Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 BCE) left only three works to posterity, but
they became the models of their kinds, and their progression furnished as
well the model for the way in which many poets conceived the development
of their careers in later western culture. The ten Eclogues were
seen as epitomizing youthful pastoral innocence. In his second work, the
four-part Georgics, Virgil ostensibly wrote about how to manage a
farm, but through this local concern runs the larger theme of mature
governance of oneself and one's environment. His crowning achievement,
the epic Aeneid, honors the founding of Rome as civilizing
imperium.
Unlike most young women of her time, Mary Shelley was educated in Latin
by her father. In her second novel, Valperga, she makes a knowing
allusion to the Georgics. In Frankenstein she cites a
famous line of the Aeneid: see 2.7.9 and note.
