VERGIL (PUBLICS VERGILMS MARO) , the first of Latin poets; born in Andes near Mantua, Oct. 15, 70 B. C. The plain of Lombardy then lay outside the limits of Italy, and formed a province known as Cisalpine Gaul. The population was mainly Celtic, but was already per meated by the Latin language and civ ilization; and Julius Cwsar, when he ad mitted it to full Roman citizenship in Vergil's 21st year, was adjusting rather than extending the natural limits of Italy. The name Vergilius is apparently Celtic, and in Vergil's Celtic blood mod ern cities have found the origin of his romantic and melancholy temper, and of the deep sense of natural beauty and the spirtual meaning of nature, in which he stands alone among Greek and Latin poets.
Vergil's father owned a small property in his native place, where, besides the ordinary work of a farm, he occupied himself in forestry and bee-keeping. He was well enough off to give his son the education which was generally confined to a wealthier class. The boy was sent to school at Cremona and Milan, and at the age of 16 went to Rome and studied rhetoric and philosophy under the best teachers of the time. His studies were probably interrupted by the civil war; at all events, we know nothing of the next years of his life till 41 B. c. The victo rious triumvirs were then providing for the immense armies which had been dis banded after the battle of Philippi by settling them on confiscated lands throughout Italy. Vergil's farm was part of the confiscated territory of Cre mona; but his reputation as a rising poet had already brought him under the no tice of the governor of the district, Asi nius Pollio, himself a distinguished man of letters. By Pollio's advice he went to Rome, with special recommendation to Octavianus; and though his own prop erty was ultimately not restored to him, he obtained ample compensation from the government, and became for a few years one of the circle of endowed court poets who gathered round the prime min ister Maecenas.
In 37 B. C. the "Eclogues," a collection of 10 pastorals modeled on those of Theocritus, were published, and received with unexampled enthusiasm. Soon af terward Vergil withdrew from Rome to Campania. The munificence of Miecenas had placed him in easy and even affluent circumstances. He had a villa at Naples, and a country house near Nola, within easy reach of it; and he seems to have lived almost entirely in this neighbor hood during the seven years in which he was engaged in the composition of the "Georgics," or "Art of Husbandry." This poem, which is in four books, and deals with tillage and pasturage, the cultivation of trees, especially the vine and olive, and the breeding of horses, cattle and bees, appeared in 30 B. c., and
confirmed Vergil's position as the fore most poet of the age. The remaining 11 years of his life were devoted to a larger and in some respects more uncongenial task, undertaken at the urgent and re peated request of the emperor, the com position of a great national epic. Dur ing these years he lived a secluded life, chiefly in Campania and Sicily; he seems also to have traveled in Greece, and to have paid occasional visits to Rome, where he had a house in the fashionable quarter on the Esquiline. The subject he chose was the story of 1Eneas, the Tro jan, the legendary founder of the Ro man nation and of the Julian family, from the fall of Troy to his arrival in Italy, his wars and alliances with the native Italian races, and his final estab lishment in his new kingdom. By 19 B. C. the "lEneid" was practically completed, but Vergil had set apart three years more for its final revision. In the sum mer of that year he left Italy with the intention of traveling in Greece and Asia; but at Athens he fell ill, and re turned only to die at Brundusium a few days after landing, on Sept. 21. He had almost completed his 51st year. In his last illness he expressed a wish to burn the "ZEneid," and he left directions to that effect in his will. By the command of Augustus these directions were dis obeyed, and it was published as we now possess it. At his own wish he was buried at Naples, on the road to Poz zuoli, his tomb for many hundred years after being worshiped as a sacred place.
Besides the three works already men tioned, a few juvenile pieces of more or less probable authenticity are extant un der his name. These are the "Culex" and the "Moretum," both in hexameter verse, the former an "epyllion," or short poem of narrative and description in the epic manner, the latter an idyll freely translated from the Greek of Parthe nius; the "Copa," a short elegiac piece; and 14 little poems in various meters, some serious, others trivial, which come under his name at the head of a collec tion of minor Latin poetry incorporated in the Latin anthology. These pieces are not printed in most editions of Ver gil, nor are any of them certainly au thentic, though some of them passed as his among scholars within a century after his death. The "Ciris," a piece of the same kind as the "Culex," is now agreed to be by a contemporary imitator.