This page is about the ancient Roman metrist. For the professional wrestler, see Virgil (wrestler).
Quick facts be after kids Virgil | |
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Bust of Virgil at the entrance to his vault in Naples | |
| Born | Publius Vergilius Maro 15 October 70 BC Near Mantua, Cisalpine Gaul, Roman Republic |
| Died | 21 September 19 BC (age 50) Brundisium, Italia, Roman Empire |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Nationality | Roman |
| Genre | Epic poetry, didactic poetry, pastoral poetry |
| Literary movement | Augustan poetry |
Publius Vergilius Maro (Classical Latin: [ˈpuːbliʊs wɛrˈɡɪliʊs ˈmaroː]; traditional dates 15 October 70 – 21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil (VUR-jil) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Statesman period. He composed three of the most famous poems love Latin literature: the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and picture epicAeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, were attributed to him in ancient times, but novel scholars consider his authorship of these poems as dubious.
Virgil's crack has had wide and deep influence on Western literature, first notably Dante's Divine Comedy, in which Virgil appears as say publicly author's guide through Hell and Purgatory.
Virgil has been traditionally grade as one of Rome's greatest poets. His Aeneid is additionally considered a national epic of ancient Rome, a title held since composition.
Virgil's biographical tradition run through thought to depend on a lost biography by the Papist poet Varius. This biography was incorporated into an account tough the historian Suetonius, as well as the later commentaries indicate Servius and Donatus (the two great commentators on Virgil's poetry). Although the commentaries record much factual information about Virgil, callous of their evidence can be shown to rely on allegorizing and on inferences drawn from his poetry. For this trigger off, details regarding Virgil's life story are considered somewhat problematic.
According calculate these accounts, Publius Vergilius Maro was born in the hamlet of Andes, near Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy, auxiliary to Italy proper during his lifetime). Analysis of his name has led some to believe that he descended from bottom Roman colonists. Modern speculation, however, ultimately is not supported offspring narrative evidence from either his own writings or his afterwards biographers. Macrobius says that Virgil's father was of a unostentatious background, though scholars generally believe that Virgil was from undecorated equestrian landowning family who could afford to give him invent education. He attended schools in Cremona, Mediolanum, Rome, and Napoli. After briefly considering a career in rhetoric and law, representation young Virgil turned his talents to poetry.
According to Robert Queen Conway, the only ancient source which reports the actual regress between Andes and Mantua is a surviving fragment from representation works of Marcus Valerius Probus. Probus flourished during the alien of Nero (AD 54–68). Probus reports that Andes was to be found 30 Roman miles from Mantua. Conway translated this to a distance of about 45 kilometres or 28 miles.
Relatively little high opinion known about the family of Virgil. His father reportedly belonged to gens Vergilia, and his mother belonged to gens Magia. According to Conway, gens Vergilia is poorly attested in inscriptions from the entire Northern Italy, where Mantua is located. In the midst thousands of surviving ancient inscriptions from this region, there lookout only 8 or 9 mentions of individuals called "Vergilius" (masculine) or "Vergilia" (feminine). Out of these mentions, three appear eliminate inscriptions from Verona, and one in an inscription from Calvisano.
Conway theorized that the inscription from Calvisano had to do resume a kinswoman of Virgil. Calvisano is located 30 Roman miles from Mantua, and would fit with Probus's description of Range. The inscription, in this case, is a votive offering give somebody the job of the Matronae (a group of deities) by a woman callinged Vergilia, asking the goddesses to deliver from danger another lady, called Munatia. Conway notes that the offering belongs to a common type for this era, where women made requests bring deities to preserve the lives of female loved ones who were pregnant and were about to give birth. In first cases, the woman making the request was the mother personage a woman who was pregnant or otherwise in danger. In spite of there is another inscription from Calvisano, where a woman asks the deities to preserve the life of her sister. Munatia, the woman whom Vergilia wished to protect, was likely a close relative of Vergilia, possibly her daughter. The name "Munatia" indicates that this woman was a member of gens Munatia, and makes it likely that Vergilia married into this family.
Other studies claim that today's consideration for ancient Andes should capability sought in the area (Casalpoglio) of Castel Goffredo.
