Publius Vergilius Maro (October 15, 70–19 BC) 
known in English as Virgil or Vergil, Latin poet, is the author of 
the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the Aeneid, this last being an epic 
poem of twelve books that is deservingly called the Roman Empire's 
national epic.

Life

Born in the village of Andes (modern Pietole?), near Mantua in 
Cisalpine Gaul (Gaul "this side", i.e., south of the Alps, present 
northern Italy), Virgil received his earliest schooling at Cremona 
and Milan. (It is little known that Virgil was of Celtic 
ancestry.) He went to Rome to study rhetoric, medicine, and 
astronomy, which he soon abandoned for philosophy. In this 
period, while he was in the school of Siro the Epicurean, Virgil 
began writing poetry. A group of minor poems attributed to the 
youthful Virgil survive but most are spurious. One, the 
Catalepton (bagatelles?), consists of fourteen little poems, 
some of which may be Virgil's, and another, a short narrative 
poem titled the Culex (the mosquito), was attributed to Virgil 
as early as the 1st century AD.

Such dubious poems are sometimes referred to as the Appendix 
Virgiliana.

In 42 BC, after the defeat of Julius Caesar's assassins, 
Brutus and Cassius, the demobilized soldiers of the victors 
were settled on expropriated land and Virgil's estate near 
Mantua was confiscated. However, the first of the Eclogues, 
written around 42 BC, is taken as evidence that Octavian 
restored the estate, for it tells how "Tityrus" recovered 
his land through Octavian's intervention and "Tityrus" is 
usually identified as Virgil himself. Virgil soon became 
part of the circle of Maecenas, Octavian's capable agent 
d'affaires who sought to counter sympathy for Marc Antony 
among the leading families by rallying Roman literary 
figures to Octavian's side. After the Eclogues were 
completed, Virgil spent the years 37–29 BC on the Georgics 
("On Farming"), which was written in honor of Maecenas. But 
Octavian, who had defeated Antony at the Battle of Actium 
in 31 BC and two years later had the title "Augustus" given 
him by the Roman senate, was already pressing Virgil to write 
an epic in praise of his regime.

Virgil responded with the Aeneid, which took up his last ten 
years. The first six books of the epic tell how the Trojan 
hero Aeneas escapes from the sack of Troy and makes his way 
to Italy. On the voyage, a storm drives him on to the coast 
of Carthage where the queen, Dido, welcomes him and before 
long Aeneas falls deeply in love. But Jupiter recalls Aeneas 
to his duty and he slips away from Carthage, leaving Dido to 
commit suicide but not before swearing vengeance. On reaching 
Cumae, in Italy, Aeneas consults the Cumaean Sibyl, who 
conducts him through the Underworld and reveals his destiny 
to him. Aeneas is reborn as the creator of imperial Rome.

The first six books (of "first writing") are modeled on 
Homer's Odyssey, but the last six are the Roman answer 
to the Iliad. Aeneas is betrothed to Lavinia, daughter of 
king Latinus, but Lavinia had already been promised to 
Turnus, the king of the Rutulians who is roused to war by 
the Fury, Allecto. The Aeneid ends with a single combat 
between Aeneas and Turnus, whom Aeneas defeats and kills, 
spurning his plea for mercy.

When Virgil died with the epic unfinished, Augustus ordered 
Virgil's literary executors, Varius and Tucca, to disregard 
Virgil's own wish that the poem be destroyed and to publish 
it with as few editorial changes as possible. Incomplete or 
not, the Aeneid was immediately recognized as a masterpiece. 
It proclaimed the imperial mission of the Roman Empire but 
at the same time could pity Rome's victims and feel their 
grief. Dido and Turnus, who are both casualties of Rome's 
destiny, are more attractive figures than Aeneas, whose 
single-minded devotion to his goal may seem almost repellent 
to the modern reader. However, the virtue that Virgil portrays 
in Aeneas may be referred to as pietas, roughly translated as 
piety. It is his duty to the Gods, his family and his 
homeland. Aeneas struggles between doing what he wants to as 
a man, and doing what he must as a virtuous hero with pietas. 
Aeneas' inner turmoil, and on many occassions, shortfallings, 
make him a far more realistic character than the heroes of 
the older poems such as Odysseus of the Odyssey by Homer.


Secret meanings in Virgil

In the medieval period, Virgil was considered a herald of 
Christianity, for his Eclogue 4 verses concerning the birth 
of a boy were re-read to prophesy Christ's nativity. The poem 
may actually refer to the pregnancy of Octavian's wife 
Scribonia, who in fact gave birth to a girl.

In the Middle Ages, as Virgil developed into a kind of magus 
or wizard, manuscripts of the Aeneid were used for divination, 
the sortes virgilianae, in which a line would be selected at 
random and interpreted as Old Testament lines were interpreted 
for arcane meanings, in light of a current situation. (Compare 
the ancient Chinese I Ching.)

Even in the Welsh myth of Taliesin, the goddess Cerridwen is 
reading from the "Book of Pheryllt"--that is, Virgil.

More recently, professor Jean-Yves Maleuvre has proposed that 
Virgil wrote the Aeneid using a "double writing" system, in 
which the first superficial writing was intended for national 
audience and Augustus' needs, while the second one, deeper 
and hidden, unnoticed before Maleuvre discovered it, reflected 
Virgil's true point of view and his true historical 
reconstruction of the past. Maleuvre believes Augustus had 
Virgil murdered once the epic was finished. Maleuvre's ideas 
have not met general acceptance.

There are some indications that Vergil was adept in the magic 
arts, and may have practiced necromancy.


Later views of Virgil

Even as the Roman world collapsed, literate men acknowledged 
that the Christianized Virgil was a master poet, even when 
they ceased to read him. Gregory of Tours had read Virgil and 
some other Latin poets, though he cautions us that "We ought 
not to relate their lying fables, lest we fall under sentence 
of eternal death." Dante made Virgil his guide in his Divine 
Comedy. Virgil is still considered the greatest of the Latin 
poets.


Virgil's Name in English

In the Middle Ages "Vergilius" was bastardized to "Virgilius." 
There are two explanations commonly given for the alteration 
in the spelling of Virgil's name. One explanation is based on 
a false etymology associated with the word virgo, Latin for 
"maiden." This arose because in antiquity Virgil, who was 
notoriously modest, was nicknamed parthenias, the Greek word 
for maiden. Another possible explanation is that "Vergilius" 
was altered to "Virgilius" based on an analogy with the Latin 
virga, or "wand," because of the magical or prophetic powers 
attributed to Virgil in the Middle Ages. In Norman schools 
(following the French practice) the habit was to anglicize 
Latin names by dropping their Latin endings, hence "Virgil." 
In the United States in the nineteenth century, however, 
German immigrant classicists suggested modification to 
"Vergil," which was closer to his original name, because 
Virgil had always been known as Vergilius in German (and 
still is today).