Virgil and the Homeless Nations

Virgil died on Sept. 21, 19 B.C.E., which I took to mean, for one misguided minute, that on Sept. 21st of our own year, 2019 C.E., we were going to mark the 2,000th anniversary of the event. But, because B.C.E. is not the same as C.E., and indeed stands in inverse relation to it, the actual correlation between the moment of Virgil's death and our own moment turns out to be a little different. It is a matter of positive and negative numbers, which can be stated with stark simplicity as a configuration of the number 1,019. Thus, with X signifying the year 1000 C.E., or the concluding year of the first millennium.