Virgil

"Parvis componere magna."

"O formose puer, nimium ne crede colori."

"Trahit sua quemque voluptas."

"Quae te dementia cepit!"

"Nunc omnis ager, nunc omnis parturit arbor; Nunc frondent sylvae, nunc formosissimus annus."

"Latet anguis in herba."

"Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo."

"Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem."

"Nunc scio quid sit Amor."

"Non omnia possumus omnes."

"Carpent tua poma nepotes."

"Omnia fert aetas, animum quoque."

"Cantantes licet usque (minus via laedit) eamus."

"Omnia vincit Amor; et nos cedamus Amori."

"Audacibus annue coeptis."

"Umida solstitia atque hiemes orate serenas, agricolae."

"Ut varias usus meditando extunderet artis paulatim."

"Labor omnia vicit improbus et duris urgens in rebus egestas."

"In primis venerare Deos."

"Adeo in teneris consuescere multum est."

"O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint Agricolas, quibus ipsa, procul discordibus armis, Fundit humo facilem victum justissima tellus!"

"Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes, Flumina amem sylvasque inglorius."

"Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas."

"Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi Prima fugit; subeunt morbi tristisque senectus Et labor, et durae rapit inclementia mortis."

"Amor omnibus idem."

"Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus."

"Alitur vitium, vivitque tegendo."

"Si parva licet componere magnis."

"Nec morti esse locum."

"Fata vocant."

"Illo Vergilium me tempore dulcis alebat Parthenope studiis florentem ignobilis oti."

"Arma virumque cano."

"Tantaene animis caelestibus irae?"

"Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem!"

"O terque quaterque beati!"

"Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto."

"Furor arma ministrat."

"O socii—neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum— O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem."

"Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit."

"Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis."

"Dux femina facti."

"Data fata secutus."

"Mirabile dictu."

"Sunt hic etiam sua praemia laudi, Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt."

"Mens sibi conscia recti."

"Semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt."

"Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco."

"Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem."

"Quis talia fando Temperet a lacrimis?"

"Equo ne credite, Teucri. quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes."

"In utrumque paratus."

"Ab uno disce omnes."

"Horresco referens."

"Tacitae per amica silentia lunae."

"Quantum mutatus ab illo."

"Arrectis auribus adsto."

"Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus Dardaniae."

"Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem."

"Dis aliter visum."

"Fit via vi."

"Quid non mortalia pectora cogis, Auri sacra fames?"

"Fama volat."

"Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum."

"Degeneres animos timor arguit."

"Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae."

"Fama, malum qua non aliud velocius ullum."

"Quis fallere possit amantem?"

"Numquam, regina, negabo Promeritam, nec me meminisse pigebit Elissae Dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos regit artus."

"Italiam non sponte sequor."

"Improbe Amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis!"

"Fata obstant."

"Varium et mutabile semper Femina."

"Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor."

"Vixi, et, quem dederat cursum Fortuna, peregi; Et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit Imago."

"‘Moriemur inultae, Sed moriamur’ ait. ‘sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras.’"

"Furens quid Femina possit."

"Litus ama."

"Possunt, quia posse videntur."

"Decus et tutamen."

"Superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est."

"Bella, horrida bella."

"Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito."

"Obscuris vera involvens."

"Facilis descensus Averno Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis; Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est."

"Fidus Achates."

"Procul, O procul este, profani!"

"Nunc animis opus, Aenea, nunc pectore firmo."

"Di, quibus imperium est animarum, umbraeque silentes, Et Chaos, et Phlegethon, loca nocte tacentia late, Sit mihi fas audita loqui: sit numine vestro Pandere res alta terra et caligine mersas."

"Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram, Perque domos Ditis vacuas et inania regna."

"Malesuada Fames."

"Consanguineus Leti Sopor."

"Stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore."

"Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando."

"Discite justitiam moniti et non temnere divos."

"Vendidit hic auro patriam."

"Non, mihi si linguae centum sunt oraque centum Ferrea vox, omnis scelerum comprendere formas, Omnia poenarum percurrere nomina possim."

"Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes."

"Mens agitat molem."

"Quisque suos patimur manis."

"Te tua fata docebo."

"Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento (Hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem, Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos."

"Tu Marcellus eris."

"Manibus date lilia plenis."

"Sunt geminae Somni portae, quarum altera fertur Cornea, qua veris facilis datur exitus umbris, Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto, Sed falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia Manes."

"Major rerum mihi nascitur ordo; Majus opus moveo."

"Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo."

"Pedibus timor addidit alas."

"Arte magistra."

"O mihi praeteritos referat si Iuppiter annos."

"Dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt, Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?"

