The Georgics

Virgil's manual of farming as poetry: soil, vines, bees, and labor under the gods of a restored Rome.

Specifications & Metrics

author

Virgil

type

Didactic poetry

era

Augustan Rome (29 BC)

language

Latin

verse form

Dactylic hexameter

cantos count

4

Core Principles & Analysis

• Four books cover crops, trees, herds, and bees.
• Written for Maecenas after the civil wars, with Octavian's return as its horizon.
• Its bee colony politics fed two millennia of analogies to the state.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Georgics