Publius Vergilius Maro (also known by the
Anglicised forms of his name as
Virgil or
Vergil) (October 15, 70 BCE – September 21, 19
BCE) was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major
works—the
Eclogues (or
Bucolics), the
Georgics,
and the
Aeneid—although several
minor poems are also attributed
to him.
The son of a farmer, Virgil came to be regarded as one of Rome's
greatest poets. His
Aeneid can be considered a
national epic of Rome and has been extremely
popular from its publication to the present day.
Life and works
Birth and biographical tradition
Virgil's biographical tradition is thought to depend on a lost
biography by
Varius, Virgil's
editor, which was incorporated into the biography by
Suetonius and the commentaries of
Servius and
Donatus,
the two great commentators on Virgil's poetry. Although the
commentaries no doubt record much factual information about Virgil,
some of their evidence can be shown to rely on inferences made from
his poetry and allegorizing; thus, Virgil's biographical tradition
remains problematic.
The tradition says that Virgil was born in
the village of Andes, near
Mantua in Cisalpine
Gaul. Scholars suggest Etruscan, Umbrian or even Celtic 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).
Macrobius says that Virgil's father was of a
humble background; however, scholars generally believe that Virgil
was from an equestrian landowning family which could afford to give
him an education.
Early works
According
to the commentators, Virgil received his first education when he
was five years old and that he later went to Cremona, Milan, and finally
Rome to study rhetoric, medicine, and astronomy,
which he soon abandoned for philosophy. From Virgil's admiring
references to the neoteric writers
Pollio and
Cinna, it has been inferred that he was, for a
time, associated with
Catullus' neoteric
circle. According to tradition, Virgil preferred sex with men and
boys and was involved in many sexual escapades, however schoolmates
considered Virgil extremely shy and reserved, according to Servius,
and he was nicknamed "Parthenias" or "maiden" because of his social
aloofness. Virgil seems to have suffered bad health throughout his
life and in some ways lived the life of an
invalid. According to the "Catalepton", while in the
Epicurean school of
Siro the Epicurean at Naples, he began to
write poetry. A group of small works attributed to the youthful
Virgil by the commentators survive collected under the title
Appendix Vergiliana,
but are largely considered spurious by scholars. 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 Gnat"), was attributed to Virgil as early
as the 1st century CE.
The Eclogues
The biographical tradition asserts that Virgil began the hexameter
Eclogues (or
Bucolics) in
42 BCE and it is thought that the collection was published around
39-38 BCE, although this is controversial. The
Eclogues
(from the Greek for "selections") are a group of ten poems roughly
modeled on the bucolic hexameter poetry ("pastoral poetry") of the
Hellenistic poet
Theocritus. After his
victory in the
Battle of Philippi
in 42 BCE, fought against the army led by the assassins of
Julius Caesar,
Octavian tried to pay off his veterans with land
expropriated from towns in northern Italy, supposedly including,
according to the tradition, an estate near Mantua belonging to
Virgil. The loss of his family farm and the attempt through poetic
petitions to regain his property have traditionally been seen as
Virgil's motives in the composition of the
Eclogues. This
is now thought to be an unsupported inference from interpretations
of the
Eclogues. In
Eclogues 1 and 9, Virgil
indeed dramatizes the contrasting feelings caused by the brutality
of the land expropriations through pastoral idiom, but offers no
indisputable evidence of the supposed biographic incident. Readers
often 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.
Thematically, the ten
Eclogues develop and vary pastoral
tropes and play with generic expectations. 1 and 9 address the land
confiscations and their effects on the Italian countryside. 2 and 3
are highly pastoral and erotic, discussing love, both homosexual
(Ecl. 2) and panerotic (Ecl. 3).
Eclogues 4, addressed to
Asinius Pollio, the so-called
'Messianic Eclogue' uses the imagery of the golden-age in
connection with the birth of a child (who the child is has been
highly contested). 5 and 8 describe the myth of
Daphnis in a song contest, 6, the cosmic and
mythological song of
Silenus, 7, a heated
poetic contest, and 10 the sufferings of the contemporary elegiac
poet
Cornelius Gallus. Virgil is
credited in the "Eclogues" with establishing Arcadia as a poetic
ideal that still resonates in Western literature and visual arts
and setting the stage for the development of Latin pastoral by
Calpurnius Siculus,
Nemesianus, and later writers.
The Georgics
Sometime after the publication of the
Eclogues (probably
before 37 BCE), Virgil became part of the circle of
Maecenas, Octavian's capable
agent
d'affaires who sought to counter sympathy for Antony among the
leading families by rallying Roman literary figures to Octavian's
side. Virgil seems to have made connections with many of the other
leading literary figures of the time, including
Horace, in whose poetry he is often mentioned, and
Varius Rufus, who later helped finish
the
Aeneid. At Maecenas' insistence (according to the
tradition) Virgil spent the ensuing years (perhaps 37–29 BCE) on
the longer didactic hexameter poem called the
Georgics (from Greek, "On Working the Earth")
which he dedicated to Maecenas. The apparent theme of the
Georgics is instruction in the methods of running a farm.
