The Bucolics and Eclogues

In ten short pastoral poems, Virgil's shepherds sing of love, friendship and loss in an idealised countryside: one shepherd driven from his land while another keeps his farm, a singing contest, a lover's lament for the cruel Alexis, and the famous fourth eclogue, which foretells the birth of a child who will bring back a golden age, and which Christians later read as a prophecy of Christ.

Virgil's first published work, written around 42 to 37 BC, the Eclogues echo the seizure of land for the veterans of the civil wars, which may have touched his own family's farm near Mantua, and they founded the European tradition of pastoral poetry. Read Virgil's Georgics and Aeneid.