The landscape of bucolics – the identification of Coniferae in Vergil’s Eclogues

The main aim of this paper is to present the results of identification of conifers, the names of which occur in Vergil’s Eclogues.
The bucolic poetry in Rome came out to the literary light in the oeuvre of Vergil.
All in all, in the collection of ten pastoral poems the author decided to use 64 names of plants, and six of them are conifers.
In this paper the author tries to classify and describe the possible species of coniferous trees used by Vergil to create the world for his shepherds, also trying to shed some light on the meaning of these trees in Roman culture.
The process of identifying the plants in poetry requires some knowledge of botany and historical phytogeography, that is the reason, why amongst philological commentaries to Vergil’s Eclogues there are so many botanical studies quoted.
The merge of botany and classical studies allows to have any image of what species of plants Vergil might have used in creation of the inner world of his poems.

VIII International Conference on Landscape and Urban Horticulture

M. Helbig

Vergilius, Eclogues, Roman poetry, bucolic, phytogeography, archeobotany

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2022.1345.11