Download or read book Virgil on the Nature of Things written by Monica R. Gale and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virgil's agricultural poem, the Georgics, forms part of a long tradition of didactic epic going back to the archaic poet Hesiod. This book explores the relationship between the Georgics and earlier works in the didactic tradition, particularly Lucretius' De Rerum Natura ("On the Nature of Things"). It is the first comprehensive study of Virgil's use of Lucretian themes, imagery, ideas and language; it also proposes a new reading of the poem as a whole, as a confrontation between the Epicurean philosophy of Lucretius and the opposing world views of his predecessors.