In 1546, virtually at the mid-point of the sixteenth century in europe, françois rabelais published his Tiers Livre, or Third Book, in which he depicts the foolish and willful character Panurge seeking advice as to whether he should marry. after an initial discussion with his friends regarding several fine points of conjugal life and a momentary flirtation with dicing, Panurge, on the advice of the giant Pantagruel, sets out on a series of consultations that will eventually bring him into contact with a whole series of authorities, from philosophers and judges to witches and poets. Yet his first move is to seek advice from the writings of a long-dead author. that author is virgil. Panurge starts his quest by engaging in the time-honored practice of the sortes virgilianae, the technique of opening virgil's works at random as a way of gaining guidance – something like the renaissance version of the fortune cookie. and, to be sure, each passage he draws, from the Eclogues and the Aeneid, has an obvious resonance with his situation. Unfortunately, he is too perplexed to interpret them in any way that would lead him to decisive action – and so his search continues.

It is not by accident that the greatest fiction writer of the French Renaissance should place virgil at the beginning of a great quest for identity and certainty. for the latin Middle ages virgil was, of course, the great poet of empire.