Fabio P. Barbieri / Fabio PBarbieri
From the moment it was published in defiance of its dead author’s wishes, the Aeneid became the standard for Latin literature. Latin was taught out of it, and Dark Age authors such as Gildas and Gregory of Tours, who knew no other classical Latin author, quoted freely from it. Despite a brief and rather silly period of nineteenth-century disparagement, it has remai-ned so ever since ; the standard for ail intellectual-minded writers, the greatest work of art to emerge from the ancient world, and one of the greatest poems of the world. Above ail, Virgil’s philosophical talents have been fruitful down the ages : every poet who successfully attempted large-scale religious epics - Dante, Tasso, Milton - found his chief inspiration in him, and indeed it is doubtful whether, had he not existed, their work would have been conceivable
