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
May the countryside and the gliding valley streams content me. Lost to fame, let me love river and woodland.
—Virgil
Topics: Fame
Whatever may happen, every kind of fortune is to be overcome by bearing it.
—Virgil
Topics: Fortune
The gates of Hell are open night and day; smooth the descent, and easy is the way: but, to return, and view the cheerful skies; in this, the task and mighty labor lies.
—Virgil
Topics: Hell
Fortune favors the brave.
—Virgil
A fickle and changeful thing is a woman ever.
—Virgil
Topics: Women
Curst greed of gold, what crimes thy tyrant power has caused.
—Virgil
Topics: Gold, Greed
Love conquers all; let us surrender to love.
—Virgil
Topics: Love
Fame hides her head among the clouds.
—Virgil
Topics: Fame
Trust one who has tried.
—Virgil
Topics: Trust
Let us follow our destiny, ebb and flow. Whatever may happen, we master fortune by accepting it.
—Virgil
Topics: Destiny
The brave venture anything.
—Virgil
Topics: Courage
They can, because they think they can.
—Virgil
Topics: Positive Attitudes, Belief, Optimism
You have endured worse things; God will grant an end even to these.
—Virgil
Topics: Adversity
Everyone is dragged on by their favorite pleasure.
—Virgil
Topics: Pleasure
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: Death, Dying
As a twig is bent the tree inclines.
—Virgil
Topics: Consequences, Habits, Habit
Death twitches my ear. “Live,” he says, “I am coming.”
—Virgil
Topics: Death, Carpe-diem, Death and Dying
Hope on, and save yourself for prosperous times.
—Virgil
Topics: Hope
Press no further with hate.
—Virgil
Topics: Hate, Hatred
Trust not too much to appearances.
—Virgil
Topics: Appearance
We may be masters of our every lot by bearing it.
—Virgil
Topics: Perseverance, Endurance, Resolve
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.
—Virgil
Topics: Death
The greatest wealth is health.
—Virgil
Topics: Health
Each man has his appointed day: short and irreparable in the brief life of all, but to extend our fame by our deeds, this is the work of mankind.
—Virgil
Topics: Fame
Happy the man who has been able to know the reasons for things.
—Virgil
Topics: Reason
It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep may be.
—Virgil
I saw these terrible things, and took great part in them.
—Virgil
Believe one who has proved it. Believe an expert.
—Virgil
Topics: Belief
From a single crime know the nation.
—Virgil
Topics: Crime, Criminals
Each person, makes their own terrible passion their God.
—Virgil
Topics: God
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