Virgil's Georgics

Virgil’s Georgics: A New Interpretation by Gary B. Miles challenges conventional readings of Virgil’s agricultural poem by shifting attention away from rustic idealization toward the poem’s political and philosophical concerns. Rather than treating the Georgics as a unified pastoral vision, Miles argues that Virgil deliberately explores multiple, often conflicting myths of rural life shaped by Hellenistic influence, civil war, and shifting Roman values. For some, the countryside symbolized the austere virtues of Rome’s founding elite; for others, it offered either luxurious retreat or a return to simplicity in contrast to the chaos of urban politics. In this light, Virgil’s choice of farming as subject was not eccentric but an apt medium for reflection on the nature of civilization and the challenges facing Augustus.

Miles interprets each book of the Georgics as elaborating a distinct perspective on rustic life, with recurrent motifs providing continuity and underscoring the realities to which all visions of civilization must respond. The poem’s culmination in the myth of Aristaeus, he contends, develops Virgil’s deepest statement about the human condition—one not reducible to any single description of farm life. Avoiding heavy engagement with scholarly debates, Miles presents his argument in a straightforward and accessible style, translating all Latin and Greek and minimizing footnotes, while situating his work within modern criticism in an introductory essay and bibliographic note. Balancing close reading with broad cultural context, Virgil’s Georgics: A New Interpretation offers both specialists and general readers a fresh perspective on one of Rome’s most intellectually complex poems.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.