrothed to Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus, but Lavinia had already been promised to Turnus, the king of the Rutulians, who is roused to war by the Fury Allecto. The Aeneid ends with a single combat between Aeneas and Turnus, whom Aeneas defeats and kills, spurning his plea for mercy.
Virgil traveled with Augustus to Greece. There, Virgil caught a fever, from which he died in Brundisium harbor, leaving the Aeneid unfinished. Augustus ordered Virgil's literary executors, Lucius Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca, to disregard Virgil's own wish that the poem be destroyed and to publish it with as few editorial changes as possible.
As a result, the text of the Aeneid that exists is a draft version, and contains faults which Virgil was planning to correct before publication:
Incomplete or not, the Aeneid was immediately recognized as a masterpiece. It proclaimed the imperial mission of the Roman Empire, but at the same time could pity Rome's victims and feel their grief.
Dido and Turnus, who are both casualties of Rome's destiny, are more attractive figures than Aeneas, whose single-minded devotion to his goal may seem almost repellent to the modern reader. However, at the time Aeneas was considered to exemplify virtue and pietas (roughly translated as piety), duty to one's gods, family and homeland.
However, Aeneas struggles between doing what he wants to do as a man, and doing what he must as a virtuous hero. Aeneas' inner turmoil and shortcomings make him a more realistic character than the heroes of older poems, such as Odysseus.
Even as the Roman world collapsed, literate men acknowledged that the Christianized Virgil was a master poet, even when they ceased to read him. Gregory of Tours read Virgil and some other Latin poets, though he cautions us that "We ought not to relate their lying fables, lest we fall under sentence of eternal death." Surviving medieval collections of manuscripts containing Virgil's works include the Vergilius Augusteus, the Vergilius Vaticanus and the Vergilius Romanus.Dante made Virgil his guide to Hell and Purgatory in The Divine Comedy.
Virgil is still considered one of the greatest of the Latin poets, and the Aeneid is a fixture of most classical studies programs.
Mysticism and Hidden Meanings
In the Middle Ages, Virgil was considered a herald of Christianity for his Eclogue 4 verses (PP Ecl.4) concerning the birth of a boy, which were re-read to prophesy Jesus' nativity. The poem may actually refer to the pregnancy of Octavian's wife Scribonia, who in fact gave birth to a girl.
Also during the Middle Ages, as Virgil developed into a kind of magus or wizard, manuscripts of the Aeneid were used for divinatory bibliomancy, the Sortes Virgilianae, in which a line would be selected at random and interpreted in the context of a current situation (Compare the ancient Chinese I Ching). The Old Testament was sometimes used for similar arcane purposes. Even in the Welsh myth of Taliesin, the goddess Cerridwen is reading from the "Book of Pheryllt" - that is, Virgil.
More recently, professor Jean-Yves Maleuvre has proposed that Virgil wrote the Aeneid using a "double writing" system, in which the first, superficial writing was intended for national audience and Augustus' needs, while the second one, deeper and hidden, unnoticed before Maleuvre discovered it, reflected Virgil's true point of view and his true historical reconstruction of the past. Maleuvre also believes that Augustus had Virgil murdered. Maleuvre's ideas have not met with general acceptance.
Virgil's Tomb
The tomb known as "Virgil's Tomb" is found at the entrance of Posilippo Cave (also known as "grotta vecchia") in the Parco di Virgilio a Piedigrotta, located in the Piedigrotta district two miles from old Naples, on the road heading north along the coast to Pozzuoli. The site called Parco Virgiliano is some distance further north along the coast. While Virgil was already the object of literary admiration and veneration before his death, in the following centuries his name became associated with miraculous powers, his tomb the destination of pilgrimages and pagan veneration. The poet himself was said to have created the cave with the fierce power of his intense gaze.
