Virgil’s Georgics

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’s working, has cast beneath his feet all fear and fate’s implacable decree, and the howl of insatiable Death. But happy too is he who knows the rural gods… They’re from his poem the Georgics, a detailed account of farming life in the Italy of the time. ‘Georgics’ means ‘agricultural things’, and it’s 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’s also a philosophical reflection on humanity’s relationship with the natural world, the ravages of time, and the politics of Virgil’s day. It’s exerted a profound influence on European writing about agriculture and rural life, and has much to offer environmental thinking today.

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Guests

• Katharine Earnshaw No other episodes
  Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter
• Neville Morley 3 episodes
  Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter
• Diana Spencer 2 episodes
  Professor of Classics at the University of Birmingham

Reading list

• Ownership and Exploitation of Land and Natural Resources in the Roman World
  Paul Erdkamp, Koenraad Verboven and Arjan Zuiderhoek (eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2015) Google Books →
• Virgil: Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics
  P. Hardie (Oxford University Press, 1998) Google Books →
• Vergil and the Mausoleum Augusti: Georgics 3.12-18
  S.J.Harrison (Acta Classica, 2005)
• Allegories of Farming from Greece and Rome: Philosophical Satire in Xenophon, Varro and Virgil
  Leah Kronenberg (Cambridge University Press, 2009) Google Books →
• Temple Buiding, Primus Language, and the Proem to Vergil's Third Georgic
  David Mebans (Classical Philology, 2008)
• Varro the Agronomist: Political Philosophy, Satire and Agriculture in the Late Republic
  Grant A. Nelsestuen (Ohio State University Press, 2015) Google Books →
• Italy's Economic Revolution: Integration and Economy in Republican Italy
  Saskia T. Roselaar (Oxford University Press, 2019) Google Books →
• Playing the Farmer: Representations of Rural Life in Vergil's Georgics
  Philip Thibodeau (University of California Press, 2011) Google Books →
• 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
  Jethro Tull (Gale ECCO, Print Editions, 2010) Google Books →
• The works of Virgil containing his Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis
  Virgil (trans. John Dryden) (Nabu Press or Wentworth Press, 2012-19) Google Books →
• The Georgics
  Virgil (trans. Peter Fallon) (Oxford University Press, 2009) Google Books →
• Virgil's Georgics: A New Verse Translation
  Virgil (trans. Janet Lembke) (Yale University Press, 2007) Google Books →
• Vergil's Political Commentary in the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid
  Leendert Weeda (De Gruyter Open Poland, 2015) Google Books →
• Reflections and New Perspectives on Virgil's Georgics
  Bobby Xinyue and Nicholas Freer (eds.) (Bloomsbury, 2019) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m001lyt4

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001lyt4

Auto-category: 871.01 (Classical Literature)