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Ancient Lives
Vergil: The Poet's Life
A biography of Vergil, Rome’s greatest poet, by the acclaimed translator of the Aeneid
“Ms. Ruden has converted the writer of the Aeneid from a noble and stodgy ‘ancient’ into our contemporary . . . persuasively re-imagined [as] a sympathetic, three-dimensional figure. . . . The existence of the Aeneid is cause for gratitude. So is Ms. Ruden’s sensitive, celebratory portrait of its maker.”—Willard Spiegelman, Wall Street Journal
The Aeneid stands as a towering work of Classical Roman literature and a gripping dramatization of the best and worst of human nature. In the process of creating this epic poem, Vergil (70–19 BCE) became the world’s first media celebrity, a living legend.
But the real Vergil is a shadowy figure; we know that he was born into a modest rural family, that he led a private and solitary life, and that, in spite of poor health and unusual emotional vulnerabilities, he worked tirelessly to achieve exquisite new effects in verse. Vergil’s most famous work, the Aeneid , was commissioned by the emperor Augustus, who published the epic despite Vergil’s dying wish that it be destroyed.
Sarah Ruden, widely praised for her translation of the Aeneid , uses evidence from Roman life and history alongside Vergil’s own writings to make careful deductions to reconstruct his life. Through her intimate knowledge of Vergil’s work, she brings to life a poet who was committed to creating something astonishingly new and memorable, even at great personal cost.
“Ms. Ruden has converted the writer of the Aeneid from a noble and stodgy ‘ancient’ into our contemporary . . . persuasively re-imagined [as] a sympathetic, three-dimensional figure. . . . The existence of the Aeneid is cause for gratitude. So is Ms. Ruden’s sensitive, celebratory portrait of its maker.”—Willard Spiegelman, Wall Street Journal
The Aeneid stands as a towering work of Classical Roman literature and a gripping dramatization of the best and worst of human nature. In the process of creating this epic poem, Vergil (70–19 BCE) became the world’s first media celebrity, a living legend.
But the real Vergil is a shadowy figure; we know that he was born into a modest rural family, that he led a private and solitary life, and that, in spite of poor health and unusual emotional vulnerabilities, he worked tirelessly to achieve exquisite new effects in verse. Vergil’s most famous work, the Aeneid , was commissioned by the emperor Augustus, who published the epic despite Vergil’s dying wish that it be destroyed.
Sarah Ruden, widely praised for her translation of the Aeneid , uses evidence from Roman life and history alongside Vergil’s own writings to make careful deductions to reconstruct his life. Through her intimate knowledge of Vergil’s work, she brings to life a poet who was committed to creating something astonishingly new and memorable, even at great personal cost.
200 pages, Hardcover
Published August 22, 2023
16 people are currently reading
211 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Ruden
23 books110 followersSarah Elizabeth Ruden is an American writer of poetry, essays, translations of Classic literature, and popularizations of Biblical philology, religious criticism and interpretation.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 30, 2023
Speculative but still Interesting
Review of the Yale University Press - Ancient Lives series hardcover (August 22, 2023).
The historical details of Vergil's (70BC - 19BC) life are little known and much is based on later accounts by Suetonius (69AD to 122AD) and others, which were also speculative. Sarah Ruden still takes up the challenge and produces an interesting account of life in the Augustan era of Ancient Rome.
This includes the standard story of humble beginnings with the gradual rise to prominence as the writer of the national epic of Ancient Rome, the Aenied. Ruden's expertise in the area extends to her translating the epic not just once (2008) but twice (2021). Although Vergil was indebted to Augustus for his patronage, there is the odd final defiance of asking for the destruction of the Aenied on his deathbed, as he had not been able to complete the work to his satisfaction. Ruden calculates that he had been writing it at the speed of 2 lines per day. Augustus countermanded that final wish and insisted that it be published regardless.
