Poet · 70 BC – 19 BC
Virgil
Little-Known Facts
- He reportedly asked for the unfinished Aeneid to be burned at his death; Augustus overrode the request.
- His tomb near Naples became a place of literary pilgrimage in antiquity.
Myths & Misconceptions
Did Virgil finish the Aeneid?
He died before fully revising it; the poem was published posthumously on the orders of Augustus, against Virgil's own wish to destroy it.