“Yes, they are. Cicero was murdered, and I feel inclined to follow the example of Cato, who died in order to escape sin. I sink, Flaccus, in lies and hypocrisy. But I will not sink ... I will mount. I have praised Augustus and his son Marcellus in my verses, but I believe no more in them, for they are not the future. Therefore the Aeneid shall be burnt!”
“You disquiet me, Maro. But what do you believe in?”
“I believe in the Sibyl, who has prophesied that the Iron Age will end, and the Golden Age return.”
“You have sung of that in the Fourth Eclogue, I remember.... Have you fever?”
“I believe I have. Do you remember—no! our fathers remember when the Capitol was burnt, and the Sibylline books destroyed. But now new books have come from Alexandria, and in them they have read that a new era will begin; that Rome will be destroyed but built up again, and that a Golden Age....”
Here the seer was silent. Then he continued: “Pardon me, Flaccus, but I am poorly, and must ride home before the mists rise from the Campagna.”
“Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume! Labuntur anni! I will follow you, friend, on my ass, for you are sick. But ‘the man of righteous heart and rock-like purpose will not be shaken nor terrified by the blind zeal of the citizens commanding evil, nor the glance of the threatening tyrant.... If the walls of the world fall in, they will bury him unterrified beneath their ruin.’”
Some days later Virgil died in Naples. His will was opened, and actually found to contain a request that his Aeneid should be burnt. But it was not carried out. Posterity has passed various judgments on this ignoring of a dead man’s wish—some think it was a pity; others that it was a good thing.
When Christianity arrived, Virgil was enrolled among the prophets. The Aeneid was regarded as a Sibylline book and included in the liturgy. Pilgrimages were made to the poet’s tomb. And later on he was raised to the rank of a saint by Dante.