Precis for "Virgil and the cosmos: religious and philosophical ideas"

          Susanna Morton Braund, in her essay, "Virgil and the cosmos: religious and philosophical ideas", argues that although Virgil was not a member of any particular school of thought, he reflected through his writing "different ideas for different purposes in different contexts"(220). Braund looks at issues of physics and cosmology (and as a subtopic, gods and humans and nature), ethical issues, and eschatology in the Georgics, Ecologues, and Aeneid. She also examines the history of Virgil's various ideas and issues, and poets or philosophers he might have learned and borrowed from. Moreover, Braund also mentions Virgil's recurrent theme of uncertainty and questions, making his writing so hard to analyze and draw singular conclusions from. She covers many topics that readers question significantly without ever attempting to answer them.
          This article was pretty persuasive, and everything Braund talked about made logical sense. I liked that she used a lot of information from other authors and writers from history. However, I didn't find the parts about the Eclogues and Georgics overly helpful. There was a lot of interesting topics that the author covered within the chapter that are very interesting to many of Virgil's readers. The author also had a small section on Aeneas and Didio that could help with my research project. Personally, I think that this article was one of the most interesting ones we have read up until now.