Georgics: Books 1-2. Vol.1

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Jul 29, 1988 - History - 288 pages
This volume and its companion volume devoted to the second half of the poem provide a detailed commentary, with text, on the whole of Virgil's Georgics. Professor Thomas describes this work as 'perhaps the most difficult, certainly the most controversial, poem in Roman literature'. He presents the Georgics as the finished poem of Virgil's mature years, approaching it not merely as a part of the tradition of didactic poetry, but rather as a work which confronts, behind its generic appearance, issues not essentially different from those which inform the Eclogues and Aeneid. His introduction and Commentary argue that Virgil's agricultural world, with its successes, failures and ultimate limitations, represents the arena for man's struggle with the realities of existence. Professor Thomas pays particular attention to Virgil's allusion to and reshaping of prior Greek and Latin poetry. The Introduction also covers stylistic, metrical and structural questions. A subject index and indexes of important Greek and Latin words conclude each volume. This edition is aimed primarily at students at university and in the upper forms of schools, but the range of its scholarship means that it will be valuable to all classical scholars. The Introduction contains material for non-classicists interested in Latin literature.

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction
1
Generic affiliations
3
The models for the Georgics
4
Structure
12
The Laudes Galli
13
The poem
16
Style and language
24
Metre
28
The text
32
P VERGILI MARONIS GEORGICON III
37
Commentary
68
Bibliography
265
Indexes
271
2 Latin words
275
3 Greek words
276
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