PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO (VIRGIL) was born near Mantua in northern Italy in 70 BCE. He was educated at the larger town of Cremona and finally at Milan. He moved to Rome around 52 BCE, but spent most of his time thereafter in the (then) congenial surroundings of the Bay of Naples. He wrote the Eclogues in the period circa 42–39 BCE. Around the year 38 he joined the circle of poets in the entourage of Maecenas, the future imperial ‘Minister for the Arts’. The composition of the Georgics occupied him from 37 or earlier until 29. He spent the rest of his life working on his epic poem, the Aeneid. He died at Brundisium in 19 BCE after abandoning a visit to Greece and Asia on which he intended to complete and perfect his epic.
PETER FALLON grew up on a farm near Kells in County Meath. He is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, where he was Writer Fellow in 1994. He was inaugural Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University in 2000. He founded The Gallery Press in 1970 and has edited and published more than 400 titles. His own books include News of the World: Selected and New Poems (1998). He lives in Loughcrew in County Meath.
ELAINE FANTHAM was educated at Oxford and taught first at the University of Toronto (1968–86) then Princeton University (1986–2000). She is author of commentaries on Seneca’s Trojan Women, Lucan, Civil War, Book 2, and Ovid, Fasti IV, of Roman Literary Culture, and most recently of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Oxford Approaches to Literature) and The Roman World of Cicero’s De Oratore.