The Eclogues/The Georgics

by Virgil, Cecil Day-Lewis (Translator), George Herbert Palmer

The Eclogues, ten short pastoral poems, were composed between approximately 42 and 39 BC, during the time of the 'Second' Triumvirate of Lepidus, Anthony, and Octavian. In them Virgil subtly blended an idealized Arcadia with contemporary history. To his Greek model - the Idylls of Theocritus - he added a strong element of Italian realism: places and people, real or disguised, and contemporary events are introduced. The Eclogues display all Virgil's art and charm and are among his most delightful achievements. Between approximately 39 and 29 BC, years of civil strife between Antony, and Octavian, Virgil was engaged upon the Georgics. Part agricultural manual, full of observations of animals and nature, they deal with the farmer's life and give it powerful allegorical meaning. These four books contain some of Virgil's finest descriptive writing and are generally held to be his greatest and most entertaining work, and C. Day Lewis's lyrical translations are classics in their own right.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Philosophy, Fiction, Literature, Ancient, Roman

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 39

About the author

born 15 October 70 BC
died 21 September 19 BC

Roman poet Virgil, also Vergil, originally Publius Vergilius Maro, composed the Aeneid , an epic telling after the sack of Troy of the wanderings of Aeneas.

Work of Virgil greatly influenced on western literature; in most notably Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri.

Reviews

[Luís · Rating 4 out of 5]

His first poetic collection, the Bucolics, features shepherds who talk, exchanging their ideas and sharing their feelings. This feature allows Virgil to sing about his love for nature, a source of nostalgia and fulfillment. But it is also an opportunity for him to express his dismay at the civil unrest of the time.
The Georgics retain the country decor. Unlike the Bucolics collection, this poem has an academic aspect. The author describes the works of the earth by releasing their techniques and, especially, by extolling their unknown charms.
By giving an example to the citizens of country life, in which he praises simplicity and wholesomeness, Virgil brings in some way its contribution to the politics of the time!
But he does not lower himself to a kind of simplistic propaganda.
The Georgics are like hymns to essential values, a great song about the beauty and grandeur of nature.

[شمس · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the Eclogues, particularly: I, II, III & VII.

The Georgics were not to my taste, although I suspect this may partly be due to the translation.

[Mir · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Brady Meyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eclogues
“Love conquers all: and let us give way to Love”. Short pastoral poems concerning unrequited love and the relationship between nature and humanity, all eclipsed by the shadows of civil warfare approaching the idyllic countryside. While the poetry at times was very beautiful and striking, for a modern reader, the parade of proper nouns and allusions are overwhelming (especially without any footnotes or references).

Georgics
Didactic poems about tending to your animals, farmland, and of course bees. Throughout are callouts to the Halcyon bygone days, the themes of love, devotion, and destruction, and there is a heavy dose of both mythology and Roman history embedded into the beautiful nature descriptions. Most striking is Virgil’s retelling of the Orpheus myth at the end of the beekeeping poem, Georgic 4.

Here is an example of Virgil at his best. Just a few lines apart, he combines ‘practical’ advice with the sudden sharp pain of mortality: “The best-shaped cow is fierce, her head ugly, with plenty of neck, and dewlaps hanging down from chin to leg… The best days of life are always the first to vanish, for mortal beings: disease and old age creep on, and suffering, and the harshness of cruel death snatches us away.”

I found the Eclogues to be more interesting, each one with a short self-contained story. While the Georgics have beautiful language (Virgil seems to just be more fantastical with his word choice compared to other classics I’ve read), the didactic nature is hard to connect with. Standouts from this collection include Eclogues 4, 6 and 9, and Georgic 4. What I am excited to carry away from these is their influence on poets such as John Milton, as well as a deeper appreciation for the fanciful nature of Ovid and of what I have read of the Aeneid so far.

Translation: T. F. Royds, a very old and very not-enjoyable translation, but it is all the library had, so next time I'll spring for something more modern.

