Yes, they even believed it

“And could one assume that the Aeneid would be vouchsafed another or better influence? Oh yes, people would praise it because as yet everything he had written had been praised, because only the agreeable things would be abstracted from it, and because there was neither danger nor hope that the exhortations would be heeded (...) these up here maintained that they revered him, yes, they even believed it”

Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil