This date in 70 BC is the birthdate of the poet Virgil. 10 things you might not know about him:
Virgil was a Roman poet, best known for three major works—the Bucolics (or Eclogues), the Georgics, and the Aeneid.
His full name was Publius Vergilius Maro.
We don’t know a lot about him. Much of what we do know comes from a lost biography by the Roman poet Varius. There’s also a fair amount of speculation.
Some say his family were peasants, although they had enough Money to give their son a pretty decent education. It’s said he was sent to Rome at the age of five to study rhetoric, medicine, philosophy, and astronomy.
One of his teachers was the Epicurean Siro. The Epicurean philosophy is reflected in his early poetry, although his later works tend more towards Stoicism.
Virgil was a young man at the time when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and began the series of civil wars that didn’t end until 31BC. Virgil and his contemporary Horace wrote about their distaste for civil war.
Virgil never fought in the war, because it’s said his health was never good. He didn’t enter political life because he was shy and retiring and poor at public speaking. His schoolmates nicknamed him "Parthenias" ("virgin") because he was so shy. Virgil never married.
All the same, he was considered by the Romans to be their greatest poet, and there were even legends that he had magical powers. For example, he is said to have carved out his tomb from the rocks near Naples with his gaze alone. His reputation as a magician spread as far as Wales. The medieval Welsh for his name, Fferyllt/Pheryllt, became a generic term for magicians and in due course, the modern Welsh word for a pharmacist – fferyllydd. Early Christians believed that he predicted the birth of Christ in Eclogues, where he describes the birth of a boy ushering in a golden age.
Virgil’s work inspired Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Virgil appears as Dante’s guide through Hell and Purgatory.
He worked on the Aeneid for 11 years and never quite finished it. As part of it was set in Greece, Virgil set out for Greece, probably for research and to get a feel for the place. He was planning to spend another three years writing it. However, he was taken ill on the voyage and returned to Italy. He died soon after he arrived at Brundisium in 19BC. His dying wish was for his unfinished work to be burned, but Augustus countermanded that request and The Aeneid survived. However, we can’t possibly know how much more editing Virgil would have done and how much he might have changed it.
NEW!!
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
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