This highly acclaimed book was, when it was first published in 1969, the first complete book in English devoted to the Georgics of Virgil, of which Mr Wilkinson provides a comprehensive survey. With careful scholarship and shrewd verbal and stylistic analysis combined with sober common sense, he deals with Virgil's early life, the conception of the poem and its composition and structure. He also examines the poem's intellectual ancestry, studies its literary, philosophic, political and agricultural aspects and finally deals with its fortunes from classical times to the present day. Prose translations of quoted passages make this book accessible to readers other than students of classics.