This Life, which survives in Donatus' commentary, is attributed
to Suetonius
PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO, a native of Mantua, had parents of humble
origin, especially his father, who according to some was a potter,
although the general opinion is that he was at first the hired
man of a certain Magus, an attendant on the magistrates, later
became his son-in-law because of his diligence, and greatly increased
his little property by buying up woodlands and raising bees. He
was born in the first consulship of Gnaeus Pompeius the Great
and Marcus Licinius Crassus, on the Ides of October [*Oct 15,
&) BCE], in a district called Andes, not far distant from
Mantua. While he was in his mother's womb, she dreamt that she
gave birth to a laurel-branch, which on touching the earth took
root and grew at once to the size of a full-grown tree, covered
with fruits and flowers of various kinds; and on the following
day, when she was on the way to a neighbouring part of the country
with her husband, she turned aside and gave birth to her child
in a ditch beside the road. They say that the infant did not cry
at its birth, and had such a gentle expression as even then to
give assurance of an unusually happy destiny. There was added
another omen; for a poplar branch, which, as was usual in that
region on such occasions, was at once planted where the birth
occurred, grew so fast in a short time that it equalled in size
poplars planted long fore. It was called from him "Vergil's
tree" and was besides worshipped with great veneration by
pregnant and newly delivered women, who made and paid vows beneath
it.
Vergil spent his early life at Cremona until he assumed the gown
of manhood, upon his fifteenth birthday) in the consulship of
the same two men who had been consuls the year he was born [55
BCE]; and it chanced that the poet Lucretius died that very same
day. Vergil, however, moved from Cremona to Mediolanum [*Milan],
and shortly afterwards from there to Rome. He was tall and of
full habit, with a dark complexion and a rustic appearance. His
health was variable; for he very often suffered from stomach and
throat troubles, as well as with headache; and he also had frequent
haemorrhages. He ate and drank but little. He was especially given
to passions for boys, and his special favourites were Cebes and
Alexander, whom he calls Alexis in the second poem of his "
Bucolics." This boy was given him by Asinius Pollio, and
both his favourites had some education, while Cebes was even a
poet. It is common report that he also had an intrigue with Plotia
Hieria. But Asconius Pedianus declares that she herself used to
say afterwards, when she was getting old, that Vergil was invited
by Varius to associate with her, but obstinately refused. Certain
it is that for the rest of his life he was so modest in speech
and thought, that at Naples he was commonly called "Parthenias,"
[*"The Maiden"] and that whenever he appeared in public
in Rome, where he very rarely went, he would take refuge in the
nearest house, to avoid those who followed and pointed him out.
Moreover, when Augustus offered him the property of a man who
had been exiled, he could not make up his mind to accept it. He
possessed nearly ten million sesterces from the generous gifts
of friends, and he had a house at Rome on the Esquiline, near
the gardens of Maecenas, although he usually lived in retirement
in Campania and in Sicily.
He was already grown up when he lost his parents, of whom his
father previously went blind, and two own brothers: Silo, who
died in childhood, and Flaccus, who lived to grow up, and whose
death he laments under the name of Daphnis. {* Eclog. 5.20]
Among other studies he gave attention also to medicine and in
particular to mathematics. He pleaded one single case in court
too, but no more; for, as Melissus has told us, he spoke very
slowly and almost like an uneducated man.
He made his first attempt at poetry when he was still a boy, composing
the following couplet on a schoolmaster called Ballista, who was
stoned to death because of his evil reputation for brigandage:
" Under this mountain of stones Ballista is covered and buried
Wayfarer, now night and day follow your course without fear."
Then he wrote the " Catalepton," " Priapea,"
" Epigrams " and the " Dirae," as well as
the "Ciris " and the " Culex " when he was
sixteen years old. The story of the " Culex " is this.
When a shepherd exhausted by the heat, had fallen asleep under
a tree, and a snake was creeping upon him, a bat flew from a marsh
and stung the shepherd between his two temples; he at once crushed
the gnat and killed the snake; then he made a tomb for the insect,
illscribed with this couplet:
'Thee, tiny gnat, well deserving, the flock's grateful keeper
now offers
For the gift of his life due funeral rites in requital."
