Virgil

Publius Virgilio Marón  (Virgil, 70 BC-Brundisium, 19 BC), better known by his nomen Virgil, was a Roman poet, author of the Aeneid, the Bucolics and the Georgics. In Dante Alighieri's work the Divine Comedy appears as his guide through Hell and Purgatory.

Educated in the schools of Mantua, Cremona, Milan, Rome and Naples, he always kept in touch with the most notable cultural circles. He studied philosophy, mathematics, and rhetoric, and was interested in astrology, medicine, zoology, and botany. From a first stage influenced by Epicureanism, he evolved towards a mystical Platonism, which is why his production is considered one of the most perfect synthesis of the spiritual currents of Rome.

He was the creator of a great work in which he shows himself as a faithful reflection of the man of his time, with his illusions and his sufferings, through a form of great stylistic perfection.

Biography

Virgilio was born in Andes, present-day Virgilio, a village near Mantua, in the Italian region of Venetia et Histria on October 15, 70 B.C. According to Macrobio, he was of humble origin, however, the consensus among the scholars tends to affirm that his family was landowners who belonged to the equites.He received a careful education and was able to study rhetoric and poetry thanks to the protection of the politician Gaius. Patron. His early years were spent in his hometown, but upon reaching adolescence he moved to Cremona, Milan and Rome to complete his training. In Rome he entered the circle of the poetae novi . His first poetic compositions belong to this period, collected under the name of the Virgilian Appendix.

He arrived in Naples in 48 B.C. C. to study with the epicurean teacher Sirón. At that time, the civil war broke out after the assassination of Julius Caesar, which affected Virgilio, who even saw his heritage in danger. He spent much of his life in Naples and Nola. He was a friend of the poet Horace and of Augustus, since before he became emperor.

Between the years 42 and 39 B.C. C. he wrote the Eclogues or Bucolic , which reveal Virgil's wishes for pacification in poems that exalt pastoral life, in imitation of Idylls of the Greek poet Theocritus. Although stylized and idealizing peasant characters, they include references to events and people of their time. In the famous eclogue IV, the arrival of a child who will bring a new golden age to Rome is sung. Later Christian culture sought here a prediction of the birth of its most important figure, Jesus Christ.

Between the years 36 and 29 B.C. C., he composed, at the request of Maecenas, the Georgics , a poem that is a treatise on agriculture, intended to proclaim the need to reestablish the traditional peasant world in Italy.

From the year 29 B.C. C., begins the composition of his most ambitious work, the Aeneid , whose writing took him eleven years, a poem in twelve books that recounts the adventures of the Trojan Aeneas from his escape from Troy to his military victory in Italy. The evident intention of the work was to endow his homeland with an epic, and to link his culture with the Greek tradition. Aeneas carries his father Anchises on his shoulders and his son Ascanius by the hand. In Carthage, on the coast of Africa, Queen Dido falls in love with him, who commits suicide after the hero's departure. In Italy, Aeneas defeats Turno, king of Rutulos. Aeneas's son, Ascanio, founds Alba Longa, a city that would later become Rome. According to Virgil, the Romans were descendants of Ascanius, and therefore of Aeneas himself. The style of the work is more refined than that of the Greek songs in which he was inspired.

He had already written the Aeneid, when he made a trip through Asia Minor and Greece, in order to verify the information he had put into his most famous poem. In Athens he met Augustus and returned with him to Italy, already ill. Upon his arrival in Brindisi, he asked the emperor before he died to destroy the Aeneid . Augusto strongly opposed and did not comply with the request, to the glory of Latin literature. He died in this city on September 21, 19 BC. c.

His original nomen (Vergilius) was altered in the IV to Virgilius perhaps due to phonetic influence due to the words virgo and virga meaning "shy" and "wizard's wand" », nicknames that were attributed to the poet.^{[citation required]}

Works

Mosaic with the Latin poet Virgilio along with Clío, muse of History, and Melpomene, muse of Tragedy. Bardo Museum, Tunisia; found in Susa. Century III d.C.