"Vergil reading the Aeniad to Augustus, Livia and Octavia" (1790) a painting by Jean-Baptiste Wicar (1762-1834). The scene depicts Octavia fainting at the mention of her son Marcellus in Aeniad Book VI. Image sourced from Yale University Press where it is sourced from WikiCommons.
Trivia and Links
Author Sarah Ruden discusses "Vergil: The Poet's Life" at the Yale University Press Podcast which you can listen to here.
Vergil: the Poet's Life is part of Yale University Press's Ancient Lives series which currently includes: Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor (expected February 2024), Ramesses the Great: Egypt's King of Kings (2023), Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor (2023), Crassus: The First Tycoon (2022), Demetrius: Sacker of Cities (2022) and Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth (2022).
Review of the Yale University Press - Ancient Lives series hardcover (August 22, 2023).
The historical details of Vergil's (70BC - 19BC) life are little known and much is based on later accounts by Suetonius (69AD to 122AD) and others, which were also speculative. Sarah Ruden still takes up the challenge and produces an interesting account of life in the Augustan era of Ancient Rome.
This includes the standard story of humble beginnings with the gradual rise to prominence as the writer of the national epic of Ancient Rome, the Aenied. Ruden's expertise in the area extends to her translating the epic not just once (2008) but twice (2021). Although Vergil was indebted to Augustus for his patronage, there is the odd final defiance of asking for the destruction of the Aenied on his deathbed, as he had not been able to complete the work to his satisfaction. Ruden calculates that he had been writing it at the speed of 2 lines per day. Augustus countermanded that final wish and insisted that it be published regardless.
"Vergil reading the Aeniad to Augustus, Livia and Octavia" (1790) a painting by Jean-Baptiste Wicar (1762-1834). The scene depicts Octavia fainting at the mention of her son Marcellus in Aeniad Book VI. Image sourced from Yale University Press where it is sourced from WikiCommons.
Trivia and Links
Author Sarah Ruden discusses "Vergil: The Poet's Life" at the Yale University Press Podcast which you can listen to here.
Vergil: the Poet's Life is part of Yale University Press's Ancient Lives series which currently includes: Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor (expected February 2024), Ramesses the Great: Egypt's King of Kings (2023), Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor (2023), Crassus: The First Tycoon (2022), Demetrius: Sacker of Cities (2022) and Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth (2022).
September 2, 2023
I wanted to like this book. I like other books in the series; it is actually a quite good series. For those old enough to remember the Carter administration, this one can be described as an incomplete success. It is not a biography of Vergil; there is not enough known about his life for a book-length biography. For that, you would be better off just reading the OCT Vitae Vergilianae antiquae, which I frequently referred to in the course of reading Ruden. This book is a rambling mélange of Roman social and cultural history, literary criticism, and rampant speculation on Vergil's life, far beyond anything the evidence supports. If I received it as a seminar paper, it would be somewhere between B- and C+.
That is not to say there is nothing good in it. Ruden provides a lot of solid information on Roman society. For example, she provides a clear discussion of the Roman patron/client relationship, and the somewhat transactional nature of amicitia ("friendship"). That amicitia was generally transactional is no surprise in a society whose relation to its gods was frequently described as "do ut des" ("I sacrifice so that you fulfill my prayers").
Many of Ruden's comments on Vergil's works are quite apposite. He is indeed a poet of the land (not an original observation on her part) and seems to have been rather uncomfortable with other people. This results in lack of depth in many of the characters in the Aeneid, as famously noted by Pound. And if you want good literary criticism on Vergil, there are better places: Richard Heinze, Viktor Pöschl, Michael Putnam, among others.
I frequently wavered on whether or not to finish this. I did, but do not feel rewarded for the effort.
That is not to say there is nothing good in it. Ruden provides a lot of solid information on Roman society. For example, she provides a clear discussion of the Roman patron/client relationship, and the somewhat transactional nature of amicitia ("friendship"). That amicitia was generally transactional is no surprise in a society whose relation to its gods was frequently described as "do ut des" ("I sacrifice so that you fulfill my prayers").
