{{Infobox Writer| name = Publius Vergilius Maro| image = Publius_Vergilius_Maro1.jpg| imagesize = 200px| caption = A bust of Virgil, from the entrance to his tomb in Naples, Italy.], 70 BC, [19 BC| occupation = [Poet| period =| genre = [Epic poetry, [pastoral poetry| debut_works =
[Bucolics]| influenced = The Nationalist movement Dante Alighieri
Ludovico Ariosto and
John Keats, [70 BC – September 21, 19 BC), later called
Virgilius, and known in English language as
Virgil or
Vergil, was a classical Roman poet. He was the author of epics in three modes: the
Bucolics (or
Eclogues), the
Georgics and the substantially completed
Aeneid, the last being an
epic poem in the
heroic mode, which comprised twelve books (as opposed to 24 in each of the epic poems by
Homer) and became the Roman Empire's national epic. Since Virgil depicted his hero
Aeneas seeking advice from his father Anchises in the underworld, Dante Alighieri made the shade of Virgil his own guide for his pilgrimage through the inferno and part of purgatory in his own epic poem
The Divine Comedy.
Life
Legend has it that Virgil was born in the village of Andes, near
Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul (Gaul south of the
Alps; present-day northern
Italy). Some scholars have claimed Celtic ancestry based upon the location of his birth and upon a perceived "Celtic" strain in his verse. Other scholars suggest Etruscan or Umbrian descent by examining the linguistic or ethnic markers of the region. Analysis of his name has led to beliefs that he descended from earlier Roman colonists. Modern speculation ultimately is not supported by narrative evidence either from his own writings or his later biographers. Etymological fancy has noted that his
cognomen MARO shares its letters anagrammatically with the twin themes of his epic: AMOR (love) and ROMA (Rome).
Early works
Again legend unsupported by independent data has it that Virgil received his first education when he was 5 years old and that he later went to Rome to study
rhetoric,
medicine, and astronomy, which he soon abandoned for philosophy; also that in this period, while in the school of Siro the Epicurean, he began to write poetry. A group of small works 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.
During the civil strife that killed the Roman Republic, when the dictator
Julius Caesar had been assassinated in 44 BCE, the army led by his assassins Marcus Junius Brutus and
Gaius Cassius Longinus met defeat by Caesar's faction, including his chief lieutenant
Mark Antony and his newly adopted son Octavian Caesar in
42 BCE in Greece near
Philippi, to which in the next age the Apostle Paul would direct epistles. The victors paid off their soldiers with land expropriated from towns in northern Italy, supposedly including an estate near Mantua belonging to Virgil: again an inference from themes in his work and not supported by independent sources. Virgil dramatizes the contrasting feelings caused by the brutality of expropriation but also by the promise attaching to the youthful figure of Caesar's heir in the
Bucolics, where he works out the mythic framework for life-long ambition to conquer Greek epic for Rome.In themes the ten eclogues develop and vary epic song, relating it first to Roman power (ecl. 1), then to love, both homosexual (ecl. 2) and panerotic (ecl. 3), then again to Roman power and Caesar's heir imagined as authorizing Virgil to surpass
Greek epic and refound
tradition (ecll. 4 and 5), shifting back to love then as a dynamic source considered apart from Rome (ecl. 6). Hence in the remaining eclogues Virgil withdraws from his newly minted
Roman mythology and gradually constructs a new myth of his own poetics: he casts the remote Greek region of
Arcadia, home of the god
Pan (mythology), as the place of poetic origin itself. In passing he again rings changes on erotic themes, such as requited and unrequited homosexual and heterosexual passion, tragic love for elusive women or magical powers of song to retrieve an elusive male. He concludes by establishing
Arcadia as a poetic ideal that still resonates in Western literature and visual arts.
Readers often naively did and sometimes do identify the poet himself with various characters and their vicissitudes, whether gratitude by an old rustic to a new god (ecl. 1), frustrated love by a rustic singer for 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 details from fictive texts preferring instead to interpret the diverse characters and themes as representing the poet's own contrastive perceptions of contemporary life and thought.