He also wrote the " Aetna," though its authorship is
disputed. Presently he began to write of Roman story, but thinking
himself unequal to the subject, turned to the "Bucolics,"
especially in order to sing the praises of Asinius Pollio, Alfenus
Varus, and Cornelius Gallus,because at the time of the assignment
of the lands beyond the Po, which were divided among the veterans
by order of the triumvirs after the victory at Philippi, these
men had saved him from ruin. Then he wrote the " Georgics
" in honour of Maecenas, because he had rendered him aid,
when the poet was still but little known, against the violence
of one of the veterans, from whom Vergil narrowly escaped death
in a quarrel about his farm. Last of all he began the "Aeneid,"
a varied and complicated theme, and as it were a mirror of both
the poems of Homer; moreover it treated Greek and Latin personages
and affairs in common, and contained at the same time an account
of the origin of the city of Rome and of Augustus, which was the
poet's special aim. When he was writing the " Georgics,"
it is said to have been his custom to dictate each day a large
number of verses which he had composed in the morning" and
then to spend the rest of the day in reducing them to a very small
number, wittily remarking that he fashioned his poem after the
manner of a she-bear, and gradually licked it into shape. In the
case of the "Aeneid," after writing a first draft in
prose and dividing it into twelve books he proceeded to turn into
verse one part after another, taking them up just as he fancied,
in no particular order. And that he might not check the flow of
his thought, he left some things unfinished, and, so to speak,
bolstered others up with very slight words, which, as he jocosely
used to say, were put in like props, to support the structure
until the solid columns should arrive.
The "Bucolics" he finished in three years, the "Georgics
" in seven, the " Aeneid " in twelve. The success
of the " Bucolics" on their first appearance was such,
that they were even frequently rendered by singers on the stage.
When Augustus was returning after his victory at Aetium and lingered
at Atella to treat his throat, Vergil read the " Georgics
" to him for four days in succession, Alaecenas taking his
turn at the reading whenever the poet was interrupted by the failure
of his voice. His own delivery, however, was sweet and wonderfully
effective. In fact, Seneca has said that the poet Julius Montanus
used to declare that he would have purloined'some of Vergil's
work, if he could also have stolen his voice, expression, and
dramatic power; for the same verses sounded well when Vergil read
them, which on another's lips were flat and toneless Hardly was
the "Aeneid" begun, when its repute became so great
that Sextus Propertius did not hesitate to declare:
"Yield, ye Roman writers; yield, ye Greeks; :
A greater than the Iliad is born."
Augustus indeed (for it chanced that he was away his Cantabrian
campaign) demanded in entreating, and even jocosely threatening
letters that Vergil send him " something from the ' Aeneid
' "; to use his own words, " either the first draft
of the poem or any section of it that he pleased." But it
was not until long afterwards, when the material was at last in
shape, that Vergil read to him three books in all, the second,
fourth, and sixth. The last of these produced a remarkable effect
on Octavia, who was present at the reading; for it is said that
when he reached the verses about her son, " Thou shalt be
Marcellus," a she fainted and was with difficulty revived.
He gave readings also to various others, but never before a large
company, selecting for the most part passages about which he was
in doubt, in order to get the benefit of criticism. They say that
Bros, his amanuensis and freedman, used to report, when he was
an old man, that Vergil once completed two half-verses off-hand
in the course of a reading. For having before him merely the words
" Misenum Aeoliden," [Aen 6.884] he added "quo
non praestantior alter;" [Aen 6.164] and again to "aere
ciere viros " he joined " Martemque accendere cantu,"
[Aen 6.165] thrown off with like inspiration, and he immediately
ordered Eros to add both half-lines to his manuscript.
In the fifty-second year of his age, wishing to give the final
touch to the " Aeneid," he determined to go away to
Greece and Asia, and after devoting three entire years to the
sole work of improving his poem, to give up the rest of his life
wholly to philosophy. But having begun his journey, and at Athens
meeting Augustus, who was on his way back to Rome from the Orients
he resolved not to part from the emperor and even to return with
him; but in the course of a visit to the neighbouring town of
Megara in a very hot sun, he was taken with a fever, and added
to his disorder by continuing his journey; hence on his arrival
at Brundisium he was considerably worse, and died there on the
eleventh day before the Kalends of October, in the consulship
of Gnaeus Sentius and Quintus Lucretius [* Sept 21, 19 BCE]. His
ashes were taken to Naples and laid to rest on the via Puteolana
less than two miles from the city, in a tomb for which he himself
composed this couplet:
Mantua gave me the light, Calabria slew me; now holds me
Parthenope. I have sung shepherds, the country, and wars.
