Best Poets of Classics

Legend has it that Virgil was born in the village of Andes, near Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul. Scholars suggest Etruscan, Umbrian or even Celtic descent by examining the linguistic or ethnic markers of the region. Analysis of his name has led to beliefs that he descended from earlier Roman colonists. Modern speculation ultimately is not supported by narrative evidence either from his own writings or his later biographers. Etymological fancy has noted that his cognomen MARO shares its letters anagrammatically with the twin themes of his epic: AMOR (love) and ROMA (Rome).

Legend also has it that Virgil received his first education when he was 5 years old and that he later went to Rome to study rhetoric, medicine, and astronomy, which he soon abandoned for philosophy; also that in this period, while in the school of Siro the Epicurean, he began to write poetry. A group of small works attributed to the youthful Virgil survive, but are largely considered spurious. One, the Catalepton, consists of fourteen short poems, some of which may be Virgil's, and another, a short narrative poem titled the Culex ("The Gnat"), was attributed to Virgil as early as the 1st century CE. These dubious poems are sometimes referred to as the Appendix Vergiliana.

During the civil strife that killed the Roman Republic, when Julius Caesar had been assassinated in 44 BCE, the army led by his assassins Brutus and Cassius met defeat by Caesar's faction, including his chief lieutenant Mark Antony and his..