2 h 26 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What can a ploughed field teach us about living after war?
In The Georgics, Virgil turns farming into poetry about the work of living. Written after the civil wars, this long poem asks how people can live well on wounded land. Grain, vines, olive trees, livestock and bees give that question a concrete shape, rooted in the demands of each season.
The poem moves from ploughed fields to trees, then to animals and the world of bees. Practical advice sits beside weather, disease, love and grief. Virgil gives patient labour its dignity without hiding its hardships. You do not need a field of your own to feel the pull of this closely observed country life.
What you’ll discover
- Grain and patient labour Enter the first book’s ploughed fields, where hard work gives the poem its grounding image.
- Vines and olive trees Explore the second book’s trees, from seeds and cuttings to the craft of grafting.
- Animals, love and loss Meet the third book’s livestock, where country life holds both pride and the threat of disease.
- The small world of bees Discover how Virgil gives the smallest creatures the weight and grandeur of epic poetry.
- A land beyond war Follow the deeper question beneath the farming advice: how to live well after conflict.
Who will love it
For readers who love poetry with a strong sense of place, care about land, seasons and honest work, or want to discover what the poet of the Aeneid wrote before that epic.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A farming poem born from civil war
- Book one: hard work holds the world up
- Book two: trees, vines and a land worth praising
- Book three: animals, love and sudden death
- Book four: the bees and a story of loss
- Images, sound and the themes that bind the poem
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Georgica
by Vergil
Virgil leads you from ploughed fields to humming hives, asking how people can live well on land torn by war.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 6
A farming poem born from civil war
Virgil grew up in northern Italy, in a farming region near Mantua. He knew country life from childhood, and he had already written the Eclogues, a book of short pastoral poems. Around 37 BC he began the Georgics, and it took him about seven years. The Greek word georgika simply means matters of farming.
The time matters. Rome had passed through decades of civil war. Fields had been seized, farmers driven off, and soldiers settled on land that was not theirs. Virgil's own family is thought to have been touched by these seizures. The poem therefore speaks to a country that needs to be fed and to be healed.
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What is The Georgics about?
It is a Latin poem in four books on farming. It covers crops and weather, trees and vines, livestock, and beekeeping, and also reflects on work, nature, war and the hope of a peaceful life on the land.
When did Virgil write the Georgics and why?
Virgil wrote it over about seven years, finishing around 29 BC, after Rome's civil wars. It was dedicated to Maecenas and was meant to honour farming and the recovery of Italy's countryside.
Is the Georgics a real farming manual?
It contains real farm knowledge, but it was not meant as a handbook. Virgil used the form of instruction to write poetry, in the tradition of Hesiod, and to speak about labour, order and Rome.
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