The Eclogues, ten short pastoral poems, were composed between approximately 42 and 39 BC, during the time of the 'Second' Triumvirate of Lepidus, Anthony, and Octavian. In them Virgil subtly blended an idealized Arcadia with contemporary history. To his Greek model - the Idylls of Theocritus - he added a strong element of Italian realism: places and people, real or disguised, and contemporary events are introduced. The Eclogues display all Virgil's art and charm and are among his most delightful achievements. Between approximately 39 and 29 BC, years of civil strife between Antony, and Octavian, Virgil was engaged upon the Georgics. Part agricultural manual, full of observations of animals and nature, they deal with the farmer's life and give it powerful allegorical meaning. These four books contain some of Virgil's finest descriptive writing and are generally held to be his greatest and most entertaining work, and C. Day Lewis's lyrical translations are classics in their own right. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This fascinating study of one of the greatest poets of the Augustan age sheds new light on Horace's works, combining literary analysis with an investigation into the poet's social and political circumstances. Lyne focuses on the poet's relations with his patron Maecenas, with the Emperor Augustus and with other grandees. Describing his background, the book considers how and why Horace came to rely on patronage, and looks at the nature of that patronage. It identifies the point at which Horace adopted the role of political poet and shows how he evolved a public poetry for his particular society. Horace was a master of personal insinuation, as well as a fine maker of public poetry. Lyne reveals him a master, too, in the art of ordering his works, positioning his poems with skill and subtlety. Looking closely at poems from the 'Satires', 'Odes' and 'Epistles', Lyne demonstrates how Horace neatly balanced deference to the great with careful assertion of his own social and political standing. He finds instances where Horace teases his original recipients - and his wider audience. He investigates why the poet set aside his great political lyric in 23 B.C. and resumed it in 17 B.C..Examining Odes in Book 4, Lyne contends that behind the public face, Horace exhibits resentment, recording views that undermine earlier patriotic statements. Horace's political utterances are always interesting, invariably well-composed, often independent. His is the public voice of Augustan society, and his literature reflects the pressures and nuances of that society, as well as revealing an image of the poet himself. R.O.A.M. Lyne was Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Balliol College, Oxford. Among his books are 'Ciris: A Poem Attributed to Vergil' (1978), 'The Latin Love Poets, from Catullus to Horace' (1980), 'Further Voices in Vergil's Aeneid' (1987), 'Words and the Poet: Characteristic Techniques of Style in Vergil's Aeneid' (1989).

This volume presents a wide range of pieces from a world-class Latinist which displays both his diverse interests as a scholar and his consistent concern with Augustan texts, their language and literary texture. The range of articles, written over more than three decades and including one previously unpublished piece, covers the same connected territory - largely Virgil, Horace, and elegy. R. O. A. M. Lyne's consistent approach of close reading means that the articles form a coherent whole, while his compelling style as an engaged literary analyst ensures that these are not dry or forbidding pieces.

The Ciris is a mythological narrative poem on the legend of Scylla and Nisus, and is an outstanding example of the epyllion genre - miniture epics, of which there must have been many from Catullus onwards. Late sources in Antiquity and inferior manuscript tradition attributed this poem to Vergil, and the possibility of Vergilian authorship has been discussed since the Renaissance. Dr Lyne has reassessed the manuscript authorities for the Ciris and here presents a new and better text of the poem with apparatus criticus. In his introduction and commentary he provides a complete account of the Ciris: its manuscripts, its style and language, the poet's treatment of the Scylla myths, his narrative technique and his method of composition. Dr Lyne's tracking down of the poet's borrowings from the now lost neoteric poets of Catullus' generation is especially interesting.

Vergil largely avoided artifices of poetic diction, preferring ordinary language, and using words which conventional poets thought too prosaic or colloquial. This book identifies such diction in Vergil and examines the methods by which he turned this into poetry.

The Aeneid can strike one as a relatively conventional epic, an objective heroic tale of Rome's beginnings. Vergil designed it so that it might read in this way. This is one, epic `voice' that he wished us to hear. But there are `further voices', and these may be disturbing, even shocking, as they add to, comment upon, question and occasionally subvert the implications of the epic voice. This is a detailed examination of Vergil's method of intruding such further voices.

This collection of essays, written by former pupils, celebrates the career of Jasper Griffin, one of the foremost modern scholars of classical epic. The volume surveys the epic tradition from the eighth century BC to the nineteenth century of our era. Individual chapters focus on: Homer and the oral epic tradition; Homer in his religious context; Herodotus and Homer; Hellenistic epic; Virgil in his literary context; Virgil in his political-cultural context; the Augustan poets and the Aeneid; Statius' Thebaid; Old English and Old Irish epic; Renaissance epic: Tasso and Milton; and the Victorians. The aim of the book is to situate writers of epic in their literary and cultural contexts--an enterprise captured in the term "interaction" in the title. The chapters singly offer insights into some of the foundational poems of the European epic tradition and together take a bold, holistic look at that tradition.