A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars generally regard these works as spurious, with the possible exception of a few short pieces.

[18] E. K. Rand defended the traditional site at Pietole, noting that Egnazio's 1507 edition of Probus' commentary, supposedly based on a "very ancient codex" from Bobbio Abbey which can no longer be found, says that Andes was three miles from Mantua, and arguing that this is the correct reading.

[25] There is some speculation that the spelling Virgilius might have arisen due to a pun, since virg- carries an echo of the Latin word for 'wand' (uirga), Virgil being particularly associated with magic in the Middle Ages.

There is also a possibility that virg- is meant to evoke the Latin virgo ('virgin'); this would be a reference to the fourth Eclogue, which has a history of Christian, and specifically Messianic, interpretations.

[27] Despite the biographers statements that Virgil's family was of modest means, these accounts of his education, as well as of his ceremonial assumption of the toga virilis, suggest that his father was in fact a wealthy equestrian landowner.

[6]: 1602  After defeating the army led by the assassins of Julius Caesar in the Battle of Philippi (42 BC), Octavian tried to pay off his veterans with land expropriated from towns in northern Italy, which—according to tradition—included an estate near Mantua belonging to Virgil.

In Eclogues 1 and 9, Virgil indeed dramatizes the contrasting feelings caused by the brutality of the land expropriations through pastoral idiom but offers no indisputable evidence of the supposed biographic incident.

Virgil came to know many of the other leading literary figures of the time, including Horace, in whose poetry he is often mentioned,[29] and Varius Rufus, who later helped finish the Aeneid.

[31]: 112 After his death at Brundisium according to Donatus,[32] or at Taranto according to some late manuscripts of Servius,[33] Virgil's remains were transported to Naples, where his tomb was engraved with an epitaph that he himself composed: Mantua me genuit; Calabri rapuere; tenet nunc Parthenope.

[34] The structure known as Virgil's tomb is found at the entrance of an ancient Roman tunnel (grotta vecchia) in Piedigrotta, a district 1.9 mi (3 km) from the centre of Naples, near the Mergellina harbour, on the road heading north along the coast to Pozzuoli.

[34] According to the commentators, Virgil received his first education when he was five years old and later went to Cremona, Milan, and finally Rome to study rhetoric, medicine, and astronomy, which he would abandon for philosophy.

A group of small works attributed to the youthful Virgil by the commentators survive collected under the title Appendix Vergiliana, but are largely considered spurious by scholars.

The Eclogues (from the Greek for "selections") are a group of ten poems roughly modeled on the bucolic (that is, "pastoral" or "rural") poetry of the Hellenistic poet Theocritus, which were written in dactylic hexameter.

5), modern scholars largely reject such efforts to garner biographical details from works of fiction, preferring to interpret an author's characters and themes as illustrations of contemporary life and thought.

Virgil in his Eclogues is credited with establishing Arcadia as a poetic ideal that still resonates in Western literature and visual arts[36] and with setting the stage for the development of Latin pastoral by Calpurnius Siculus, Nemesianus and later writers.

Book 4 concludes with a long mythological narrative, in the form of an epyllion which describes vividly the discovery of beekeeping by Aristaeus and the story of Orpheus' journey to the underworld.

Ancient scholars, such as Servius, conjectured that the Aristaeus episode replaced, at the emperor's request, a long section in praise of Virgil's friend, the poet Gallus, who was disgraced by Augustus, and who committed suicide in 26 BC.

The tone of the Georgics wavers between optimism and pessimism, sparking critical debate on the poet's intentions,[6]: 1605  but the work lays the foundations for later didactic poetry.

The Aeneid is widely considered Virgil's finest work, and is regarded as one of the most important poems in the history of Western literature (T. S. Eliot referred to it as 'the classic of all Europe').

The epic poem consists of 12 books in dactylic hexameter verse which describe the journey of Aeneas, a warrior fleeing the sack of Troy, to Italy, his battle with the Italian prince Turnus, and the foundation of a city from which Rome would emerge.

Ancient commentators noted that Virgil seems to divide the Aeneid into two sections based on the poetry of Homer; the first six books were viewed as employing the Odyssey as a model while the last six were connected to the Iliad.

Book 7 (beginning the Iliadic half) opens with an address to the muse and recounts Aeneas's arrival in Italy and betrothal to Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus.

The Aeneid ends in Book 12 with the taking of Latinus's city, the death of Amata, and Aeneas's defeat and killing of Turnus, whose pleas for mercy are spurned.

The Augustan poet Ovid parodies the opening lines of the Aeneid in Amores 1.1.1–2, and his summary of the Aeneas story in Book 14 of the Metamorphoses, the so-called "mini-Aeneid", has been viewed as a particularly important example of post-Virgilian response to the epic genre.

The Flavian-era poet Statius in his 12-book epic Thebaid engages closely with the poetry of Virgil; in his epilogue he advises his poem not to "rival the divine Aeneid, but follow afar and ever venerate its footsteps.

In a similar vein Macrobius in the Saturnalia credits the work of Virgil as the embodiment of human knowledge and experience, mirroring the Greek conception of Homer.

Servius's commentary provides us with a great deal of information about Virgil's life, sources, and references; however, many modern scholars find the variable quality of his work and the often simplistic interpretations frustrating.

Even as the Western Roman Empire collapsed, literate men acknowledged that Virgil was a master poet – Saint Augustine, for example, confessing how he had wept at reading the death of Dido.

Gregory of Tours read Virgil, whom he quotes in several places, along with some other Latin poets, though he cautions that "we ought not to relate their lying fables, lest we fall under sentence of eternal death".

[47] The legend of "Virgil in his basket" arose in the Middle Ages, and is often seen in art and mentioned in literature as part of the Power of Women literary topos, demonstrating the disruptive force of female attractiveness on men.