Authors

Roman · 70–19

Virgil

Virgil was the supreme Latin poet and the author of the Aeneid — the founding epic of Roman civilisation and one of the most influential poems in Western literature. His Eclogues introduced pastoral poetry to Latin; his Georgics are the supreme agricultural poem of antiquity. The Aeneid — narrating Aeneas's journey from Troy to Italy and the founding of the line that would become Rome — was left unfinished at his death; he reportedly wanted it burned but Augustus overruled this wish. Dante chose Virgil as his guide through Hell and Purgatory in the Commedia.