Clarendon Paperbacks
2 total works
The Georgics is a poem in four books, likely published in 29 BC. It is the second major work by the Latin poet Virgil, following his Eclogues and preceding the Aeneid. It is a poem that draws on many prior sources and influenced many later authors from antiquity to the present. As the name suggests the subject of the poem is agriculture; but far from being an example of peaceful rural poetry, it is a work characterized by tensions in both theme and purpose.
Surprising though it may seem, this is the first full-scale scholarly commentary in English on Virgil's Eclogues. Written between about 42 and 35 BC, these ten short pastorals are among the best known poems in Latin literature. They have inspired numerous poets - Sidney, Ronsard, and others - and at the same time have held enduring fascination among scholars for their sophistaicated and allusive blend of Theocritean idyll and contemporary Roman history.
Professor Clausen's commentary will provide a comprehensive guide to the poems and the considerable scholarship surrounding them, and should be indispensable to all serious students of Virgil's poetry. Special attention is paid throughout the commentary to the important question of Virgil's use of Theocritus and other Hellenistic poets, with translations provided of all Greek passages. There are many new and illuminating observations on Virgil's poetic style and vocabulary, often with
reference to his Latin predecessors: Lucretius, Catullus and (virtually unnoticed by previous scholars) Plautus. A third feature of the commentary is a new examination of the plants and trees in the poems - both their exact identification and their significance. There are helpful introductions to each poem,
as well as a comprehensive general introduction to the Eclogues as a whole, in which Professor Clausen discusses the nature of ancient pastoral poetry, the structure of the Eclogues, and the composition of a pastoral landscape by Virgil and Theocritus.
Professor Clausen's commentary will provide a comprehensive guide to the poems and the considerable scholarship surrounding them, and should be indispensable to all serious students of Virgil's poetry. Special attention is paid throughout the commentary to the important question of Virgil's use of Theocritus and other Hellenistic poets, with translations provided of all Greek passages. There are many new and illuminating observations on Virgil's poetic style and vocabulary, often with
reference to his Latin predecessors: Lucretius, Catullus and (virtually unnoticed by previous scholars) Plautus. A third feature of the commentary is a new examination of the plants and trees in the poems - both their exact identification and their significance. There are helpful introductions to each poem,
as well as a comprehensive general introduction to the Eclogues as a whole, in which Professor Clausen discusses the nature of ancient pastoral poetry, the structure of the Eclogues, and the composition of a pastoral landscape by Virgil and Theocritus.