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Vergilius
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the ''Eclogues'' (or ''Bucolics''), the ''Georgics'', and the epic ''Aeneid''. A number of minor poems, collected in the ''Appendix Vergiliana'', were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars consider his authorship of these poems as dubious. Virgil's work has had wide and deep influence on Western literature, most notably Dante's ''Divine Comedy'', in which Virgil appears as the author's guide through Hell and Purgatory. Virgil has been traditionally ranked as one of Rome's greatest poets. His ''Aeneid'' is also considered a national epic of ancient Rome, a title held since composition. Life and works Birth and biographical tradition Virgil's biographical tradition is thought to depend on a lost biography by the Roman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aeneid
The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan_War#Sack_of_Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Ancient Rome, Romans. It comprises 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas' wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed. The hero Aeneas was already known to Greco-Roman legend and myth, having been a character in the ''Iliad''. Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas' wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Ancient Rome, Rome and his description as a personage of no fixed characteristics other than a scrupulous ''pietas'', and fashioned th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georgics
The ''Georgics'' ( ; ) is a poem by Latin poet Virgil, likely published in 29 BCE. As the name suggests (from the Greek word , ''geōrgika'', i.e. "agricultural (things)") the subject of the poem is agriculture; but far from being an example of peaceful rural poetry, it is a work characterized by tensions in both theme and purpose. The ''Georgics'' is considered Virgil's second major work, following his ''Eclogues'' and preceding the ''Aeneid''. The poem draws on a variety of prior sources and has influenced many later authors from antiquity to the present. Description and summary The work consists of 2,188 hexametric verses divided into four books. The yearly timings by the rising and setting of particular stars were valid for the precession epoch of Virgil's time, and so are not always valid now. Book One Virgil begins his poem with a summary of the four books, followed by a prayer to various agricultural deities as well as Augustus himself. It takes as its model the work ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eclogues
The ''Eclogues'' (; ), also called the ''Bucolics'', is the first of the three major works of the Latin poet Virgil. Background Taking as his generic model the Greek bucolic poetry of Theocritus, Virgil created a Roman version partly by offering a dramatic and mythic interpretation of revolutionary change at Rome in the turbulent period between roughly 44 and 38 BC. Virgil introduced political clamor largely absent from Theocritus' poems, called idylls ("little scenes" or "vignettes"), even though erotic turbulence disturbs the "idyllic" landscapes of Theocritus. Virgil's book contains ten pieces, each called not an idyll but an eclogue ("draft" or "selection" or "reckoning"), populated by and large with herdsmen imagined conversing and performing amoebaean singing in largely rural settings, whether suffering or embracing revolutionary change or happy or unhappy love. Performed with great success on the Roman stage, they feature a mix of visionary politics and eroticism that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Appendix Vergiliana
The ''Appendix Vergiliana'' is a collection of poems traditionally ascribed as being the juvenilia (work written as a juvenile) of Virgil.Régine ChambertVergil's Epicureanism in his early poems in "Vergil, Philodemus, and the Augustans" 2003: "Vergil's authorship of at least some of the poems in the Appendix is nowadays no longer contested. This is especially true of the Culex ... and also of a collection of short epigrams called the Catalepton." Many of the poems in the Appendix were considered works by Virgil in antiquity. However, recent studies suggest that the Appendix contains a diverse collection of minor poems by various authors from the 1st century AD. Scholars are almost unanimous in considering the works of the ''Appendix'' spurious, primarily on grounds of style, metrics, and vocabulary. Composition The collection most likely formed in Late Antiquity. The individual components are older: ancient authors considered the ''Culex'' to be a youthful work of Virgil's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Augustan Literature (ancient Rome)
Augustan literature refers to the pieces of Latin literature that were written during the reign of Caesar Augustus (27 BC–AD 14), the first Roman emperor. In literary histories of the first part of the 20th century and earlier, Augustan literature was regarded along with that of the Late Republic as constituting the Golden Age of Latin literature, a period of stylistic classicism.Fergus Millar, "Ovid and the Domus Augusta: Rome Seen from Tomoi," ''Journal of Roman Studies'' 83 (1993), p. 6. Most of the literature periodized as "Augustan" was in fact written by men—Vergil, Horace, Propertius, Livy—whose careers were established during the triumviral years, before Octavian assumed the title ''Augustus''. Strictly speaking, Ovid is the poet whose work is most thoroughly embedded in the Augustan regime. Impact and style Augustan literature produced the most widely read, influential, and enduring of Rome's poets. The Republican poets Catullus and Lucretius are their immed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mantua
Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard language, Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and ''comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the Province of Mantua, province of the same name. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture. In 2017, it was named as the European Capital of Gastronomy, included in the Eastern Lombardy District (together with the cities of Bergamo, Brescia, and Cremona). In 2008, Mantua's ''centro storico'' (old town) and Sabbioneta were declared by UNESCO to be a World Heritage Site. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family has made it one of the main artistic, culture, cultural, and especially musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole. Having one of the most splendid courts of Europe of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries. Mantua is noted for its significant role in the history of opera; the city is also known for its architectural treasures and artifacts, elegant palaces, and the m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maurus Servius Honoratus
