Virgil

Virgil was a farmer’s son from near Mantua who lost his land in the confiscations after Philippi and won it back, tradition says, by the favour of Octavian. The Eclogues brought Greek pastoral to Rome; the Georgics, four books on farming, are the most perfect Latin poem; the Aeneid, on which he spent the last eleven years of his life, gave Rome its epic of origins and Augustus his mythology. He asked on his deathbed that it be burned. Dante chose him as guide through hell and purgatory, and the Middle Ages thought him almost a prophet.