Chronology
Every drafted work, year by year, alongside the events of Virgil's life. Runs of consecutive letters are folded into groups so you can skim past them or expand to read.
39 BC
Age ~31. Amid the land confiscations that followed Philippi (42) — which reportedly cost his own family's farm — Virgil writes the ten pastoral Eclogues and enters the circle of Maecenas and the young Octavian.
poem The Eclogues 39 BC29 BC
Age ~41. With Octavian victorious at Actium (31) and the civil wars ending, Virgil completes the Georgics, a four-book poem on farming that is really about Italy, labor, loss, and order restored.
poem The Georgics 29 BC19 BC
Age ~51, the year of his death. After a decade on the Aeneid — Rome's national epic, binding Augustus's new order back to Troy — Virgil dies at Brundisium asking that the unfinished poem be burned. Augustus overrides him and has it published.
poem The Aeneid 19 BC