| Life and Background of the Poet |
| Publius Vergilius Maro was born October 15, 70 B.C., in the northern Italian village of Andes, a town just outside the city of Mantovaknown 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 sonshis brother Silo died in childbirth, and Flaccus, his other brother, lived only to young manhoodVirgil came from a prosperous family. His father, an industrious potter and cattle farmer, married his landlord's daughter, worked at bee-keeping, 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. |
| 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 schoolor academyof 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 wanted him to, but after arguing his first law case he turned to the study of philosophy, finding it more congenial to his temperament. |
| 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 if a number of minor poems attributed to Virgil, including "Culex" ("The Gnat"), "Copa" ("The Barmaid''), and |
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