Glande sues laeti redeunt: the pigs come home regaled with acorns … in Virgil’s rural paradise, even the livestock live off the fat of the land. The swineherd knocking down mast from the trees for his animals is from a famous late-mediaeval Book of Hours, the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.
Hear Virgil’s Latin and follow in John Dryden’s charming but not very faithful 17th century translation here.
Even with Octavian in the ascendant, around 29 BCE Rome is still at risk from the legacy of civil war. In his Georgics, comparing the city to a racing chariot out of control, Virgil turns abruptly from the life of the countryside to implore the Gods to allow the future Emperor Augustus to restore its threatened fortunes.
Hear Virgil’s Latin and follow in English here.
Pantheon Poets’ selection of extracts from the Georgics, Virgil’s epic poem about farming and the countryside. Click on the title of each extract to hear it in Virgil’s original Latin and follow in English translation.
Virgil begins the Georgics (Georgics Book 1, lines 1 – 42)
The farmer’s starry calendar (Georgics Book 1, lines 204 – 230)
Signs of bad weather (Georgics Book 1, lines 351 – 392)
Catastrophe for Rome? (Georgics Book 1, lines 461 – 514)
The farmer’s happy lot (Georgics, Book 2, lines 458 – 474)
More from Virgil’s farming Utopia (Georgics Book 2, lines 490 – 502 and 513 – 532)
Virgil’s poetic temple to Caesar (Georgics Book 3, lines 6 – 22 and 40 – 48)
Love is the same for all (Georgics Book 4, lines 243 – 279)
The natural history of bees (Georgics Book 4, lines 149 – 190)
Aristaeus’s bees (Georgics Book 4, lines 531 – 558)
Farmers have an easy life, according to Virgil in his Georgics. But would they agree? Hear Virgil’s rose-coloured poem in Latin and follow in English here.
