By adopting differing approaches to the physical world as astronomy, geography, topography, landscape and ecology, this work offers an account of the Eclogues that emphasises their range and complexity.

Beginning in outer space and ending up among the atoms, "Bucolic Ecology" illustrates how these poems repeatedly turn to the natural world in order to define themselves and their place in the literary tradition. It argues that the 'Eclogues' find there both a sequence of analogies for their own poetic processes and a map upon which can be located other landmarks in Greco-Roman literature. Unlike previous studies of this kind, "Bucolic Ecology" does not attribute to Virgil a predominantly Romantic conception of nature and its relationship to poetry, but by adopting such differing approaches to the physical world as astronomy, geography, topography, landscape and ecology, it offers an account of the Eclogues that emphasises their range and complexity and reaffirms their innovation and audacity.

This barnstormer bucketful of a reading, in the new 150-page format of the noughties, is another fillip for freshening revival of attention to the Eclogues.