The Classic Text. As Cicero is to Latin prose, so Vergil is to Latin poetry: for many readers he epitomizes the greatest and most beautiful artistic achievement of Roman civilization. Indeed, his Aeneid is regarded by many as the classic text par excellence.

Vergil's Earliest Work: The Eclogues. The earliest, definitely authentic poems of Publius Vergilius Maro, the Eclogues, were published shortly after Sallust's works in 39 B.C.E. In these ten pastoral poems modeled on the Hellenistic Greek poet Theocritus, Vergil combines an idyllic, rustic world, inspired by Greek poetry and apparently dominated by peace and love, with contemporary Roman events such as land expropriations or civil war. The great yearning for peace after almost one hundred years of intermittent civil strife finds its climax in the fourth Eclogue, in which this hope is connected with the birth of a child...