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Home / Greece and Rome / Virgil asked for the Aeneid to be burned, and Augustus ordered it published
Case file s4 · Greece and Rome · 19 BCE
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19 BCE
Virgil: Virgil mosaic in the Bardo National Museum (Tunis) (12241228546)
Virgil. Boyd Dwyer. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
21 September 19 BC
Place
Brundisium (Brindisi) · Italy
Field
poet · Literature and writing on the timeline
Legal tradition
Roman law · Roman law
Historical event
First decade of Augustus' principate after the Roman civil wars
Greece and RomeBurned papers and destroyed workAncient worldEuropeItalyJulio-Claudian dynasty

Virgil asked for the Aeneid to be burned, and Augustus ordered it published

Virgil met Augustus in Athens in 19 BC, fell ill with a fever near Megara, sailed back to Italy and died at Brundisium. The ancient Life of Virgil by Donatus gives the date and the money. Gifts from friends had made him rich: almost 10 million sesterces and a house on the Esquiline next to the gardens of Maecenas. His will left half to his half-brother Valerius Proculus, a quarter to Augustus, a twelfth to Maecenas and the rest to his friends Lucius Varius and Plotius Tucca. The Aeneid, the epic of Rome's founding, was unfinished. Before leaving Italy Virgil had asked Varius to burn it if anything happened to him. Varius refused. On his deathbed Virgil asked for the boxes holding the manuscript so he could burn it himself. No one brought them. Augustus ordered Varius and Tucca to publish the poem with as few changes as possible. They left the half-finished lines as they were and added nothing. He was buried on the road to Puteoli near Naples under an epitaph that begins "Mantua me genuit": Mantua bore me. In 2026 a tomb called Virgil's stands at Piedigrotta in Naples; whether it holds his remains is not established†. The half-lines Varius left are still in the text.

What the law took from it

An instruction to destroy property binds only if the executor will carry it out; Virgil gave it to the friend who refused.

Record vs. record

Donatus places the death at Brundisium; late manuscripts of Servius place it at Taranto.

livingpoets.awh.durham.ac.ukWikipedia (English)
Sources
  1. livingpoets.awh.durham.ac.ukScholarship
  2. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Virgil asked for the Aeneid to be burned, and Augustus ordered it published,” story s4, https://www.celebrity.estate/virgil-19-bc, updated 30 October 2026.

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