One of three surviving collections of Latin bucolic poetry, the seven Eclogues transmitted under the name of Calpurnius Siculus are generally assigned to the reign of Nero, although the debate on dating continues, with proposals ranging between the later first and third centuries CE. Calpurnius follows Vergil's Eclogues as his main model, but reaches back to Theocritus for additional pastoral features, and the poems show the influences of later works of Vergil, Ovid, and other elegists.
Two factors have made Calpurnius a "marginal" poet: the collection's lack of historical context and the status of bucolic poetry as a minor, discontinuous genre. This literary study embraces these factors as an opportunity for a de-historicized reading of Calpurnius by interpreting the poems closely and within the context of the bucolic tradition but without reference to any kind of contemporary context. In doing so, Yelena Baraz explores questions about the working of tradition in Latin poetry, but also about how we approach Latin poetry and what issues we are drawn to given our own scholarly tradition. The book invites questions about reading literature on its own terms and, in particular, reading intertextually. The author also provides a new translation of Calpurnius' poems, the first in nearly a century, along with the Latin text.
Calpurnius Siculus and the Transformation of Pastoral uses the work of a marginal Latin pastoral poet to shed new light on the mechanics of imperial Latin poetry. Utilizing the features that made this genre of poetry difficult to interpret, the book highlights developments within the tradition and demonstrates how new genres and the presence of the emperor as a privileged reader reshaped pastoral.
