Author of the Roman epic the Aeneid
The greatest poet of ancient Rome, commissioned to write the epic the Aeneid, telling how the Trojan survivor Aeneas wandered to found Rome — grafting a sacred bloodline from the heroes of Troy onto the Roman Empire. He took Homer as his model, yet wrote a Roman sense of duty and destiny. A thousand years later, Dante chose him as the guide through Hell and Purgatory in the Divine Comedy — and so Virgil became the bridge joining the classical and medieval worlds.
Virgil is said to have remained unsatisfied with the Aeneid on his deathbed, thinking it unfinished and imperfect, and ordered the manuscript burned. It was the emperor Augustus who personally ordered it preserved, and so this epic — which would shape Western literature for nearly two thousand years — survived; by a hair, it might have vanished with its author.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.