COSMOS:AN INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE,LANGUAGE AND INDIC STUDIES

www.englishcosmos.org
www.mukeshpareek.com (9828402032)
Dr. MUKESH PAREEK 14 NET ,3 JRF ,2 M.Phil
Youtube channel : English for UGC NET by Dr.Mukesh Pareek

VIRGIL
• Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 BCE), better known to most modern readers
as Virgil, was one of the greatest poets of the early Roman Empire.
• His best-known work, the Aeneid, told of a Trojan prince, Aeneas, who
escaped the burning of Troy in the final days of the Trojan War to
eventually make his way across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy (Latium)
where his descendants Romulus and Remus would ultimately found
the city of Rome.
• He was so highly regarded by those authors who followed him that the
early 14th-century CE Italian author Dante Alighieri chose Virgil as his
guide through the nine levels of hell in The Inferno.
• Early Life
• Virgil, sometimes spelled Vergil, was born on October 15, 70 BCE in
Andes, a small village near Mantua north of the Po River in
Cisalpine Gaul.
• The 5th-century CE author and statesman Macrobius maintained Virgil
was born of country parents among the shrubs and woods; the passion for
the rural life would remain with him throughout his adult life.
• He was described as having the appearance of a countryman being tall but
bulky with a dark complexion, 'changeable health,' and eating and drinking
little; his poor health kept him away from the civil war that was brewing
at the time. His father was a potter and courier who was lucky enough to
marry the boss’ daughter.
• VIRGIL'S FIRST COLLECTION OF TEN POEMS, THE
ECLOGUES, WOULD MAKE HIM THE MOST CELEBRATED
POET OF THE DAY.
• While his province of birth did not have citizenship rights (not until 51
BCE), his father, being of old Latin stock, was a citizen.
• Although some question his parents’ financial status, most agree they were
affluent enough to provide him with a solid education.
• The future poet acquired his early schooling in Cremona and Milan
(Mediolanum) where he obtained his toga virilis --- a symbol of both
manhood and citizenship.

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COSMOS:AN INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE,LANGUAGE AND INDIC STUDIES
www.englishcosmos.org
www.mukeshpareek.com (9828402032)
Dr. MUKESH PAREEK 14 NET ,3 JRF ,2 M.Phil
Youtube channel : English for UGC NET by Dr.Mukesh Pareek

• This early education garnered him an appreciation for

both Greek and Roman authors.
• He arrived in Rome with plans to study rhetoric (a subject he disliked) with
Epidius whose school was where Octavian and Mark Antony would
eventually study as well.
• Evidently, Virgil only spoke once in the law courts, but without
distinction; apparently, he was too shy. Virgil soon left the city to
study philosophy at the Epicurean school of Siron in Naples.
• The love of philosophy that brought him to the Epicurean community
enabled him to meet his fellow poet Horace.
• When he was around 30 years old, the Roman Republic was in
crisis. Julius Caesar had been assassinated, and his adopted son and heir
the future Emperor Augustus (aka Octavian) was embroiled in a civil war.
• In 42 BCE, after the defeat of the tyrannicides at the Battle of Philippi,
attempts were made to settle army veterans on confiscated land, a subject
for Virgil’s early poems.
• Unluckily for his family, in 41 BCE his father’s farm was seized. The
young poet tried to use his influence in Rome to have it returned; however,
there is no record whether or not he was successful.
• Eclogues
• By this time Virgil had met a fellow author and patron of the arts Gaius
Cilnius Maecenas. This wealthy Roman, a personal friend and advisor to
Augustus, gathered around him a circle of young poets like Virgil and
Horace.
• Through him, the young poet would eventually become close friends with
the emperor.
• It was also at this time, c. 39-38 BCE, that Virgil would publish his first
collection of ten poems in Rome, Eclogues.
• Its success would make him the most celebrated poet of the day. He would
be awarded with a house on Esquiline Hill near the home of his benefactor
Maecenas. It should be noted that poets of this period needed benefactors
such as Maecenas in order to have financial security.

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COSMOS:AN INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE,LANGUAGE AND INDIC STUDIES
www.englishcosmos.org
www.mukeshpareek.com (9828402032)
Dr. MUKESH PAREEK 14 NET ,3 JRF ,2 M.Phil
Youtube channel : English for UGC NET by Dr.Mukesh Pareek

• Virgil would find a friend and sponsor not only in Maecenas but also in
Augustus.

• As with Horace, the emperor would nurture the two poets, believing they
would help restore the fledgling empire to the ideals of the past. The
emperor believed that Rome was suffering from moral decay and wanted a
return to the values of old. Although a successful poet and the talk of Rome
with a home on the hill, Virgil left the city for the quiet of rural Campania
where he would spend the next seven years working on his collection of
poems entitled the Georgics. After completing the work in 30 BCE, he
would spend the remainder of his life, until his death in 19 BCE, working
on his epic work, the Aeneid.
• According to historian Nigel Rodgers, Virgil, Horace, and the
exiled Ovid created a classical style of writing comparable to the great
Greek authors.
• While he only produced three major works, Virgil stands above the others.
His early works centered on his love of the rural life.
• His first collection Eclogues was set in an idealized Arcadia and depicts a
shepherd’s life and loves. However, it also turns political with a reference
to the turmoil of the civil war. Unfortunately, this quiet life is threatened
by Octavian’s eviction notice after the Battle of Philippi. The poem makes
reference to three individuals involved in the evictions and confiscation of
land: the jurist and consul Publius Varus, the author and consul Gaius
Pollio, and the poet Gaius Gallus.
• According to Rodgers, the poem also foretells of the birth of a divine child
who will restore the golden age of Rome; many Christians interpret this to
be a foretelling of Jesus Christ. In Eclogue IV, Virgil wrote:
• Now the last age by Cumae’s Sybil sung
Has come and gone, and the majestic roll
Of circling begins anew:
•
Justice returns, returns old Saturn’s reign:
With a new breed of men sent down from heaven
Only do thou, at the boy’s birth in whom
The iron shall cease, the golden race arise.

