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Berlioz visited Posilippo Cave and ‘Virgil’s tomb’ near Naples, and made a visit to the island of Nisida, but we do not have any evidence that he also visited the following locations, which we have included on the website because of their connection with Virgil and his Æneid, which inspired Berlioz’s Les Troyens.
Virgil’s birthplaceVirgil [Publius Vergilius Maro] was born in 70 BC in Mantua, in Lombardy, Italy.
Virgil and the ÆneidThomas Campbell, Lord Rector of Glasgow University, writes in his 1827 book, Letters to the Students of Glasgow on the Epochs of Literature (London, S. and R. Bentley, Dorset Street):
No part of Italy excepting Rome can bring more interesting associations to the lover of antiquity than Latium. Its villas were the retreats of the most illustrious Romans, and we may picture to ourselves Scipio and Lælius amusing themselves with the shells on its shores, or Cicero declaiming amidst the groves of his Tusculum. Here, too, is the Alban mountain, now Monte cavo, where all the cities of the Latin name assembled to hold their fairs and their festivals: and where the gods of Æneid, like those of Iliad on Mout Ida, survey the armies, the cities, camp, and movements of war. The neighbourhood, indeed, is the theatre of the latter half of Virgil’s poem — it has the scene where Nisus and Euryalus fell, and the woods first echoed to the horn of Alecto.
This page was created on 1st February 2017.
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