The Virgil Encyclopedia

Thomas (Reading Virgil and His Texts) and Ziolkowski's (both classics, Harvard Univ.; The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years) exhaustive source seeks to document, as its preface states, "everything of importance that enters into Virgil, that is in Virgil, and that comes out from Virgil into literature, art, and music." The more than 2,300 entries include terms not only related to the author but also connected to his contemporaries and the time in which he lived, as well as later artists and works with a Virgilian influence. For example, the first volume contains an "acorn" entry, explaining that the word appears in Eclogues, and one on W.H. Auden, which discusses Virgil's influence on the poet. Entries are generally brief, spanning a few paragraphs or, at most, a few pages. They often include cross-references and suggestions for further reading and provide references to specific lines of Virgil's material when appropriate.