A student who is not actually reading Virgil’s integral texts can hardly be expected to need a reference to Dahlmann’s 1954 German article on the Georgics. The “Recommended reading” betrays the book’s Cambridge provenance (e.g., “Books 8, 9 and 11 are published in admirable editions by Cambridge,” high praise indeed for the disappointing Gransden 11). The student using the introduction is likely to be overwhelmed by densely packed information on more than s/he can possibly digest without much additional aid. The influence of Hellenistic poetry is here, too, and (somewhat astonishingly) an almost casual mention of Homer after Callimachus: “And throughout the Aeneid he invokes both the spirit and letter of the works of Homer.” Indeed, there is more in the introduction on Epicurus and Zeno of Cyprus than on Virgil’s principal poetic inspiration. The three pages of introduction are well-written, though they try to cover far too much ground (especially for the presumed audience), ranging from a history of the fall of the Roman Republic to Dmitri Shostakovich’s possible anti-Soviet subversiveness as comparandum to Virgil’s Augustan poetry (one can imagine term papers comparing Augustan Rome to Soviet Russia now). 1 Better on this count is deMay’s forthcoming Lucretius in the same series, which offers one chapter for each book of the original. It remains unclear who would actually use this book the back cover speaks of “both advanced secondary school and undergraduate study.” Ironically, there is a fair amount of attention to Virgilian scholarship (more anon), with the inevitable conclusion that the student is expected to move from this book to a major monograph on the Aeneid without ever having read the poem (one gets the sense the bibliography and references that appear passim are here to facilitate term papers).īesides an introduction and annotated bibliography, there are eight chapters: one each on the Eclogues and Georgics, four on the first half of the Aeneid, and a scant two on the second half (the maius opus), an odd return to the lamentable trend of pre-1970s Virgilian scholarship that prejudiced Virgil’s Odyssey at the expense of his Iliad. Something of a throwback to late antiquity, this volume embodies a disturbing move to epitomize the work of masters. Rather than being a guide to Virgil’s opera, M.’s book is a substitute for reading the originals. For M.’s book provides a survey of the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, taking us though each work with prose translations of selected parts, short summaries of the many omitted sections, brief annotation (and illustration) relevant to the excerpted lines, and numerous discussion questions to stimulate classroom exchange. Morwood’s (hereafter M.) volume in the Cambridge Greece and Rome: Texts and Contexts series is one of the latest in the unabating stream of books on Virgil’s verse, this time apparently aimed at an audience that will not be reading the poet’s three works in toto anytime soon.
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