So you're saying that, in your view, the greatest poets of all time were Vergil's primary influence, the two poets he most greatly influenced, and Vergil himself, and you're arguing that he's not as influential as Shakespeare? I'd argue that he's better than any of those three when just considering quality of writing, but even if you don't think as I do, that puts him in a pretty elite class.

Horace and Cicero were both great, but Vergil outclassed them both as an author, and he was held in much higher regard than either of them.

That's not what I meant by universal, but he reached the boundaries of what cultural exchange permitted at the time, just as did Shakespeare. That's not really a fair comparison to make out of context.

I won't argue your genre point, though I will point out that he did write things other than the Aeneid in different styles and that the Aeneid encompasses a variety of genres, so they're not as far off on that front as you claim.

Please can you consider votes only, NOT +1s.

The voting mechanism has changed, but that doesn't mean we should discount the votes that came before the change, no?

"So you're saying that, in your view, the greatest poets of all time were Vergil's primary influence, the two poets he most greatly influenced, and Vergil himself, and you're arguing that he's not as influential as Shakespeare?"

Yes, because Shakespeare's even MORE influential...

Look at just about anyone who came after him in English literature...at least 4/5 of them draw on Shakespeare.

Look at the Russians--Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy are arguably their most world-renowned writers (and yes, there's Gogol and Chekhov, just saying, renowned.) The first two? Heavily influenced by Shakespeare and pro-Shakespeare...the latter? Influenced by way of his hatred of the Bard.

Which is another, albeit ironic thing--Shakespeare even shapes his detractors...

People who don't like Vergil just don't care for him and move on, but disliking Shakespeare informs who you are as a writer in itself.

And while he's in an elite class, I'd definitely rank him the least of the Homer/Dante/Vergil/Milton group...the only shuffling I could possibly make there is to say he maybe could take over Milton's spot at #3, but I think Milton's had a bigger philosophical and theological impact, challenged the status quo a lot more by daring to arguably make Satan into an anti-hero and God into a character that's kind of hard to root for, and maybe exploring the philosophical Problem of Evil greater in one poem than any other single work of literature.

And while doing away with the +1s would put Shakespeare back in the lead...

Yeah, we should count them as they've already been cast. Damn. Lol.

Alas, poor Shakespeare...you deserve to move on to Round 2, but you're up against a fellow titan.

Shakespeare: 5
Vergil: 7

(Just to put it on this page)

almost all the people are titans - we tried to pick our 64 favourite authors of all time! i could name 100 titans, each of whom would not be overly disserviced by a win or a loss against another... especially as we have no voting criteria

Shakespeare.

i really cant believe so many people think vergil is better than shakespeare.

honestly i was sure shakespeare would be in the top 4 contenders for the #1 spot. "objectively" speaking he is really really hard to beat on most measures. i'm not even that big of a fan, but god damn you have to admit he was a fucking genius

thucy, you admitted to having not been overly familiar with virgil... perhaps if you were you would have a different opinion.

Obi, I think you're underestimating Vergil's influence and his poetry. I caan understand if you don't prefer him to Dante/Homer/Milton, but that's definitely an opinion and not a fact as you make it out to be. On top of that, Dante and Milton and even Shakespeare are nothing without Vergil. He may not have the same level of direct influence on modern authors as Shakespeare does, but that's due to temporal and linguistic separation, and he's the driving influence on many of their influences.

"Shakespeare: 5
Vergil: 7"
Who's vergil? Virgil was a great poet, but I've never heard of Vergil...

Publius Vergilius Maro spelled his name with an e.

lmao do we stop ourselves from changing the spellings over other foreign names?

Confucius? I mean lol

The Romans kind of used the same alphabet that we do, so that comparison's not really accurate. Fasces criticizing anybody's spelling is also just hilarious.

the same alphabet doesn't stop us from calling Cristoforo Colombo/Cristóbal Colón Christopher Columbus, my point is a common one, applying to a huge number of historical figures.

Languages do that to each other all the time. In my dream world, they never would, but history is just not on the side of that. Convention is just majority rule in languages. Virgil is how it's spelled in English, predominantly. Whatever.

Shakespeare: 6
Ve/irgil: 7

I mean, "a rose by any other name" and all that, right...

Huh...who wrote THAT one again? :p

You're totally right that that languages do that to each other, but our convention for Roman names is to chop off the ending, not change the vowel. They're both considered correct in English, and Vergil is used more than Virgil in academic settings. I just think it's a bit ridiculous for Fasces to correct it backwards when he can't even spell English words correctly half the time.

Someone +1 , so

Shakespeare: 7
Vergil: 7

(Next thread we're not doing this +1 thing at all, way too confusing, lol!)

"On top of that, Dante and Milton and even Shakespeare are nothing without Vergil."

Again, Dante and Milton I can see that for, but not Shakespeare...

Ovid and Homer were both far more important for Shakespeare in terms of material for his plots and language...

