Download or read book Playing the Farmer written by Philip Thibodeau and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-06-05 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Setting Vergil's Georgics in the social context of its day, the book connects the poem's idyllic, and idealized, portrait of rustic life and agriculture with changing attitudes toward the countryside in late Republican and early Imperial Rome. It argues that what has been seen as a straightforward poem about agriculture is in fact an enchanting work of fantasy that elevated, and sometimes whitewashed, the realities of country life.