WorkPublius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)
Aeneid (Aeneis), Book IV, lines 175-177 (c. 29-19 BCE)
Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil) (70 BCE–19 BCE) · c. 29–19 BCE
AnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Documented 1820–1850
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Letters • Books • Manuscripts
Selected engagements, in chronological order.
Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this work is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →
Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had this work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“vires acquirit eundo / parva metu prima; mox sese attollit in auras, / et caput inter nubilia condit.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Groton 6th March 1835
A substantial three-line Latin verse passage quoted verbatim from the Aeneid, beyond a mere short phrase.
“I am half through the fifth book of Virgil In my last lesson I got the whole of the fourth book and Uncle Elisha said I got it extremely well”
Inferred Hudspeth identified Book 5 depicts Aeneas driven to Sicily, where he institutes funeral games for Anchises.
“I have got through Virgil and I shall go into Cicero as soon as I go to school.”
Inferred This culminates the Aeneid study documented in her previous letters, as Hudspeth identified.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“This fancy was attributed at the time to my incessant reading of Virgil.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Fragmentary Reading Notes and Autobiographical Reflections." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Inferred Fuller mentions 'my incessant reading of Virgil' in her autobiographical childhood recollection; no specific work named. Fuller recalls in her autobiographical reflections that her childhood dreams of blood and violence were attributed to her 'incessant reading of Virgil'.
Fuller recalls in her autobiographical reflections that her childhood dreams of blood and violence were attributed to her 'incessant reading of Virgil'.
“their puzzles about Vergil's notions of heaven and virtue, and his gracefully-described gods and goddesses, have led me to alter my opinions”
Fuller, Margaret. "To [?], ca. February 1835." In The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817–1838, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth, 218–219. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller reflects that her pupils' engagement with Virgil's "notions of heaven and virtue" and his "gracefully-described gods and goddesses" has led her to reconsider whether classical education is as religiously neutral as she previously thought. No specific work is named, though the references suggest primarily the Aeneid.
“I have still a great partiality for the goddess who vires acquirit eundo parva metu prima; mox sese attollit in auras, et caput inter nubilia condit.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“The Latin poet, though used to a court, has faintly described what I saw and heard often, in going the length of a street.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Inferred Fuller alludes to "the Latin poet" in describing wild rumor and lamentation during the Dorr Rebellion in Providence. Hudspeth identified this as Virgil's Aeneid, Book 4, specifically the passage describing rumor spreading after Dido's suicide.
Hudspeth identified this as Virgil's Aeneid, Book 4, specifically the passage describing rumor spreading after Dido's suicide.
“floating on the cloud a starry banner with the inscription "Afflatur Numine.”
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.
Inferred Banner inscription 'Afflatur Numine' adapts Aeneid VI.50: 'adflata est numine quando iam propiore dei' (she was breathed upon by the divinity with the god now nearer). Fuller adapts 'adflata est numine' (Aeneid VI.50, describing the Cumaean Sibyl) into the active present form 'Afflatur Numine' ('is breathed upon by the divine').
“Procul, O procul este profani.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p343
Inferred The Latin tag for this quoted passage, "Procul, O procul este profani" ("Far, O far be ye profane!"), is an ecphrastic quotation from Virgil's Aeneid, Book VI, line 258.
“yearned to embrace her also, and ached when the shade refused to fill his longing arms.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Inferred Fuller's phrase "the shade refused to fill his longing arms" alludes to one of the most celebrated passages in Virgil's Aeneid: the three failed embraces of a shade.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“Non ignara mali”
Fuller, Margaret. "On Pain." Boston Public Library Archives & Special Collections; MS Am. 1450; Box: 2, Folder: 93.
Inferred The underscored dash and Latin phrasing signal a conscious quotation; both author and title inferred from the Latin fingerprint.
“Possunt quia posse videntur”
Fuller, Margaret. "A Theme on Will and Destiny." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“I was from childhood up in the singular habit of always learning by heart the beginning of the books or other divisions of a book by heart, as first of the five books of Moses, then of the Aeneid o& Metamorphoses.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Plan for a Life of Goethe." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“as she had just read in her Virgil, of being among trees that dripped with blood, where she walked and walked and could not get out”
Inferred Margaret Fuller's writings evoke a dreamscape reminiscent of Virgil's Aeneid, specifically recalling the passage where Aeneas encounters the bloody myrtle trees of Polydorus in Book III.
“their puzzles about Virgil's notions of heaven and virtue, and his gracefully-described gods and goddesses, have led me to alter my opinions”
Inferred Her reflections suggest that her classical education, likely encompassing the Aeneid and the Eclogues/Georgics, profoundly shaped her understanding of these philosophical and theological themes and contributed to her own early intellectual development.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“drowning in the deep places of Virgil”
Fuller, Richard Frederick. Recollections of Richard F. Fuller. Boston: privately printed, 1936.
Inferred The specific work is not named, but the Aeneid is the standard schoolroom Virgil text of the period.