In handling this theme, Virgil follows in the
didactic (instructive) tradition of the Greek poet
Hesiod one of whose poems focuses on farming
and the later Hellenistic poets. The four books of the
Georgics focus respectively on raising crops and trees (1
and 2), livestock and horses (3), and beekeeping and the qualities
of bees (4). Significant passages include the beloved
Laus
Italiae of Book 2, the prologue description of the temple in
Book 3, and the description of the plague at the end of Book 3.
Book 4 concludes with a long mythological narrative, in the form of
an
epyllion which describes vividly the
discovery of beekeeping by
Aristaeus and
the story of
Orpheus' journey to the
underworld. Ancient scholars conjectured that the Aristaeus episode
replaced a long section in praise of Virgil's friend, the poet
Gallus, who was disgraced by Augustus and committed suicide in 26
BCE. Augustus is supposed to have ordered the section to be
replaced. A major critical issue in considering the
Georgics is the assessment of tone; Virgil seems to waver
between optimism and pessimism, sparking a great deal of debate on
the poem's intentions. With the
Georgics Virgil is again
credited with laying the foundations for later didactic poetry.
The
biographical tradition says that Virgil and Maecenas took turns
reading the Georgics to Octavian upon his return from
defeating Antony and Cleopatra at the
Battle of
Actium in 31 BCE.
The Aeneid
The
Aeneid is widely considered Virgil's finest work and
one of the most important poems in the history of western
literature. Virgil worked on the
Aeneid during the last
ten years of his life (29-19 BCE), commissioned, according to
tradition by Augustus. The epic poem consists of 12 books in
hexameter verse which describe the journey of
Aeneas, a prince fleeing the sack of Troy, to Italy,
his battle with the Italian prince Turnus, and the foundation of a
city from whence Rome would emerge. The
Aeneid's first six
books describe the journey of Aeneas from Troy to Rome. Virgil made
use of several models in the composition of his epic;
Homer the preeminent classical epicist is everywhere
present, but Virgil also makes especial use of the Latin poet
Ennius and the Hellenistic poet
Apollonius of Rhodes among the various
other writers he alludes to. Although the
Aeneid casts
itself firmly into the epic mode, it often seeks to expand the
genre by including elements of other genres such as tragedy and
aetiological poetry. Ancient commentators noted that Virgil seems
to divide the
Aeneid into two sections based on the poetry
of Homer; the first six books were viewed as employing the
Odyssey as a model while the last
six were connected to the
Iliad.
Book 1 (at the head of the Odyssean section) opens with a storm
which
Juno, Aeneas' enemy throughout the poem,
stirs up against the fleet.
The storm drives the hero 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. At a banquet in Book 2, Aeneas tells the story of the
sack of Troy, the death of his wife, and his escape to the
enthralled Carthginians, while in Book 3 he recounts to them his
wanderings over the Mediterranean in search of a suitable new home.
Jupiter in Book 4 recalls the
lingering Aeneas to his duty to found a new city, 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. In Book 5, Aeneas' father
Anchises
dies and funeral games are clebrated for him.
On reaching Cumae, in Italy in
Book 6, Aeneas consults the Cumaean
Sibyl, who conducts him through the Underworld where Aeneas meets the dead Anchises
who reveals his Rome's destiny to his son.
Book 7 (beginning the Iliadic half) opens with an address to the
muse and recounts Aeneas arrival in Italy and betrothal to
Lavinia, daughter of King
Latinus. Lavinia had already been promised to
Turnus, the king of the Rutulians, who is
roused to war by the
Fury Allecto and
Amata Lavinia's
mother. In Book 8, Aeneas allies with King
Evander, who occupies the future site of Rome, and
is given new armor and a shield depicting Roman history. Book 9
records an assault by
Nisus and
Euryalus on the Rutulians, 10, the death of
Evander's young son
Pallas, and 11 the death
of the Volscian warrior princess
Camilla and
the decision to settle the war with a duel between Aeneas and
Turnus. The
Aeneid ends in Book 12 with the taking of
Latinus' city, the death of Amata, and Aeneas' defeat and killing
of Turnus, whose pleas for mercy are spurned.
Critics of the
Aeneid focus on a variety of issues (see
Fowler for an excellent bibliography and summary). The tone of the
poem as a whole is a particular matter of debate; some see the poem
as ultimately pessimistic and politically subversive to the
Augustan regime, while others view it as a celebration of the new
imperial dynasty. Virgil makes use of the symbolism of the Augustan
regime, and some scholars see strong associations between Augustus
and Aeneas, the one as founder and the other as re-founder of Rome.
