When this immortal work was completed, Virgil resolved on retiring into
Greece and Asia for three years, that he might devote himself entirely to
polishing it, and have leisure afterwards to pass the remainder of his
life in the cultivation of philosophy. But meeting at Athens with
Augustus, who was on his return from the East, he determined on
accompanying the emperor back to Rome. Upon a visit to Megara, a town in
the neighbourhood of Athens, he was seized with a languor, which
increased during the ensuing voyage; and he expired a few days after
landing at Brundisium, on the 22nd of September, in the fifty-second year
of his age. He desired that his body might be carried to Naples, where
he had passed many happy years; and that the following distich, written
in his last sickness, should be inscribed upon his tomb:

Mantua me genuit: Calabri rapuere: tenet nunc
Parthenope: cecini pascua, rura, duces. [274]

He was accordingly interred, by the order of Augustus, with great funeral
pomp, within two miles of Naples, near the road to Puteoli, where his
tomb still exists. Of his estate, which was very considerable by the
liberality of his friends, he left the greater part to Valerius Proculus
and his brother, a fourth to Augustus, a twelfth to Mecaenas, besides
legacies to L. Varius and Plotius Tucca, who, in consequence of his own
request, and the command of Augustus, revised and corrected the Aeneid
after his death. Their instructions from the emperor were, to expunge
whatever they thought improper, but upon no account to make any addition.
This restriction is supposed to be the cause that many lines in the
Aeneid are imperfect.

Virgil was of large stature, had a dark complexion, and his (172)