VIRGIL, or PUBLIUS VIRGILIUS MARO, the most excellent of all the Latin poets, was the son of a potter of Andes, near Mantua, where he was born, 70 years B. C. He studied first at Mantua; then at Cremona, Milan, and Naples; whence going to Rome, he acquired the esteem of the greatest wits and most illustrious persons of his time; and among others, of the emperor Augustus, Mæcenas, and Pollio. He was well skilled not only in polite literature and poetry, but also in philosophy, the mathematics, geography, medicine, and natural history. Though one of the greatest geniuses of his age, and the admiration of the Romans, he always preserved a singular modesty, and lived chaste at a time when the manners of the people were extremely corrupt. He carried Latin poetry to such an high perfection, that he was justly esteemed the prince of Latin poets. He first turned himself to pastoral; and being captivated with the beauty and sweetness of Theocritus, was ambitious to introduce this new species of poetry among the Romans. His first performance in this way is supposed to have been written U. C. 709, the year before the death of Julius Cæsar, when the poet was in his 25th year: it is intitled Alexis. Possibly Palemon was his second: it is a close imitation of the fourth and fifth Idylls of Theocritus. Mr Warton places Silenus next; which is said to have been publicly recited on the stage by Cytheris, a celebrated comedian. Virgil's fifth eclogue is composed in allusion to the death and deifi-
cation of Cæsar. The battle of Philippi in 712 having put an end to the Roman liberty, the veteran soldiers began to murmur for their pay; and Augustus, to reward them, distributed among them the lands of Mantua and Cremona. Virgil was involved in this common calamity; and applied to Varus and Pollio, who warmly recommended him to Augustus, and procured for him his patrimony again. Full of gratitude to Augustus, he composed the Tityrus, in which he introduces two shepherds: one of them complaining of the distraction of the times, and of the havoc the soldiers made among the Mantuan farmers; the other rejoicing for the recovery of his estate, and promising to honour as a God the person who restored it to him. But our poet's joy was not of long continuance; for we are told, that when he returned to take possession of his farm, he was violently assaulted by the intruder, and would certainly have been killed by him if he had not escaped by swimming hastily over the Mincio. Upon this unexpected disappointment, he returned to Rome to renew his petition; and during his journey seems to have composed his ninth eclogue. The celebrated eclogue, intitled Pollis, was composed U. C. 714, upon the following occasion. The consul Pollio on the part of Antony, and Mæcenas on the part of Cæsar, had made up the differences between them; by agreeing, that Octavia, half-sister to Cæsar, should be given in marriage to Antony. This agreement caused an universal joy; and Virgil, in his eclogue, testified his. Octavia was with child by her late husband Marcellus at the time of this marriage; and whereas the Sybilline oracles had foretold, that a child was to be born about this time, who should rule the world, and establish perpetual peace, the poet ingeniously supposes the child in Octavia's womb to be the glorious infant, under whose reign mankind was to be happy, the golden age to return from heaven, and fraud and violence to be no more. In this celebrated poem, the author with great delicacy at the same time pays his court to both the chiefs, to his patron Pollio, to Octavia, and to the unborn infant. In 715, Pollio was sent against the Parthini, a people of Illyricum; and during this expedition, Virgil addressed to him a beautiful eclogue, called Pharmaceutria. His tenth and last eclogue was addressed to Gaius. These were our poet's first productions; and we have been the more circumstantial in our account of some of them, as many particulars of his life are intimately connected with them.
Being in his 34th year, he retired to Naples, and laid the plan of his inimitable Georgics; which he undertook at the intreaties of Mæcenas, to whom he dedicated them: not to rival and excel Hesiod, as he had lately done Theocritus, but on a noble political motive, and to promote the welfare of his country. Great was the desolation occasioned by the civil wars: Italy was almost depopulated; the lands were uncultivated and unstocked; a famine and insurrection ensued; and Augustus himself hardly escaped being stoned by the people, who attributed this calamity to his ambition. His wife and able minister therefore resolved, if possible, to revive the decayed spirit of husbandry; to introduce a taste for agriculture, even among the great; and could not think of a better method to effect this, than to recommend it by the insinuating charms of poetry. Virgil fully answered the expectations of his polite patron, by
by his Georgics. They are divided into four books. Corn and ploughing are the subject of the first, vines of the second, cattle of the third, and bees of the fourth.
