Virgil Italy (Rome)

Publius Vergilius Maro, or Virgil to us, was born near
Mantua in 70 BCE. He was the son of a locally important
family, who had him well educated at Cremona and Milan and
eventually at Rome. This was probably with an eye to a career
in the law courts and politics. However, he chose to return
home and work on his poetry at a time when literature was not
a normal career for a Roman gentleman. Possibly the civil war
between Pompey and Caesar played a part in his decision to
come home, but at all events, he began the very slow deliberate
composition of his major poems.

First came the Eclogues, with their ideal country scenes
between shepherds, though they also reflect local families’
being deprived of their farms to provide holdings for the
veterans of the winning side in the civil wars. The Eclogues seem
to have caught the attention of Octavian’s minister Maecenas,
who became Virgil’s patron.

Virgil worked on the Georgics in the 30s BCE, but also appears
to have gained a reputation for training racehorses. Maecenas
introduced him to Octavian, who seems to have been greatly
taken with this new and radical poetry.

After completing the Georgics, Virgil worked on the Aeneid
until his death in 19 BCE. This was an attempt to tell the
mythical story of the Trojan ancestors of the Romans after the
sack of Troy and their emigration to Italy, and provides Rome
with an epic on the scale of the Odyssey and Iliad. Though this
great poem was very slightly unfinished, and the dying Virgil
wanted it to be destroyed, Octavian (now formally elevated to
head of the Roman State as Augustus) insisted on its publication
after the poet’s death.

(2024)