Patterns of Redemption in Virgil's Georgics

This 1999 study seeks to understand Virgil's Georgics in terms of the cultural and political upheavals in Rome.

Llewelyn Morgan (Author)

9780521155120, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 14 April 2011

266 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.34 kg

"This is clearly a learned book and I have learned a lot from reading it..." Robert Cramer, Universitaet Bonn, email

At the time of this book's first publication in 1999, orthodoxy interpreted the Georgics as a statement of profound ambivalence towards Octavian and his claim to be Rome's saviour after the catastrophe of the civil wars. This book takes issue with the model of the subtly subversive poet. It argues that in the turbulent political circumstances which obtained at the time of the poem's composition, Virgil's preoccupation with violent conflict has a highly optimistic import. Octavian's brutal conduct in the civil wars is subjected to a searching analysis, but is ultimately vindicated, refigured as a paradoxically constructive violence analogous to blood sacrifice or Romulus' fratricide of Remus. The vindication of Octavian also has strictly literary implications for Virgil. The close of the poem sees Virgil asserting his mastery of the Homeric mode of poetry and the providential world-view it was thought to embody.

Introduction
Part I. Prima ab Origine: 1. The Old Man of the Sea
2. Aristeia
Part II. Mirabile Dictu: 3. Ox and paradox
4. Poeta creatus
Postscript: Sphragis
Appendix I. Proteus and Proteus
Appendix II. 4.400
Appendix III. Sparsere per agros.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]