|
 The
greatest of Roman poets called by Tennyson "wielder of the stateliest
measure ever moulded by the lips of man." Virgil is known for his
epic, the AENEID (written about 29 B.C.E., unfinished), which takes
its literary model from Homer's epic poems the Iliad and
the Odyssey. The tale depicts the Greek hero Aeneas's search
for a home and his war to found a city. The archetypical character
of Aeneas has provided the model for numerous Western heroes familiar
from the books of such authors as Owen Wister and Louis L'Amour.
"It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates
of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace
one's steps to the upper air - there's the rub, the task."
(from Aeneid)
Virgil was born on October 15, 70 B.C.E., in a small village near
Mantua in Northern Italy. Virgil was not Roman but a Gaul (the village
was situated in what was then called Gallia Cisalpina - Gaul this
side of the Alps); nevertheless Publius Vergilius Maro, or Virgil,
grew up to be hailed as the greatest Roman poet. Although his work
has influenced Western literature for two millennia, little is know
about the man himself. His father was a prosperous landowner, described
variously as a "potter" and a "courier", who could afford a thorough
education for the future poet. Virgil thus received a good education.
He attended school at Cremona and Milan, and then went to Rome,
where he studied mathematics, medicine and rhetoric, finally completing
his studies in Naples. He entered literary circles as an "Alexandrian,"
the name given to a group of poets who sought inspiration in the
sophisticated work of third-century Greek poets known as Alexandrians.
In 49 BC Virgil became a Roman citizen.
"Fortune assists the bold."
After the battle of Philippi in 42 B.C.E. his father's property
in Cisalpine Gaul was confiscated for veterans. According to some
sources it was afterwards restored at the command of Octavian (later
styled Augustus). In the following years Virgil spent most of his
time in Campania and Sicily, but also had a house in Rome. During
the reign of emperor Augustus, Virgil became a member of his court
circle and was aided by minister Maecenas, patronage of arts and
close friend to poet Horace. Maecenas was twice left in virtual
control of Rome when the emperor was away.
Between 42 and 37 B.C.E. Virgil composed pastoral poems known as
BUCOLIC or ECLOGUES ('rustic poems' and 'selections'), spent years
on the GEORGICS (literally, 'pertaining to agriculture'), a didactic
work on agriculture, and the cultivation of the olive and vine,
livestock, and beekeeping. The work takes its model from Works
and Days by the Greek writer Hesiod, composed around 700 BC.
"The great cycle of the ages is renewed. Now Justice returns,
returns the Golden Age; a new generation now descends from on high."
(This was interpreted in the Middle Ages as a prophecy of the birth
of Christ. Dante cites the lines in The Divine Comedy)
 In
31 B.C.E. Octavian won the Battle of Actium against his former ally
Mark Anthony, (who had a liaison with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra),
thus by the age of 29 the way to power was open. In 27 BC he was
given the title of Augustus ('venerable'). He pressed his poet to
write of the glory of Rome under his rule. "I found Rome brick and
I left it marble," he said according to Suetonius. Thus the remaining
time of his life, from 30 to 19 B.C., Virgil devoted to The Aeneid,
the national epic of Rome, to glory the Empire. Although ambitious,
Virgil was never really happy about the task. Moreover, he was a
perfectionist, who knew the importance of his work, and did not
want to hurry his lines. The contemporary poet, Propertius, acknowledged
- perhaps ironically - this with the lines: "Make way, Greek and
Roman writers! Something greater than the Iliad is being
born."
Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.
Long labours, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;
His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
(from Aeneid, trans. by John Dryden)
In the famous stanzas of Book VI, the spirit of Anchises shows
to his son the future of Rome: "Romans, these are your arts:
to bear dominion over the nations, to impose peace, to spare the
conquered and subdue the proud." In 23 B.C. Virgil read the
second and fourth books to Augustus personally - the emperor had
complained a few years earlier that he has not seen any of the text.
When Augustus was returning from Samos after the winter of 20 B.C.,
he met the poet in Athens. Virgil accompanied the emperor to Megara
and then to Italy. The journey turned out to be fatal and Virgil
died of a fever contracted on his visit to Greece. He had instructed
his executor Varius to destroy the manuscript of The Aeneid,
but Augustus ordered Varius to ignore this request, and the poem
was published. Virgil was buried near Naples but there are doubts
that the so-called Tomb of Virgil in the area is authentic.
