Virgil

Virgil Virgil is generally acknowledged as the greatest of all Latin poets. He was famous in his own lifetime and was the first poet in the history of Latin literature to be the subject of lectures given by a contemporary teacher. There seemed to be a great deal of interest in him and on his rare appearances in Rome he was pointed out in the streets as if he were a celebrity. However, in his private life he was know to be very shy, and preferred the quiet countryside to the chaos of Rome. He was born as Publius Virgilius Maro in Andes, a small village, near Mantua (Mantova), Italy on October 15, 70 BC. He had two brothers; Silo, who died in his childhood, and Flaccus, who lived to be a young man. Virgil's father, a potter and cattle farmer, worked hard to provide his son with an Aristocratic education. After he completed his studies in Cremona and Milan, Virgil went to Rome to study law and rhetoric at Epidius' academy. It was in Rome that he met Gaius Maecenas, a Roman statesman and patron of the arts, who saw Virgil's great potential and virgil, rome, work, virgil's, aeneas, aeneid, poem, life, augustus, poet, italy, epic, became, bc, roman, after, new, great, friend, first, birth, years, written, works, two, study, story, pp, poets, out, major, maecenas, latin, last, himself