"Nequeam lacrimas perferre parentis."

"Volvitur Euryalus leto, pulchrosque per artus It cruor inque umeros cervix conlapsa recumbit: Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro Languescit moriens; lassove papavera collo Demisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur."

"Fortunati ambo! si quid mea carmina possunt, Nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo, Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum Accolet imperiumque pater Romanus habebit."

"Iuppiter omnipotens, audacibus adnue coeptis."

"Macte nova virtute, puer, sic itur ad astra."

"Fata viam invenient."

"Audentes fortuna iuvat."

"Stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus Omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis, Hoc virtutis opus."

"Experto credite."

"Spes sibi quisque."

"Nulla salus bello."

"Aegrescitque medendo."

"Forsan miseros meliora sequentur."

"Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem, Fortunam ex aliis."

"Usque adeone mori miserum est?"

"Ulterius ne tende odiis."

"Vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras."

"Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena Carmen, et egressus silvis vicina coegi Ut quamvis avido parerent arva colono, Gratum opus agricolis, at nunc horrentia Martis ..."

"Facilius esse Herculi clavam quam Homero versum subripere."

"Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores."

"Mors aurem vellens, "vivite," ait, "venio.""

"Color est e pluribus unus."

"Cecini pascua, rura, duces."

"Minuit praesentia famam."

"Let fraud supply the want of force in war."

"Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam."

"Virginibus puerisque canto."

"Crescentem sequitur cura pecuniam, Maiorumque fames."

"Interdum volgus rectum videt, est ubi peccat."

"Vincit amor patriae."

"Animae dimidium meae."

"Vergilium vidi tantum."

"Ideoque optime institutum est ut ab Homero atque Vergilio lectio inciperet, quamquam ad intellegendas eorum virtutes firmiore iudicio opus est: sed huic rei superest tempus, neque enim semel legentur."

"Vtar enim verbis isdem quae ex Afro Domitio iuvenis excepi, qui mihi interroganti quem Homero crederet maxime accedere "secundus" inquit "est Vergilius, propior tamen primo quam tertio". Et hercule ut illi naturae caelesti atque inmortali cesserimus, ita curae et diligentiae vel ideo in hoc plus est, quod ei fuit magis laborandum, et quantum eminentibus vincimur, fortasse aequalitate pensamus. Ceteri omnes longe sequentur."

"Corpore et statura fuit grandi, aquilo colore, facie rusticana, valetudine varia; nam plerumque a stomacho et a faucibus ac dolore capitis laborabat, sanguinem etiam saepe reiecit. Cibi vinique minimi; libidinis in pueros pronioris... Vulgatum est consuesse eum et cum Plotia Hieria. ... Cetera sane vitae et ore et animo tam probum constat, ut Neapoli Parthenias vulgo appellatus sit, ac si quando Romae, quo rarissime commeabat, viseretur in publico, sectantis demonstrantisque se subterfugeret in proximum tectum."

""Bucolica" triennio, "Georgica" VII, "Aeneida" XI perfecit annis."

"Plato of Poets."

"Facundia Mantuani multiplex et multiformis est et dicendi genus omne complectitur."

"Decem Rhetorum, qui apud Athenas Atticas floruerunt, stylos inter se diversos hunc unum permiscuisse."

"Intentio Vergilii haec est, Homerum imitari et Augustum laudare a parentibus."

"Καὶ φίλος Αὐσονίοισι λιγύθροος ἔπρεπε κύκνος πνείων εὐεπίης Βεργίλλιος, ὅν ποτε Ῥώμης Θυμβριὰς ἄλλον Ὅμηρον ἀνέτρεφε πάτριος Ηχώ."

"Nempe apud Vergilium, quem propterea paruuli legunt, ut uidelicet poeta magnus omniumque praeclarissimus atque optimus teneris ebibitus animis non facile obliuione possit aboleri..."

"Divinus poeta noster."

"Or se' tu quel Virgilio e quella fonte che spandi di parlar sì largo fiume?"

"O de li altri poeti onore e lume, vagliami 'l lungo studio e 'l grande amore che m'ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume.'Tu se' lo mio maestro e 'l mio autore, tu se' solo colui da cu' io tolsi lo bello stilo che m'ha fatto onore."

"O anima cortese mantoana Di cui la fama ancor nel mondo dura, E durera quanto 'l moto lontana."

"Tu duca, tu signore e tu maestro."

"O gloria di Latin, disse, per cui mostrò ciò che potea la lingua nostra..."

"Ma Virgilio n'avea lasciati scemi di sé, Virgilio, dolcissimo patre, Virgilio a cui per mia salute die'mi."

