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Virgil

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Writers and critics

   Publius Vergilius Maro ( October 15, 70 BC – September 21, 19 BC),
   later called Virgilius, and known in English as Virgil or Vergil, was
   an ancient Roman poet, the author of the Eclogues, the Georgics and the
   Aeneid, the last being an epic poem of twelve books that became the
   Roman Empire's national epic. A fictional depiction of Virgil was also
   Dante's guide through Hell and Purgatory in Dante's epic poem, The
   Divine Comedy.

Life

   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.

Early works

   Virgil received his earliest education at 5 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. 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.
   Virgil explores the various emotions surrounding these appropriations
   and other aspects of rural life in the Eclogues, his earliest poetry
   first published in the mid-30's BC. A number of the eclogues, notably
   the second, but also the third, the fifth, the seventh and the tenth,
   touch on the topic of love between males, often of a pederastic nature.
   Ancient writers assumed that the character of Corydon in the second
   eclogue, lover of Alexis, represented Virgil himself, and Alexis
   represented Alexander, a slave given to Virgil by Pollio. The theme of
   pederastic love was later also taken up in his epic poem in the story
   of Nisus and Euryalus. Modern scholars largely reject the effort to
   seek to identify him with characters in his poetry and thus to garner
   further biographical details from his own life.

   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. He gained many connections with other leading literary figures of
   the time, including Horace and Varius Rufus (who later helped finish
   the Aeneid). After the Eclogues were completed, Virgil spent the years
   37 BC– 29 BC on the Georgics ("On Farming"), which was written in
   honour of Maecenas, and is the source of the expression tempus fugit
   ("time flies"). However, Octavian, who had defeated Antony at the
   Battle of Actium in 31 BC and upon whom the title "Augustus" had been
   bestowed four years later by the Roman Senate, was already pressing
   Virgil to write an epic to praise his regime.

Composition of the Aeneid and death

   A mosaic of Virgil, in a Tunisian villa probably from the 1st century
   AD.
   Enlarge
   A mosaic of Virgil, in a Tunisian villa probably from the 1st century
   AD.

   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 under the influence of the gods falls deeply in love
   with him. Jupiter recalls Aeneas to his duty, however, 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 travelled with Augustus to Greece. There, Virgil caught a fever,
   from which he died in Brundisium harbour, 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,
   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, 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 Homeric poetry, such as
   Odysseus.

Later views of Virgil

   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.
   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 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

   A 5th century portrait of Virgil from the Vergilius Romanus.
   Enlarge
   A 5th century portrait of Virgil from the Vergilius Romanus.

   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 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 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.

   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 harbour, 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 Pagan 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)
   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 pagan background with the high regard in which
   his 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 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."

List of works

   Dates are approximate.
     * ( 50 BC) Appendix Vergiliana
     * ( 37 BC) Eclogues (or "Bucolics") -- 10 books
     * ( 29 BC) Georgics (or "On Farming") -- 4 books
     * ( 19 BC) Aeneid -- 12 books

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