WILL THE REAL VERGIL PLEASE STAND UP? Making sense of the life of a poet about whom we know so little.

The author reflects on typical victim of Vergil's "Aeneid" and literary inspiration for this story might be the dismemberment of Pentheus at the hands of feral women in Euripides's "Bacchae." It mentions doubt with the help of powerful imperial patronage a most un-Roman respect for his privacy. It also mentions Roman nation through the providential survival and triumph of the refugee Aeneas.