Publius Vergilius Maro (simply Vergil or less accurately Virgil in English) was the greatest Latin poet of the Augustan Age, and has been compared to Homer for his masterpiece epic, the Aeneid.
Life
Vergil’s early life is still debated. He was born on 15 October 70 BCE at Mantua. He was probably educated in Rome, though Naples is another contender, and it may in fact be both. One preface to a poem attributed to Vergil alludes to his learning from the Epicurean philosopher Siro, who had a school in Naples, and the first securely attested work of his, the Eclogues, shows familiarity with Epicurean teachings.
Vergil’s ancestral lands, like those of other families in northern Italy, were confiscated in 41 BCE after the Battle of Philippi, but he regained them shortly after publishing the Eclogues. It is possible that the wealthy literary patron Maecenas interceded on his behalf after reading the Eclogues, since he soon joined the circle of poets around Maecenas, which also consisted of Horace and Propertius. He died in 19 BCE sailing back from Greece where he was researching the land for his magnum opus, the Aeneid.
Vergil was buried at Naples, and on his tomb the following epitaph was inscribed:
Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc
Parthenope; cecini pascua, rura, duces.
Mantua bore me, Calabrians snatched me, now holds me
Parthenope; I sang of pastures, the countryside, and leaders.
Parthenope was the original name for Naples, named after a siren from the area.
Works
The earliest work attributed to Vergil is the Appendix Vergiliana, which consists of a collection of short poems.. While some scholars argue that a few poems might be authentically Vergil’s, it is generally agreed that most date from the first century CE, and perhaps none at all are in fact Vergil’s.
Besides the Appendix, Vergil’s first real publications are his Eclogae (“Eclogues,” sometimes also called the “Bucolics”), ten poems composed in hexameter verse and published sometime after 40 BCE.
These poems extol the rustic and bucolic lifestyle over that of the crowded city, taking Theocritus’ Idylls as a model. It was with Vergil’s Eclogues that Arcadia, long associated with the wilderness, cemented its status as the idyllic countryside. The poems feature dialogues, typically involving shepherds and their beloved in meadows and groves of untouched lands, especially Arcadia.
With Rome divided between Octavian and Antony, though, Vergil introduces political undertones in many of the poems. The first eclogue’s participant, Meliboeus, lost his lands due to the events from the war between Caesar and Pompey; some understand this as Vergil’s own voice, since he too had lost his ancestral home. In the fourth eclogue, a child is predicted as bringing peace to Rome and her dominion; Christians have long interpreted the prediction to be about Christ, but in reality it was more plausibly about Octavian, whom Julius Caesar posthumously adopted in his will.
Vergil’s second publication were the Georgica (Georgics, from the Greek γεωργικά, geōrgika, “pertaining to farming”), poems that form a manual on agriculture written in hexameters. These were published in four books in 29 BCE on the occasion of Octavian returning triumphant over Antony and Cleopatra. The long civil wars had wreaked havoc on the countryside, and Vergil’s poetry is an attempt at reconstructing that formerly idyllic land. This is most apparent in Vergil’s use of the Hesiodic “Myth of the Golden Age,” which lamented while still accepting the degenerate status of the world compared to the past. That myth is in the Works and Days, which is the model for all later didactic poems on farming.
Vergil’s final work was the Aeneid, an epic in twelve books narrating Aeneas’ journey from Troy after the Trojan War to Italy, where he follows a prophecy to found the “Roman race.” It begins in media res with Aeneas telling his story to Dido, queen of Carthage, after arriving shipwrecked in her land. He relates his tale from the sack of Troy and the enmity the Trojans incurred from Juno (Book II) to his adventures in Greece and Sicily (Book III), where he encounters figures from the two other great Greek journey epics, Polyphemus the Cyclops (from the Odyssey) and the harpies (from the Argonautica).
After finishing the story up to this point, Venus causes Dido to fall in love with him, though Aeneas eventually spurns her in order to continue fulfilling the prophecy that he will found Rome. By Book VI, the crew lands in Italy, where Aeneas seeks out the Sibyl of Cumae, a seeress who leads him to the Underworld once he has obtained a golden bough. There he is led around by his father Anchises and is shown both ghosts of his past and future great men of Rome.
Book VII marks the turning point in the epic, in which Aeneas and his companions land in Italy and fight to stay there. In Book VIII, Aeneas allies with the Greek Evander and his son Pallas, while Books IX-XII narrate the war. The Aeneid ends on a sour note. Aeneas is victorious and nearly shows mercy on his enemy, the Latin Turnus, before noticing that he is wearing the belt of Pallas, whom he had slain earlier. The final scene is Aeneas throwing away that mercy and promptly killing Turnus.
Vergil died before he could publish the epic, but his friends disobeyed his dying wishes by saving the Aeneid instead of throwing it into a fire. Though it is mostly finished and certainly in perfect reading quality, there still remain a few lines that seem incomplete (the so-called “half-lines”).
