"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 ..."
— Virgil

January 1, 1970

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Poets from RomeVirgilPeople from Lombardy
Original Language: English

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Spurious opening lines of the Aeneid (tr. Stanley Lombardo), not found in the earliest manuscripts. Attributed to Virgil on the authority of "the grammarian Nisus", who claimed to have "heard from older men" that Varius had "emended the beginning of the first book by striking out" the four introductory lines, as reported in Suetonius' Life of Vergil, 42 (Loeb translation). John Conington, in his Commentary on Vergil's Aeneid, remarks: "The external evidence of such a story it is impossible to es