Many of Ruden's comments on Vergil's works are quite apposite. He is indeed a poet of the land (not an original observation on her part) and seems to have been rather uncomfortable with other people. This results in lack of depth in many of the characters in the Aeneid, as famously noted by Pound. And if you want good literary criticism on Vergil, there are better places: Richard Heinze, Viktor Pöschl, Michael Putnam, among others.
I frequently wavered on whether or not to finish this. I did, but do not feel rewarded for the effort.
August 10, 2023
When writing a biography of Vergil, you have to connect lots of dots and read between lines, which Sarah Ruden does well. But she also most definitely grew too speculative at many points. We should not see every character and their experience as a stand-in for the author or as an accidental expose of his psyche.
Don’t expect to understand Vergil’s poetry any better after reading this.
Don’t expect to understand Vergil’s poetry any better after reading this.
February 1, 2025
I quite liked this, both for insights into Vergil and the Aeneid, as well as into the group of poets and elite Romans who surrounded Vergil. Yes, the author definitely speculates a lot about Vergil's and other people's motivations, but for the most part, the book held my interest.
May 14, 2024
An interesting (extended) introduction to Ruden's own translation. If nothing else, it's primed me to extend more grace and interest in my next read of the Aeneid, whether it's Ruden's or otherwise.
October 28, 2023
(Audiobook) (3.5 stars) This work looks at the life of the poet Vergil, best known for the Aeneid and being the guide for Dante in the Inferno. Yet, for a man of literature, it can be quite the challenge to figure out just who was the man behind the writing. Ruden has plenty of experience in the study of Vergil, so she is as qualified as any to try to figure out just who was this man. This may be as complete as record attempting for the unbiased analysis as we can find. Vergil was hardly a saint or perfect man, and did run afoul of many in power, like Augustus. Interesting that he really, really didn’t seem to want to preserve his most famous work (at least in the modern era), but, go figure, it is his most enduring.
A solid read/listen to learn about this author. Perhaps we will never really know the full story of this man vs. his work, but we do what we can with the materials we can find.
A solid read/listen to learn about this author. Perhaps we will never really know the full story of this man vs. his work, but we do what we can with the materials we can find.
December 16, 2023
Sarah Ruden is one of my favorite classics scholars working today and her prose in this book is excellent, as always. I like to imagine her Quaker background influences her work. I love her translations of Vergil’s
The Aeneid
(2008, revised 2021),
The Satyricon of Petronius
(2000), Aristophanes’
Lysistrata
(2003), The
Homeric Hymns
(2005), Apuleius’
The Golden Ass
(2012), Plato's
Hippias Minor
(2015), Aeschylus’
The Oresteia
(2016), Augustine's
Confessions
(2017), and
The Gospels
(2021). Her books focused on biblical interpretation -
Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time
(2011) and
The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible
(2017) - are also well worth reading.
Vergil: The Poet’s Life acts as a “literary biography” (p. 20) to the most famous of ancient Roman poets. Sarah Ruden acknowledges that little is known about Vergil (70-19 BCE) and that much of The Poet’s Life is conjecture. She analyzes his surviving works for potential autobiographical elements, and references an ancient biographical tradition that admittedly “veered out of control from the first and never corrected itself.” We can say that Vergil was unusually private and solitary for a prestigious Roman, often suffered ailments (real or imaginary), and was a methodical perfectionist in his writing. The book is at its best when Ruden provides insight into the Roman culture of the era, along with its violent political realities, that may have influenced Vergil.
Quotes
"Great works of literature are sly and powerful beasts who pounce on readers, grabbing them by the neck and shaking them back and forth." (p. 12).
*
"Epicurus would have disapproved of a long, elaborate poem in itself as a frivolous and wearing use of mental energy. But in the ancient world, philosophy always loses, and literature always wins." (p. 65).