And Terrence and Plautus were more influential with regards to his early comedies ("A Comedy of Errors," which is one of if not the earliest play in the canon, is almost directly taken from a Plautus play about twins, and Shakespeare just made it about two sets of twins and infused the play with some of his worst-aged jokes.) ;)

Virgil...not nearly so much...

Aside from a reference to Dido and other obvious Aeneid references, all four of those above Greco-Roman authors had far more influence on Shakespeare than Virgil.

Fun thread:
"how many sayings do we have from shakespeare?"

How about Vergil? "Fortune favors the bold," "Love conquers all"?

I think modern influence is kind of a silly way to judge between the two -- better to look at quality of writing/storytelling. After all, JK Rowling has had more influence on culture post-2000 than Gogol. Is she a better writer?

Anyway, I vote Vergil.

For every Hamlet, there's a Troilus and Cressida, whereas all of the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid are exemplary and genre-defining. (Though I will cut the Bard some slack given his monetary pressures, something V. never had to deal with.)

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It has been posting THIS SAME TRIPE OVER AND OVER FOR YEARS.

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Shakespeare: 7
Vergil: 8

Hamlet has far more Aeneid in it than just the play within the play. Hamlet's story reflects both Aeneas's struggle and the Priam incident. There are also some Vergillian undertones in MacBeth, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempast, and I'm sure several others. Read the Aeneid again and tell me you don't see a bunch of parallels to Shakespeare.

I think the strongest Vergillian influence is in the Henriad...

But that's why it takes its name from the Iliad/Aeneid.

I'd again argue all four of my stated Greco-Roman authors had more influence on the Bard than did Vergil.

And, to take on jmeyesed's point:

"For every Hamlet, there's a Troilus and Cressida, whereas all of the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid are exemplary and genre-defining."

First of all, I don't think that's true at all, I think his good works far exceed the bad, especially taking the sonnets and longer poems into account.

And I'd argue his great works have been had a further impact based on quality rather than time (by which I mean of course Vergil has a head start in terms of having 2,000 years to 397, but take that same time...say, 400 years for each--were Vergil and his works the biggest game in town 400 years after his death? No, that'd still either be Homer or the Bible, depending on how you want to score that. By contrast, there's no question--400 years after his death, Shakespeare IS the biggest name in English literature, and a Top 5 in world literature easily.)

The Aeneid was extremely widely read through the middle ages. The Bible was bigger, but the Bible is arguably still bigger. Your statement is simply false.

Wide read, yes, but again, it wasn't the TOP game--that's my argument.

Virgil's never eclipsed Homer, and to argue otherwise is itself simply false.

By comparison, Shakespeare's eclipsed all other playwrights and writers in the English language...and that includes a TON of big names, past and present.

It was the top.

Homer is different. Shakespeare's never eclipsed Homer either. Homer is the culmination of hundreds of years of an entire civilization. Vergil's works are pieces of literature written by one man, and in terms of actual literary quality, Vergil is better.

In terms of literary quality, I'd still take Homer over Virgil.

And Shakespeare never tried to eclipse Homer--different genres. But Shakespeare eclipsed titans in the playwriting sphere, and has continued to do so even as more and bigger names hit the scene.

Virgil's not even the top writer in his own genre, that's indisputably Homer, whether or not you want that to be Homer the Man or Homer the Text (the latter probably being a better argument.)

I'd also add that courses devoted to Virgil are few and far between, whereas Shakespeare's the one author you can be sure EVERY college will devote entire classes to, and the one author just about every kid in the English-speaking world is likely to read, AND the probable representative of that language outside the English-speaking world.

And what's more, again, Shakespeare's just penetrated the popular culture in a better and more lasting way, and I think that has to count for something. Literature's not the exclusive domain of the Ivory Tower types...and whether you're a sci-fi fan watching Doctor Who or Star Trek, a casual TV viewer watching House or The West Wing or Frasier or the hundreds of other shows that reference and use the Bard's phrases and tropes, or what have you...

Shakespeare simply matters to our everyday world today in a way Virgil does not.

@Obi
Yes, but impact is highly dependent on factors besides that of the work itself. 400 years after Vergil's death the Roman Empire fell. It's not fair to make comparisons based on criteria that are totally exogenous to the literary tradition. After Shakespeare, Britain went on to conquer a quarter of the earth, and we're still living in an Anglo-American world. Of course S. would have more "influence" on that world. Maybe if we were speaking Latin it would be a different story.
My point is that judging based on influence is really more dependent on things other than the actual works. That's not to say it's unimportant, but it's not fair to punish Vergil for not living in an age of mass communication.

Yes, I was exaggerating with "For every Hamlet, there's a Troilus and Cressida." Fair play. I admit S.'s works are predominately excellent, but not all of them. There are several that are at or below average.
Genuine question: Which Shakespeare plays/works make him "the best"? That is, without Hamlet, is he still #1? How far down the list of his works do you have to go before he is no longer a contender?