"For thou shalt, by thyn owene experience, Konne in a chayer rede of this sentence Bet than Virgile, while he was on lyve."

"Quem te, inquit, reddidissem, Si te vivum invenissem, Poetarum maxime!"

"Nothing in short was omitted by that godlike man. Only fools would want to add anything; only insolent men to change anything. Sentences, numbers, figures, simplicity, candor, ornaments, nature, art, learning—all is incomparable, or, in a word—Virgilian. ... Let the cravens who contend that the free genius and taste of divine Virgil were prisoners of Homer's inventions hold their peace. It was not thus. The arguments of Homer which nature proposed to him were corrected by Virgil as a schoolboy's theme by his professor."

"...exemplum, regula, principium, finis esse debet nobis Maro."

"Homer's poems were writ from a free fury, an absolute and full soul; Virgil's out of a courtly, laborious, and altogether imitatory spirit: not a simile he hath but is Homer's; not an invention, person, or disposition but is wholly or originally built upon Homerical foundations, and in many places hath the very words Homer useth."

"And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life, That it shall gather strength of life, with being, And live hereafter more admired than now."

"The chastest poet and royalest that to the memory of man is known."

"Next, Virgil I’ll call forth To pledge this second health In wine, whose each cup’s worth An Indian commonwealth."

"Hail mighty Maro! may that sacred name Kindle my breast with thy celestial flame; Sublime ideas and apt words infuse, The Muse instruct my voice, and thou inspire the Muse!"

"I looked on Virgil as a succinct and grave majestic writer; one who weighed not only every thought, but every word and syllable."

"He seems to have studied not to be translated."

"There is an inimitable grace in Virgil's words, and in them principally consists that beauty which gives so inexpressible a pleasure to him who best understands their force. This diction of his, I must once again say, is never to be copied; and since it cannot, he will appear but lame in the best translation."

"Virgil had the gift of expressing much in little, and sometimes in silence..."

"Virgil is so exact in every word, that none can be changed but for a worse; nor any one removed from its place, but the harmony will be altered. He pretends sometimes to trip; but it is only to make you think him in danger of a fall, when he is most secure."

"[Homer's] Fire burns with extraordinary Heat and Vehemence … Virgil's is a clearer and a chaster Flame ..."

"Virgil has a thousand secret beauties..."

"Virgil cannot be said to copy Homer; the Grecian had only the advantage of writing first."

"Virgil, above all poets, had a stock, which I may call almost inexhaustible, of figurative, elegant, and sounding words."

"It long has been this sacred author's fate, To lie at ev'ry dull translator's will: Long, long his muse has groan'd beneath the weight Of mangling Ogleby's presumptuous quill."

"Virgil was of a quiet, sedate temper; Homer was violent, impetuous, and full of fire. The chief talent of Virgil was propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words."

"I came home a little later than usual the other night; and, not finding myself inclined to sleep, I took up Virgil, to divert me till I should be more disposed to rest. He is the author whom I always choose on such occasions; no one writing in so divine, so harmonious, nor so equal a strain, which leaves the mind composed and softened into an agreeable melancholy; the temper in which, of all others, I choose to close the day."

"When first young Maro in his boundless mind A work to outlast immortal Rome designed, Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law, And but from Nature's fountains scorned to draw: But when to examine every part he came, Nature and Homer were, he found, the same. Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design, And rules as strict his laboured work confine, As if the Stagirite o'erlooked each line."

"This fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned as through a glass, reflected from Homer, more shining than fierce, but every where equal and constant."

"The delight of all ages, and the pattern of all poets."

"Virgil loved rural ease, and, far from harm, Maecenas fix'd him in a neat, snug farm, Where he might free from trouble pass his days In his own way, and pay his rent in praise."

"The warmest admirers of the great Mantuan poet can extol him for little more than the skill with which he has, by making his hero both a traveller and a warrior, united the beauties of the Iliad and Odyssey in one composition; yet his judgment was perhaps sometimes overborne by his avarice of the Homeric treasures; and, for fear of suffering a sparkling ornament to be lost, he has inserted it where it cannot shine with its original splendor."

"Savez-vous le latin, madame? Non; voilà pourquoi vous me demandez si j'aime mieux Pope que Virgile. Ah! madame, toutes nos langues modernes sont sèches, pauvres, et sans harmonie, en comparaison de celles qu'ont parlées nos premiers maîtres, les Grecs et les Romains. Nous ne sommes que des violons de village. Comment voulez-vous d’ailleurs que je compare des épîtres à un poëme épique, aux amours de Didon, à l'embrasement de Troie, à la descente d'Énée aux enfers? Je crois lEssai sur l'Homme, de Pope, le premier des poëmes didactiques, des poëmes philosophiques; mais ne mettons rien à côté de Virgile. Vous le connaissez par les traductions; mais les poëtes ne se traduisent point. Peut-on traduire de la musique? Je vous plains, madame, avec le goût et la sensibilité éclairée que vous avez, de ne pouvoir lire Virgile."

