“[Virgil’s] schooling trained him in Greek and Latin. The pupil with a stylus made his letters on a wax tablet which could then be smoothed. He listened to the teacher’s lesson and read or recited his exercises aloud. He wore the Roman tunica, a sleeved shirt reaching the knees, and after his fifteenth year the Roman toga, a white woolen full-length robe, passed over the left shoulder, brought from behind under the right arm, and then thrown again over the left shoulder. . . .

Tall and dark-haired, with a dark complexion, Virgil retained in Rome a shy and countryfied air. He had a fine reading voice. He was not robust.”

—Robert Fitzgerald, postscript from his translation of Virgil’s The Aeneid, 1983.