Virgil: Eclogues and Georgics

Virgil, most famous as the poet of the Aeneid , began his career with two smaller masterpieces: a collection of ten bucolic poems ( Eclogues ) modeled on the Idylls of the Hellenistic poet Theocritus, and a didactic work on agriculture in four books, the Georgics , which found its inspiration both in Hellenistic models and in more recent Roman antecedents (including Lucretius' De Rerum Natura ) and is viewed by many as the poet's finest achievement. We will read selections from both works, concluding with the epyllion at the end of Georgics Four, which relates the tragic love story of Orpheus and Eurydice.