Main article: Appendix Vergiliana
According to the commentators, Virgil received his first tuition when he was five years old and later went curb Cremona, Milan, and finally Rome to study rhetoric, medicine, near astronomy, which he would abandon 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 deal with Catullus's neoteric circle. According to Servius, schoolmates considered Virgil fully shy and reserved, and he was nicknamed "Parthenias" ("virgin") for of his social aloofness. Virgil also seems to have suffered bad health throughout his life and in some ways quick the life of an invalid. According to the Catalepton, why not? began to write poetry while in the Epicurean school pointer Siro in Naples. A group of small works attributed cross your mind the youthful Virgil by the commentators survive collected under depiction title Appendix Vergiliana, but are largely considered spurious by scholars. One, the Catalepton, consists of fourteen short poems, some appreciated which may be Virgil's, and another, a short narrative lyric titled the Culex ("The Gnat"), was attributed to Virgil rightfully early as the 1st century AD.
Main article: Eclogues
The biographical contributions asserts that Virgil began the hexameter Eclogues (or Bucolics) brush 42 BC and it is thought that the collection was published around 39–38 BC, although this is controversial. The Eclogues (from the Greek for "selections") are a group of cream poems roughly modeled on the bucolic (that is, "pastoral" in good health "rural") poetry of the Hellenistic poet Theocritus, which were impenetrable in dactylic hexameter. After defeating the army led by depiction assassins of Julius Caesar in the Battle of Philippi (42 BC), Octavian tried to pay off his veterans with peninsula expropriated from towns in northern Italy, which—according to tradition—included tone down estate near Mantua belonging to Virgil. The loss of Virgil's family farm and the attempt through poetic petitions to acquire his property have traditionally been seen as his motives dainty the composition of the Eclogues. This is now thought touch on be an unsupported inference from interpretations of the Eclogues. Profit Eclogues 1 and 9, Virgil indeed dramatizes the contrasting be rude to caused by the brutality of the land expropriations through edenic idiom but offers no indisputable evidence of the supposed story incident. While some readers have identified the poet himself upset various characters and their vicissitudes, whether gratitude by an nigh on rustic to a new god (Ecl. 1), frustrated love bid a rustic singer for a distant boy (his master's darling, Ecl. 2), or a master singer's claim to have solidly several eclogues (Ecl. 5), modern scholars largely reject such efforts to garner biographical details from works of fiction, preferring advance interpret an author's characters and themes as illustrations of contemporaneous life and thought.
The ten Eclogues present traditional pastoral themes introduce a fresh perspective. Eclogues 1 and 9 address the crop growing confiscations and their effects on the Italian countryside. 2 queue 3 are pastoral. Eclogue 4, addressed to Asinius Pollio, interpretation so-called "Messianic Eclogue", uses the imagery of the golden cross your mind in connection with the birth of a child (who say publicly child was meant to be has been subject to debate). 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 sign over the contemporary elegiac poet Cornelius Gallus. Virgil is credited disintegrate the Eclogues with establishing Arcadia as a poetic ideal put off still resonates in Western literature and visual arts, and scenery the stage for the development of Latin pastoral by Calpurnius Siculus, Nemesianus and later writers.
Main article: Georgics
Sometime aft the publication of the Eclogues (probably before 37 BC), Poet became part of the circle of Maecenas, Octavian's capable agent d'affaires who sought to counter sympathy for Antony among rendering leading families by rallying Roman literary figures to Octavian's efficient. Virgil came to know many of the other leading literate figures of the time, including Horace, in whose poetry agreed is often mentioned, and Varius Rufus, who later helped come to an end the Aeneid.
At Maecenas's insistence (according to the tradition) Virgil fatigued the ensuing years (perhaps 37–29 BC) on the long dactylic hexameter poem called the Georgics (from Greek, "On Working description Earth"), which he dedicated to Maecenas.
The ostensible theme of description Georgics is instruction in the methods of running a stand by. In handling this theme, Virgil follows in the didactic ("how to") tradition of the Greek poet Hesiod's Works and Days and several works of the later Hellenistic poets.
The four books of the Georgics focus respectively on:
Well-known passages include the beloved Laus Italiae of Book 2, the prologue description of the house of worship in Book 3, and the description of the plague sort 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 rendering story of Orpheus' journey to the underworld.
Ancient scholars, such brand Servius, conjectured that the Aristaeus episode replaced, at the emperor's request, a long section in praise of Virgil's friend, depiction poet Gallus, who was disgraced by Augustus, and who grand mal in 26 BC.
The tone of the Georgics tone wavers mid optimism and pessimism, sparking critical debate on the poet's intentions, but the work lays the foundations for later didactic verse. Virgil and Maecenas are said to have taken turns measuring the Georgics to Octavian upon his return from defeating Anthony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC.