Biographical reconstruction supposes that 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. It also appears that Virgil gained many connections with other leading literary figures of the time, including Horace and Varius Rufus (who later helped finish the Aeneid). After he had completed the
Bucolics in homage to Greek Theocritus, who had been the first to write short epic poems taking herdsmen's life as their apparent theme: 'bucolic' in Greek meaning 'on care for cattle'], Virgil spent the ensuing years (perhaps 37 BCE–
29 BCE) on the longer epic called
Georgics (from Greek, 'on working the earth', because farming is their apparent theme, in the tradition of Greek Hesiod), which he dedicated to Maecenas of the expression
tempus fugit ("time flies")].Virgil and Maecenas took turns reading the
Georgics to Octavian upon his return from defeating Antony and his consort
Cleopatra at the
Battle of Actium in
31 BCE. In 27 BCE the Roman Senate conferred on Octavian the more than human title Augustus, well suited to Virgil's ambition to write an
epic poetry to challenge Homer, a Roman epic developed from the Caesarist mythology introduced in the
Bucolics and incorporating now the Julian Caesars' family legend that traced their line back to a mythical Trojan prince who escaped the
fall of Troy.
Composition of the
Aeneid and death
of Virgil which was discovered in a
Tunisian villa from the 3rd century AD.
Virgil worked on the
Aeneid during the last ten years of his life. Its first six books tell how the
Troy 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, which historically was Rome's deadliest foe. The queen,
Dido, welcomes the ancestor of the Romans, and under the influence of the gods falls deeply in love with him.
Jupiter (god) recalls Aeneas to his duty towards Rome, however, and he slips away from Carthage, leaving Dido to commit
suicide, cursing Aeneas and calling down revenge in a symbolic anticipation of the fierce wars between Carthage and Rome. On reaching Cumae, in Italy, Aeneas consults the
Cumaean Sibyl, who conducts him through the
Underworld and where Virgil imagines him meeting his father Anchises who reveals his son's Roman destiny to him.
The 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
Erinyes Allecto. The
Aeneid ends with a single combat between Aeneas and Turnus, whom Aeneas defeats and kills, spurning his plea for mercy.
The ancient biography relates that Virgil traveled with Augustus to
Greece. En route, 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 burned, instead ordering it published with as few editorial changes as possible. As a result, the text of the
Aeneid that exists may contain faults which Virgil was planning to correct before publication. However, the only obvious imperfections are a few lines of verse that are metrically unfinished (i.e., not a complete line of dactylic hexameter). Other alleged "imperfections" are subject to scholarly debate.
Incomplete or not, the
Aeneid was immediately recognized as a masterpiece, it proclaimed the Imperial mission of the
Roman Empire, whilst at the same time pitying Rome's victims and feeling their grief. Aeneas was considered to exemplify virtue and
pietas (roughly translated as
piety, though the word is far more complex and has a sense of being duty-bound and respectful of divine will, family and homeland). Nevertheless, Aeneas struggles between doing what he wants to do as a man, and doing what he must as a virtuous hero. In the view of some modern critics, Aeneas' inner turmoil and shortcomings make him a more realistic character than the heroes of Homer, such as Odysseus.
Later views of Virgil
Even as the Roman empire collapsed, literate men acknowledged that the Christianized Virgil was a master poet.
Gregory of Tours read Virgil whom he quotes in several places, 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." The Aeneid remained the central Latin literary text of the Middle Ages and retained its status as the grand epic of the Latin peoples, and of those who considered themselves to be of Roman provenance, such as the English. It also held religious importance as it describes the founding of the Holy City. Virgil was made palatable for his Christian audience also through a belief in his prophecy of Christ in his Fourth Eclogue. Cicero and other classical writers too were declared Christian due to similarities in moral thinking to Christianity. Surviving medieval collections of manuscripts containing Virgil's works include the Vergilius Augusteus, the Vergilius Vaticanus and the
Vergilius Romanus.
