Virgil (70 BCE–19 BCE,) born Publius Vergilius Maro, was a great Roman Latin poet. He set the archetype of a poet for whom poetry is both a way of life and a means for the deepest individual, cultural, and spiritual inquiry. Virgil’s grand epic, the Aeneid, is one of the most venerated and influential literary works in Western cultural history.
Virgil was born in Cisalpine Gaul in northern Italy. His father was a landlord and a farmer, prominent enough to provide Virgil with a solid education in Cremona, Milan, and finally Rome, where he arrived at the age of 17. He intended to become a lawyer but was too introverted to speak publicly. He also missed the Italian countryside, so he returned to his family’s farm and wrote poetry.
Virgil’s poetic triumph is expressed in three monumental works. His earliest, The Eclogues, celebrated idyllic rustic life and contrasted the present with the natural and the simple life. Virgil’s description of the rural landscape became popular because it reminded everyone of a simple time before a series of civil wars.
At a time when civil wars were tearing down Rome, the regime asked Virgil to write a poem that would influence Romans, who had left the countryside to return home and become farmers again. The Georgics, considered by many his finest work, is a didactic poem about grain production, trees, animal husbandry, and beekeeping. Although the poems formed a practical handbook, they were also entertaining and full of nationalistic paean conveying the love of the land and the lasting wisdom of rural values.
Roman Emperor Augustus was impressed with Virgil’s work and provided him a generous stipend to live on for the rest of his life, which he spent writing. Virgil wrote his epic poem, The Aeneid, based on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and presented the soldier Aeneas, traveling home from the Trojan war to found a new city that would develop into Rome.
Virgil wrote The Aeneid first in prose, and then meticulously transformed it into metered poetry. The poem was unfinished when Virgil died—to be precise, it is almost complete except for a few metrically incomplete lines of verse. The Aeneid is celebrated for its patriotic goal and its probing of the inner meaning of heroism and man’s fate.
Before Virgil died, he instructed that the poem should be destroyed. It is believed that Emperor Augustus himself overrode Virgil’s final desire and saved the Aeneid for posterity. It became the heart of the Roman school curriculum and has been in print for over 2,000 years.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Virgil
Trust not too much to an enchanting face.
—Virgil
Topics: Beauty
Take heart again; put your dismal fears away. One day, who knows? Even these hardships will be grand things to look back on.
—Virgil
Topics: Difficulties
Whatever may happen, every kind of fortune is to be overcome by bearing it.
—Virgil
Topics: Fortune
Go on and increase in valor for this is the path to immortality.
—Virgil
Topics: Bravery, Valor
Fame hides her head among the clouds.
—Virgil
Topics: Fame
I too must attempt a way by which I can raise myself above the ground, and soar triumphant through the lips of men.
—Virgil
Topics: Ambition
Love conquers all; let us surrender to love.
—Virgil
Topics: Love
Let us go singing as far as we go; the road will be less tedious.
—Virgil
Topics: Enthusiasm, Passion
As a twig is bent the tree inclines.
—Virgil
Topics: Consequences, Habit, Habits
The brave venture anything.
—Virgil
Topics: Courage
The Britons are quite separated from all the world.
—Virgil
Topics: Nationalities, Nationality, Nationalism, Nation
The noblest motive is the public good.
—Virgil
Topics: God, Patriotism
Our fate, whatever it is to be, will be overcome by patience under it.
—Virgil
Topics: Fate
Fortune sides with him who dares.
—Virgil
Topics: Fortune, Luck
They attack the one man with their hate and their shower of weapons. But he is like some rock which stretches into the vast sea and which, exposed to the fury of the winds and beaten against by the waves, endures all the violence
—Virgil
Topics: Character
Your descendants shall gather your fruits.
—Virgil
Topics: Legacy
Fear is the proof of a degenerate mind.
—Virgil
Topics: Fear
Perhaps one day this too will be pleasant to remember.
—Virgil
Topics: Memory, Resilience
Blessings on your young courage, boy; that’s the way to the stars.
—Virgil
Topics: Advice
Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember.
—Virgil
Topics: Memory
Command large fields, but cultivate small ones.
—Virgil
Knowing sorrow well, I learn to succor the distressed.
—Virgil
Topics: Compassion, Service, Kindness
Who asks whether the enemy were defeated by strategy or valor?
—Virgil
Topics: Defeat
Trust one who has tried.
—Virgil
Topics: Trust
Wherever the fates lead us let us follow.
—Virgil
Topics: Fate
Trust not too much to appearances.
—Virgil
Topics: Appearance
Fear is proof of a low born soul.
—Virgil
Topics: Fear
I have lived, and I have run the course which fortune allotted me; and now my shade shall descend illustrious to the grave.
—Virgil
Topics: Dying, Death
Enter on the way of training while the spirits in youth are still pliable.
—Virgil
Topics: Learning
Such is the love of praise, so great the anxiety for victory.
—Virgil
Topics: Victory
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