Reading After Actium: Vergil's Georgics, Octavian, and RomeReading after Actium is a study of Vergil's Georgics, a didactic poem ostensibly about farming but in fact a brilliant exercise challenging readers to develop a broader perspective on the basic problems and the dangers of human life. Octavian is treated as one of the poet's students and given the opportunity to learn lessons in handling power, in controlling Rome's vast resources, and in preventing the bloody cycle of civil war from beginning again. Most of all the Georgics asks Octavian to consider what is involved in assuming godlike power over his fellow citizens. Reading after Actium provides an introduction to the history of scholarship surrounding the Georgics and the political questions surrounding Octavian and his career. Nappa gives a book by book analysis of the entire poem, and a conclusion that draws together the themes of the whole. Reading after Actium will appeal to students and critics of Vergil and other Augustan Literature as well as those of didactic poetry and its traditions. Students of Roman history and politics should read this as well. Christopher Nappa is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Minnesota. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 33
... divine context . We need not like it — as Vergil's farmers or his readers — but we are constantly asked to consider its place in a divine plan that comprehends both space and time . After returning to another of his familiar themes ...
... divine mind and drafts of aether . For , they say , God moves throughout all - all lands and tracts of sea and the fathomless sky . They say that flocks and herds and men and every kind of beast at birth all take from this source their ...
... divine mother for help in his misfortune , but , unlike the father of Achilles , Aristaeus ' father is also a god.62 He has been led to expect that he too will be enrolled among the gods , but at the moment he is inclined to doubt his ...