*
“The artist who has made peace with his talent makes peace with the future.” (p. 141).
*
Vergil: The Poet’s Life acts as a “literary biography” (p. 20) to the most famous of ancient Roman poets. Sarah Ruden acknowledges that little is known about Vergil (70-19 BCE) and that much of The Poet’s Life is conjecture. She analyzes his surviving works for potential autobiographical elements, and references an ancient biographical tradition that admittedly “veered out of control from the first and never corrected itself.” We can say that Vergil was unusually private and solitary for a prestigious Roman, often suffered ailments (real or imaginary), and was a methodical perfectionist in his writing. The book is at its best when Ruden provides insight into the Roman culture of the era, along with its violent political realities, that may have influenced Vergil.
**
Title: Vergil: The Poet’s Life
Author(s): Sarah Ruden
Series: Yale University Press' Ancient Lives
Year: 2023
Genre: Nonfiction - Literary biography, ancient history
Page count: 196 pages
Date(s) read: 12/12/23 - 12/15/23
Book #233 in 2023
**
Quotes
*
"I have always been proud of my relationship with “my” authors. They seem to become living presences as I dig in the text’s details for evidence of their moods and visions. I rely on what they “tell me” even when that means resisting conventional English renderings, which I often see applied to a great variety of authors and genres in a mechanical, classroom-translation way. (p. 9).
*
"Great works of literature are sly and powerful beasts who pounce on readers, grabbing them by the neck and shaking them back and forth." (p. 12).
*
"As a translator of Vergil, and the first one to produce a line-by-line, tightly metrical rendering of the Aeneid, which required sweating over certain lines for hours, and then sweating over thousands of revisions for the second edition, I probably know better than anyone alive how it feels to spend time as he reportedly did. There are worse foundations for writing about his life." (p. 19).
*
"Though Vergil as a personality is often associated with the hero Aeneas, I think it is at least as useful to look comprehensively at Iulus. He is by far the most complete and interesting child to appear in ancient poetry; he is also a far-fetched literary artifact." (p. 42).
*
"Characters in the Aeneid tend to be wooden, without plausible inner lives. Too many of their motivations are literally external, depending on commands or meddling from the gods. In the case of a poet like Vergil, it is unsatisfying to blame this on the underdeveloped state of literary characterization in his time…
…I am convinced that his characters tend to fall short in differentiation and believable thoughts and feelings because he did not like other people much or find their minds reliably interesting compared with his own. The land, in contrast, was endlessly fascinating to him." (p. 51).
*
"Epicurus would have disapproved of a long, elaborate poem in itself as a frivolous and wearing use of mental energy. But in the ancient world, philosophy always loses, and literature always wins." (p. 65).
*
"…as the poet grew more famous, people came to hoard any of his early and ongoing discards they could get their hands on, as well as pseudonymous works—the ancient equivalent of fan fiction—and that people in succeeding generations could mis-ascribe texts even more freely." (p. 79).
*
"Augustus suddenly exiled Ovid, a poet in the generation after Vergil, to an outpost on the Black Sea and let him die there, ignoring years of his versified pleas to be allowed to come home. In short, Augustus was vindictive, and his revenges became worse over time. That Vergil did not live to see the worst did not mean that he failed to see it coming." (p. 114).
*
“The artist who has made peace with his talent makes peace with the future.” (p. 141).
*
"The speech is a masterpiece of mendacity from an author who knew of what he wrote; he was, after all, a lover of males who composed the ancient world’s most searing heterosexual love stories, those of Orpheus and Eurydice and of Dido and Aeneas." (p. 148).
*
"Vergil turned violently against his work and did not pass beyond that mood before he died, or he turned against the people who had fostered his work, decreeing that they did not deserve it…
…But none of the posthumous arrangements, however pragmatic or well-intentioned, could blot out the reality that Vergil’s life—like the Aeneid itself—ended in a blaze of rage, and that those around him merely shuffled through both endings, ignoring their heat." (p. 175).
