Excerpt from Publication of Yale University, Vol. 46: Studies in Cervantes Persiles Y Sigismunda III Tion.1 And when Christianity began to spread through the Empire, it was natural that Virgil's prestige as a poet and sage should be readily accepted and transmitted by the teachers of the new religion, who had been educated in Latin schools. They even went farther. In their eagerness to turn an authority among the ancients into a luminary that would serve the Church, theologians interpreted the poet as a semi-christian prophet, and pronounced his fourth eclogue an inspired prediction of the coming of Christ. Finally, with his prestige as a poet, sage and prophet so great among the learned, it was inevitable that a Virgil of a different type should grow inde pendently among the masses who were not in touch with the little learning of the darker Middle Ages. This was the Virgil of folk lore, a man of superhuman powers, an enchanter and magician, whose mythical history has been treated in a masterly fashion by Comparetti2 and touches the subject in hand but little. The present article will therefore be devoted only to the Virgil of literature, whose influence as a romancer concerns us most. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.