Virgil: Why Rome's Greatest Poet Begged to Have His Masterpiece Burned

Virgil spent the last eleven years of his life writing the Aeneid — the epic poem that gave Rome its founding myth and became the most influential work of Latin literature. On his deathbed, he ordered it destroyed, insisting it was unfinished and unworthy. Augustus overruled the dying poet's wishes and published it anyway. The poem Virgil wanted burned became the cornerstone of Western literary education for two thousand years.This episode traces Virgil from his rural Italian origins through the Eclogues and Georgics, the decade of composition that produced the Aeneid, and the deathbed request that Augustus refused to honor.Virgil's rural upbringing and the pastoral poetry that brought him to Augustus's attentionThe commission to write Rome's national epic and the eleven years spent crafting the AeneidThe poem's themes — duty, empire, and the cost of civilization — and their service to Augustan propagandaThe deathbed request to burn the manuscript and Augustus's decision to publish it against Virgil's wishes