Virgil

The ancient Romans called Virgil their supreme poet, and for once, the empire's self-regard was justified. This 19th-century study traces the arc of a writer who shaped Western literature for two millennia: from the shepherd's lute of the Eclogues, through the agricultural wisdom of the Georgics, to the founding epic that became Europe's cultural backbone. Collins examines how Virgil transformed the raw material of Roman imperialism into something aching and humane, whether charting the doomed passion of Dido or meditating on what farmers owe to the earth. The Aeneid alone gave English its words for empire, fate, and the burden of civilization. But this book reveals the smaller victories too: a poem about bees that still reads like revelation, verses that made Augustus weep. For anyone who suspects that the classics are merely old, Collins demonstrates they are instead permanent.