Virum Volitare Per Ora: Genre And Poetic Immortality In Vergil’s Georgics

It is a curious thing that the poet who once demurred in Callimachean fashion to sing reges et proelia (Ecl. 6.3) should begin his magnum opus with a bold declaration of generic allegiance to Homeric epic: arma uirumque cano (Aen. 1.1). It must have struck Vergil too. For, in the poem which falls between these two works, the Georgics, he engages in an extended self-referential discourse to explain the evolution of his poetic programme. The poem’s metageneric discourse is central to its meaning. And so, in this thesis, I will explore how Vergil reconciles his earlier aesthetic commitment with his intention to compose epic. Critical to his poetic self-fashioning is the notion of poetic immortality, and the desire to be a Roman poet by writing on Roman themes.