Virgil's Georgics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet's celebration of agriculture and rural life composed in 29BC after a civil war, when questions of land ownership were contested.
In the year 29 BC the great Roman poet Virgil published these lines:
Blessed is he who has succeeded in learning the laws of nature鈥檚 working, has cast beneath his feet all fear and fate鈥檚 implacable decree, and the howl of insatiable Death. But happy too is he who knows the rural gods鈥�
They鈥檙e from his poem the Georgics, a detailed account of farming life in the Italy of the time. 鈥楪eorgics鈥� means 鈥榓gricultural things鈥�, and it鈥檚 often been read as a farming manual. But it was written at a moment when the Roman world was emerging from a period of civil war, and questions of land ownership and management were heavily contested. It鈥檚 also a philosophical reflection on humanity鈥檚 relationship with the natural world, the ravages of time, and the politics of 痴颈谤驳颈濒鈥檚 day.
It鈥檚 exerted a profound influence on European writing about agriculture and rural life, and has much to offer environmental thinking today.
With
Katharine Earnshaw
Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter;
Neville Morley
Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter
and
Diana Spencer
Professor of Classics at the University of Birmingham
Producer: Luke Mulhall
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Links and further reading
CONTRIBUTORS
at the University of Exeter
at the University of Exeter
at the University of Birmingham
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READING LIST
Paul Erdkamp, Koenraad Verboven and Arjan Zuiderhoek (eds.), Ownership and Exploitation of Land and Natural Resources in the Roman World (Oxford University Press, 2015), especially 'The nature of the villa economy' by Alessandro Launaro
P. Hardie, Virgil: Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics (Oxford University Press, 1998)听
S.J.Harrison, 鈥榁ergil and the Mausoleum Augusti: Georgics 3.12-18鈥� (Acta Classica 48, 2005)
Leah Kronenberg, Allegories of Farming from Greece and Rome: Philosophical Satire in Xenophon, Varro and Virgil (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
David Mebans, 鈥楾emple Buiding, Primus Language, and the Proem to Vergil鈥檚 Third Georgic鈥� (Classical Philology 103, 2008)听
Grant A. Nelsestuen, Varro the Agronomist: Political Philosophy, Satire and Agriculture in the Late Republic (Ohio State University Press, 2015)
Saskia T. Roselaar, Italy's Economic Revolution: Integration and Economy in Republican Italy (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Philip Thibodeau, Playing the Farmer: Representations of Rural Life in Vergil's Georgics (University of California Press, 2011)
Jethro Tull, Horse-Hoeing Husbandry: or, An Essay On The Principles of Vegetation and Tillage. Designed To Introduce A New Method of Culture, Whereby The Produce of The Land Be Increased (Gale ECCO, Print Editions, 2010)
Virgil (trans. John Dryden), The works of Virgil containing his Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis (3 volumes, Nabu Press or Wentworth Press, 2012-19)
Virgil (trans. Peter Fallon), The Georgics (Oxford University Press, 2009)]
Virgil (trans. Janet Lembke), Virgil鈥榮 Georgics: A New Verse Translation (Yale University Press, 2007)
Leendert Weeda, Vergil麓s Political Commentary in the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid (De Gruyter Open Poland, 2015)
Bobby Xinyue and Nicholas Freer (eds.), Reflections and New Perspectives on Virgil's Georgics (Bloomsbury, 2019)
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