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COSMOS:AN INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE,LANGUAGE AND INDIC STUDIES
www.englishcosmos.org
www.mukeshpareek.com (9828402032)
Dr. MUKESH PAREEK 14 NET ,3 JRF ,2 M.Phil
Youtube channel : English for UGC NET by Dr.Mukesh Pareek

•
• Georgics
• The next collection of poems, the Georgics, was written after Octavian’s
victory over Mark Anthony and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra at
the Battle of Actium and was dedicated to Maecenas.
• The Georgics, like the previous Eclogues, praised the simple farm life,
plowing, growing trees, tending cattle, and even keeping bees. In the
opening lines to Georgic I, he wrote:
• What makes the cornfield smile; beneath what star
Maecenas, it is meet to turn the sod
Or marry elm with vine; how end the steer;
What pains for cattle-keeping, or what proof
Of patient trail serves for thrifty bees;
Such are my themes.
• (Virgil, 37)
• Besides the confiscation of the land, one of the negative effects of the wars
on Italy and its provinces was depopulation; many farmers had to abandon
their land to fight in the war.
• In his poems, Virgil made a plea for the restoration of land and return to
the agricultural life. By the time of their publication, Virgil had fully
entrenched himself into the inner circle at the imperial palace.
After Georgics was read to the emperor, the poet left the city. His mind
was elsewhere, it was on the twelve books of his yet unwritten epic.
• Aeneid
• The theme of the Aeneid was the where, when, and why of the founding of
Rome by Romulus and his brother Remus.
• The poem tells of the Trojan prince and son of the goddess Venus,
Aeneas, and his escape during the final moments of the Trojan War.
• Becoming aware of his destiny to found a grand city on the peninsula of
Italy, the warrior and his family make their way across the sea - in a series
of events similar to Homer’s Odyssey - eventually landing in Carthage,
where he falls in love with Queen Dido.
• Unfortunately for the queen, Aeneas is reminded of his destiny and leaves
Carthage. The forsaken queen grieves for her lost love and commits
suicide.
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COSMOS:AN INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE,LANGUAGE AND INDIC STUDIES
www.englishcosmos.org
www.mukeshpareek.com (9828402032)
Dr. MUKESH PAREEK 14 NET ,3 JRF ,2 M.Phil
Youtube channel : English for UGC NET by Dr.Mukesh Pareek

• Despite his desire to remain, Aeneas sails on to Latium, and he even makes
a trip to the underworld where he meets his father and Queen Dido.

• Over time, his descendants would found Rome. He was the ideal model for
the Roman way of life, both 'heroic' and 'Augustan.' Of course, one of the
more confusing aspects of the poem is the time lapse between the supposed
time of the Trojan War and the founding of Rome, the 12th century BCE
to the 8th century BCE.

• In actuality, Aeneas does not actually fulfill his destiny and found Rome.
That accomplishment was left to others. With the death of the queen, the
poem also introduces the reader to the birth of the antagonism that
developed between Rome and Carthage, a conflict that would evolve into
the Punic Wars.

• The poem has, over the years, had its share of critics. Many are repelled by
Aeneas’ cruelty against a defeated enemy as well as the suicide of his
beloved Dido.
• Although Virgil was not pleased with the epic, Augustus, who claimed to
be a descendant of Aeneas, was ecstatic. It could be that the emperor
believed that the poem demonstrated a final fulfillment of Rome’s destiny.
Virgil himself believed that it was Rome’s fate to forgive the conquered
and defeat the proud in war. The opening lines of the poem speak of
Aeneas’ destiny:
• Of arms I sing, and of the man who first
From Trojan shores beneath the ban of fate
To Italy and coasts Lavinian came,
Much tossed about on land and ocean he
By violence of the gods above, to sate
Relentless Juno’s ever-rankling ire,
In war, too, much enduring, till what time
A city he might found him, and bear safe
His gods to Latium, whence the Latin race
And Alba’s sires, and lofty-towering Rome.

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COSMOS:AN INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE,LANGUAGE AND INDIC STUDIES
www.englishcosmos.org
www.mukeshpareek.com (9828402032)
Dr. MUKESH PAREEK 14 NET ,3 JRF ,2 M.Phil
Youtube channel : English for UGC NET by Dr.Mukesh Pareek

• (Virgil, 103)
• Legacy
• For eleven years Virgil worked on the poem but died before its final
revision. He was not pleased with it, and asked his friend Lucius Varius
Rufus to destroy it; however, the fellow poet refused. While on a trip
to Greece, Virgil became ill at Megara, dying on September 21, 19 BCE
before he could return home.
• He was buried at his villa in Naples.
• The emperor had the epic published despite the poet’s last wishes.
• Virgil’s poems, especially the Aeneid, have lived on for over 2,000 years
and are still being read and analyzed to this day.
• Excerpts of his poems were even found on the excavated walls
of Pompeii. He was an inspiration to countless authors who followed him.
Dante, the author of The Divine Comedy, chose Virgil as his guide through
the Inferno’s nine levels of hell.