Virgil

Hello! My name is Publius Vergilius Maro, but people throughout history know me as Virgil. I was born on October 15th, in the year 70 BCE, in a small village near Mantua in northern Italy. I grew up loving the countryside—the buzzing bees, the shady trees, and the hardworking farmers. My family knew that education was very important, so they sent me to schools in bigger cities to learn and study. My journey eventually took me to the great city of Rome.

I wasn't interested in being a lawyer or a politician like many other students. My heart was in poetry. My first big work was a collection of poems called the 'Eclogues,' which I finished around 39 BCE. They were all about the simple, beautiful lives of shepherds in the countryside that I remembered so fondly from my childhood. These poems became very popular and were noticed by a powerful and kind man named Maecenas. He was a close friend of Octavian, the man who would soon become the first Roman emperor, Augustus. Maecenas became my patron, which means he gave me money and support so I could spend all my time writing.

With my friend's support, I wrote another long poem called the 'Georgics,' which I completed around 29 BCE. It was a poem all about the art of farming. I wrote about growing olives, caring for cattle, and even keeping bees. It was my way of honoring the land and the people who worked it, which had always been so important to me. After I finished this work, Emperor Augustus himself asked me to do something even bigger. He wanted me to write a grand, epic poem that would tell the story of where the Roman people came from. He hoped for a story that would make all Romans feel proud of their history and their great city.

I accepted the emperor's challenge. For the next eleven years of my life, from about 30 BCE to 19 BCE, I worked on my most famous poem, the 'Aeneid.' It tells the story of a brave hero named Aeneas who escapes from the burning city of Troy. He and his fellow survivors go on a long, dangerous journey across the sea until they finally land in Italy. There, they lay the groundwork for what would one day become the mighty city of Rome. I wanted every single line of the poem to be perfect. In the year 19 BCE, I traveled to Greece to do more research for the poem, but I became very ill on the journey.

I realized I would not have time to finish the 'Aeneid' to my satisfaction. I felt it wasn't ready for the world to see, so I asked my friends to destroy it. But Emperor Augustus disagreed. He thought the story was too magnificent to be lost forever, and he ordered it to be published just as it was. I lived to be 50 years old. Even though I didn't think it was finished, the 'Aeneid' became the most important poem in ancient Rome. For more than two thousand years, my stories have been read by students, writers, and dreamers who are inspired by the tale of a hero who never gave up.