Virgil: His Life and Times

Front Cover
Duckworth, 1998 - 248 pages
Virgil, doubtless the most famous of Roman poets, has fired the imagination of generations. Invented, reinvented and triumphantly adopted in a vast variety of scenes, he has become, as T. S. Eliot pointed out, the classic poet for two thousand years. A poet of talent that grows, a friend of Horace and Ovid, Virgil's poetry alone bore the weight and force of the Pax Romana. His poetry may crack under the strain, as marx's contemporary Mommsen believed, but it does not crumble. This is the first full-length life of Virgil since 1938 and the most searching reassessment of the summer of Roman poetry. Peter Levi teases a remarkably vivid life from Virgil's poems, a life-long study of poetry and the few facts that have come down to us through Suetonius.

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Contents

The Youth of Virgil
13
Country Singing
39
Virgils Italy
71
Copyright

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