Between 42 and 39 BC, Vergil composed the first Latin pastoral collection, entitled Eclogues, and consisting of ten poems in the form in which it has come down to us. Vergil’s Eclogues represent the introduction of a new genre, the pastoral, to Latin literature, and recall the Hellenistic poet Theocritus who invented this genre. The fact that the Roman author inserts into the text elements from other Greek and Latin texts modifying them through innovations and changes (constitutes an attractive field of research. This book shows that Vergil’s dialogue with the earlier Greek and Latin tradition is not only typical of the way in which Latin literature was written in the 1st century BC; rather, it is also a dynamic literary method used to affect and define the character of each Eclogue.

A collection of ten classic essays on Vergil's Eclogues, written between 1970 and 1999. The contributions represent recent developments in Vergilian scholarship, and are placed in context in a specially written introduction.

Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 B.C.), known in English as Virgil, was perhaps the single greatest poet of the Roman empire—a friend to the emperor Augustus and the beneficiary of wealthy and powerful patrons. Most famous for his epic of the founding of Rome, the Aeneid, he wrote two other collections of poems: the Georgics and the Bucolics, or Eclogues. The Eclogues were Virgil's first published poems. Ancient sources say that he spent three years composing and revising them at about the age of thirty. Though these poems begin a sequence that continues with the Georgics and culminates in the Aeneid, they are no less elegant in style or less profound in insight than the later, more extensive works. These intricate and highly polished variations on the idea of the pastoral poem, as practiced by earlier Greek poets, mix political, social, historical, artistic, and moral commentary in musical Latin that exerted a profound influence on subsequent Western poetry. Poet Len Krisak's vibrant metric translation captures the music of Virgil's richly textured verse by employing rhyme and other sonic devices. The result is English poetry rather than translated prose. Presenting the English on facing pages with the original Latin, Virgil's Eclogues also features an introduction by scholar Gregson Davis that situates the epic in the time in which it was created.

Virgil’s Eclogues, also known as the Bucolics, is a collection of ten pastoral poems written in Latin during the first century BC. It’s among the most famous cycles of poetry in Latin literature. The Eclogues were written at a time of political and social upheaval in Rome, and they reflect Virgil’s concerns about the state of the Roman Republic under Augustus’s rule. The poems are set in an idealized, rural landscape and feature shepherds engaging in conversations about love, politics, and the natural world. The characters and themes are often allegorical, representing contemporary political figures and events in a veiled manner. The poems also draw on the pastoral tradition established by earlier Greek poets like Theocritus. The first eclogue introduces two shepherds, Tityrus and Meliboeus, who discuss the impact of recent land expropriations on their lives. Other eclogues explore themes such as unrequited love, the idyllic rural life, and the effects of political turmoil on the countryside. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.