[max theodore]

read in tandem with the penguin editions of the poems, because i'm insane! (also because two different friends got me two different editions for my birthday last year. glad to have a reputation.) not much to say about the text that i haven't said there, so i will shout out this edition for focusing less on the directness of the translation and more on the beauty and clarity of the english--i turned to it frequently when i didn’t know what the fuck the other editions (which replicate latin syntax more closely) was saying. also the footnotes were more helpful here. also also, props for making the songs in the eclogues rhyme; that's fun!

Not to deaf ears I sing, for the woods echo my singing.

[Adèle · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 pour la participation

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oliver Lyne, the editor of this translation of Virgil's first two works, seems not to like the translation very much, criticising Cecil Day Lewis for being unclear or misleading at least three times in the introduction, which seems like a bad marketing idea.

CDL's verse translation is not metrically regular, usually I think iambic but with a lot of flexibility, and the lines are very long, from 11 to 16 syllables each, and very often enjambed in a way that disguises the line ending, so it sometimes has a prosy feel. It's conversational, accessible, with a few colloquialisms and contractions, but there are lyrical parts that as a result stand out a lot.

In Eclogue III he rhymes 'ditties' with 'titties' which kind of ruins the immersion for me, as they say. Kind of hard to come back from that, but here's a good passage from the final Eclogue:

But I shall go and set to music for the Sicilian
Shepherd's pipe the poems I write in Chalcidic verse.
I shall live hard in the forest, where wild beasts have their lairs--
My mind is made up--and cut the name of my loved Lycoris
Upon the young trees' bark: my love will grow as the trees grow.

[Bohdan Pechenyak · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic translation of Virgil’s poetry - unusual, free, interpretive and contemplative. It’s not a straight translation, so those looking for something following Virgil’s meter and form should look elsewhere. But this interpretative translation adds a whole another dimension, relating the ancient Roman world to modern times.

[Markus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful reading and a reference in literature.

[Bryony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Georgics book IV is a gem even if it gives really bad beekeeping advice.

[Emily]

No it's not the most faithful translation. But it's a fun interpretation and as a hobbyist Classicist, I enjoyed it, especially the Georgics.

[Austin Hoffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book proves I’m not very pastoral.

[GW · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Alyosha · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Georgics, specifically, were a beautiful read. I love the visions invoked by Virgil’s commentary on the art of farming both plants and animals (especially so, since I myself raise goats for milk).

Autumn drops her varied fruits at our feet, while far
Above on sunny rocks the vintage basks and mellows.
And all the time he has dear children who dote on kisses, A house that preserves the tradition of chastity, cows that
hang
Their milky udders, and plump young goats on the happy
green
Romping and butting with their horns.
The farmer himself keeps holidays when, at ease in a meadow, A fire in the midst and friends there to crown the flowing
bowl,
He drinks the health of the Wine-god and arranges for his
herdsmen
A darts-match, setting up the target upon an elm tree, And the labourers bare their sinewy bodies for country
wrestling.

- Georgics, book II, lines 521-531

[Jin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 🌟

The Eclogues - 4 🌟, was fun and short. Funny and more queer than I thought.

The Georgics - 3🌟, the first book melted my brain. I put it down and didn’t pick up for ages. But the three other books were great - I especially liked the last book about the 🐝🐝🐝. If I’m being honest I originally picked this up because I wanted to read about the bees.

[Bob Jacobs · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s Vergilius, what do you want me to say? I’d give him six out of five stars if I could.

[Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the debate of Aeneid v. Georgics that's been going for the last two thousand years, I fall on the side of Georgics. It is Virgil's perfect work.

[Kit McEvoy Gould · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was holding out hope for this after the Aenied. I think it waaas better, and I definitely preferred Georgics to Eclogues, but it was still just pretty mediocre.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love used book sales. If you’ve ever gone ‘garage sale-ing’, then you’re probably familiar with the types of pushy scavengers that you might meet at a used book sale. You’d almost think Dickens had these bibliophiles in mind for his caricature of Scrooge in the opening chapter of A Christmas Carol: “…a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, …secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.” Solitary, that is, until they catch the scent of a musty book in the air that could be had for a buck. Watching the doors open for a used book sale can cause you to lose faith in humanity. But as I said, I’m a used-book scavenger myself, and I only hope that my love for life ultimately outstrips my lust for books.