• The Bucholics
• La Eneida
• The Geórgicas
• A set of minor works known, since Escalígero gave him that name in his 1573 edition, as Appendix Vergiliana, attributed to Virgilio in Antiquity, but of whose authenticity they doubt many modern specialists, in which poems such as Culex, Dirae, Aetna, Ciris, Catalepton, Cataleptum, Moretum, Cupand Elegiae in Maecenatem.
• In the Culex ('Mosquito'), this alert in a dream to the pastor who killed him that by stinging it saved his life, and that is why the mosquito is honored with a grave by the shepherd.
• The Dirae o 'Maldiciones' are pronounced by the lover of a land that has to leave (drawn by some veterans of the Roman army); her enamored Lydia is honored by a poem of love that bears her name and a praise of the field where she lived.
• The Aetnaconsecrated to the volcano Etna
• The Ciris: evocation of the metamorphosis in bird (Ciris) of Escila, daughter of the king of Megara.
• The Catalepton, handful of short poems, of which some seem authentic works of youth of Virgilio.

At a later stage, still added to this collection:

• La Cup: poem that bears the name of a Syrian dancer who invites a traveler to the pleasure of seeing her dance in her house.
• The Elegiae in Maecenatem: necrologic piece that refers to the last words of Mecenas, benefactor of Virgilio, addressed to the Emperor Augustus.
• The Moretum: Gastronomic poem that describes in detail the preparation of this local cysalpine dish.

Virgil's perfect verse was praised and considered exemplary both among his contemporaries and in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and following, while the Aeneid was shredded as a treatise on philosophy and politics, when not considered the work of a seer. The effort of the Renaissance to unite Christianity with classical culture found its main reference in Virgil.

Dante took his figure as one of the main characters in his work the Divine Comedy; represents Reason, and helps Dante through Hell and Purgatory. On the other hand, Hermann Broch, in his novel The Death of Virgil , narrates his last days.

Influence

Virgilio reads the Eneida to Livia, Octavia and Augusto (1812), by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Museo de los Agustinos, Toulouse

In Antiquity

Virgil's works revolutionized Latin poetry almost from the moment of their publication. The Bucolics, Georgics and, above all, the Aeneid became standard texts in school curricula with which all educated Romans were familiar.. Poets following Virgil often refer intertextually to his works to generate meaning in their own poetry. The poet Ovid parodies the opening lines of the Aeneid in Amores 1.1.1-2, and his summary of the story of Aeneas in book 14 of the Metamorphoses , the so-called "mini-Aeneid", has been seen as a particularly important example of the post-Virgilian response to the epic genre. Lucan's epic, the Bellum civile, has been considered an anti-Virgilian epic, dispensing with divine mechanism, dealing with historical events, and diverging drastically from Virgil's epic practice. The poet Flavio Stacio in his epic of 12 books Thebaid is closely related to the poetry of Virgil; In his epilogue he advises his poem not to "compete with the divine Aeneid , but to follow far away and always venerate his steps". In Silio Italico, Virgilio meets one of his most ardent admirers. With almost every line of his Punic epic, Silius refers to Virgil. In fact, Silius is known to have bought Virgil's tomb and worshiped the poet. Partly as a result of his fourth "messianic" —widely interpreted later as a prediction of the birth of Jesus Christ—Virgil was reputed in late antiquity to have the magical abilities of a seer; The sortes Vergilianae, the process of using Virgil's poetry as a divination tool, dates back to the time of Hadrian, and continued into the Middle Ages. Along the same lines, Macrobius, in Saturnalia, defines Virgil's work as the embodiment of human knowledge and experience, reflecting Homer's Greek conception. Virgil also found commentators in antiquity. Serbian, commentator of the IV century a. C., based his work on Donato's comment. Servius' commentary provides a great deal of information about Virgil's life, sources and references to him; however, many modern scholars find the quality of his work variable and the often simplistic interpretations frustrating.

