Seamus Heaney, 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, is a modern poeta doctus of incomparable merit as far as the contemporary survival of Virgil’s poetry is concerned. To this end, the importance of his translations is highlighted here against the background of the contexts of life, education, and ideas about poetry. “Virgil: Eclogue IX” is also particularly interesting since it belongs, within the same collection (Electric Light, 2001), to a constellation of rewritings which span from a maximum faithfulness to a maximum of freedom to the Virgilian original. This provides useful insights into the didactic use of the modern eclogue, also in schools.