*
June 16, 2024
Nec minus Aeneas, quamquam tardata sagitta
interdum genua impediunt cursumque recusant,
insequitur trepidique pedem pede fervidus urget:
inclusum veluti siquando flumine nanctus
cervum aut puniceae saeptum formidine pinnae
venator cursu canis et latratibus instat;
ille autem, insidiis et ripa territus alta,
mille fugit refugitque vias; at vividus Umber
haeret hians, iam iamque tenet similisque tenenti
increpuit malis morsuque elusus inani est.
Tum vero exoritur clamor, ripaeque lacusque
responsant circa et caelum tonat omne tumultu.
Ille simul fugiens Rutulos simul increpat omnis,
nomine quemque vocans, notumque efflagitat ensem.
Aeneas mortem contra praesensque minatur
exitium, si quisquam adeat, terretque trementis
excisurum urbem minitans et saucius instat.
Quinque orbis explent cursu totidemque retexunt
huc illuc; neque enim levia aut ludicra petuntur
praemia, sed Turni de vita et sanguine certant.
interdum genua impediunt cursumque recusant,
insequitur trepidique pedem pede fervidus urget:
inclusum veluti siquando flumine nanctus
cervum aut puniceae saeptum formidine pinnae
venator cursu canis et latratibus instat;
ille autem, insidiis et ripa territus alta,
mille fugit refugitque vias; at vividus Umber
haeret hians, iam iamque tenet similisque tenenti
increpuit malis morsuque elusus inani est.
Tum vero exoritur clamor, ripaeque lacusque
responsant circa et caelum tonat omne tumultu.
Ille simul fugiens Rutulos simul increpat omnis,
nomine quemque vocans, notumque efflagitat ensem.
Aeneas mortem contra praesensque minatur
exitium, si quisquam adeat, terretque trementis
excisurum urbem minitans et saucius instat.
Quinque orbis explent cursu totidemque retexunt
huc illuc; neque enim levia aut ludicra petuntur
praemia, sed Turni de vita et sanguine certant.
June 23, 2024
Book by book I’ve become a fan of Sarah Ruben. Her translation of The Golden Ass was excellent, as is her translation of The Aeneid. I am currently in a class in which we slowly translate The Aeneid line by line. (For the obsessed among you, I have 7 different translations of the The Aeneid, probably five more than I need.) The translation we’re consulting is by Shadi Bartsch. Compared with her fine translation (and others by Ahl, Lombardo, Fagles, Fitzgerald and Ferry), I find Ruden’s version the most rewarding.
So it makes sense I’d look to Ruden for some background on the poet’s life. (It’s one in an excellent series of Ancient Lives published by Yale.) It did not disappoint. Ruden is not afraid to speculate, given the paucity of actual information, nor is she afraid to celebrate the bits that do survive, such as Suetonius’ observation that Vergil preferred the company of boys (hardly exceptional in the graphic galleries of Suetonius). Her readings of The Ecologues and The Georgics are genuinely interesting; on The Aeneid itself she is, as expected, very good.
So it makes sense I’d look to Ruden for some background on the poet’s life. (It’s one in an excellent series of Ancient Lives published by Yale.) It did not disappoint. Ruden is not afraid to speculate, given the paucity of actual information, nor is she afraid to celebrate the bits that do survive, such as Suetonius’ observation that Vergil preferred the company of boys (hardly exceptional in the graphic galleries of Suetonius). Her readings of The Ecologues and The Georgics are genuinely interesting; on The Aeneid itself she is, as expected, very good.
November 13, 2025
I'm no Vergil scholar but as a student of the Classics, I was intrigued at the idea of a biography of the great poet, mostly because -- from what I did know about him -- there isn't enough verifiable information about his life left to us to reconstruct one. Reading this book has borne that out.
