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
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
Blessings on your young courage, boy; that’s the way to the stars.
—Virgil
Topics: Advice
You have endured worse things; God will grant an end even to these.
—Virgil
Topics: Adversity
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
Whatever may happen, every kind of fortune is to be overcome by bearing it.
—Virgil
Topics: Fortune
Enter on the way of training while the spirits in youth are still pliable.
—Virgil
Topics: Learning
They can, because they think they can.
—Virgil
Topics: Belief, Optimism, Positive Attitudes
Command large fields, but cultivate small ones.
—Virgil
Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember.
—Virgil
Topics: Memory
Trust not too much to appearances.
—Virgil
Topics: Appearance
It manus in gyrum; paullatim singula viresDeperdunt proprias; color est E pluribus unus. Spins round the stirring hand; lose by degreesTheir separate powers the parts, and comes at lastFrom many several colors one that rules.
—Virgil
Hope on, and save yourself for prosperous times.
—Virgil
Topics: Hope
The hour is ripe, and yonder lies the way.
—Virgil
Topics: Getting Going, Inaction, Procrastination
Let us follow our destiny, ebb and flow. Whatever may happen, we master fortune by accepting it.
—Virgil
Topics: Destiny
Fear betrays unworthy souls.
—Virgil
Your descendants shall gather your fruits.
—Virgil
Topics: Legacy
Death twitches my ear. “Live,” he says, “I am coming.”
—Virgil
Topics: Death, Death and Dying, Carpe-diem
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
Impotent fury rages powerless and to no purpose.
—Virgil
Topics: Anger
Such is the love of praise, so great the anxiety for victory.
—Virgil
Topics: Victory
From a single crime know the nation.
—Virgil
Topics: Crime, Criminals
Nunc scio quit sit amor.
—Virgil
Topics: Love
The brave venture anything.
—Virgil
Topics: Courage
May the countryside and the gliding valley streams content me. Lost to fame, let me love river and woodland.
—Virgil
Topics: Fame
Love conquers all; let us surrender to love.
—Virgil
Topics: Love
Too happy would you be, did ye but know your own advantages.
—Virgil
Topics: Blessings, Silver Linings
The greatest wealth is health.
—Virgil
Topics: Health
As a twig is bent the tree inclines.
—Virgil
Topics: Habit, Habits, Consequences
Fortune helps the brave.
—Virgil
Topics: Courage
Wherever the fates lead us let us follow.
—Virgil
Topics: Fate
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