500 Lire Death of Virgil

Issued to mark the bimillennium of Virgil's death in 19 BC, this coin belongs to a run of Italian commemoratives that the Zecca produced throughout the late 1970s and 1980s with varying levels of public interest. Virgil died at Brindisi returning from Greece, reportedly having requested that the unfinished Aeneid be destroyed — a wish Augustus personally overrode by ordering its publication.