Table of Contents

Dedication
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Solitary Sphere

I. Cicero Speaking with Solitudes
II. Virgil's Eclogues as Meditation
III. Virgil's Solitary Spheres
IV. Horace and the Slip to Solitudes
V. Love Elegy, Propertius, and Soliloquy

Conclusion: Imperium and the Individual
Bibliography
Notes

About the Author

Aaron J. Kachuck was a Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge until 2021, when he took up the chair of Latin Authors and Latin Literature at Université Catholique de Louvain.

Reviews

At its most ambitious, Kachuck's study suggests a way to understand not just the solitude of the poet in Augustan Rome, but the dynamics of individuation beyond public and private assumptions of personhood across time.
*Andres V. Matlock, Classical Review*

The Solitary Sphere will reward a reader who knows Latin well and is willing to keep his or her feet firmly anchored in the texts being discussed so as to avoid being carried away by flights of metaphor. It is a book for advanced scholars and graduate students, but they will find it rewarding, especially if they are engaged in the demanding task of imagining the mental world of the Romans.
*LEE T. PEARCY, The Classical Outlook*

Kachuck's argument is thorough, and he provides close readings of passages in which the authors imagine themselves or their characters apart from Roman institutions of public and private life ... This challenging but rewarding book is well argued but primarily of interest to specialists.
*P. E. Ojennus, CHOICE*

The central argument is compelling.... This challenging but rewarding book is well argued.
*CHOICE*

Aaron Kachuck aims to introduce a new sphere into our discussions of Roman life and literature in the age of Vergil, broadly conceived; in addition to the public and private spheres, he argues, we need to do full justice to a third one - the solitary sphere.
*Anke Walker, Greece & Rome Vol 70.2*