So what does this have to do with Virgil? Well, I found a book containing three of Virgil’s works at the last sale (with over a million books!…humina, humina), and I tucked it away on a bookshelf for a rainy day. Well my friends, that day came a week ago. Imagine, if you will, me deciding on a whim that I REALLY wanted to read some of Virgil, forgetting that I had the book on hand, scouring my shelves for the next book to read, and stumbling upon this little ruby. I AM! I actually wanted to read only the Eclogues and Georgics, not the more famous Aeneid, mostly because I’ve heard that the former were much more poetic than the adventurous latter. My plan is to read the whole of Dante’s Divine Comedy soon (I’ve only read the Inferno up till now), and for some reason it has always intrigued me that Dante, one of the most celebrated authors of all time, chose Virgil as his guide through Hades.

The Eclogues are pastoral (rural) poems and songs written in the tradition of a shepherd sing-off. Speakers take turns trying to ‘one-up’ their opponents in a friendly game of lyrical improvisation (freestyle rap battle!!) about the country life. I’m sure in the day they had their Eminems and Jay-Z’s, but this is hardly anything a 21st century man can relate to. Between the references to antiquated cultural traditions and the constant allusion to Roman mythology, I wasn’t able to make much of it. Unfortunately you’ll need a history/mythology buff to help break down the ‘thick accent’. It’s almost lost to all but a few super-conditioned readers.

The Georgics, on the other hand, were a different story altogether. I wouldn’t quite give it the accolade that was offered in the introduction of the Modern Library version: “…perhaps the most perfect work of Virgil…No one who reads the magnificent passage in the second book (lines 136-137) can fail to be thrilled with its patriotic fervor.” I beg to differ with you Charles L. Durham (whoever you are), I failed to be thrilled by almost all of it. Don’t get me wrong, I do sense the Shakespearean brilliance and perpetual poetry of every line crafted with the utmost care to extract the sweet wine of beauty and truth out of every word, but I must be a few millennia off. Doesn’t hit me quite the way Shakespeare does, I’m sure because I speak the same language and I’m in the same general epoch as the Man. There were a couple sublime verses that I could detect, however, like:

“The grasses dare in safety to trust themselves to spring rain.”
“Neither might things so delicate endure this their toil, except such space of calm passed between the cold and the heat, and earth were cradled by an indulgent sky.”
“Lost to fame, let me love stream and woodland.”
“But we have crossed a boundless breadth of plain, and now is time to loosen the necks of our steaming horses.”
Overall, I considered this worth my time. If nothing else, it’s a piece of history and some of its poetry remains translucent for us. I hope to read the Aeneid sometime in the future, and even sooner I plan on picking up The Divine Comedy to be reunited with this Dante’s dubious choice of a guide.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics precede his more well-known work The Aeneid and far surpass it it quality. The ten pastoral poems and the four books of agricultural prose that constitute this work show the poet in his true element and are what gained him the initial popularity. Stephen Harris seems to indicate the Eclogues and Georgics were well-received by the Romans of the day who may have been nostalgic for the agrarian lifestyle romanticized in these works of poetry. This initial popularity lead to writing the later work, which he (like me) felt to be garbage. On his deathbed he ordered the Aeneid to be destroyed, which was unfortunately prevented by emperor Octavian (I'd personally question his taste not only on this but also on taking severe offense to Ovid's classic work Metamorphoses).

This translation is a little archaic, following the King James Bible style and its use of "Thees" and "Thous", but that didn't seem to get in the way. This this isn't a work of theology and doesn't hold the expectation for the reader to introspectively absorb and ponder esoteric principles; this is a work of poetry and as such is concerned with using rhythm and lyric to put the reader in a mood to appreciate beauty. And since the subject matter itself is simple in comparison to the layers of a spiritual concept, it's much easier to see the world through the poet's eyes.

The Eclogues paint a picture of shepherds as lighthearted romantics who pass the time composing songs and recapitulating the simple issues of their herds. A few eclogues are structured as a conversation and some are narrated. Though some of it went over my head it was still beautiful verse and the type of flowery prose that's hard to regret reading.

