The Eclogues and Georgics are poems which concern the rising of a new age; while these have constantly been interpreted as Jesus Christ, it is more telling of a Roman Golden Age. The prose demonstrates why Virgil was considered a Wizard, weaving delicately from line to line. Subtle changes in pace and rhythm reflect the reader's eyes grazing the page, sometimes furiously consuming the text, sometimes slowly digesting the work. A must read.

La litérature Romaine est probablement à l'origine des genres de la fiction romantique et de la 'high fantasy'. Malgré quelques scènes morbide, et le sujet de l'expulsion et de la pèrte dans certains de ses poèmes, Virgile laisse un sentiment de légèreté et libérté, peu présent dans literature du Siècle des Lumières - certainement quand la vie était dûre on n'écrivait que ce qui valait être écrit...

The Eclogues and The Georgics are Virgil's pre-Aeneid poetry. Let's take a moment to note that until today - when I was finally paying attention - I thought they were called The Ecologues and the Georgeics. (Shakes head in despair.)

The Eclogues are ten poems building on the bucolic template of Theocritus' Idylls. They're not as funny as Theocritus' work, but I think that is because - and here I'm disagreeing with Lyne is his introduction - Virgil has a more didactic reason for writing these poems. They're partly his response to the end of the Civil Wars. The victor, Augustus, has to reward his soldiers and he's giving them land by confiscating it from the existing tenants. Part of Virgil's intent is to speak on behalf of those people, but because he's not an idiot he chooses to do so ambiguously. Virgil is smart enough not to burn bridges. They're translated - in 1964 and updated in 1984 - by Cecil Day Lewis. He makes the decision to give us tunes for the songs of the duelling shepherds, which he's picked from traditional Scottish/British folk songs. I tried to get it to work, using Eclogue V (which Day Lewis says is to the tune of 'The Lark in the Clear Air'. I have a wonderful version of that by Cara Dillon. I couldn't quite get it to work, but I'm not a musician.

The Eclogues are fine. There are moments of real beauty. One part of Eclogue V reminded me of W H Auden's 'Stop All the Clocks':

"'Cruel stars and gods!' his mother cried,
clasping the poor corpse close in her arms.
No one drove his oxen to the stream,
no beast ate or drank at all from sadness:
Even Afric lions roated their grief,
forest and hill keened Daphnis dead."

The Georgics are four longer poems that are effectively poetic lectures on making a living in the countryside. Interestingly none of these poems talk much about slaves. The implication is that the reader Virgil is addressing will be doing the work themselves.

Georgic I covers - basically - arable farming, star lore and the seasons. Georgic II is trees, vines and olives. Georgic III is sheep, goats, cattle, horses and ends with a delightful section of pests and pestilence. Georgic IV is bees. I think my favourite was Georgic IV. I heard someone else refer to it as twenty pages of boring poetry about bees. But I really liked it.

I'll confess that there are patches of dullness here and I suspect anyone following Virgil's instructions would end up with a lot of dead animals and crops but again I think Virgil is using these poems as a moral guide: that the Gods reward hard work and that combining that with peace and stability one can have a good life in the country. The country perhaps standing not just for the soil but for Rome itself? This is sometimes more obvious than at other points. He does also take time - when talking about pests and pestilence - to point out that one can live a good life but still be hit by disasters. But you deal with those and move on. I'm not sure how much of a Stoic Virgil was but you get that outlook does seem to be here. Also bits of Georgic II sound like they could have come from the milder sections of Juvenal's Satire III.

The Georgics in this book are based on Cecil Day Lewis' 1940 translation, which I found weirdly inconsistent. Overly poetic here, clunking contemporary reference there. He refers to a part of north west Scythia as Ukraine at one point and then uses the Roman name for the region later on. He randomly drops in a couple of short French phrases at one point. I found myself doing something I never, ever do normally. I referred to another translation I have, also by Oxford World Classics, this one the 2004 translation by Peter Fallon. I even myself referring to the original Latin and trying to work out what was being said myself, which was something of a struggle as I failed Latin A-Level over 30 years ago. But it was worth it. I felt I made a real effort to understand Virgil's own words and not just rely on the translator for once.

Day Lewis in his introduction says, "...while there is seldom any insuperable difficulty discovering what Virgil meant, it is all by impossible to convey how he said it." I might argue that both seem quite difficult. There's an ambiguity about Virgil's work that hides some of the more political/satirical notes behind a respectable screen of bucolic/rural good sense.

I'm going to read Peter Fallon's translation of the Georgics now. Let's see if what Virgil meant and said are possible to convey.

3,5-4/5 -> (Unsicher)

Beautiful reading and a reference in literature.

i loved the beginning with the gay shepherd and the end with orpheus. the were same plants and bees in the middle. what am i even saying, i gave this 4-stars? well that's 'cause both virgil and day lewis are brilliant poets.

Virgil was a good writer. I wish I could say that this was interesting, or edifying, or entertaining. My rating is low, but less because of Virgil's product and more because I wasn't able to use it well. Give it a try! Perhaps you will appreciate it more than I did.

3,5 ⭐ Bucólicas: 3, Geórgicas: 4

This wasn't the edition I read; mine was in Latin. I had to translate the Eclogues into English for a course. Maybe they would have been better had the class not met at 8 a.m.

2020-02-15 Read David Slavitt’s “commentary/translations,” essentially positing that Virgil was the 1st century B.C. answer to Woody Allen

After reading some of the reviews I'm convinced that I don't have a literate opinion. This reading was a second time for me. The first I read was a different translation back in the 1980's and I had trouble seeing the words on the pages. The same thing happened again with this edition. I have reading glasses, but the sentences kept fading on the page. This phenomena has never happened with any other book and I've read 1,000 books to date. I can only say that the title is haunted and some god or goddess who does not want me to read it cursed the title for me. I did it anyway. It was beautiful. Pagan and decadent I found words of wise and uninhibited lust in the Eclogues and true husbandry in Georgics. As a layman of Latin I found the names at times unrecognizable but the translation I read was readable. I'll chalk my vision problem up to the words being so bright and the source of intense condensed thought from the origins of the Western Civilization. You can't see the sun without a devise that prohibits being blinded by it. Overall getting a glimpse of Roman bucolic writing was a nice experience.

Just for those who have never seen a Loeb-it has the original Latin (or Greek) on one side with the translation on the following page. The Loeb series are known for their excellent translations and are vital to any researcher or historian who wants to return to the orginal for their primary source. Virgil's Georgics alone make this book a necessity (the Georgics used to be standard reading before and after the revolution in universities) and the Aeneid provides an excellent balance to the Eclouges and the Georgics. Virgil's writings are fairly simple yet convey both the message and the image of what he wishes to get across to the reader. The Loeb series are a bit more pricey than the Penguin translations but the added luxury of the Latin text make this series indispensable to the student or reseacher of Rome or the Latin language.