The Georgics (On Land Cultivation) is a didactic poem written at the behest of Maecenas who gathered about him a cluster of writers and tried to harness their talents for the benefit of Octavian. In the literary tradition of Europe, it was Vergil, not Theocritus, who invented pastoral poetry. In the Eclogues, the influence of Theocritus is clear, but it was Vergil who invented Arcadia-not the Arcadia in central Greece but an imaginary Arcadia where shepherds and cowherds sang and loved and lived a life far removed from the turmoil of the city. But if so, the child whose birth Vergil foretold was never born. he was still married to his second wife Scribonia by whom he had his only child, a daughter Julia. It could be a child expected by Octavian when Eclogue Four was written in 40 b.c.e. The identity of this child has been much disputed, and later Christian commentators interpreted the poem as a prophecy of Christ's birth. The fourth poem, the so-called "Messianic" Eclogue hails the expected birth of a child who will usher in a new age. There are problems with this interpretation, and it is more probable that Vergil's intent in both his first and ninth Eclogues was to make known the disruption and injustice caused by the land expropriations. Vergil's family estate was expropriated and the first Eclogue tells how a freedman, Tityrus, had his little farm restored to him. There are ten of them, and two-the first and the ninth-have been thought to be autobiographic, for they deal with the land confiscations after the Battle of Philippi, when Octavian expropriated land in the region of Cremona and Mantua to settle demobilized soldiers. Some scholars accept the Culex as Vergilian, but the earliest works that are certainly written by him are his Bucolics (Poems of the Countryside), otherwise known as his Eclogues (Select Poems). The poem describes how a shepherd is wakened from a nap by a mosquito, which he kills only to discover that a venomous snake is about to strike him the mosquito had sacrificed its life to warn him in time. Vergil's Eclogues.Ī group of minor poems have survived which have been considered Vergil's early works, and one of them, the Culex ( The Gnat) is an epyllion worthy of Vergil. The reasons for his exile are obscure, but one of them may have been a playful poem he wrote titled The Art of Love which is a witty poetic instruction manual on how to seduce women. Augustus' successor, Tiberius, did not recall him and he died there. When Ovid was about fifty years old, Augustus exiled him to Tomis on the Black Sea in modern Rumania. Ovid was born the year after Julius Caesar was murdered and never knew the free-wheeling days of the republic when writers could write what they pleased, but he learned that an author under the principate-as Augustus' regime was called-failed at his peril to respect certain limits to his freedom. Vergil, the greatest of the Augustan writers, had no hankering for the old Roman republic, having seen first-hand how it misruled the provinces, for he was born in one. The poet Tibullus personally had no taste for war, as he tells us in two poems which celebrate the victories of his patron Messala, and Propertius preferred to write about the love of his life whom he called Cynthia-her real name was Hostia and she was a beautiful courtesan-but since he belonged to the circle of writers who were supported by Augustus' unofficial minister of propaganda, Maecenas, he was called upon to eulogize Augustus' exploits and excused himself as gracefully as he could. He returned to Italy after the defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 b.c.e., and made his peace with the new regime. The poet Horace fought as a staff officer (tribune) in the army of Brutus and Cassius, but he was no diehard defender of the Roman republic. and ended when Caesar's heir, Octavian, defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 b.c.e.-ended the era of literature of the late republic and started the Augustan Age. The civil war-which started when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River in 49 b.c.e. The Golden Age of Latin Literature Under Augustus New Climate of Opinion.
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