A strong
teleology, or drive towards a
climax, has been detected in the poem. The
Aeneid is full
of prophecies about the future of Rome, the deeds of Augustus, his
ancestors, and famous Romans, and the
Carthaginian Wars; the shield of Aeneas
even depicts Augustus' victory at Actium in 31 BCE. A further focus
of study is the character of Aeneas. As the protagonist of the
poem, Aeneas seems to constantly waver between his emotions and
committment to his prophetic duty to found Rome; critics note the
breakdown of Aeneas' emotional control in the last sections of the
poem where the "pious" and "righteous" Aeneas mercilessly
slaughters Turnus.
The
Aeneid appears to have been a great success. Virgil is
said to have recited Books 2,4, and 6 to Augustus; Book 6
apparently caused Augustus' sister
Octavia
to faint. Unfortunately, the poem was unfinished at Virgil's death
in 19 BCE.
Death and the Editing of the Aeneid
According
to the tradition, Virgil traveled to Greece around 19
BCE in order to revise the Aeneid. After meeting Augustus
in Athens and deciding to return home, Virgil caught a fever while
visiting a town near Megara.
After crossing to Italy by ship, weakened with disease, Virgil died
in
Brundisium harbour on September 21, 19
BCE. 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.
Later views of Virgil and Reception
In Antiquity
The works of Virgil almost from the moment of their publication
revolutionized Latin poetry. The
Eclogues,
Georgics, and above all the
Aeneid became
standard texts in school curricula with which all educated Romans
were familiar. Poets, following Virgil often refer intertextually
to his works to generate meaning in their own poetry. The Augustan
poet
Ovid parodies the opening lines of the
Aeneid in Am. 1.1.1-2, and his summary of the Aeneas story
in Book 14 of the
Metamorphoses, the so-called
"mini-Aeneid", has been viewed as a particularly important example
of post-Virgilian response to the epic genre.
Lucan's epic, the
Bellum
Civile has been considered an anti-Virgilian epic,
disposing with the divine mechanism, treating historical events,
and diverging drastically from Virgilian epic practice. The Flavian
poet
Statius in his 12 book epic
Thebaid engages closely with the poetry of Virgil; in his
epilogue he advises his poem not to "rival the divine
Aeneid, but follow afar and ever venerate its footsteps."
In
Silius Italicus, Virgil finds one
of his most ardent admirers. With almost every line of his epic
Punica Silius references Virgil.
Indeed, Silius is known to have bought Virgil's tomb and worshipped
the poet. In antiquity Virgil began to take on magical qualities;
the
sortes Vergilianae, the process of using Virgil's
poetry as a tool of divination, is found in the time of
Hadrian. In a similar vein Macrobius in the
Saturnalia credits the work of
Virgil as the embodiment of human knowledge and experience,
mirroring the Greek conception of Homer. Virgil also found
commentators in antiquity.
Servius, a
commentator of the 4th century CE based his work on the commentary
of
Donatus. Servius' commentary provides us
with a great deal of information about Virgil's life, sources, and
references, however many modern scholars find the variable quality
of his work and the often simplistic interpretations
frustrating.
Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
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, along with some other Latin poets, though
he cautions 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 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,
Lucan and
Statius, as one of the four
regulati poetae
(ii, vi, 7).
Virgil continues to be considered one of the greatest Latin
poets.
Mysticism and hidden meanings
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.
Also during the Middle Ages, as Virgil was developed into a kind of
magus, manuscripts of the
Aeneid were
used for
divinatory bibliomancy, the
Sortes Virgilianae (Virgilian
lottery), 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.
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
"
Christianize" 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.
Modern Virgilian Criticism
Virgil's name in English
In the Late Empire and Middle Ages
Vergilius was
frequently spelled
Virgilius. There are two explanations
commonly given for this alteration. One deduces a false etymology
associated with the word
virgo ("maiden" in
Latin) due to Virgil's excessive, "maiden"-like
(
parthenías or παρθενίας 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 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
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
guide to style recommends
Vergilius to avoid confusion
with the 8th-century grammarian
Virgilius Maro Grammaticus. Some
post-
Renaissance writers liked to affect
the
sobriquet "The Swan of Mantua".
Famous Quotes from Virgil
"
Omnia vincit amor" "Love conquers all" (Ecl.10.69)
"
Arma virumque cano" "Arms and the man I sing"
(Aen.1.1)
"
Audentis fortuna iuvat" "Fortune favors the bold"
(Aen.10.284)
Notes and references
Further reading
- Buckham, Philip Wentworth; Spence, Joseph; Holdsworth, Edward;
Warburton, William; Jortin, John. Miscellanea Virgiliana: In Scriptis Maxime
Eruditorum Virorum Varie Dispersa, in Unum Fasciculum
Collecta. Cambridge: Printed for W. P. Grant, 1825.
- Ziolkowski, Jan M., and Michael C. J. Putnam, eds. The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen
Hundred Years. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
ISBN 9780300108224
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. Vergilius 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.
The article above was originally sourced from
Nupedia and is
open content.