Vergil's Eclogues

Best remembered for his unfinished epic, the Aeneid, the poet Vergil was celebrated in his time both for the perfection of his art and for the centrality of his ideas to Roman culture. The Eclogues, his earliest confirmed work, were composed in part out of political considerations: when the Roman authorities threatened to seize his familys land, Vergils appeal in the form of Eclogue IX won a stay. Eclogue I appears to be a thank-you for that favor. Barbara Hughes Fowler provides scholars and students with a new American verse translation of Vergils Eclogues. An accomplished translator, Fowler renders the poets words into an English that is contemporary while remaining close to the spirit of the original. In an introduction to the text, she compares the treatment of the pastoral form by Vergil and Theocritus, illuminating the ways in which Vergil borrowed from and built upon the earlier poets work, and thereby moved the genre in a new direction.