Publius Vergilius Maro Quotes
Roman poet, author of the Aeneid
Publius Vergilius Maro was roman poet, author of the aeneid from Italy. On October 15, 70 BCE, a son was born to a modest landowner in the village of Andes near Mantua.
“Fortune favors the bold.”— Publius Vergilius Maro
Aeneid, Book X, line 284. Spoken by the warrior Turnus as he charges into battle against the Trojans landing in Italy, composed around 25 BCE.
The Story of Publius
Farm Boy Near Mantua
On October 15, 70 BCE, a son was born to a modest landowner in the village of Andes near Mantua. The father kept bees, tended orchards, and saved enough to send the quiet boy south. Publius grew up smelling crushed thyme and hearing Latin spoken with a rough northern accent.
Student in Naples
He studied rhetoric in Cremona, Milan, and Rome, then settled in Naples to read Greek philosophy under Siro the Epicurean. His voice was weak, his manner shy. He failed as a courtroom speaker after one case. Poetry suited him better, and by 37 BCE his Eclogues circulated among Rome's literary circles.
The Aeneid Years
After the Georgics earned him the friendship of Maecenas and Augustus, he spent eleven years on the Aeneid. He wrote slowly, sometimes one line a morning, licking each into shape like a she-bear her cubs. In 23 BCE he read Book VI aloud to Octavia, who fainted at the mention of her dead son Marcellus.
Unfinished Epic
In 19 BCE he sailed to Greece to polish the Aeneid, caught fever in Megara, and died at Brundisium on September 21. He begged friends to burn the manuscript. Augustus refused. The poem survived, shaped Dante, Milton, and every schoolroom in Europe for nineteen centuries.
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