Vergil or Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro), 70-19 B.C., greatest of Roman poets; b. near Mantua; a resident of Rome from 41 B.C. Early life on his father's farm was central to his education. The Eclogues or Bucolics (37 B.C.) idealized rural life in the manner of THEOCRITUS. Vergil then turned to realistic and didactic rural poetry in the Georgics (30 B.C.), seeking, like HESIOD, to convey the charm of real life and work on the farm. He spent the rest of his life working on his national epic, the Aeneid, one of the greatest long poems in world literature. Vergil's AENEAS is a paragon of Roman virtues-familial devotion, loyalty to the state, and piety. The 12 books follow Aeneas from TROY's fall through his affair with the Carthaginian queen, DIDO, to the founding of the Roman state. The poem, in dactylic hexameters of striking regularity, is central to all Latin literature. A favorite of AUGUSTUS, Vergil influenced poets from DANTE on.