The Tomb of Virgil between Text, Memory, and Site

This chapter explores the earliest traditions clustering around Virgil’s tomb. Its geographical location on the Via Puteolana, identified in the ancient lives, activates not only literary memories of the Aeneid (the landscape of Aeneas’ landfall and descent into the underworld), but also memories associated with the landscape itself in other sources. The chapter also investigates how the physical space of the tomb functioned as an early site of poetic succession: the land was acquired by the poet Silius Italicus, whose veneration of the tomb and claim to Virgil’s literary inheritance is taken up by Martial and Pliny the Younger. These accounts and traditions are examined within the context of the ancient topos of the neglected and rediscovered grave.