ABSTRACT
At least in part as a result of Virgil’s works-particularly the Aeneid-having traditionally been read as justifying Rome’s imperial aspirations and supporting the claims to political authority of Caesar Augustus, he has enjoyed an unparalleled prominence among Roman poets from the unauthorized publication of the Aeneid by his literary executors shortly after his death to the present.1 That such a reputation and renown should rest on such a small corpus consisting of only a few minor poems, the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the Aeneid speaks eloquently of both their collective importance and their considerable cultural capital. He brought to his poetry and most conspicuously to his epic a significant and unparalleled degree of lyric flexibility while at the same time remarkably never losing sight of a strict sense of overall structure. His career began with works of a smaller scale but ended with a masterpiece that was almost immediately seen as a reflection of the destiny of the nation and shortly after its publication was already widely quoted by contemporary poets. Just as those whose exposure to Latin literature may be rather modest have typically read the prose of Caesar and Cicero, their experience with poetry has most often been with that of Virgil, a fact which assures a broader audience than other classical authors can readily claim.