He named as his heirs Valerius Proculus, his half-bother, to one-half
of his estate, Augustus to one-fourth, Maecenas to one-twelfth;
the rest he left to Lucius Varius and Plotius Tucca, who revised
the "Aeneid" after his death by order of Augustus. With
regard to this matter we have the following verses of Sulpicius
of Carthage:
"Vergil had bidden these songs by swift flame be turned into
ashes,
Songs which sang of thy fates, Phrygia's leader renowned.
Varius and Tucca forbade, and thou, too, greatest of Caesars,
Adding your veto to theirs, Latium's story preserved.
All but twice in the flames unhappy Pergamum perished
Troy on a second pyre narrowly failed of her doom.
He had arranged with Varius, before leaving Italy, that if anything
befell him a his friend should burn the "Aeneid "; but
Varius had emphatically declared that he would do no such thing.
Therefore in his mortal illness Vergil constantly called for his
book-boxes, intending to burn the poem himself; but when no one
brought them to him, he made no specific request about the matter,
but left his writings jointly to the above mentioned Varius and
to Tucca, with the stipulation that they should publish nothing
which he himself would not have given to the world. However, Varius
published the "Aeneid" at Augustus' request, making
only a few slight corrections, and even leaving the incomplete
lines just as they were. These last many afterwards tried to finish,
but failed owing to the difficulty that nearly all the half-lines
in Vergil are complete in sense and meaning, the sole exception
being " Quem tibi iam Troia." [Aen 3.340] The grammarian
Nisus used to say that he had heard from older men that Varius
changed the order of two of the books and made what was then the
second book the third; also that he emended the beginning of the
first book by striking out the lines
"I who on slender reed once rustic numbers did render,
Parting then from the groves, commanded the neighbouring fallows
Tribute to pay to their lords, however much they exacted,
Task hailed with joy by the hind, but now dread deeds of the war-god,
Arms and the hero I sing."
Vergil never lacked detractors, which is not strange; for neither
did Homer. When the "Bucolics" appeared, a certain Numitorius
wrote " Anti-bucolics," consisting of but two poems,
which were a very insipid parody. The first began as follows:
"Tityrus, if a warm toga you have, why then a beech mantle
? "
The second:-
Tell me, Damoetas, I pray, is ' cuium pecus ' really good Latin
?
Nay, but our Aegon's way, and thus men talk in the country.
Another man, when Vergil recited from his Georgics," "nudus
ara, sere nudus," ["plough naked, naked sow] added "habebis
frigore febrem." ["A chill will give you the fever].
There is also a book in criticism of the "Aeneid " by
Carvilius Pictor, called "Aeneomastix." [The Scourge
of Aeneas] Marcus Vipsanius called Vergil a supposititious child
of Maecenas, that inventor of a new kind of affected language,
neither bombastic nor of studied simplicity, but in ordinary words
and hence less obvious. Herennius made selections confined to
his defects, and Perellius Fausta to his pilferings. More than
that, the eight volumes of Quintus Octavius Avitus, entitled "
Resemblances," contain the verses which he borrowed, with
their sources. Asconius Pedianus, in a book which he wrote "Against
the Detractors of Vergil," sets forth
a very few of the charges against him, and those for the most
part dealing with history and with the accusatnon that he borrowed
a great deal from Homer; but he says that Vergil used to meet
this latter accusation with these word: " Why don't my critics
also attempt the same thefts? If they do, they will realize that
it is easier to filch his club from Hercules than a line from
Homer." Yet Asconius says that Vergil had intended to go
into retirement in order to prune down everything to the satisfaction
of carping critics.
END
Source.
From: Suetonius: The Life of Vergil [Loeb Translation, 1913]
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