Abstract

Reflecting about hope does not itself have to be hopeful. One can take all sorts of attitudes toward hope or happiness, whether confirming them, noting their absence, or raising questions about their complexities. This chapter investigates first of all the various ways in which Vergil in his Georgics depicts the life of Italian farmers as full of strong emotions. It then shifts the focus away from agriculture to the passionate world of myth, with Aristaeus, Orpheus, and Eurydice, before turning to the poem’s interactions with contemporary Roman politics. The aim of the whole is to illustrate the ways in which Vergil’s didactic poetry offers a vision of a world full of anger and fear, but also of one in which there is an important place for pity and hope.