It is said that the Chiesa della Santa Maria di Piedigrotta was erected by Church authorities to neutralize this pagan adoration and "Christianize" the site. The tomb, however, is a tourist attraction, and still sports a tripod burner originally dedicated to Apollo, bearing witness to the continued allure of hinted dark powers and bizarre mysteries.
Virgil's name in English
In the Middle Ages "Vergilius" was frequently spelled "Virgilius." There are two explanations commonly given for the alteration in the spelling of Virgil's name. One explanation is based on a false etymology associated with the word virgo (maiden in Latin) due to Virgil's excessively "maiden"-like (parthenias in Greek) modesty. Alternatively, some argue that "Vergilius" was altered to "Virgilius" by analogy with the Latin virga (wand) due to the magical or prophetic powers attributed to Virgil in the Middle Ages.
In Norman schools (following the French practice), the habit was to anglicize Latin names by dropping their Latin endings, hence "Virgil."In the 19th century, some German-trained classicists in the United States suggested modification to "Vergil," as it is closer to his original name, and is also the traditional German spelling. Modern usage permits both, though the Oxford Style Manual recommends Vergilius to avoid confusion with the 8th-century Irish grammarian Virgilius Maro Grammaticus.Some post-Renaissance writers liked to affect the sobriquet "The Swan of Mantua."
Virgil devoted his last ten years to the composition of the Aeneid, a mythological epic in 12 books describing the seven-year wanderings of the hero Aeneas from the fall of Troy to his military victory in Italy. Aeneas escaped from Troy carrying his aged father on his shoulders and leading his young son Ascanius by the hand. He assembled a fleet and sailed the eastern Mediterranean Sea with the surviving Trojans to Thrace, Crete (Kríti), Epirus, and Sicily before being shipwrecked on the coast of Africa. Here Dido, queen of Carthage, fell in love with Aeneas and was driven to suicide on his subsequent departure.
After landing at the mouth of the Tiber River in Italy, Aeneas killed Turnus, king of the Rutulians, in a war for the hand of Lavinia, princess of Latium. According to Virgil, the Romans were directly descended from Ascanius, the founder of Alba Longa, mother city of Rome.
The Aeneid's style and treatment are derived from the ancient Greek epics attributed to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Virgil also was influenced in part by the epic poem Argonautica by Greek poet Apollonius of Rhodes and by the Annales of Roman poet Quintus Ennius, who was the first to introduce dactylic hexameter into Latin epic verse. In the Aeneid, Virgil developed both the music and the technical precision of this meter, or rhythmic pattern, so subtly that his verse has been considered a model of literary perfection ever since.
The Aeneid is usually considered the first great literary epic, in contrast to the Iliad, which is constructed with literary artistry but remains in essence a work of oral poetry. The Aeneid, unlike the Iliad or the Bible, is not an inherited part of a national consciousness but rather a deliberate attempt by Virgil, at the request of Augustus, to glorify Rome by celebrating the supposed Trojan origin of its people and, particularly, the achievements and ideals of Rome under its new ruler. The historical and Augustan elements are especially prominent in books five through eight, the central portion of the poem. Because of its ambitious designs, the smooth beauty of its style, and its deep humanity, however, the Aeneid achieves universal scope.
The Aeneid became a classic in its own day. During the Middle Ages, philosophical meanings were read into it, and Virgil was thought to be a seer, or prophet, and a magician.
Italian poet Dante Alighieri took Virgil as his guide through the first part of the Divine Comedy (completed 1321), and English poet Geoffrey Chaucer told part of the story of the Aeneid in his House of Fame (1386?) In the 16th century, English poet Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene (Books I-III, 1590; Books IV-VI, 1596) was indebted to Virgil for his conception of the epic as a national poem. Virgil's style and technique of versification influenced English poets John Milton, in the 17th century, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in the 19th century.
The Aeneid Online - Written 19 B.C.E
The Eclogues Online - Written 37 B.C.E
The Georgics Online - Written 29 B.C.E
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