Virgil or Vergil, full name Publius Vergilius Maro 70-19BC
Roman poet, one of the greatest of antiquity

Virgil is said to have had a wealthy father of humble origins, and a well-connected mother. He was born in Andes near Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul, and was educated at Cremona and Milan, and at 16 went to Rome to study rhetoric and philosophy. After the Battle of Philippi in 42BC his family estate seems to have been confiscated to provide land for the veterans of Mark Antony and Octavian (Emperor Augustus), but he went to Rome and was recompensed. He soon became one of the endowed court poets who received the patronage of Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, and in 37 his Eclogues, 10 pastorals modelled on those of Theocritus, were received with great enthusiasm. The same year, Virgil travelled with Horace to Brundisium, as recorded by Horace (Satires bk 1 no. 5).

Soon afterwards Virgil, now well off from Maecenas's patronage, left Rome and moved to Campania, where he had a villa at Naples and a country house near Nola. In 30 he published the Georgics, or Art of Husbandry, in four books, dealing with tillage and pasturage, the vine and olive, horses, cattle, and bees; they confirmed his position as the foremost poet of the age. The remaining 11 years of his life were devoted to a larger task, undertaken at the request of Emperor Augustus, the composition of a great national epic based on the story of Aeneas the Trojan, legendary founder of the Roman nation and of the Julian family. The epic covered the hero's life from the fall of Troy to his arrival in Italy, his wars and alliances with the native Italian races, and his final establishment in his new kingdom.

By 19BC the Aeneid was nearly completed, and Virgil left Italy to travel in Greece and Asia, but he fell ill at Megara in central Greece, and died at Brundisium on his way home. At his own wish he was buried in Naples, on the road to Pozzuoli; his tomb was worshipped as a sacred place for many hundreds of years.

The supremacy of Virgil in Latin poetry was immediate and almost unquestioned; his works were established classics even in his lifetime, and soon after his death they had become the textbooks of western Europe; commentaries and scholarly discussions were written by Aelius Donatus, Ambrosius Macrobius, Servius and others who also recorded facts about his life. By the 3rd century AD his poems ranked as sacred books, and were regularly used for purposes of divination; a favourite passage was Dido's curse on Aeneas in Book 4. The early Christian writers saw him as almost one of themselves, and there is a story by an anonymous 13th-century French poet that St Paul wept over Virgil's tomb at Naples. His work has been translated and admired by generations of poets, including John Dryden and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Bibliography: J Griffin, Virgil (1986); F Klinger, Vergil (1967); W A Camps, An Introduction to Virgil's Aeneid (1961).