The Eclogues of Virgil (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Virgil
- First Published: 1999
- Type of Work: Pastoral poetry
- Time of Work: Indefinite antiquity with imagery related to Augustan Italy
- Setting: Arcadia as seen through the images of post-Civil War Rome
- Genres: Poetry, Pastoral, Lyric poetry, Eclogue
- Subjects: Homosexuality or homosexuals, Love or romance, Greek or Roman times, Rome
- Locales: Rome, ancient, Arcadia, Greece
Publius Vergilius Maro, the talented young Mantuan best known to the modern world as Virgil, the poet of the Aeneid (c. 29- 19 b.c.e.), began his career by writing ten pastorals in the style of the third century Greek poet Theocritus. His achievement extended the range of the Latin language into the rarefied literary territory of his Greek predecessor even as he portrayed Augustus’s Italy as a neo-Roman Arcadia. This harmonized well with the aims of the emperor. Augustus had, after all, stabilized Rome following the chaos of the civil war and the Gracchan land reforms. Then,...
[The entire page is 2149 words long]
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