"I have this year read all Virgil through. I read a book of the Æneid every night, so it was done in twelve nights, and I had a great delight in it. The Georgicks did not give me so much pleasure, except the fourth book. The Eclogues I have almost all by heart."

"The principal and distinguishing excellency of Virgil, and which, in my opinion, he possesses beyond all poets, is tenderness. Nature had endowed him with exquisite sensibility; he felt every affecting circumstance in the scenes he describes; and, by a single stroke, he knows how to reach the heart."

"[The] pathetic is Virgil's great excellence in the Æneid, and...in that way he surpasses all other poets of every age and nation, except, perhaps (and only perhaps), Shakspeare. It is on that account that I rank him so very high; for surely to excel in that style which speaks to the heart is the greatest of all excellence."

"That harmonious plagiary and miserable flatterer, whose cursed hexameters were drilled into me at Harrow."

"Virgil's style is an inimitable mixture of the elaborately ornate, and the majestically plain and touching."

"Virgil seems to have copied Greek models completely, imitating them slavishly and lifelessly, and so they appear as plagiarisms more or less devoid of spirit."

"If you take from Virgil his diction and metre, what do you leave him?"

"O Virgile! ô poète! ô mon maître divin!"

"It never occurs to me to place him among the Roman poets of the first order."

"Unless one is a moron, one always dies unsure of one's own value and that of one's works. Virgil himself, as he lay dying, wanted the Aeneid burned."

"Le poète de la latinité tout entière."

"Over the whole of the great poem of Virgil, over the whole Æneid, there rests an ineffable melancholy: not a rigid, a moody gloom, like the melancholy of Lucretius; no, a sweet, a touching sadness, but still a sadness; a melancholy which is at once a source of charm in the poem, and a testimony to its incompleteness. Virgil, as Niebuhr has well said, expressed no affected self-disparagement, but the haunting, the irresistible self-dissatisfaction of his heart, when he desired on his deathbed that his poem might be destroyed. A man of the most delicate genius, the most rich learning, but of weak health, of the most sensitive nature, in a great and overwhelming world; conscious, at heart, of his inadequacy for the thorough spiritual mastery of that world and its interpretation in a work of art; conscious of this inadequacy—the one inadequacy, the one weak place in the mighty Roman nature! This suffering, this graceful-minded, this finely-gifted man is the most beautiful, the most attractive figure in literary history; but he is not the adequate interpreter of the great period of Rome."

"He writes passionately, because he feels keenly; forcibly, because he conceives vividly; he sees too clearly to be vague; he is too serious to be otiose; he can analyze his subject, and therefore he is rich; he embraces it as a whole and in its parts, and therefore he is consistent; he has a firm hold of it, and therefore he is luminous. When his imagination wells up, it overflows in ornament; when his heart is touched, it thrills along his verse. He always has the right word for the right idea, and never a word too much. If he is brief, it is because few words suffice; when he is lavish of them, still each word has its mark, and aids, not embarrasses, the vigorous march of his elocution. He expresses what all feel, but all cannot say; and his sayings pass into proverbs among his people, and his phrases become household words and idioms of their daily speech, which is tesselated with the rich fragments of his language, as we see in foreign lands the marbles of Roman grandeur worked into the walls and pavements of modern palaces. Such pre-eminently is Shakespeare among ourselves; such pre-eminently Virgil among the Latins; such in their degree are all those writers who in every nation go by the name of Classics."

"Virgil imitated Homer, but imitated him as a rival, not as a disciple."

"His single words and phrases, his pathetic half-lines giving utterance, are as the voice of Nature herself, to that pain and weariness, yet hope of better things, which is the experience of her children in every time."

"My lord, you know what Virgil sings— Woman is various and most mutable."

"Roman Virgil, thou that singest Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire."

"Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd; All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word."

"Thou that seest Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind; Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind."

"Sound for ever of Imperial Rome."

"I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began, Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man."

"Hundreds of Virgil's lines are for most of us familiar quotations, which linger in our memory, and round which our literary associations cluster and hang, just as religious feeling clings to well-known texts or passages of Scripture."

"Of all that [Homer] knew he sang, but Virgil could only follow and imitate, with a pale antiquarian interest, the things that were alive for Homer."

