To write the life of a man who flourished two thousand years before us, and in a distant country, when ages of barbarity and ignorance have intervened, can be no very easy or pleasing task to the biographer. Facts containing novelty and importance, cannot be supposed, at this remote period, to be procured, or those that are already in our possession authenticated. To collect, therefore, the most probable incidents from former works, and to satisfy the curiosity of the uninformed, has been the principal aim of the writer of this sketch; while, by an unremitting attention to classical information, he has endeavoured to render it amusing to the scholar, and instructive to the illiterate. MANTUA, the capital of new Etruria, itself built three centuries before Rome, had the honour of giving birth to Publius Virgilius Maro. This great event happened on or near the 15th of October, seventy years B. C. or during the first consulship of Pompey the Great and Licinius Crassus. Who his father was, and even to what country he belonged, has been disputed by the greatest writers of which literature has to boast. Some assert that he was a potter of Andes; but the most probable account is, that he was either a wandering astrologer, who practised physic, or a servant to one of this learned fraternity. It is observed by Juvenal, that medicus, ma gus, usually went together, and that his course of life was principally followed by the Greeks and Syrians; to one of these nations therefore, it is presumed, Virgil owes his birth. His mother Maia, was indubitably of good extraction, being nearly related to Quinctilius Varus, of whom honourable mention is made in the history of the second Carthaginian war. In the life of Virgil, generally ascribed to Donatus, it is related, that this woman had certain dreams and presages, which the physician, recurring to his powers as an astrologer, endeavoured to elucidate; but the fact, in all probability, was, that being herself a woman of superior understanding, and moreover, captivated by the sweet disposition, and early indication of transcendent genius in her son, she took this method of working on the credulity of her husband, and inclining him, as if directed by the Fates, to give Virgil that education, to which her rank and his talents so justly entitled him. Accordingly, he passed the "initia ætatis" at Mantua, thence he removed to Cremona, and afterwards to Milan. In all these places he prosecuted his studies with the most diligent application, associating with the eminent professors of every department of science and devoting whole nights to the study of the best Latin and Greek authors: in the latter he was greatly assisted by his proximity to Marseilles, the only Greek colony that maintained its refinement and purity of language, amidst the overwhelming influence of all the barbarous nations that surrounded it. At first, he devoted himself to the Epicurean philosophy, but receiving no satisfactory reasons for its tenets from his master, the celebrated Syro, he passed over to the academic school, when physic and mathematics became his favourite sciences, and these he continued to cultivate, at leisure moments, during his whole life. At Milan he composed a great number of verses, on various subjects, and in the warmth of early youth, framed a noble design of writing a Heroic Poem, On the Wars of Rome; but after some attempts, was dis |