Servius was a late fourth-century and early fifth-century grammarian. He earned a contemporary reputation as the most learned man of his generation in Italy; he authored a set of commentaries on the works of Virgil. These works, ''In tria Virgilii Opera Expositio'', constituted the first incunable to be printed at Florence, by Bernardo Cennini, in 1471. In the ''Saturnalia'' of Macrobius, Servius appears as one of the interlocutors; allusions in that work and a letter from Symmachus to Servius indicate that he was not a convert to Christianity. Commentary on Virgil The commentary on Virgil ( la, In Vergilii Aeneidem commentarii) survives in two distinct manuscript traditions. The first is a comparatively short commentary, attributed to Servius in the superscription in the manuscripts and by other internal evidence. The second class derive from the 10th and 11th centuries, embed the same text in a much expanded commentary. The copious additions are in contrasting style t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pastoral Poetry
A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts such life in an idealized manner, typically for urban audiences. A ''pastoral'' is a work of this genre, also known as bucolic, from the Greek , from , meaning a cowherd. Literature Pastoral literature in general Pastoral is a mode of literature in which the author employs various techniques to place the complex life into a simple one. Paul Alpers distinguishes pastoral as a mode rather than a genre, and he bases this distinction on the recurring attitude of power; that is to say that pastoral literature holds a humble perspective toward nature. Thus, pastoral as a mode occurs in many types of literature (poetry, drama, etc.) as well as genres (most notably the pastoral elegy). Terry Gifford, a prominent literary theorist, define ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Purgatory
Purgatory (, borrowed into English via Anglo-Norman and Old French) is, according to the belief of some Christian denominations (mostly Catholic), an intermediate state after physical death for expiatory purification. The process of purgatory is the final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. Tradition, by reference to certain texts of scripture, sees the process as involving a cleansing fire. Some forms of Western Christianity, particularly within Protestantism, deny its existence. Other strands of Western Christianity see purgatory as a place, perhaps filled with fire. Some concepts of Gehenna in Judaism resemble those of purgatory. The word "purgatory" has come to refer to a wide range of historical and modern conceptions of postmortem suffering short of everlasting damnation. English-speakers also use the word in a non-specific sense to mean any place or condition of suffering or torment, especially one that is tempor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Epic
A national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic scope which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation—not necessarily a nation state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with aspirations to independence or autonomy. National epics frequently recount the origin of a nation, a part of its history, or a crucial event in the development of national identity such as other national symbols. History In medieval times Homer's ''Iliad'' was taken to be based on historical facts, and the Trojan War came to be considered as seminal in the genealogies of European monarchies. Virgil's ''Aeneid'' was taken to be the Roman equivalent of the ''Iliad'', starting from the Fall of Troy and leading up to the birth of the young Roman nation. According to the then prevailing conception of history, empires were born and died in organic succession and correspondences existed between the past and the present. Geoffrey of Monmouth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suetonius
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (), commonly referred to as Suetonius ( ; c. AD 69 – after AD 122), was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is a set of biographies of 12 successive Roman rulers, from Julius Caesar to Domitian, properly entitled ''De vita Caesarum''. Other works by Suetonius concerned the daily life of Rome, politics, oratory, and the lives of famous writers, including poets, historians, and grammarians. A few of these books have partially survived, but many have been lost. Life Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was probably born about AD 69, a date deduced from his remarks describing himself as a "young man" 20 years after Nero's death. His place of birth is disputed, but most scholars place it in Hippo Regius, a small north African town in Numidia, in modern-day Algeria. It is certain that Suetonius came from a family of moderate social position, that his father, Suetonius Laetus, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucius Varius Rufus
Lucius Varius Rufus (; 14 BC) was a Roman poet of the early Augustan age. He was a friend of Virgil, after whose death he and Plotius Tucca prepared the ''Aeneid'' for publication, and of Horace, for whom he and Virgil obtained an introduction to Maecenas. Horace spoke of him as a master of epic and the only poet capable of celebrating the achievements of Vipsanius Agrippa (''Odes'', i.6); Virgil (under the name of Lycidas, ''Ecl.'' ix.35) regretted that he had hitherto produced nothing comparable to the work of Varius or Helvius Cinna. Macrobius (''Saturnalia'', vi. I, 39; 2, 19) states that Varius composed an epic poem ''De Morte'', some lines of which are quoted as having been imitated or appropriated by Virgil; Horace (''Sat.'' i.10, 43) probably alluded to another epic, and, according to the scholiast on ''Epistles'', i.16, 2 729, these three lines were taken bodily from a panegyric of Varius on Augustus. Varius's most famous literary production was the tragedy ''Thyeste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