"He who in the days of yore Sang of pastures, sang of farms, Sang of heroes and their arms, Sang of passion, sang of war."

"Then the soul of Virgil seems To awaken from its dreams, To sing again the melodies Of which he often tells,— The music of the birds, The lowing of the herds, The tinkling of the bells."

"The use which the grammarians made of Vergil is so extensive that, if all the MSS. of him had been lost, it would be possible from the notices given us by the ancients of the Vergilian poems, and the passages quoted from them by the grammarians alone, to reconstruct practically the whole of the Bucolics, the Georgics, and the Aeneid."

"[Virgil] borrows royally from nearly every older master of style. Yet the result, if a mosaic, at least remains clear, beautiful, even harmonious, in its general design and effect."

"But it is to beauty that, like Dante, one returns as the final fact and feature of his style. Under Virgil's verbal sorcery, Latin becomes a golden language of exquisite richness, veined with a delicate melancholy and wistful reverie upon the abundant travail of life. If his wealth of tremulous pities and mystic dreams do not make true poetry, then poetry was never written."

"Does [Aeneas] really resemble Odysseus at any point? No—there is no greater difference within the whole compass of ancient literature; and to understand that is to see how absurd are those critics who would dismiss Virgil contemptuously as a mere plagiarist and imitator of Homer. There is no more profound or astonishing originality in all the literature of antiquity than Virgil's; and that precisely because it operates within the limits imposed by the inherited and traditional forms, which it reverently observes."

"With Virgil European poetry grows up."

"[Aeneas] is the symbol of Rome; and, as Aeneas is to Rome, so is ancient Rome to Europe. Thus Virgil acquires the centrality of the unique classic; he is at the centre of European civilisation, in a position which no other poet can share or usurp. The Roman Empire and the Latin language were not any empire and any language, but an empire and a language with a unique destiny in relation to ourselves, and the poet in whom that Empire and that language came to consciousness and expression is a poet of unique destiny. [...] No modern language can hope to produce a classic, in the sense in which I have called Virgil a classic. Our classic, the classic of all Europe, is Virgil."

"I think that he had few illusions and that he saw clearly both sides of every question—the case for the loser as well as the case for the winner."

"Virgil, among classical Latin poets or prose writers, is uniquely near to Christianity."

"...in the sense in which a poet is a philosopher … Virgil is the greatest philosopher of ancient Rome. ...Virgil was, among all authors of classical antiquity, one for whom the world made sense, for whom it had order and dignity, and for whom, as for no one before his time except the Hebrew prophets, history had meaning."

"No, Virgil, no: Not even the first of the Romans can learn His Roman history in the future tense, Not even to serve your political turn; Hindsight as foresight makes no sense."

"Why Virgil's poems have for the last two thousand years exercised so great an influence on our Western culture is, paradoxically, because he was a renegade to the true Muse. His pliability; his subservience; his narrowness; his denial of that stubborn imaginative freedom which the true poets who preceded him had prized; his perfect lack of originality, courage, humour, or even animal spirits: these were the negative qualities which first commended him to government circles and have kept him in public favour ever since. [...] Few poets have brought such discredit as Virgil on their sacred calling."

"Virgil's narrative style...is subjective or more accurately, empathetic-sympathetic. Virgil not only reads the minds of his characters; he constantly communicates to us his own reactions to them and to their behaviour."

"Homer is a world; Virgil, a style."

"Like every human being, a poet has to deal with three questions: how, what for, and in the name of what to live. The Bucolics, the Georgics and the Aeneid answer all three, and these answers apply equally to the Emperor and to his subjects, to antiquity as well as to our times. The modern reader may use Virgil in the same way that Dante used him in his passage through Hell and Purgatory: as a guide."

"For Virgil all war is mad and one cannot conduct oneself morally on the battlefield."

"Virgil's influence on English literature has been enormous. He was Edmund Spenser's constant inspiration for the fanciful beauty of The Faerie Queene. The Aeneid was the model for John Milton's Paradise Lost not only in epic structure and machinery but also in style and diction. In the English Augustan age, John Dryden and countless others held that Virgil's poetry had reached the ultimate perfection of form and ethical content. There was some reaction against him in the Romantic period, but the Victorians, such as Matthew Arnold and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, rediscovered in full measure that sensitivity and pathos that the Romantics had complained that Virgil lacked."

"Virgil is too important to be left to the classicists."

"At every step I have seen how impossible it is to translate Virgil, especially his unequaled blend of grandeur and accessibility..., of eloquence and action, heroics and humanity."