gend. Constantine, the first Christian emperor, professed
to have been converted by the perusal of one of Virgil's "Eclogues,"
and Dante owned him as his master and model, and his guide through all
the circles of the other world, while Italian tradition still regards
him a great necromancer, a prophet, and a worker of miracles. From the
date of his death till to-day, in every country, his works have been
among the commonest of school-books, and editions, commentaries and
translations are countless.

Publius Vergilius Maro--for the manuscripts and inscriptions of
antiquity spell his name Vergilius, not Virgilius, as is
customary--was born near the present city of Mantua, in Upper Italy,
in the year 70 B.C., at a little village called Andes, which has been
identified with the modern Italian hamlet of Pietola. At the time of
his birth this region was not included in the term "Italy," but was a
part of Cisalpine Gaul, where the inhabitants did not obtain Roman
citizenship till the year B.C. 49. Thus the writer whose greatest work
is devoted to immortalizing the glories of Rome and the deeds of its
founder, was not a Roman by birth, and was over twenty before he
became a citizen.

His father seems to have been in possession of a small property at
Andes which he cultivated himself, and where the poet acquired his
love for nature, and the intimate practical acquaintance with farm
labors and farm management, which he used so effectively in his most
carefully polished work, his "Georgics." His first education was
received at the town of Cremona, and the larger city of Milan, and he
was at the former place in his sixteenth year on the day when the poet
Lucretius died.

Greek in those days was not only the language of poetry and
philosophy, but the language of polite society and commercial usage.
It was the common medium of communication throughout the Roman world,
and a knowledge of it was indispensable. Hence, after studying his
native language in Northern Italy, Virgil was sent to Naples, a city
founded by Greeks, and possessing a large Greek population. Here he
studied under Parthenius for some time, and then proceeded to Rome,
where he had as his instructor, Syron, a member of the Epicurean
school, of whose doctrines Virgil's poems bear some traces.

Rome, however, offered no career to a youth who was not yet a citizen,
and Virgil seems to have returned to his paternal farm, and there
probably he composed some of his sma