Virgil

Virgil was a poet who lived during the civil wars in Rome and then in the time of the Roman Emperor Augustus, just before the birth of Jesus Christ. Virgil (VER-jill) was a friend of Maecenas (my-SEEN-ass), who was a friend of Augustus, and the poetry Virgil wrote was meant to support the government. He wrote a bunch of poems, called the Georgics, which are about how wonderful Italy is, and how nice it is to have peace (thanks to Augustus), and how good it is to live a simple, traditional life.

But the work Virgil is most remembered for is the epic poem called the Aeneid. This is a long poem in twelve books, like the Iliad or the Odyssey. The hero is Aeneas (i-KNEE-ass), who was a Trojan who was supposed to have escaped from Troy when the Greeks captured it during the Trojan War. It is the story of how Aeneas and his men (like Odysseus and his men) travelled from Troy to Italy to found the city of Rome. This makes the Trojans the ancestors of the Romans.

Virgil was not happy with the Aeneid. It was not published while he was alive, and when he died in 19 BC he left instructions that it should be destroyed. But his heirs published it anyway.

Click here to read Virgil on the web

To find out more about Virgil, check out these books from Amazon.com or your library:

Approaches to Teaching Vergil's Aeneid (Approaches to Teaching World Literature, No 74)
by William S. Anderson

Livy
Main Roman literature page
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