Context
Virgil, the preeminent poet of
the Roman Empire, was born Publius Vergilius Maro on October 15, 70 B.C.,
near Mantua, a city in northern Italy. The son of a farmer, Virgil
studied in Cremona, then in Milan, and finally in Rome. Around 41 B.C., he
returned to Mantua to begin work on his Eclogues, which
he published in 37 B.C. Soon
afterward, civil war forced him to flee south to Naples, where seven
years later he finished his second work, the Georgics, a long
poem on farming. Virgil's writing gained him the recognition of the
public, wealth from patrons, and the favor of the emperor.
Virgil lived at the height of the first age of the Roman
Empire, during the reign of the emperor Octavian, later known as
Augustus. Before Augustus became emperor, though, internal strife
plagued the Roman government. During Virgil's youth, the First Triumvirate—Julius
Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus—governed the Roman Republic. Crassus
was killed around 53 B.C.,
and Caesar initiated civil war against Pompey. After defeating Pompey,
Caesar reigned alone until the Ides of March in 44 B.C.,
when Brutus and Cassius, two senators, assassinated him. Civil war
erupted between the assassins and the Second Triumvirate—Octavian,
Antony, and Lepidus. By 36 B.C. only
Octavian and Antony remained, and they began warring against each
other. At the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C.,
Octavian defeated Antony and his ally Cleopatra of Egypt, finally
consolidating power in himself alone. Four years later, he assumed
the title Augustus. Virgil witnessed all this turmoil, and the warring
often disrupted his life.
Immediately after finishing the Georgics, Virgil
began his masterwork, the Aeneid. He was fortunate
enough to enter the good graces of Augustus, and, in part, the Aeneid serves
to legitimize Augustus's reign. The Aeneid tells
the story of the Trojan hero Aeneas's perilous flight from Troy
to Italy following the Trojan War. In Italy, Aeneas's descendents
would go on to found Rome. In the epic, Virgil repeatedly foreshadows
the coming of Augustus, perhaps to silence critics who claimed that
he achieved power through violence and treachery. (Whether or not
Virgil truly believed all the praise he heaped upon Augustus is
a matter of debate.) When Rome was at its height, the easiest way
to justify the recent brutal events was to claim that the civil
wars and the changes in leadership had been decreed by fate to usher
in the reign of the great Augustus. Yet the Aeneid is
by no means a purely political work; like other epic poems, its
subject stands on its own as a story for all time.
Virgil did not invent the story that Rome descended from
Troy; he crafted the events narrated in the Aeneid from
an existing tradition surrounding Aeneas that extended from the
ancient Greek poet Homer through the contemporary Roman historian
Livy. In Book XX of the Iliad, Aeneas faces off
with Achilles, and we learn about Aeneas's lineage and his reputation
for bravery. However, in that scene, he is no match for Achilles,
who has been outfitted in armor forged by the divine smith Hephaestus.
Poseidon rescues Aeneas from certain doom and praises the Trojan
for his piety. Poseidon also prophesies that Aeneas will survive
the Trojan War and assume leadership over the Trojan people.
Ancient accounts of Aeneas's postwar wanderings vary.
Greek art from the sixth century B.C. portrays
Aeneas carrying his father, Anchises, out from the burning ruins
of Troy. Archaeological evidence suggests that the myth of Aeneas
was often depicted in art on the Italian mainland as early as the
sixth century B.C. The settlement of Aeneas
and the Trojans in Italy and their connection with the foundation
of Rome entered the written tradition centuries after Homer, at
the end of the third century B.C. Earlier
poets, including the Roman Varro, had connected Dido and Aeneas,
but Virgil was the first to tie all the elements of Aeneas's story
together in epic form.
After eleven years of composition, the meticulous Virgil
did not consider the Aeneid fit for publication.
He planned to spend three years editing it, but fell ill returning
from a trip to Greece. Just before his death on September 21, 19 B.C.,
he ordered the manuscript of the Aeneid to be burned,
because he still considered it unfinished. Augustus intervened,
however, arranging for the poem to be published against Virgil's
wishes.
Virgil's masterful and meticulously crafted poetry earned
him a legacy as the greatest poet in the Latin language. Throughout
the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, his fame only grew. Before the
invention of the printing press, when classical texts, transmitted by
the hands of scribes, were scarce, Virgil's poetry was available
to the literate classes, among whom he was regarded as the most
significant writer of antiquity. He inspired poets across languages,
including Dante in Italian, Milton in English, and an anonymous
French poet who reworked the Aeneid into the medieval
romance Le Roman d'Eneas. In what became a Christian
culture, Virgil was viewed as a pagan prophet because several lines
in his works were interpreted as predictions of the coming of Christ.
Among writers of the Renaissance, Virgil was appreciated for the
fluidity of his rigorously structured poetry and his vivid portrayals
of human emotion.
Modern critics, on the other hand, have been less kind.
Virgil's poetry is often judged in relation to that of his Greek
predecessors, especially the Iliad and the Odyssey, epics
attributed to Homer that also portray the Trojan War and its aftermath.
Most contemporary scholars hold that Virgil's poetry pales in comparison
to Homer's. Virgil himself often viewed his poetry in light of Homer's;
he invoked such comparisons within the Aeneid and
wished to surpass the Greek poet, while still borrowing from him
heavily. Virgil's poetry does not possess the same originality of
expression as Homeric epic poetry. The Aeneid shares
with the Iliad and the Odyssey a tone
of ironic tragedy, as characters act against their own wishes, submit
their lives to fate, and often meet dark ends. Most scholars agree
that Virgil distinguished himself within the epic tradition of antiquity
by representing the broad spectrum of human emotion in his characters
as they are subsumed in the historical tides of dislocation and
war.
