The Moretum decomposed

Abstract

Papers on the Moretum at one time aimed to analyse the ps.-Virgilian Moretum in terms of what the poem tells us in minute detail about subsistence farming (though the date is not secure and localization is quite uncertain). It emerges, however, that the detail is disconcertingly familiar and identifiably literary. That discovery invites us to reopen various issues in the discussion of the poem’s scope, genre, character, and humour.