Since we don't know enough about Vergil's life to write a proper biography of him, this book reads more like a sort of entry in a parlor game of making inferences about the life of the author based a combination of on the cultural and social context in which he lived and potential clues strewn throughout his work. For people interested in the subject, reading something like this can be an amusing enough way to pass the time, but I can't say that I really learned much about Vergil's life since simply aren't many known facts for Ms. Ruden to write about.
Aside from the fact that this book is more of an extended pamphlet of wild, circumstantial speculation than a true biography, my other criticism of this book is Ms. Ruden's style, which I frequently found to be somewhat awkward and often downright confusing. My impression is that she was aiming for some mixture of academic, lyrical, and conversational in the way she presents her arguments but the end result is an infelicitous melange that seems to showcase mostly the worst of each of the three styles. I generally enjoy Vergil's writing and this book does provide some interesting context for further speculation so I'm glad I read it... but only just.
Since we don't know enough about Vergil's life to write a proper biography of him, this book reads more like a sort of entry in a parlor game of making inferences about the life of the author based a combination of on the cultural and social context in which he lived and potential clues strewn throughout his work. For people interested in the subject, reading something like this can be an amusing enough way to pass the time, but I can't say that I really learned much about Vergil's life since simply aren't many known facts for Ms. Ruden to write about.
Aside from the fact that this book is more of an extended pamphlet of wild, circumstantial speculation than a true biography, my other criticism of this book is Ms. Ruden's style, which I frequently found to be somewhat awkward and often downright confusing. My impression is that she was aiming for some mixture of academic, lyrical, and conversational in the way she presents her arguments but the end result is an infelicitous melange that seems to showcase mostly the worst of each of the three styles. I generally enjoy Vergil's writing and this book does provide some interesting context for further speculation so I'm glad I read it... but only just.
April 23, 2025
Sarah Ruden is the author of by far the best recent English translation of The Aeneid. The biography of Vergil is, frankly, an impossible task: very little is known, all that survives is a not very reliable account by Suetonius and a few other snippets, some of them much later than Vergil's time. Inevitably, a "biography" becomes a biographie littéraire, an analysis of what seemed important to Vergil and what didn't. Ruden claims (or rather assumes by default) that Vergil was gay (or asexual, come to think of it); she also puts forward the idea (without actually saying so) that Augustus had Vergil murdered because he really wanted the Aeneid to finally be published (or for some other reason, after all, it was all a long time ago, we can't know for sure). The style of the book is very dense; I am surprised that it couples with the rather transparent and clear language of her Aeneid.
July 15, 2024
Sarah Ruden has written a new biography of Vergil that will be of interest to readers of his works. In reading those works, the focus is of course laid on those works themselves and readers are often served but a short description of Vergil's life. In contrast, Ruden's biography can delve into the details of his vita and really ponder and speculate on things like the poet's personality and his relationship with that most powerful of patrons, the emperor Augustus. I found her findings and thoughts there really interesting myself. For readers of Vergil wanting to go beyond his works themselves, this book is greatly recommended.
January 20, 2024
A little dry with complicated sentence structure everywhere. Clearly for a niche audience that probably includes me, a former Latin teacher. Some might object to the speculative nature of the author's assertion, but as someone who read and taught Vergil for many years, I found the book interesting especially the explanation of literary patronage in Ancient Rome.
January 8, 2025
I'm a big Sarah Ruden fan but I didn't love this. Maybe because not much is known definitively about Vergil's life, and what is known is not very interesting, I expected "the poet's life" to be the beating heart of this book. And it was more about commentary on the Aeneid, which is reasonable and not really what I wanted.
September 26, 2025
was going to be 3 stars but the book finished really strong
December 28, 2025
Maybe I should have enjoyed this book more, but I felt like it was a biography that said "let's take out all speculation except for here and there and then compare Vergil with modern writers."
August 9, 2024
Wrote the greatest Roman poem,
Though his values were un-Roman.
Though his values were un-Roman.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews