Editing Virgil (section)

=== Late antiquity ===

[[File:Vergil tomb inscription.jpg|alt=The verse inscription at Virgil's tomb.|thumb|The verse inscription at Virgil's tomb was supposedly composed by the poet himself: ''Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces.'' ("[[Mantua]] gave me life, the [[Salento|Calabrians]] took it away, [[Naples]] holds me now; I sang of pastures, farms, and commanders" [transl. [[Bernard Knox]]])]]
Even as the Western Roman Empire collapsed, literate men acknowledged that Virgil was a master poet – [[Augustine of Hippo|Saint Augustine]], for example, confessing how he had wept at reading the death of Dido.<ref>K. W. Gransden, ''Virgil: The Aeneid'' (Cambridge 1990), p. 105.</ref> The best-known surviving manuscripts of Virgil's works include manuscripts from late antiquity such as the ''[[Vergilius Augusteus]]'', the ''[[Vergilius Vaticanus]]'' and the ''[[Vergilius Romanus]]''.