Dante Alighieri made Virgil his guide to Hell and the greater part of Purgatory in
The Divine Comedy. Dante also mentions Virgil in
De vulgari eloquentia, along with
Ovid, Marcus Annaeus Lucanus and
Statius as one of the four
regulati poetae (ii, vi, 7).
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
portrait of Virgil from the
Vergilius Romanus.In the
Middle Ages, Virgil was considered a herald of
Christianity for his
Eclogue 4 verses () concerning the birth of a boy, which were read as a prophecy of 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 was developed into a kind of
magus, manuscripts of the
Aeneid were used for divination 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 mythology of
Taliesin, the goddess
Cerridwen is reading from the "Book of Pheryllt"—that is, Virgil.
In some legends, such as
Virgilius the Sorcerer, the powers attributed to Virgil were far more extensive.
Virgil's tomb
The tomb known as "Virgil's tomb" is found at the entrance of an ancient Roman tunnel (also known as "grotta vecchia") in the Parco di Virgilio in
Piedigrotta, a district two miles from old Naples, near the Mergellina harbor, 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 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 adoration and "
Christianization" the site. The tomb, however, is a tourist attraction, and still sports a tripod burner originally dedicated to
Apollo, bearing witness to the beliefs held by Virgil.
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 or παρθηνιας in
Greek language) 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 an attempt to reconcile his non-Christian background with the high regard in which medieval scholars held him, it was posited that some of his works metaphorically foretold the coming of Christ, hence making him a prophet of sorts. This view is defended by some scholars today, namely Richard F. Thomas of Harvard.
In
Normans schools (following the French language practice), the habit was to anglicize Latin names by dropping their Latin endings, hence "Virgil."
In the 19th century, some German language-trained
classics 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
Ireland grammarian Virgilius Maro Grammaticus.
Some post-Renaissance writers liked to affect the
sobriquet "The Swan of Mantua."
See also
External links
- Collected Works
-
- Latin texts & commentaries
- Aeneid translated by T. C. Williams, 1910
- Aeneid translated by John Dryden, 1697
- Aeneid, Eclogues & Georgics translated by J. C. Greenough, 1900
- Works of Virgil at Theoi Project
- Aeneid, Eclogues & Georgics translated by H. R. Fairclough, 1916
- Works of Virgil at Sacred Texts
- Aeneid translated by John Dryden, 1697
- Eclogues & Georgics translated by J.W. MacKail, 1934
- P. Vergilivs Maro at The Latin Library
- Latin texts
- Aeneid translated by E. Fairfax Taylor, 1907
- Aeneid, Georgics & Eclogues translated by (unnamed)
- Moretum ("The Salad") Scanned from Joseph J. Mooney (tr.), The Minor Poems of Vergil: Comprising the Culex, Dirae, Lydia, Moretum, Copa, Priapeia, and Catalepton (Birmingham: Cornish Brothers, 1916).
- Virgil's works: text, concordances and frequency list.
- Biography
- Suetonius: The Life of Virgil, an English translation.
- Vita Vergiliana, Aelius Donatus' Life of Virgil in the original Latin.
- Virgil.org: Aelius Donatus' Life of Virgil translated into English by David Wilson-Okamura
- Project Gutenberg edition of Vergil—A Biography, by Tenney Frank.
- Vergilian Chronology (in German).
- Commentary
- "A new Aeneid for the 21st century". A review of Robert Fagles's new translation of the Aeneid in the TLS, February 9th, 2007.
- Virgil in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance: an Online Bibliography
- Virgilmurder (Jean-Yves Maleuvre's website setting forth his theory that Virgil was murdered by Augustus)
- The Secret History of Virgil, containing a selection on the magical legends and tall tales that circulated about Virgil in the Middle Ages.
- Interview with Virgil scholar Richard Thomas and poet David Ferry, who recently translated The Georgics, on Thoughtcast
- The Vergilian Society.
The article above was originally sourced from Nupedia and is
open content.
{{Persondata]|DATE OF BIRTH=October 15, [70 BC, [North Italy, [19 BC-->
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