Vergil in Antiquity

Poetry

• Ovid, Letters of Heroines: Dido to Aeneas
• Calpurnius Siculus: imitations of Eclogues
• Lucan (d. 65), Civil War: epic w/out gods
• Statius (d. 96), Thebaid: back to Greek myth; lays claim to 2nd place after Vergil

• Aeneid as school-text
• Servius: 4th c. commentary on Vergil
• Macrobius (early 5th c.), Saturnalia

• Pompeian wall paintings
• Illuminated manuscripts
•  "Vatican Vergil" (early 5th c.)
•  "Vergilius Romanus" (late 5th c.)

Christian readings

• St. Augustine (4th c.), Confessions

What is more pitiable than a wretch without pity for himself who weeps over the death of Dido dying for love of Aeneas, but not weeping over himself dying for his lack of love for you, my God, light of my heart ...? I wept over Dido who 'died in pursuing her ultimate end with a sword.' I abandoned you to pursue the lowest things of your creation ... to me it was a hateful chant to recite 'one and one is two' and 'two and two are four'; delightful was the vain spectacle of the wooden horse full of armed soldiers and the burning of Troy and the very ghost of Creusa.

Augustine, Confessions 1.13.21ff.
 

• Christian epics in Vergilian style
• Christian interpretations of 4th Eclogue
• Proba (4th c.):  Christian "cento" from V.
• Fulgentius (6th c.), "Exposition of Virgil according to Moral Philosophy"

Vergil the Magician

• Neapolitan folktales & anecdotes
• "Sortes Vergilianae" (cf. Bible)

• Encounter with ancient poets in Limbo
• Vergil as guide in Inferno, Purgatorio
• Influence of Bk. 6
• Vergil : Dante :: Sibyl : Aeneas

Renaissance Italy

• Master of Jarves Cassoni: Aeneas & Dido
• Bernini: Aeneas, Anchises & Ascanius

• John Dryden translation, 1697: rhymed couplets
• Henry Purcell, Dido & Aeneas (c. 1680)

• J.M.W. Turner: "Dido Building Carthage"; "Lake Avernus"
• Hector Berlioz, Les Troyens (1863)
• W.F. Jackson Knight (translation)
• T.S. Eliot, "What is a Classic?" (1945)

• Allen Tate, "Aeneas at Washington" (1933)
• Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil (1945)
• G. Ungaretti, La terra promessa (1950)
• Robert Lowell, "Falling Asleep Over the Aeneid"
• Scholarship: the "Harvard School"