»Oruđe krepkih težaka«: Vergilijeve Georgike, knjiga I
»The tools of hardy laborers«: Virgil’s Georgics, Book One

Summary/Abstract: Being the preface to a Serbian translation of Virgil’s Georgics, Book One, this essay acts as an introduction to ancient didactic poetry in general. It presents the main characteristics of the genre and provides the reader with a short overview of didactic epic throughout Greek, Hellenistic and Roman periods. Another part deals with different readings of Virgil’s Georgics which for many years have been a source of fierce controversy. The ambiguity of the poem should be understood as a product of poet’s personal attitude as well as the result of a complex engagement with earlier writers in the didactic tradition: Hesiod, Aratus and above all Lucretius. The work admits both optimistic and pessimistic reading without enforcing either of them. Virgil ‘doesn’t assert anything’, he rather ‘searches and poses a question’.

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