Virgil

These stamps page showing ancient scenes are related in some way to Publius Vergilius Maro, better known as Virgil. He was from Ancient Rome, from what is now Mantua, Italy. He lived from 70 to 19 b.c.e. and was a famous writer, a poet of his time – and still famous, although I’ve never read anything he wrote. One of his best works, written in Latin, was the Aeneid. It’s an epic poem about the legendary Aeneas, a Trojan who left Troy when it fell and went to Rome. He was the ancestor of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome.

There are a few standard postage stamps, but there are also a couple of semi-postal stamps and some air mail stamps, two of which are semi-post air mail stamps. All of these stamps depict scenes from the Aenid. The semi-postal and semi-postal air mail stamps cost more than the normal price to raise funds for the restoration of Virgil monuments around the country – which was a big thing the Fascists like to do, restore and herald key places and figures of the old empire. This also seemed to have been a common thing for the Italian post office, to raise money for something or other.

These stamps are like the ones in the main album for the Kingdom of Italy (i.e., Virgil), but are overprinted with the words, Isole Italiane dell’Egeo – which is Italian for the Italian Aegean Islands.

Note

This page is complete with all mint stamps. It includes the regular commemoratives celebrating Virgil, as well as four air mail stamps from the same series. In my U.S. collection, air mail stamps are on separate pages and at the back of the album. That’s an old style of organizing a stamp collection. It follows the Scott catalog which is organized the same way.

Placing parcel post, postage due and other such stamps in the back, in a separate section makes sense. But I think for commemorative air mail stamps, they belong together with the rest of their series as you see here.

Contains 13 spots: own 13 – 13 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed Jan 22, 2024

Stamp Details

The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.

spot

own

catalog

subject

description

comment

Virgil

1.1	✓	21	Helenus greets Aeneas	15c (dec 1930) comm., violet black
1.2	✓	22	Aeneas’ Mandate to Govern	20c (dec 1930) comm., red brown
1.3	✓	23	Aeneas Lands on Tiber	25c (dec 1930) comm., green
2.1	✓	24	Greetings to Italia	30c (dec 1930) comm., dark brown
2.2	✓	25	The Wealth of Farmers	50c (dec 1930) comm., violet
2.3	✓	26	The Family	75c (dec 1930) comm., carmine
3.1	✓	27	Anchises approaches Italy	1.25₤ (dec 1930) comm., green blue
3.2	✓	28	Pastoral Life	5+1.50₤ (dec 1930) semi-postal, dark lilac
3.3	✓	29	Turn Encourages Men	10+2.50₤ (dec 1930) semi-postal, brown

Virgil - Air Mail

4.1	✓	A4	Jupiter, Eagle, Road Consular	50c (dec 1930) air mail, green
4.2	✓	A5	Jupiter, Eagle, Road Consular	1₤ (dec 1930) air mail, carmine
5.1	✓	A6	Jupiter, Eagle, Road Consular	7.70+1.30₤ (dec 1930) semi-postal, dark brown
5.2	✓	A7	Jupiter, Eagle, Road Consular	9+2₤ (dec 1930) semi-postal, blue black

Footnotes

Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.