William Alexander: No sooner does peace descend than golden age of literature and poetry arises

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

American writers on peace and against war

William Alexander: Cover’d with a bloody stain fields that once look’d pleasantly

William Alexander: Of all calamities to which we may be destined, none is so baleful and destructive as war

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William Alexander
Dissertations on Poetry

The Era of Augustus

From the wild writers of Rome’s republican days, we now retire, and present you their successors of a different character. Augustus had no sooner conferred upon a subjugated world that blessing of blessings, peace, when we behold a golden age of literature and poetry arising to adorn the same. Then arises a new poetic constellation, of which Virgjl, Horace, and Ovid are the brightest stars.

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The Georgics

The second work of Virgil is his Georgics. They treat of husbandry, and were undertaken at the earnest request of Maecenas. The reason of the request is evident. Civil wars had rendered Italy almost a desert. Caesar, therefore, having set himself to promote agricultural improvements, Maecenas calls in the aid of Virgil, reputed the wisest man of that era, to further the same object; by a design as new in Latin verse, as the pastoral was, before him, in Italy.