 Aeneid
- a historical epic depicting one of the great heroes of the Trojan
war. The Aeneid recounts Aeneas' wanderings and adventures after
the fall of Troy up to the establishment of his destined rule
in Latium. It was well understood in Virgil's own time that The
Aeneid was in its first half an Odyssey and in its
second an Iliad. The poem was written about 29-19 B.C.E.
and composed in hexameters, about 60 lines of which were left
unfinished at Virgil's death. The work is organized in 12 books,
and starts when Aeneas is forced to land his fleet on the Libyan
coast. Dido, the queen of Carthage, whom he informs of his adventures,
welcomes him. Dido falls in love with Aeneas, but Aeneas is forced
to sail again and Dido prepares to kill herself. The Trojans sail
to Sicily, then Aeneas journeys to the underworld where he meets
Dido and his father Anchises. "Thrice would I have thrown my
arms about her neck, and thrice the ghost embraced fled from my
grasp; like a fluttering breeze, like a fleeting dream." Virgil
reveals the destiny of Rome in book VI. The Trojans reach the
Tiber and are received by King Latinus. War breaks out, but the
Trojans win with the help of the Etruscan local tribe known as
the Rutuli. Aeneas marries Latinus' daughter Lavinia and founds
Lavinium.
See also: Dante adopted themes from Virgil's Aeneid in
his epic poem The Divine Comedy. Virgil is also the guide through
Dante's Inferno and Purgatory. - Influence: See Alexander Pope,
Victor Hugo - Note 1: Hermann Broch's The Death of Virgil
(1945) is one of the great monuments of exile literature. The
story focuses on the last days of the dying poet. Note 2:
A phrase altered from Eclogues - Novus ordo seclorum - appears
on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, first used
on the silver dollar certificates, series of 1935. Virgil also
supplied the Latin for other phrases on the Great Seal. - "Virgil.
Of all the poets of the earth, there is none other who has been
listened to with such love. Even beyond Augustus, Rome, and the
empire that, across other nations and languages, is still the
Empire. Virgil is our friend. When Dante made Virgil his guide
and the most continual character in the Commedia, he gave
an enduring aesthetic form to that which all men feel with gratitude."
(Jorge Luis Borges in Total Library, 1999) Aeneas ja Dido
(1972). T.S. Eliot.
For further reading: Reading Virgil's Aeneid: An Interpretive
Guide, ed. by Christine Perkell (1999); Reading Virgil and His
Texts: Studies in Intertextuality by Richard F. Thomas (1999);
Virgil, ed. by Philip R. Hardie (1999); Patterns of Redemption
in Virgil's Georgics by Llewlyn Morgan (1999) Virgil; His Life
And Times by Peter Levi (1998); Virgil's Epic Designs: Ekphrasis
in the Aeneid by Michael C. J. Putnam (1998); The Georgics of
Virgil : A Critical Survey by L. P. Wilkinson, Niall Rudd (1997);
The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. by Charles Martindale (1997);
The Chil and the Hero: Coming of Age in Catullus and Virgil by
Mark Petrini (1997); Virgil's Aeneid: Contemporary Literary Views
Book, ed. by Harold Bloom (1996); Virgil As Orpheus: A Study of
the Georgics by M. Owen Lee (1996); True Names: Virgil and the
Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay by James J. O'Hara
(1996); Virgil's Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence by Michael
C. J. Putnam (1995); A Companion to the Study of Virgil, ed. by
Nicholas Horsfall (1995); Virgil by Jasper Griffin (1995); Virgil:
A Study in Civilized Poetry by Brooks Otis (1995); A Commentary
on Virgil Eclogues by Wendell Clausen (1995); Epic and Empire:
Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton by David Quint
(1993); The Language of Virgil: An Introduction to the Poetry
of the Aeneid by Daniel H. Garrison (1993); Virgil's Epic Technique
by Richard Heinze, et al (1993); The Epic Successors of Virgil:
A Study in the Dynamics of a Tradition by Philip Hardie (1993);
Virgil and the Moderns by Theodore Ziolkowski (1993); Virgil's
Aeneid: A Poem of Grief and Love by Steven Farron (1993); Death
and the Optimistic Prophecy in Virgil's Aeneid by James J. O'Hara
(1990); Virgil by Ian McAuslan, Peter Walcot, ed. (1990); The
Poet's Truth: A Study of the Poet in Virgil's Georgics (1989);
Public and Private in Virgil's Aeneid by Susan Ford Wiltshire
(1989); Pastoral and Ideology; Virgil to Valery by Annabel Patterson
(1987); The Art of Virgil by Viktor Poschl (1986); Virgil at 2000
: Commemorative Essays on the Poet and His Influence, ed. by John
D. Bernard (1986); Effects of Divine Manifestation on the Readers
Perspective in Virgil's Aneld by Elizabeth Block (1981); The Social
Poetry of the Georgics´ by Edward W. Spofford (1981); Fathers
and Sons in Virgil's Aeneid: Tum Genitor Natum by M. Owen Lee
(1980); Introduction to Virgil's Aeneid by W. A. Camp (1979, paperback);
Patterns of Time in Virgil BY Sara MacK (1978); Roman Poets of
Augustan Age: Virgil by W. Y. Sellar (1970)
|
