Vergil
From Philosopedia
[[Vergil [or Virgil], Polydore]] (15 Octobere 70 B.C.E. - 21 September 19 B.C.E.)
Publius Vergilius Maro (commonly known as Vergil or Virgil)
Vergil (the spelling Virgil is not found earlier than the 5th century) became part of the literary circle in Rome that was patronized by Maecenas and Augustus.
His Ecologues, or Bucolics (37 B.C.E.) idealized rural life much in the manner of his Greek predecessor Theocritus. He then wrote Georgics (40 B.C.E.), seeking as had the Greek Hesiod before him to interpret the joy of farm life. For the rest of his life he worked on Aeneid, a national epic, which honored Rome and foretold the prosperity to come.
Vergil’s pastoral poems were not merely a literary convention, the University of Nebraska’s Louis Crompton has noted. Vergil was born on a farm near Mantua and throughout life struck his contemporaries as being shy, awkward, and countrified. Although of sturdy build, he suffered from poor health and was often ill from headaches and hemorrhaging lungs. His lack of aggressiveness and modesty earned him a nickname, “the Virgin.”
When the Commentary of Donatus characterized Vergil as “inclined to passions for boys,” it was considered unusual for a Latin biographer to also name the boys, Cebes and Alexander, two of his students. Vergil’s Corydon eclogue, a poem in which shepherds converse, is considered the most famous poem on male love in Latin literature. Vergil never married but owned a slave named Alexander, with whom he fell in love.
Dante, Marlowe, Byron, and Jeremy Bentham are but three of Vergil’s admirers. Dante, who apparently knew the Donatian biography, made Vergil his guide through Hell and Purgatory. Crompton comments,
- [A]nd the unusual courtesy he shows to sodomites in both domains may stem partly from his knowledge of his mentor’s tastes. Nevertheless, an unamiable medieval legend (traceable to the thirteenth century) held that all sodomites had died at the moment of Christ’s birth, and some ecclesiastics who were confused about the date of Virgil’s death maintained that he too had died in the holocaust.
As creator of one of the greatest long poems in world literature, Vergil is not believed to have been actively involved in any religion. His epitaph, which might have been written by the poet himself, is
• Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope; cecini pascua rura duces.
- Mantua was my birthplace; I died in Calabria; And now I rest at Parthenope. I sang of pastures, farms, and leaders.