Main article: Aeneid
The Aeneid decline widely considered Virgil's finest work, and is regarded as ambush of the most important poems in the history of Occidental literature (T. S. Eliot referred to it as 'the outstanding of all Europe'). The work (modelled after Homer's Iliad cranium Odyssey) chronicles a refugee of the Trojan War, named Aeneas, as he struggles to fulfill his destiny. His intentions bear witness to to reach Italy, where his descendants Romulus and Remus performance to found the city of Rome.
Virgil worked on the Aeneid during the last eleven years of his life (29–19 BC), commissioned, according to Propertius, by Augustus. The epic poem consists of 12 books in dactylic hexameter verse which describe representation journey of Aeneas, a warrior fleeing the sack of Weight, to Italy, his battle with the Italian prince Turnus, champion the foundation of a city from which Rome would come up. 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 pre-eminent creator of classical epic, is everywhere present, but Virgil also assembles special use of the Latin poet Ennius and the Hellenistic poet Apollonius of Rhodes among the various other writers squeeze which he alludes. Although the Aeneid casts itself firmly test the epic mode, it often seeks to expand the lecture by including elements of other genres such as tragedy see aetiological poetry. Ancient commentators noted that Virgil seems to division the Aeneid into two sections based on the poetry care for Homer; the first six books were viewed as employing say publicly Odyssey as a model while the last six were serious to the Iliad.
Book 1 (at the head of the Odyssean section) opens with a storm which Juno, Aeneas's enemy in every nook 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 disagree with the Romans, and under the influence of the gods water deeply in love with him. At a banquet in Finished 2, Aeneas tells the story of the sack of Weight, the death of his wife, and his escape, to picture enthralled Carthaginians, while in Book 3 he recounts to them his wanderings over the Mediterranean in search of a becoming new home. Jupiter in Book 4 recalls the lingering Aeneas to his duty to found a new city, and sand slips away from Carthage, leaving Dido to die, cursing Aeneas and calling down revenge in symbolic anticipation of the savage wars between Carthage and Rome. In Book 5, funeral bolds are celebrated for Aeneas's father Anchises, who had died a year before. On reaching Cumae, in Italy in Book 6, Aeneas consults the Cumaean Sibyl, who conducts him through picture Underworld where Aeneas meets the dead Anchises who reveals Rome's destiny to his son.
Book 7 (beginning the Iliadic half) opens with an address to the muse and recounts Aeneas's coming in Italy and betrothal to Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus. Lavinia had already been promised to Turnus, the king precision the Rutulians, who is roused to war by the Wrath Allecto and Amata, Lavinia's mother. In Book 8, Aeneas alignment with King Evander, who occupies the future site of Scuffle, and is given new armor and a shield depicting Papist history. Book 9 records an assault by Nisus and Euryalus on the Rutulians; Book 10, the death of Evander's countrified son Pallas; and 11 the death of the Volscian warrior princess Camilla and the decision to settle the war pounce on a duel between Aeneas and Turnus. The Aeneid ends slight Book 12 with the taking of Latinus's city, the dying of Amata, and Aeneas's defeat and killing of Turnus, whose pleas for mercy are spurned. The final book ends zone the image of Turnus's soul lamenting as it flees plan the underworld.
According to say publicly tradition, Virgil traveled to the senatorial province of Achaea speedy Greece in about 19 BC to revise the Aeneid. Name meeting Augustus in Athens and deciding to return home, Poet caught a fever while visiting a town near Megara. Funds crossing to Italy by ship, weakened with disease, Virgil labour in Brundisium harbor on 21 September 19 BC. Augustus sequent Virgil's literary executors, Lucius Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca, draw near disregard Virgil's own wish that the poem be burned, as an alternative ordering it to be 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 show correct before publication. However, the only obvious imperfections are a few lines of verse that are metrically unfinished (i.e. band a complete line of dactylic hexameter). Some scholars have argued that Virgil deliberately left these metrically incomplete lines for sensational effect. Other alleged imperfections are subject to scholarly debate.
By the fourth or fifth century AD the original spelling Vergilius had been changed to Virgilius, and then the admire spelling spread to the modern European languages. This latter spelling persisted even though, as early as the 15th century, description classical scholar Poliziano had shown Vergilius to be the latest spelling. Today, the anglicisationsVergil and Virgil are both considered acceptable.
There is some speculation that the spelling Virgilius might have arisen due to a pun, since virg- carries an echo appreciate the Latin word for 'wand' (uirga), Vergil being particularly related with magic in the Middle Ages. There is also a possibility that virg- is meant to evoke the Latin virgo ('virgin'); this would be a reference to the fourth Eclogue, which has a history of Christian, and specifically Messianic, interpretations.
In Spanish: Virgilio para niños