Virgil

Virgil was the most celebrated of Latin poets and wrote in a circle of poets under the patronage of Maecenas who was himself closely associated with the emperor Augustus. Born in a Roman province in 70BC just south of the Alps, his upbringing was rustic except for his academic education in Cremona and Milan. This was the context and inspiration for his earlier works, the Eclogues and the Georgics, which focus on country living. His move to Rome and the Bay of Naples and his association with Maecenas brought the commission from Augustus for an epic poem to rival those of Homer, celebrating the domination of Rome and the genealogy and position of the emperor, who traced his ancestry to Aeneas, the hero of the Trojan War. He spent the last eleven years of his life on the Aeneid, before he fell ill and died, and although the poem was largely complete, it was not complete enough for the poet who asked for the manuscript to be burned, only to be saved from the flames by Augustus. The influence of this poem is remarkable, even on Christian writers, such as Dante who portrayed Virgil’s spirit as the guide to Paradise.