Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, born near Mantua in 70 BC, was the greatest poet of Augustan Rome. His Eclogues (about 39-38 BC) brought the pastoral poetry of Theocritus into Latin, the Georgics (about 29 BC) turned a farming manual into a poem on work, nature and Italy, and the Aeneid, on which he worked for the last ten years of his life, gave Rome a national epic modelled on Homer and tracing its origins to the Trojan Aeneas. He died at Brundisium in 19 BC with the Aeneid unrevised; Augustus had it published against his wish that it be burned.