The Aeneid was written at the very height of Augustus’ cultural program. Part of Augustus’ imperial program was a glorification of the past, and Vergil’s Aeneid occupies a central part in establishing not just a Roman epic, but a primordial lineage for Julius Caesar and by extension Augustus. Ascanius, for example, was also given the name Iulus, and it was through him that the gens Iulia, the Julian family, descends, including Julius Caesar. Moreover, in the underworld, Anchises points out the assassination of Julius Caesar as a lamentable tragedy and the ascension of Augustus as a new golden age for the city.
Some scholars, detecting a counter-current of unease throughout, argue that the Aeneid might not actually be complete propaganda. They point to problematic sections which seem to undermine Augustan claims. For example, upon exiting the Underworld, Aeneas chooses the gate of dreams, which raises the question how much of what he saw was “real” if everything was just a dream. Moreover, the figure of Aeneas himself, often thought to represent Augustus at some level, is constantly pushed around without any real agency on his own, until the very end when he abandons mercy (a central tenet of Julius Caesar’s reign) for irrational bloodshed. Individually, any number of these kinds of points can be disputed, but when taken all together they present a real reason to see Vergil’s skepticism of the Augustan regime. If true, this can be partially explained as coming from Vergil’s latent anger in having his ancestral lands stripped from him by Augustan forces during the war with Antony.
Legacy
Not long after publication, Vergil’s Aeneid was heralded as an instant masterpiece and quickly rose to canonical status. For it, Vergil became one of the most praised poets of all of Latin literature, but especially of epic poetry. Quintilian, in discussing Roman poets, quotes a conversation with Domitius Afer:
I asked what poet in his opinion came nearest to Homer, and he replied, “Vergil came nearest to Homer, but is nearer first than third.” And in truth, although we must bow before the immortal and superhuman genius of Homer, there is greater diligence and exactness in the work of Vergil […] The superior uniformity of the Roman’s excellence balances Homer’s pre-eminence in his outstanding passages.
The Aeneid’s impact on the literary world was immediate. Its presence and influence was felt throughout Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Lucan’s Pharsalia, and even as the latter attempted to subvert the epic conventions perfected by Vergil.
Vergil’s Aeneid soon became mandatory reading for all Roman school children. Augustine recalled learning it as a child and remembered weeping for the death of Dido, something he regretted after his conversion to Christianity. Commentaries were written on it already in antiquity, and Servius’ commentary, which thankfully survives, not only illuminates some of the more obscure references in and aspects of the Aeneid, but also showcases ancient literary criticism.
Aside from the Aeneid, Vergil’s other works were held in an equally high regard. Whereas before Vergil, the model for bucolic poetry was Theocritus’ Idylls, Vergil transformed the genre, solidifying the role of the rustic in the setting. Arcadia became the location par excellence for the ideal shepherd in his ideal, idyllic life, far from the city, playing the lyre over their sheep. The specifically Vergilian models were adopted by Latin poets in the first century CE like Calpurnius Siculus and Nemesianus.
Perhaps by association with virga (which can mean inter alia a “magic wand”) and because of his descriptions of the underworld in book 6, Vergil himself was used by Dante as his guide to hell and purgatory in the Divine Comedy; this association is also why his name is incorrectly spelled Virgil.
Memorable Lines
Latet anguis in herba.
“The snake lies hidden in the grass.”
(Eclogues 3.93)
Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem.
“Begin, little child, to recognize your mother with a smile.”
(Eclogues 4.60)
Omnia vincit Amor: et cedamus Amori.
“Love conquers all; we too will yield to Love.”
(Eclogues 10.69)
Audacibus adnue coeptis.
“Approve of our bold beginnings.” Adopted as one of US mottoes as Annuit Coeptis.
(Georgics 1.40)
Labor omnia vicit.
“Hard work conquered everything.”
(Georgics 1.145)
Arma virumque cano.
“I sing of arms and a man.”
(Aeneid 1.1)
Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuuabit.
“Perhaps even these things will one day be pleasing to remember.”
(Aeneid 1.203)
Dux femina facti.
“The woman was the leader of the deed.”
(Aeneid 1.364)
Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis.
“Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even bearing gifts.” Said about the Trojan horse.
(Aeneid 2.49)
Facilis descensus Averno
“The descent to hell is easy.”
(Aeneid 6.126)
opta ardua pennis astra sequi
“Choose to follow the difficult stars on wings.”
(Aeneid 12.892–893)
Vergil Online
Latin: PHI Latin Texts
Latin: Sacred-Texts
English: Poetry in Translation (Aeneid, Eclogues, Georgics)
English: Theoi (Aeneid)
Sacred-Texts: (Aeneid, Eclogues, Georgics)
Further Reading
- Cairns, Francis. 1989. Virgil’s Augustan Epic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
- Michael C. J. Putnam 1995. Virgil’s Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence. University of North Carolina Press.
- Yasmin Syed, Vergil’s Aeneid and the Roman Self: Subject and Nation in Literary Discourse. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
- Joseph Farrell & Michael C. J. Putnam edd. 2010. A Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and Its Tradition. Wiley Blackwell.
- Philip Thibodeau, Playing the Farmer: Representations of Rural Life in Vergil’s Georgics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
