ODD TRUTHS: THE MAGICAL AFTERLIFE OF VIRGIL

Virgil is considered to be one of the outstanding poets of the Western literary canon. His works (The Aeneid, The Eclogues and The Georgics) revolutionised Roman literature and demonstrated his intimate knowledge of religion, philosophy, and history; leading contemporaries such as Propertius and Quintilian to suggest that he was even greater than Homer. After his death, Virgil’s celebrity was magnified by a number of stories which cast him as a supernatural figure. Each one reads like a comic-book spinoff; pitting the valiant poet against new villains.

In the Gesta Romanorum, compiled in the thirteenth century, Virgil appears as the inventor of an omniscient statue that reports civic misdeeds to the emperor. In The Divine Comedy, Virgil serves as a psychopomp, leading Dante through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. The poet attains true superhero status in The Life of Virgil, which chronicles all of his fabled exploits. The romance has some resemblance to the The Arabian Nights, and includes outlandish accounts of Virgil’s liaisons with a Sultan’s daughter and his founding of a school of magic in Naples.

As the Neapolitan “Prospero”, Virgil also has an association with Castel dell’Ovo. Legend has it the Roman poet-sorcerer once defended the castle with an enchanted egg. In perhaps a stranger story, Virgil’s tomb in Naples becomes the destination for an archaeological expedition. After obtaining a royal warrant from the King of Sicily, an English “master” of the liberal arts excavates Virgil’s tomb and finds the poet’s bones, along with a book of incantations. The following passage (translated by Sylvia Lettice Thrupp) is from the Otia Imperialia, a book written by the courtier Gervais of Tilbury for Emperor Otto IV in the early thirteenth century:

“After the dust and bones had been removed, the book was taken by the master. Then, however, the people of Naples remembered the particular affection that Vergil had for their city and feared lest it should be exposed to harm if the bones were taken away. They decided, therefore, to disregard the king’s mandate rather than by obedience to be the cause of the destruction of the town. Vergil, it was thought, had himself placed the tomb in the bowels o the mountain, opining that the removal of his bones would bring his artifices to naught. The master of the knights, therefore with a crowd of citizens, gathered the bones together again and, pacing them in a leather bag, took them to a castle surrounded by the sea on the borders of the city, where they are shown through an iron grille to those wishing to see them.”

While the people rejoice in the rediscovery of their culture-hero, the English master disappears with the book, never to be seen again. Though Virgil’s spellbook was reportedly lost to history, his supposed tomb is open to the public. For centuries pilgrims have travelled to the eastern entrance of the Crypta Neapolitana, hoping to get a glimpse of the poet’s final resting place. Although the tunnel system dates to the 1st century BC, the site has been a part of the Parco Vergiliano a Piedigrotta since 1930.

Virgil died on the other side of the Italian peninsula in Brindisi in 19 BC so the only reasons one might believe he was actually buried in the underground tunnels would have to be his folkloric history with Naples, as well as his spiritual connection to the siren Parthenope, Naples’ patroness. An epitaph which was once widely attributed to Virgil reads:

“Mantua gave birth to me, the Calabrians snatched me away, Parthenope now holds me; I sang of pastures, plowlands, and leaders.”

Aesthetically, Posillipo seems like the ideal place for Virgil to conclude both his lifetime as a poet of nature and his afterlife as a semi-divine magus. Across the aquamarine Bay of Naples, Mount Vesuvius looms like an earthbound Titan, watching over what was once part of Magna Graecia. Coincidentally, or perhaps fatefully, the crypt stretches underneath the Phlegraean Fields, a volcanic area nearby Lake Avernus, where Virgil’s character Aeneas descended into the underworld.

Further Reading

The Virgilian tradition: the first fifteen hundred years

Yale University Press

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