Vergil and Elegy

Born in 70 BCE, the Roman poet Vergil came of age during a period of literary experimentalism among Latin authors. These authors introduced new Greek verse forms and metres into the existing repertoire of Latin poetic genres and measures, foremost among them being elegy , a genre that the ancients thought originated in funeral lament, but which in classical Rome became first-person poetry about the poet-lover’s amatory vicissitudes. Despite the influence of notable elegists on Vergil’s early poe