“I give Ambracis her liberty, and assign to her, as a marriage portion, 500 drachmæ or five mines and a slave.
“I bequeath to Thala, besides the bought slave she has, a young female slave and 1000 drachmæ.
“As regards Simo, besides the money already given him to buy another slave, let one more be bought for him or let him have the value in money.
“Tacho is to have his freedom when my daughter marries. Philo, and Olympias with his son, shall also be made free at the same period. The children of my slaves shall pass into the service of my heirs, and, when they become adults, they shall be freed if they have deserved it.
“Let the statues I have ordered be finished and placed as I have instructed Gryllo, viz. those of Nicanor, Proxenes, and the mother of Nicanor; also that of Arimnestes to serve as a monument for him as he left no children.
“Also let the Ceres, belonging to my mother, be placed in the Nemea. Let the bones of my wife, Pythias, be placed in my tomb, even as she desired. I further wish the four stone animals, promised by me as votive offerings for the preservation of Nicanor, to be placed at Stagyra to Jupiter and Minerva. They are to be four cubits high.”
Will of Virgil
(10 B.C.)
A singular trait in the character of this great poet was that which appeared by the clause in his will which ordered the Æneid to be burnt: “Ut rem emendatam imperfectamque.” Tucca and Varus, however, his executors and friends, and, we may add also, the friends of literature and of the civilized world, assured him Augustus would never consent to this barbarous behest. On this he bequeathed to them his Mss., but on the express condition that if he should die before he had time to revise and finish them, and they should think proper to publish them, they should change nothing and should leave the imperfect and incomplete verses just as they were.
He ordered his body to be “carried to Naples, and there interred near the road to Puzzuoli, by the second milestone.” The epitaph which was engraved on it was written by himself:
Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc
Parthenope: cecini pascua, rura, duces.