Introduction -- Agricolae -- Playing the farmer -- Nobility in rustication -- A protreptic to agronomy -- To enchant readers -- The reception of the Georgics in early Imperial Rome -- Appendix 1. Vergil's economic status -- Appendix 2. Early readership of The georgics
Summary
Setting Vergil's Georgics in the social context of its day, the book connects the poem's idyllic, and idealized, portrait of rustic life and agriculture with changing attitudes toward the countryside in late Republican and early Imperial Rome. It argues that what has been seen as a straightforward poem about agriculture is in fact an enchanting work of fantasy that elevated, and sometimes whitewashed, the realities of country life
