Fiction · about 29 BC
The Georgics
Virgil · translated by James Rhoades
Four books of practical instruction in verse: how to read the weather and work the soil, how to plant vines and olives, how to breed and keep livestock, and how to keep bees — the last book closing with the story of Aristaeus, who loses his swarm and, tracking down the sea-god Proteus for an explanation, hears the tale of Orpheus's own failed rescue of Eurydice from the underworld.
Virgil composed the poem over several years, reading it to Octavian on his return from the East in 29 BC. Ostensibly a farmer's manual, dedicated to his patron Maecenas, it is also — in its praise of rural Italy and its darker meditations on labor, mortality and the aftermath of civil war — one of the most finely finished poems in Latin literature. James Rhoades's blank-verse translation was first published in 1881; he went on to translate the Aeneid in 1893.
This Bibliomancer edition presents Rhoades's complete translation in four books.
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
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About the author
-71–-20 · Ancient
Virgil (70–19 BC) was born near Mantua in northern Italy and studied rhetoric and philosophy in Rome before turning to poetry. His pastoral Eclogues (42–37 BC) and the four books of the Georgics, on farming (29 BC), established his reputation; the last decade of his life was given to the Aeneid, the national epic of Rome, which he left unfinished at his death. Tradition holds he wanted the manuscript destroyed; the emperor Augustus overruled him and had it published.
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