The Georgics

This Latin didactic poem in four books, written in the late first century BCE, instructs readers in the care of fields, trees and vines, livestock, and bees, while treating labour, weather, and the gods of the countryside. Book I turns from ploughing to portents of civil war; Book II praises Italy's soil; Book III follows horses and cattle into plague; Book IV moves from the hive to the myth of Aristaeus, Orpheus, and Eurydice. The addressee is the working land after Rome's wars. The work is a verse treatise on farming framed by politics and fable, not a pastoral of idle shepherds.

5 leaves of soft-ground etchings by Nigel Lambourne. Full pale brown canvas binding decorated in brown. Orange endleaves. Brown slipcase.