Vergil
Vergil names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Vergil the first of Latin poets
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the first of Latin poets; born in Andes near Mantua, Oct. 15 , 70 b. c. The plain of Lombardy then lay outside the limits of Italy, and formed a province known as Cisalpine Gaul. The population was mainly Celtic, but was already permeated by the Latin language and civilization; and Julius Cæsar, when he admitted it to full Roman citizenship in Vergil's 21st year, was adjusting rather than extending the natural limits of Italy. The name Vergilius is apparently Celtic, and in Vergil's Celtic blood modern cities have found the origin of his romantic and melancholy temper, and of the deep sense of natural beauty and the spirtual meaning of nature, in which he stands alone among Greek and Latin poets. Vergil's father owned small property in his native place, where, besides the ordinary work of a farm, he occupied himself in forestry and bee-keeping. He was well enough off to give his son the education which was generally confined to a wealthier class. The boy was sent to school at Cremona and Milan, and at the age of 16 went to Rome and studied rhetoric and philosophy under the best teachers of the time. His studies were probably interrupted by the civil war; at all events, we know nothing of the next years of his life till 41 b. c. The victorious triumvirs were then providing for the immense armies which had been disbanded after the battle of Philippi by settling them on confiscated lands throughout Italy. Vergil's farm was part of the confiscated territory of Cremona; but his reputation as a rising poet had already brought him under the notice of the governor of the district, Asinius Pollio, himself a distinguished man of letters. By Pollio's advice he went to Rome, with special recommendation to Octavianus; and though his own property was ultimately not restored to him, he obtained ample compensation from the government, and became for a few years one of the circle of endowed court poets who gathered round the prime minister Mæcenas. In 37 B. c. the "Eclogues," a collection of 10 pastorals modeled on those of Theocritus, were published, and received with unexampled enthusiasm. Soon afterward Vergil withdrew from Rome to Campania. The munificence of Mæcenas had placed him in easy and even affluent circumstances. He had a villa at Naples, and a country house near Nola, within easy reach of it; and he seems to have lived almost entirely in this neighborhood during the seven years in which he was engaged in the composition of the "Georgics," or "Art of Husbandry." This poem, which is in four books, and deals with tillage and pasturage, the cultivation of trees, especially the vine and olive, and the breeding of horses, cattle and bees, appeared in 30 B. C., and confirmed Vergil's position as the foremost poet of the age. The remaining 11 years of his life were devoted to a larger and in some respects more uncongenial task, undertaken at the urgent and repeated request of the emperor, the composition of a great national epic. During these years he lived a secluded life, chiefly in Campania and Sicily; he seems also to have traveled in Greece, and to have paid occasional visits to Ron Rome, where he had a house in the fashionable quarter on the Esquiline. The subject he chose was the story of Æneas, the Trojan, the legendary founder of the Roman nation and of the Julian family, from the fall of Troy to his arrival in Italy, his wars and alliances with the native Italian races, and his final establishment in his new kingdom. By 19 B. C. the "Æneid" was practically completed, but Vergil had set apart three years more for its final revision. In the summer of that year he left Italy with the intention of traveling in Greece and Asia; but at Athens he fell ill, and returned only to die at Brundusium a few days after landing, on Sept. 21. He had almost completed his 51st year. In his last illness he expressed a wish to burn the "Æneid," and he left directions to that effect in his will. By the command of Augustus these directions were disobeyed, and it was published as we now possess it. At his own wish he was buried at Naples, on the road to Pozzuoli, his tomb for many hundred years after being worshiped as a sacred place. Besides the three works already mentioned, a few juvenile pieces of more or less probable authenticity are extant under his name. These are the "Culex" and the "Moretum," both in hexameter verse, the former an "epyllion," or short poem of narrative and description in the epic manner, the latter an idyll freely translated from the Greek of Parthenius; the "Copa," a short elegiac piece; and 14 little poems in various meters, some serious, others trivial, which come under his name at the head of a collection of minor Latin poetry incorporated in the Latin anthology. These pieces are not printed in most editions of Vergil, nor are any of them certainly authentic, though some of them passed as his among scholars within a century after his death. The "Ciris," a piece of the same kind as the "Culex," is now agreed to be by a contemporary imitator.
Vergil POLYDORE, an earlier book than the "Adagia" of his friend Erasmus
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
POLYDORE, an earlier book than the "Adagia" of his friend Erasmus. His second, "De Inventoribus Rerum" ( 1499), which was also the earliest book of its kind, became extremely popular , and was translated into English, Spanish and Italian . His "Historiæ Anglicæ Libri XXVI." appeared at Basel at 1534 ; the 27th book, bringing the story down to 1538 , was added in the third edition (1555). About 1550 he obtained a license from Edward VI. to return to Italy for his health's sake, without losing his livings, and next he traveled to Urbino, where he lived in quiet till his death in 1555. His history is a work of great research, vigororous and independent, written in clear and elegant Latin. It is the fullest original narrative for the reign of Henry VII., and here Hall has simply translated his Latin into English. As rediscounted by his strong prejudice. gards Wolsey, the value of his evidence He spared no pains to insure accuracy , and a strongly rational bias of mind hindered him from accepting the Scottish fables supplied him by Gavin Douglas, or the exploits of Brut and Arthur warranted by Geoffrey of Monmouth.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The outline of the life and works that Collier's gave in 1921 is still the one taught, and the Aeneid, Georgics and Eclogues are read in much the same shape. Two things have gone: the confident racial explanation that in "Vergil's Celtic blood" lay the origin of his "romantic and melancholy temper" is no longer entertained by anyone, and scholars now treat the whole ancient biography — the confiscated farm, the deathbed wish to burn the epic, the patronage of Maecenas — as a tradition largely spun out of the poems themselves by later commentators rather than as documented fact. The minor poems Collier's hedged about, the Culex, Moretum and Copa, are now generally placed with the Ciris among the pseudo-Virgilian Appendix Vergiliana. The largest shift is in reading the Aeneid: since the 1960s many critics have argued that the poem the emperor commissioned is deeply ambivalent about the cost of Rome's mission, not simply the national epic of Collier's description, and a steady run of new English versions (Fitzgerald 1983, Fagles 2006, Ruden 2008) has kept it in general circulation.
Written for this edition, 2026.