Late Antiquity and Middle Ages

As the western Roman empire collapsed, literate men recognized that Virgil was a master poet. Gregorio de Tours reads Virginity, whom he quotes in various places, along with other Latin poets, although he warns that "we must not relate his lying fables, so that we do not fall into a sentence of eternal death."

Dante made Virgil his guide in Hell and most of Purgatory in the Divine Comedy. Dante also mentions Virgil in De vulgari eloquentia, along with Ovid, Lucan and Statius, as one of the four regulati poetae (ii, vi, 7).

The best-known surviving manuscripts of Virgil's works include the Vergilius Augusteus, the Vergilius Vaticanus, and the Vergilius Romanus.

Legends

In the Middle Ages, Virgil's reputation was such that he inspired legends associating him with magic and prophecy. Beginning at least in the III century, Christian thinkers interpreted Eclogue IV, which describes the birth of a child inaugurating a golden age, as a prediction of the birth of Jesus. Consequently, Virgil came to be seen on a similar level to the Hebrew prophets of the Bible as one who had heralded Christianity.

Possibly as early as the II century d. C., Virgil's works also began to be seen as possessing magical properties and were used for divination. In what is known as Sortes Vergilianae (Virgilian Lucks), passages were randomly selected and interpreted to answer the questions. In the 12th century, beginning in Naples but spreading throughout Europe, a tradition developed in which Virgil was considered a great magician. Legends about Virgil and his magical powers remained popular for over two hundred years, possibly becoming as prominent as his own writings. Virgil's legacy in medieval Wales was such that the Welsh version of his name, Fferyllt or Pheryllt, became a generic term for the worker of magic, and survives in the modern Welsh word for pharmacist, fferyllydd. .

The legend of "Virgil in the basket" It arose in the Middle Ages, and is often seen in art and mentioned in literature as part of the Power of Women literary topos, demonstrating the disruptive force of female attractiveness in men. In this story, Virgil fell in love with a beautiful woman, sometimes described as the emperor's daughter or mistress and named Lucrecia. She pretended to play along and arranged a date at her house, where he was to sneak in at night by climbing into a large basket that she would lower from a window. When she did, the young woman just hoisted him halfway up the wall and then left him trapped there until the next day, exposed to public ridicule. The story parallels that of Phyllis riding Aristotle. Among other artists depicting the scene, Lucas van Leyden made a woodcut or engraving and later an etching.

Tomb of Virgil

Virgilio's tomb in Naples.

The structure known as “Virgil's tomb” is located at the entrance of an ancient Roman tunnel called the Cripta Neapolitana (also known as Grotta Vecchia) in Piedigrotta, a district of Naples, specifically in the Vergiliano a Piedigrotta Park. While Virgil was already the object of literary admiration and veneration before his death, in the Middle Ages his name was associated with miraculous powers, and for a couple of centuries his tomb was the destination of pilgrimage and veneration.

Featured Manuscripts

Seven manuscripts of Virgil have been preserved in capital letters, two of them contain paintings that belong to the final period of antiquity.

• In tiny letters

π = Pragensis. Century X

a = Bernensis 172. Century X.

b = Bernensis 165. Century IX.

c = Bernensis 184. Century IX.

γ = Gudianus lat. 2°70 = Guelferbytanus, for coming from the Herzog August Bibliothek, in Wolfenbüttel. Century X.

m = Minaurogiensis. X or 12th century century span>.

r = Rehdigeranus 136. 12th century.

