Introduction

This chapter describes the metamorphosis of the exponent of Rome’s imperial ideal into a wizard of popular legend and traces his gradual literary transformation into the prophetic guide of Christian souls. This astonishing narrative will some day be followed by the no less romantic story of Virgil in the Renaissance. The ascendancy of the Aeneid was long and brilliant, for Virgil was, in a unique sense, master and model of all epic poets from Petrarch to Milton. Maphaeus Vegius was born in the Lombard town of Lodi in 1407, the very year in which his more famous friend, the learned and audacious critic, Lorenzo Valla, was born in Rome; and he died at Rome in 1458, one year after Valla’s death. Maphaeus’ foster-mother was modest and bashful, with a disposition as gentle as her countenance. Maphaeus looked back in after years to the influence of his nurse as wholly good.