Talking to Virgil: A Miscellany

A collection of ten essays, three of which directly concern Rome and its history, ancient and modern. The other essays discuss topics such as the Hereford mappamundi as evidence of Julius Caesar’s project of a survey of the world; how Anthony Powell uses the ancient world in A Dance to the Music of Time ; the eruption of Vesuvius as the vengeance of the Giants on gods and men; the murder of Caligula as the last flicker of Republicanism; mud, Plato and exam papers in Gerard Manley Hopkins; how spiritualism enabled two classicists to pracice the direct method in Virgilian scholarship; and classical studies and the humanities during the 12 years of Thatcher government.