Essays on Latin lyric, elegy, and epic

"Devoted to five of Rome's master poets of the late Republican and early Augustan period, the essays in this volume are exercises in practical criticism that greatly increase the accessibility of the poets to the modern reader. The author discusses major individual poems and a few minor poems; in one instance he focuses on the imaginative structure of a complete book of poems by Propertius, and in the final essay on certain themes and ideas that unify Virgil's poetry as a whole. The essays are categorized by genres and by authors, who, with one exception, are arranged chronologically." [Back cover].