Book contents
- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- Contents
- CHAPTER I GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER II VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE
- CHAPTER III LIFE AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL
- CHAPTER IV THE ECLOGUES
- CHAPTER V MOTIVES, FORM, SUBSTANCE, AND SOURCES OF THE GEORGICS
- CHAPTER VI RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS
- CHAPTER VII THE GEORGICS A POEM REPRESENTATIVE OF ITALY
- CHAPTER VIII THE ROMAN EPIC BEFORE THE TIME OF VIRGIL
- CHAPTER IX FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID
- CHAPTER X THE AENEID AS THE EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
- CHAPTER XI THE AENEID AS AN EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE
CHAPTER V - MOTIVES, FORM, SUBSTANCE, AND SOURCES OF THE GEORGICS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- Contents
- CHAPTER I GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER II VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE
- CHAPTER III LIFE AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL
- CHAPTER IV THE ECLOGUES
- CHAPTER V MOTIVES, FORM, SUBSTANCE, AND SOURCES OF THE GEORGICS
- CHAPTER VI RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS
- CHAPTER VII THE GEORGICS A POEM REPRESENTATIVE OF ITALY
- CHAPTER VIII THE ROMAN EPIC BEFORE THE TIME OF VIRGIL
- CHAPTER IX FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID
- CHAPTER X THE AENEID AS THE EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
- CHAPTER XI THE AENEID AS AN EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE
Summary
Original motives of the Poem
The appearance of the Eclogues marked Virgil out among his contemporaries as the poet of Nature and rural life. That province was assigned to him, as epic poetry was to Varius and tragedy to Pollio. It is to the Eclogues only that the lines in which Horace characterises his art can with propriety be applied. These lines were written before the appearance of the Georgics, and probably before any considerable part of the poem had been composed. The epithets which admirably characterise the receptive attitude of Virgil's mind in the composition of his pastoral poems are quite inapplicable to the solid and severe workmanship and the earnest feeling of his didactic poem. The Eclogues are the poems of youth, and of a youth passed in study and in contact with Nature rather than with the serious interests of life. Though Virgil indicates in them the ambition which was moving him to vaster undertakings, yet he shows at the same time his consciousness of the comparative triviality of his art. The class of poem to which the word ludere is applied was, even when not of a licentious character, regarded by the more serious minds of Rome, such as Cicero for instance, with a certain degree of contempt, as being among the ‘leviora studia,’ partaking more of the ‘Graeca levitas’ than the ‘Romana gravitas.’
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- Roman Poets of the Augustan AgeVirgil, pp. 174 - 198Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1877