How Ancient Greece Shaped Rome’s Greatest Poet, Virgil
Christopher Enolpe
April 30th, 2025
Virgil reading the Aeneid to Augustus, Octavia, and Livia. Credit: Jean-Baptiste Wicar, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
Virgil was one of Rome’s most prolific poets, and ancient Greece had a profound influence on his works.
He practically wrote the instruction manual for the Roman Empire with his Aeneid, a work foundational to the Roman psyche. Virgil was the voice of Roman grandeur, the ultimate expression of Latin literature. However, there is a detail that modern scholars and enthusiasts alike often forget. Through this work, Virgil not only aimed to glorify Rome’s origins but also to connect the city’s rise to the grandeur of ancient Greece, drawing on Homeric traditions.
If you scratch beneath that polished and impressively talented Roman surface, you hit Greek bedrock. It is hard to oppose the argument that Virgil’s incredible talent didn’t just magically appear on the Italian peninsula; it was fundamentally shaped and even nurtured by ancient Greece’s impressive lyrical and academic achievements. His work is like a conversation across centuries that bridges older generations of Greek poets with the emerging Roman power of the 1st century BC.
British Museum. Public domain
The influence of Homer and ancient Greece on Virgil
You simply can’t get your head around Virgil’s Aeneid without acknowledging that Homer must have been looking over his shoulder while he wrote it. It’s almost funny how deeply the Iliad and Odyssey are baked into Rome’s national epic. Aeneas, escaping Troy and wandering the Mediterranean towards his destiny in… Italy? That’s Odysseus’ itinerary, just rerouted slightly more to the West, compared to Ithaca’s position and, of course, a different set of divine interventions.
The second half of his epic work focuses on brutal battles and the struggles of founding a nation, on Italian soil. That’s the core element of the Iliad, plain and simple, just dressed up in Roman legionary gear and adapted for an audience probably tired of Homer’s well-known epics. Virgil wasn’t simply tracing Homer’s outlines; far from it. We do not argue that he was a copycat of Homer. Quite the opposite, he grappled with the master, taking epic Greek poetry’s sound and structure and forging something distinctly Roman. It’s this deep, foundational link between Virgil and ancient Greece that gave Rome its epic voice and made him stand out from the crowd of poets of that era.
Aeneas flees Troy with his father and son. Credit: Boyd Dwyer, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
Shepherds, farmers, and Virgil’s Greek know-how
Virgil would not be satisfied with mediocrity; how could he be, as one of Rome’s most legendary personalities? His Greek influences were not limited to epic battles and showdowns, making him a well-rounded creator. Consider his Eclogues—those poems about shepherds relaxing in picturesque landscapes, perhaps contemplating life and love. One could argue that they were unique as they resonated with the heart of the average Roman citizen.
However, there are clear correlations to the ancient Greek way of life. Some writers like Wendell Clausen even argue that he got the blueprint for that straight from Theocritus, a Greek poet from Sicily who pretty much invented the whole pastoral genre centuries before. Virgil just gave those idyllic scenes an Italian postcode and adapted them for the era of Roman dominance.
There is also the “Georgics,” Virgil’s surprisingly gripping poetic guide to farming, nature, and the good life on the land. Who was his inspiration there? You guessed it—another Greek, Hesiod, whose “Works and Days” laid out similar themes of agriculture and morality. It feels like Greece provided the essential software package for Roman poetry—from the epic operating system down to the apps for sheep-herding and olive cultivation, to use analogies from our modern world.
Portrait bust of Theocritus in profile. Credit: Anonymous, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
Virgil was a Roman with a Greek soul
So, does this make Virgil just a brilliant Roman mimic? Not at all. This is where things get interesting. Virgil’s true genius wasn’t only in mastering these Greek forms; he was transforming them. Copying is easy. Creating out of pure inspiration, however, is a completely different game.
Virgil soaked up the styles, myths, and techniques. He infused them with Rome’s specific anxieties, aspirations, and political realities—his Rome, the Rome of Augustus: the Empire emerging as the world’s greatest power.
Virgil leveraged his incredible artistic talent to connect ancient Greece and Rome, using earlier Greek creators as a launchpad, but not as a final destination. He crafted a Roman monument with Greek tools, infused with a Roman spirit. It’s a kind of cultural chemistry—taking something universally admired, powerful, and established, and making it uniquely your own, resonating with your own time and place.
Virgil remains a monumental figure of Roman literature and a fascinating artistic bridge, illustrating how Roman culture defined itself through a dynamic, sometimes argumentative dialogue with its Greek inheritance.
