The Eclogues (often called the Bucolics) is Virgil's first published collection of poetry. It consists of ten selections, (eclogues, in Greek). The word Bucolics comes from the Greek word for cowherd. These are pastorals, poems set in a idealized countryside among herdsmen and small landowners. Reality intrudes in Eclogues 1 and 9, which concern the confiscation of Virgil's farm.

Virgil wrote the Georgics in four sections. This handbook of agriculture was also intended to promote the revival of traditional Roman pastorial and agrarian life, with an emphasis on family life, hard work, practical patriotism and simplicity of manners and pleasures. Commissioned by Caesar Augustus in an attempt to make Rome's pastoral and agrarian past seem like an attractive and viable way of life for the population to continue to follow, the vision put forward in the Georgics is in many ways like...