This book is a study of one of the most famous poems of Roman literature, Virgil's Georgics. By close reading of selected passages in the poem it seeks to understand the work in terms of the cultural and political upheavals that were afflicting Rome at the time of its composition. The poem, it argues, constitutes an audacious attempt to explain and justify the violent civil wars that had recently brought Octavian (the future Augustus, with whom Virgil was closely associated) to power in Rome.