The title of the collection, (silvae meaning "forest" or "raw material") was used to describe the draft of a poet"s work which was composed impromptu in a moment of strong inspiration and which was then revised into a polished, metrical poem. This suggests that the Silvae are revised, impromptu pieces of occasional poetry which were composed in the space of a few days" time. There are thirty-two poems in the collection (almost all with a dedicatee), divided into five books, each with a dedicatory epistle. Of nearly four thousand lines which the books contain, more than five-sixths are hexameters. Four of the pieces are written in the hendecasyllabic metre, and there is one Alcaic and one Sapphic ode.