He is supposed to have been in his 45th year when he began to write the Aeneid; the design of which is thus explained by Mr Spence in his Polymetis. Augustus being freed from his rival Antony, the government of the Roman empire was to be wholly in him; and though he chose to be called their father, he was, in every thing but the name, their king. But the monarchical form of government must naturally displease the Romans; and therefore Virgil, like a good courtier, seems to have laid the plan of his poem to reconcile them to it. He takes advantage of their religious tura, and of some old prophecies that must have been very flattering to the Roman people, as promising them the empire of the whole world. He weaves this in with the most probable account of their origin; that of their being descended from the Trojans. He shows, that Aeneas was called into their country by the express order of the gods; that there was an uninterrupted succession of kings from him to Romulus; that Julius Cæsar was of the royal race, and that Augustus was his sole heir. The result of all this was, that the promises made to the Roman people in and through this race, terminating in Augustus, the Romans, if they would obey the gods, and be masters of the world, were to yield obedience to the new establishment under that prince. Augustus was eager to peruse this poem before it was finished; and intreated him by letters to communicate it. Macrobius has preserved to us part of one of Virgil's answers to the emperor, in which the poet excuses himself: who, however, at length complied, and read himself the sixth book to the emperor; when Octavia, who had just lost her son Marcellus, the darling of Rome, and adopted son of Augustus, made one of the audience. Virgil had artfully inserted that beautiful lamentation for the death of young Marcellus, beginning with—O nate, ingentem luctum ne quare tuorum—but suppressed his name, till he came to the line—Tu Marcellus eris: upon hearing which, Octavia could bear no more, but fainted away; overcome with surprise and sorrow. When she recovered, she made the poet a present of ten sesterces for every line, which amounted in the whole to above 2000l.
The Aeneid being brought to a conclusion, but not to the perfection our author intended to give it, he resolved to travel into Greece to correct and polish it at leisure. It was probably on this occasion that Horace addressed that affectionate ode to him, Sic te Divæ potenti Cypri, &c. Augustus returning victorious from the east, met with Virgil at Athens, who thought himself obliged to attend the emperor to Italy: but the poet was suddenly seized with a fatal distemper, which being increased by the agitation of the vessel, put an end to his life as soon as he landed at Brundusium, in his 52d year. He had ordered in his will, that the Aeneid should be burnt as an unfinished poem; but Augustus forbade it, and had it delivered to Varius and Tucca, with the directed charge to make no additions, but only to publish it correctly. He died with such steadiness and tranquillity, as to be able to dictate his own epitaph in the following words:
Mortua me genuit: Calabri rapuere, tractu nunc
Partibuse: cecidi Pafina, Rara, Daces.
His bones were carried to Naples, according to his earnest request; and a monument was erected at a small distance from the city.
Virgil was of a swarthy complexion, tall, of a sickly constitution, and afflicted with frequent head-achs and spitting of blood. He was so very bashful, that he often ran into the shops to prevent being gazed at in the streets; yet was so honoured by the Roman people, that once coming into the theatre, the whole audience rose up out of respect to him. He was of a thoughtful and melancholy temper; he spoke little, and loved retirement and contemplation. His fortune was affluent; he had a fine house and well-furnished library near Mæcenas's gardens, on the Esquiline mount at Rome, and also a delightful villa in Sicily. He was so benevolent and inoffensive, that most of his coteremporary poets, though they envied each other, agreed in loving and esteeming him. He revised his verses with prodigious severity; and used to compare himself to a she-bear, which licked her cubs into shape.
The best edition of Virgil's works are those of Mosvicius, with the notes of Servius, printed at Leuwarden in 1717, 2 vols. 4to; and that of Burman, at Amsterdam, 1746, in 4 vols. 4to. There are several English translations, which are well known.