Editions

• P. Vergili Maronis operates, recognovit brevique adnotatione critic instruxit Fredericus Arturus Hirtzel. Oxonii: Typographeo Clarendoniano. 1900. (Reprinted in 1966)
• P. Vergili Maronis operates omnia ex recensione Henrici Nettleship a Joanne P. Postgate reread. Londini: apud MacMillan et partners. 2 vol. 1912.
• Oeuvres de Virgile. Text latin. Publiées par F. Plessis et P. Lejay. Paris: Hachette. 1919.
• P. Vergili Maronis operates, post Ribbeckium tertium recognovit Gualtherus Ianell. Editio maior. Lipsiae: in aedibus B. G. Teubneri. 1920. [1930]
• P. Vergili Maronis operates. Remigius Sabbadini recensuit. Romae: Typis regiae officinae polygraphicae. 2 vol. 1930.
• The works of Vergil, with a commentary by J. Conington and H. Nettleship, revised by F. Haverfield. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung. 2 vol. 1963.
• P. Vergili Maronis operates. apparatu critico in artius contracto iterum recensuit Otto Ribbeck. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung. 4 vol. 1966.
• P. Vergili Maronis operates. recognovit brevique adnotatione critic instruxit R. A. B. Mynors. Oxonii: e Typographeo Clarendoniano. 1969. [1990]
• P. Vergili Maronis operates, post Remigium Sabbadini et Aloisium Castiglioni; recensuit Marius Geymonat. Aug. Taurinorum: G. B. Paravia, Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum Paravianum. 1973. [Nuova edizione con aggiunte e corr. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura. 2008]

Translations

• Modern to Spanish translations of the complete works:

1. P. Virgilii Maronis operates omnia = Complete Works of P. Virgilio Maróntranslated into Spanish by Eugenio de Ochoa. [Madrid: Imp. and Estereotipia de M. Rivadeneyra. 1869]
2. Works by Virgilio, translated in Spanish verses, with an introduction and notes by Miguel Antonio Caro. Bogota: Echeverría Hermanos. 3 v. 1873-1876.
3. La Eneida en la República Argentina. Translation of Mr. Dr. D. Vélez Sarfield and J. C. Varela. Posted under the auspices of the families of both translators, and with a review of them by Domingo F. Sarmiento and Adolfo Saldías. Buenos Aires. Felix Lajouane, Editor. [1888]
4. Works by Virgilio, critical study by Sainte-Beuve, Castilian version of Manuel Machado. Paris: Garnier Hermanos. [1914]
5. Complete works. Publio Virgilio Marón, prologue, interpretation and comet of Lorenzo Riber. Madrid: M. Aguilar. [Bolaños and Aguilar] 1934.
6. The Eneida. Bucolics. Geórgicas. Publio Virgilio Marón, translation of The Eneida of F. V. revised and corrected by Miguel Querol, translator Bucholics and Geórgicas. [Barcelona: Joaquín Gil. Agustín Núñez. 1944]
7. Complete works Virgilio. Introduction, prologue and notes of Marcial Olivar. Barcelona: Montaner and Simon. [Clarasó. 1951] [Reimp. Montaner and Simon. 1967]
8. Complete works, translation, preliminary studies and notes by Emilio Gómez de Miguel. Madrid: [Sáez Hnos., s.a.] [5.a ed. Sáez. 1961]
9. Virgil in Spanish verse. Bucolics. Geórgicas. Eneida. Aurelio Espinosa Pólit. Mexico: Jus, Universal Classics No. 4. 1.a edition. 1961.
10. The Eneidafollowed by Bucholics and Geórgicas by Publio Virgilio Marón; Latin translation, prologue and notes by Miquel Querol. [Barcelona: Iberia, Diamante. 1963] [New ed. Barcelona: Iberia, D.L. 1990. ]
11. The Eneida. Bucolics. Geórgicas. Virgil; translation by Javier Cabrero. Arganda del Rey: EDIMAT. [2002]
12. Complete works. Publio Virgilio Marón; translation Bucholics, Geórgicas and Eneida, Aurelio Espinosa Pólit; translation appendix virgiliano, Arturo Soler Ruiz; bilingual edition, introduction, appendixes and translation of the Life of VirgilPollux Hernúñez. Madrid: Chair, Bibliotheca avrea. 1.a ed. 2003.