This new introduction to Virgil's poetry offers an excellent resource for students wishing to situate the Bucolics, Georgics and Aeneid in their literary, historical and philosophical contexts. It is a welcome addition to Bloomsbury's Understanding Classics series, which aims to bring great classical authors to new audiences: as one of the most highly praised authors from antiquity onwards, Virgil certainly merits his place in this collection. Throughout this book K. discusses how individual passages and poetic themes and structures from Virgil's work connect to a wider tradition, in a way that is accessible to those who have little prior knowledge of Virgilian poetry or scholarship. Quotations from ancient texts are provided entirely in prose translations, with only occasional references to individual words in Latin or (transliterated) Greek, and the majority of works in the bibliography are in English, which will make the book useful for students who are not trained in classical or modern (continental European) languages. The book does not set out to offer a radical reinterpretation of Virgil's poetry, but instead focuses on explaining well-established features of the poems, which otherwise require a broad familiarity with Graeco-Roman literature to understand.
The first chapter establishes the three key strands that recur throughout K.'s analysis – politics, philosophy and literary tradition – and explores evidence and anecdotes that were circulated in antiquity about Virgil's life. K. notes that ancient biographies cannot be taken as historical fact and separates features of the tradition that are likely to be true from those that are more questionable or uncertain. Particular emphasis is placed on contexts of civil war and the settlement of veterans, which shape some of Virgil's poetic themes, and on Virgil's position within a circle of poets and Epicurean philosophers based around Naples. By contrast, K. does not make much of Virgil's identity as an inhabitant of northern Italy (or rather, Cisalpine Gaul), although this could have been used to explain passages such as the laudes Italiae in the second book of the Georgics, or the echoes of the Social War and the creation of a national identity found in the Aeneid.
Subsequent chapters analyse the Bucolics, Georgics and Aeneid in turn. Each chapter provides solid coverage of established structural and thematic allusions to a range of authors, focusing on Homer, Hesiod, Theocritus, Callimachus, Lucretius and Catullus. The poems are situated within their different generic traditions, but K. also indicates areas where Virgil innovates and departs from his models, such as the references to political petitions and literary patronage in the Bucolics, which contrast with the separation from politics found in Theocritus’ Idylls. The final sections of Chapters 2 and 3 suggest, for the Bucolics and the fourth book of the Georgics respectively, strong influences from the poetry of Virgil's contemporary Gallus. Most of Gallus’ work is not extant, so it has received relatively little attention in studies of Virgilian intertextuality. In places, the analysis of literary influences would benefit from more detailed comparisons: for instance, references to Lucretian language and style require more explanation, especially for an audience of students reading these texts in translation. As well as intertextual links, K. indicates connections within Virgil's poetic corpus, an advantage of a book that covers each of his poems in detail.
In each of the three central chapters the discussion of Virgil's philosophical influences offers significant new insights. An apparent conflict between Epicurean ideals and political engagement in the Bucolics is explained through reference to contemporary senators, who allowed Epicurean ethics to guide their political activities; Virgil's praise of a young god in the first poem of the Bucolics is identified as using Lucretian allusions and etymological wordplay to suggest both Octavian and Epicurus. In her exploration of the Georgics K. explains a difficulty over whether Virgil places more value on philosophy or agriculture by indicating similarities to the writings of the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, who described the happiness of the landowner as almost equal to that of the sage. In the chapter on the Aeneid Stoic and Epicurean models of behaviour are applied to the characters of Jupiter, Juno and Aeneas, with passions and anxieties causing each figure to fall short of possible ideals: for instance, K. argues that Dido becomes a negative model of an Epicurean, as she shifts from a life of freedom and leisure to one in which her love for Aeneas causes her to neglect her community. The underworld of Aeneid 6 is explained both in terms of historical references, shaped by Anchises’ narrative for didactic and exemplary purposes, and in terms of the influence of Orphic mystery cults and Pythagorean philosophies of reincarnation.
Historical and political context is provided, but political complexities are less of a focus. K. offers an ‘optimistic’ reading of the Aeneid, focusing on Aeneas’ heroism and epic stature even as many of the characters around him slip into a more tragic vein, and pointing to the flaws that lead many other figures to die (such as the individualism and love of spoils shown by young warriors such as Nisus, Euryalus and Camilla). This is certainly a valid and popular interpretation of the poem, but, of course, many other scholars have focused on more ‘pessimistic’ elements of the narrative or on highlighting the coexistence of these possible interpretations. As an introduction to Virgil's poetry, this book could have benefited from an explanation of this significant scholarly debate, to ensure that students recognise these alternative ways of understanding the poem.
The final chapter attempts to cover the reception of Virgil over the last two thousand years; perhaps inevitably, it is partial and often cursory. K. successfully indicates the widespread impact of Virgil's poetry in antiquity – as a model for bucolic, didactic and epic poetry, and as a source of language and ideas for various prose writers –, but texts and authors are named (and situated in a historical context) without much analysis of the different ways in which they respond to or react against Virgil's works. Christian reception is treated in more detail, including discussions of Augustine's responses to Dido, the production of Virgilian centos and the biblical epics that present Christian narratives in Virgilian diction. K. includes medieval and Renaissance poets such as Dante, Petrarch and Maffeo Vegio, before focusing on the translation and reception of the Aeneid in England and America. Poems by W.H. Auden and Robert Lowell receive detailed analysis, and the chapter finishes with a description of Ursula Le Guin's 2008 novel Lavinia. The passages of close reading in this chapter are as strong as elsewhere in the book, but the coverage is limited: there is no mention of the reception of Virgilian poetry in drama, opera or visual culture, and no discussion of non-Anglophone reception after the mid-fifteenth century, although the endnotes contain suggested scholarship on these topics.
This book provides a wide-ranging introduction to the texts and philosophical ideas with which Virgil's poetry engages, emphasising Virgil's erudition and complicated use of allusion through a systematic approach to each of the texts. It pays less attention to Virgil's literary style, to the emotional power of his work and to the complicated and contradictory possible interpretations that have sustained the poet's enduring appeal among different audiences. K. summarises the current state of scholarship and offers new interpretations to reconcile some of the possible tensions between political and philosophical aspects of the poems. This book will be a valuable addition to introductory bibliographies on Latin literature and a useful tool for non-Classicists who are interested in studying Virgil for the first time.
