Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro (70–19 BCE), known as Virgil, was a Roman poet whose work helped define Latin literature during the transition from the late Republic to the age of Augustus. Born near Mantua in northern Italy, he gained early fame with the *Eclogues*, pastoral poems that adapt Greek models to Roman themes. He followed with the *Georgics*, a didactic poem on agriculture that also reflects on labor, politics, and the land. Virgil’s masterpiece, the epic *Aeneid*, traces Aeneas’s journey from Troy to Italy and offers a foundational myth for Rome. Virgil died in Brundisium and was buried near Naples.