Personal Background
Publius Vergilius Maro was born October 15, 70 B.C., in the northern Italian village of Andes, a town just outside the city of Mantova, known today as Mantua. Although his name is correctly spelled “Vergil,” the variant “Virgil” is more commonly used. This name derives from the Latin word virga, meaning “wand,” which reflects the belief, prevalent during the Middle Ages, that a poet is a great magician, with the power to conjure dead spirits.
The eldest of three sons—his brother Silo died in childbirth, and Flaccus, his other brother, lived only to young manhood—Virgil came from a prosperous family. His father, an industrious potter and cattle farmer, married his landlord’s daughter, worked at beekeeping, and invested in the lumber industry. An ambitious man, he strove to provide Virgil with an aristocratic education to prepare him for a law career.
Education
Virgil attended school in Cremona and then, briefly, in Milan. In 54 or 53 B.C., he went to Rome, where he studied law and rhetoric in the school, or academy, of Epidius. There, he met Octavian, a fellow student, who, as the future emperor Augustus, would become Virgil’s patron. Virgil had intended to become a lawyer as his father wished, but after arguing his first law case he turned to the study of philosophy, finding it more congenial to his temperament.
Early Works
In 49 B.C., the year Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River with his legions of soldiers and marched on Rome to seize power, Virgil, to escape the civil disturbances that Caesar’s arrival created, left the city and moved to Naples. There, he studied with the philosopher Siro. It is uncertain whether a number of minor poems attributed to Virgil, including “Culex” (“The Gnat”), “Copa” (“The Barmaid”), and “Catalepton” (“Trifles”), were written by him, but if so, some of them may have been completed at this time.
After Caesar’s assassination in 44 B.C., Virgil returned to Mantova, where, a year later, he began the composition of his first important work, a collection of ten poems known as the Eclogues, or “Selections,” sometimes called the Bucolics, or “Pastoral Poems.” Published in 37 B.C., the Eclogues depict the lives and loves of shepherds in idealized rural settings. However, the first and ninth Eclogues, which are more realistic than the others, allude to the politically motivated confiscation of Mantuan farms, which were awarded to war veterans after the forces of Octavian, Lepidus, and Mark Antony defeated Brutus’s and Cassius’s armies at the Battle of Philippi in 42 B.C. When his father’s estate was confiscated in 41 B.C., Virgil appealed to Octavian for restitution, although there is considerable uncertainty and disagreement as to the result of this appeal. The confiscated property may have been regained, or, failing that, residences in Rome and Naples may have been awarded to him as compensation for the loss of his patrimony.
With the publication of the Eclogues, Virgil achieved great popular success. By this time, he had reestablished his friendship with Octavian and had met Maecenas, the future emperor’s wealthy and powerful advisor, whose house was a gathering place for poets and other men of letters. This acquaintance no doubt influenced Virgil’s Georgics, which was his second and final important work before he began writing the Aeneid.
Virgil undertook the Georgics not long after the publication of the Eclogues. A didactic poem of over two thousand lines, the Georgics (“About Farming”) was completed in 30 B.C., after seven years of labor, during which time Virgil lived chiefly in Naples, the city he loved most. On one level, this work, in four books, is about animal husbandry and agricultural methods, topics that might have been suggested by Maecenas, to whom the poem is dedicated, and who was interested in reviving farming as a way of life for war veterans. On a deeper level, the Georgics celebrates the beauty and power of nature and stresses the importance of living in harmony with it. It also contains references to the future emperor Augustus and the peace his reign promises after years of civil war.
