The Oxford Companion to English Literature | Virgil
Virgil
(
Publius
Vergilius
Maro
)
(
70
–
19
BC
), the greatest of Roman poets, valued particularly for his craftsmanship, love of nature, and sense of pathos. Maturing at a time when the Romans were struggling to produce a literature that would match the Greek, he imitated successively the pastorals of
Theocritus
, the didactic poems of
Hesiod
and
Aratus
, and the epics of
Homer
, making original contributions to all three genres. In his Eclogues he added a new level of meaning to the pastoral's idealization of country life by alluding to topics of contemporary interest; in the Georgics he transformed the bald didacticism of his models into a panegyric of Italy and the traditional ways of rural life; and in the Aeneid he committed the epic to the presentation of a major patriotic theme. He began like most poets of his generation by working within the conventions of
Hellenistic poetry
, but...
[The entire page is 452 words long]
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