In the Georgics, Virgil created a brilliant blend of myth, poetic praise of the many fruits of the land, and practical insight and how-to's for farmers. It's impressive how he can start by praising Bacchus, then citing examples of the fruits of the vine for which to rejoice, finishing then with tips on how to know whether the soil is better fit for planting vines or for growing corn or grain, and all this laid out in a smooth poetic rhythm. The first book in Georgics sings the praises of Ceres (the Roman name for Demeter) and the fruits of her harvest (though Minerva's olives and a few other deities related to staple crops are cited). The second book is centered on Bacchus (Dionysus) and the fruits of the vine. The third book wasn't specifically centered on a crop or fruit, although it did focus somewhat on tending to the livestock. The fourth book is centered on honey, beekeeping and the admiration a good Roman citizen should have for the bee colony. He points out that the bee colony far outlasts the lives of the drones and draws many parallels meant to politically inspire his fellow Romans. He finishes the fourth book with a somewhat unrelated but excellent recap of the tale of Orpheus.

I wasn't expecting to like this work based on my last experience reading Virgil, but it is so unique and well-executed that I couldn't help falling in love with it. Equally heart-warming was the knowledge that the citizens of a culture two-thousand years removed from my own can similarly find themselves exhausted by the strain of urban life and need a good dose of a highly imaginative and romanticized agrarian daydream.

[Michael Percy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book of pastoral poems is a classic, and therefore difficult to dismiss off-handedly. What I found interesting were other reviews on Goodreads. One stated: "I have hardly any clue what I actually read". Virgil reads like Shakespeare, although the work is translated from Latin, so I share the sentiments of the other reviewer! It took me some time to read the poems, as I had to research the various characters and Greek and Roman gods to make sense of it. Even then, the background story of the civil wars and political instability in Rome is difficult to discern simply from the poems' text. The imagery of the text is evident in Naomi Mitchison's book Cloud Cuckoo Land , but the difference between Roman and Greek ideals about pastoral life are significant. While Virgil applies Greek imagery to the Italian landscape, the images belie the true story. In Virgil's time, rich Roman families dominated the farms and used slave labour to operate them. According to David Quint, writing in The New Republic , it was the Roman equivalent of what has happened in agribusiness in the United States, where the virtues of the rural life on the family farm persist, yet 'big business' owns most of the farms. The Georgics are didactic in that they provide guidance for farming, interspersed with metaphors for the birth of Rome. I found Georgic IV, which concludes the book, to be inspiring. We are hoping to keep bees, and bee-keeping is the subject of the poem (if one puts aside the birth-of-Rome metaphor). So there is some joy to be found for the virgin reader, much like one might find in a Shakespearean sonnet. However, without the background information, one might read and not absorb a word of what one had read. This brings me to this particular Dover Thrift Edition. I enjoy the size and price of this series, but sometimes I wonder whether a more substantial text with notes would be useful. Of course, there is the tendency, like in the Penguin version of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis , to have longer notes than the actual work, and this can be worse. Nevertheless, this reading was useful as I steel myself for tackling Homer, Milton, and Dante.

[Evan Leach · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Eclogues and Georgics are the other two major works of Virgil, more famous for his Aeneid. The Eclogues, a collection of ten poems, were written around 38 b.c. Virgil modeled this collection off of the Greek Bucolic tradition, as exemplified by Theocritus.

Bucolic poetry, which generally involves shepherds frolicking around the pastoral countryside and singing to each other, is really (really) not my genre of choice. Eclogues II, IV, and X were the strongest of the bunch, in my opinion. Eclogue IV is also historically notable, as you get to watch a young Virgil suck up to Octavian (i.e., the future Augustus Caesar) by mustering all the propaganda he can handle. So there's that. But give me Horace's Odes over these pastoral poems six days a week and twice on Sunday, so 3 stars for the Eclogues. I know, I'd be a terrible shepherd. Let's just move on.

Happily, I enjoyed the Georgics a great deal more. Published around 29 b.c., the Georgics is one long poem split into four books. With 2,188 verses, it is not a short work. Like the Eclogues, the Georgics spends a lot of time discussing livestock & agriculture. But the tone of the Georgics is much more majestic, and the poem soars as a result:

“[A]nd the time will come when there anigh, Heaving the earth up with his curved plough, Some swain will light on javelins by foul rust Corroded, or with ponderous harrow strike On empty helmets, while he gapes to see Bones as of giants from the trench untombed.” Book I.

