Why was the request of the poet Virgil to destroy the manuscript of his poem Aeneid denied?”
In 31 B.C.E. Octavian won the Battle of Actium against his former ally Mark Anthony, who had a liaison with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, and by 29 the way to power was open to him. In 27 BC he was given the title of Augustus (‘venerable’). He pressed his poet to write of the glory of Rome under his rule. “I found Rome brick and I left it marble,” he said according to Suetonius. Thus the rest of his life, from 30 to 19 B.C., Virgil devoted to The Aeneid, the national epic of Rome, and the glory of the Empire. Although ambitious, Virgil was never really happy about the task. Moreover, he was a perfectionist, who knew the importance of his work, and did not want to hurry with his lines. In 23 Virgil read the second and the fourth books to Augustus personally – the emperor had complained a few years earlier that he had not seen any of the text. When Augustus was returning from Samos after the winter of 20, he met the poet in Athens. Virgil accompanied the emperor to Megara and then to Ita
