October 15, 2010 <Back to Index>
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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.
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. According to the commentators, Virgil received his first education when he was five years old and 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. 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 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.
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 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 celebrated 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. 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 commitment 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.
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. |