Now that's the kind of agricultural poetry I can get into! Alternately, listen to Virgil describing the King of Bees:

“[H]im with awful eye they reverence, and with murmuring throngs surround, in crowds attend, oft shoulder him on high, or with their bodies shield him in the fight, and seek through showering wounds a glorious death.” Book IV.

Does the Georgics quite reach the heights of the Aeneid? I don't think so. But it isn't terribly far behind, and if you enjoyed the Aeneid the Georgics is definitely worth a read. 5 stars for the Georgics, leaving us with a grand total of 4 stars for the book as a whole.

Note: I read the Dryden translation, which is justly famous. If you liked the lofty language above, I would highly recommend it. It's old, so at times you may need to slow down and re-read something to understand what the hell he is talking about, but worth it in my opinion.

[Brett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book of pastoral poems from Virgil is very interested in agricultural methods. As I read the first half of it, I was bored out of my skull, spurred on only by the knowledge that the book was very short and that I could finish it quickly and move on to something else.

In the second half, something happened. I was sitting with my newborn son, just weeks old. For whatever reason, I decided to start reading the poem out loud to him. The act of reading the language did something to change it for me, and I was...not exactly engrossed, but definitely more attentive than I had been. I tried to slow down and just feel the rhythm of the language and the timelessness of the poetry. My son seemed to like it too, as much as a two week old can like anything.

The introduction tried to tell me that these books may have allegorical political meanings, but that was entirely lost on me. This is not a book I'll be revisiting very often, but the specialness of that one memory does mean that I have to bump up my star rating a bit. If you're in an unusually contemplative mood, these poems have been around for thousands of years, waiting to be read aloud.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Andrada · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to take a break from Mishima and relax with a bit of pastoral poetry. The Eclogues were quite beautiful in their evocation of a idealized country life while the Georgics were at times tedious due to their agricultural theme. I found Hesiod's Works and Days that had the same topic much more entertaining due to Hesiod's entreaties to his good for nothing brother which made it humorous at times while the Georgics interspersed agricultural advice with allegory and mythological ruminations of a perhaps darker nature(I'm particularly thinking of the end of book III here).

Much like the Aeneid, I felt the tone of the Georgics to be a bit too affected for my liking. I liked the Eclogues where Virgil is more playful in his content and imagery a lot more.

[Sean Garrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Virgil is interesting, to say the least. His apparent obsession with hard work and the country probably arose from his move from the countryside to Rome during Octavian's rise to power. I don't often enjoy poetry, but this time it was tolerable, so I gave it three stars. His reference to a boy savior born of a virgin is mysterious, but most likely refers to Octavian rather than Christ, as Augustine thought. Overall, it's a good read and insightful.

[Ashley Sousa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, the physical book came apart from the spine when I was about 3/4 of the way through, which became distracting for the rest of it. Otherwise I enjoyed it somewhat, but probably wouldn’t give it a second read for pleasure. There are so many references that I don’t know and have to look up that I had to choose between not fully understanding the references or interrupting the passages to look it up. I fully admit I’m not smart enough to fully appreciate this 🤷🏻‍♀️

[Eteocles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Agradezco a Alianza que haya sacado las dos juntas, ya que las Geórgicas suele ser más complicado pillarlas editadas (sin que sea Gredos). La traducción es un poco... pues eso, tres estrellas. Suenta todo un poco ripioso y cursi en las bucólicas y un poco densísimo en las Geórgicas. Pero bueno, seré yo que no sé. Y el problema no es Virgilio. Hiperión hizo una edición de las Bucólicas mucho más respetuosa y lírica, pero hay que agradecer el esfuerzo a Alianza.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a testament to Vergil's abilities that his work is entrancing even here, in this decidedly lackluster translation (rhyming ditties with titties, really, Day-Lewis). At least Lyne--responsible for the introduction and notes--seems to concur with me on this, and criticises the translation for its flaws (and outright fabrications) at several points.