Vergilius 54 (2009) 97-123 EUGENIOS VOULGARIS’ TRANSLATION OF THE GEORGICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST MODERN GREEK TRANSLATION OF VERGIL 1 SOPHIA PAPAIOANNOU Eugenios Voulgaris (1716–1806), one of the most prominent and also most intriguing personalities of the Greek Enlightenment, became a leading participant in two major developments in the intellectual and political renaissance of the Orthodox East. In the history of neoteric Hellenic thought he is particularly noted for his theory about the possibility and viability of an organic synthesis between two seemingly polarized intellectual entities, the doctrines of Orthodox spirituality and the writings of his contemporary western rationalist philosophers (especially the German Aufklärer) and scientists. 2 No less seminal and widely regarded has been his devotion to 1 Julia Chatzipanagioti-Sangmeister, a specialist in the Greek Enlightenment with emphasis on the activity of the Greek diaspora intellectuals in 18 th c. Germany, provided invaluable bibliographical – some as yet unpublished – information that confirms an argument in favor of a new date of composition for the Georgics translation by Voulgaris. Her bibliography on Voulgaris’ literary activity during the last, ‘Russian’, period of his life, and on Catherine II’s foreign- and cultural policy agenda, in J. Chatzipanagioti-Sangmeister, “Έ  Τ ”  Ε Β: Τ Κ   Ι  [ = “Description of the Tauris Peninsula” by Eugenios Voulgaris: The Text and Its History]. Text, Introduction and Commentary (Athens 2007), in print, became the starting-point for this research. 2 For the Voulgaris novice, the most comprehensive and accessible book-length biography on this leading figure of the Greek Enlightenment is Bataldin; this includes a detailed bibliography of Voulgaris’ own works (this list needs an update, however, for, since 1982 new, previously unknown manuscripts have surfaced). For both those works written by Voulgaris and those either translated or edited by him particularly on Voulgaris’ stay in Germany, see also Goltz. Voulgaris spent eight formative years in Germany, in Leipzig and Halle, between 1763 and 1771. During that time he authored his most important scientific works, a book on Logic (Leipzig 1766), the Elements of Metaphysics (Venice 1805); he also translated in Greek Senger’s Elements of Mathematics. Voulgaris’ philosophical work has attracted systematic attention recently, and a series of selected studies has shed