Eclogues
Rome · -37
V
Virgil
Virgil
c. 70 BCE–c. 19 BCE · Mantua
Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70 – 19 BCE) was a Roman poet of the Augustan age, regarded as one of the foremost authors in the Latin literary tradition. Born near Mantua in northern Italy, he produced three major works: the Eclogues (or Bucolics), a set of pastoral poems modeled on the Greek poet Theocritus; the Georgics, a didactic poem on agriculture and rural life; and the Aeneid, an epic narrating the legendary founding of Rome by the Trojan Aeneas. He was associated with the literary circle of Maecenas and enjoyed the patronage of the emperor Augustus, and his poetry shaped Roman national identity and exerted enduring influence on later European literature. He died at Brundisium in 19 BCE, leaving the Aeneid unfinished.
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Stop 1 of 470 BCEBorn
MantuaמנטובהItaly
What they did here
Born 15 October 70 BCE at the village of Andes near Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul (ancient tradition; Donatus' Life). His family farm in the Mantua district was later affected by the post-Philippi land confiscations of 41–40 BCE.
About Mantua
Mantua is a city in Lombardy, northern Italy, ringed by lakes formed from the Mincio River. The Roman poet Virgil was born in a village nearby. From 1328 to 1708 the Gonzaga family ruled it, and their court became a leading centre of Renaissance art, humanist schooling and music. Mantua also had one of Italy's notable Jewish communities: a Hebrew press was active there in the fifteenth century, and the city produced rabbis, physicians, kabbalists and scholars before a ghetto was imposed in 1612. In the nineteenth century Giuseppe Sarto, later Pope Pius X, was its bishop from 1884.
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Virgil’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Virgil’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.