Virgil

, Vergil

Latin name Publius Vergilius Maro. 70--19 bc, Roman poet, patronized by Maecenas. The Eclogues (42--37), ten pastoral poems, and the Georgics (37--30), four books on the art of farming, established Virgil as the foremost poet of his age. His masterpiece is the Aeneid (30--19)

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

Vergil

Dante’s guide in Hell and Purgatory. [Ital. Lit.: Divine Comedy, Magill I 211–213]

See: Guide

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Vergil

(full name, Publius Vergilius Maro; in Late Latin incorrectly written as Virgilius). Born 70 B.C.; died 19 B.C. Roman poet.

An eyewitness to the downfall of the Roman Republic, Vergil, in his collection Bucolics (Pastoral Songs, 42-38 B.C.), attempted to escape from political storms into the idyllic world of pastoral life. In his didactic narrative poem the Georgics (A Poem About Farming, 36-29 B.C.), Vergil sought a “serenely placid life” in the toil of a village farmer.

With the intention of creating a Roman parallel to the Iliad and the Odyssey, Vergil in his epic poem the Aeneid (completed only in rough draft) developed the legends about the wanderings and wars of the Trojan Aeneas, who appears in this epic poem as the ancestor of the Emperor Augustus. Moreover, Vergil provides an idealized picture of Italian antiquity, closely linking it with Rome’s contemporary political problems.

The creative art of Vergil became a model for rhetorical and epic poetry during the period of classicism.

WORKS

Opera, vols. 1-4. Edited by O. Ribbeek. Leipzig, 1894-95.
Aeneis. … Published in collaboration with K. Bayer by J. Götte. [Munich], 1958. (Text in Latin and German.)
In Russian translation:
Sel’skie poemy. Bukoliki. Georgiki. Moscow-Leningrad [1933].
Eneida. Translated by V. Briusov and S. Solov’ev. Moscow-Leningrad [1933].

REFERENCES

Istoriia rimskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow, 1959.
Pöschl, V. Die Dichtkunst Virgils. Wiesbaden, 1950.
Perret, J. Virgile, l’homme et l’oeuvre. Paris, 1952.
Büchner, K. Vergilius Maro, der Dichter der Römer. Stuttgart, 1960.
Peeters, F. A Bibliography of Virgil. New York, 1933.

I. M. TRONSKII