Georgics

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Georgics Book III, Shepherd with Flocks, Roman Virgil.

The Georgics is a poem in four books, likely published in 29 BC.^[1] It is the second major work by the Latin poet Virgil, following his Eclogues and preceding the Aeneid. Its position both in the Virgilian corpus and as a poem drawing on many previous sources and influencing many later authors allows for a variety of critical approaches. Scholars are often at odds in their opinions as to how to read the work as a whole, puzzling over such phrases as labor omnia vincit/ improbus (Georg. I.145-146), which is not simply the platitude, "work conquers all," but "shameful work conquers all." The subject of the poem is farming, as its name suggests (a combination of the Greeks words for earth and work), but far from being merely an example of peaceful bucolic poetry, it is a work filled with tensions.

[edit] Description

The work contains 2,188 hexametric verses divided into four books.

The poem has an explicit political dimension, making several references to Octavian, who would become emperor Augustus in 27 BC. Virgil's patron Maecenas, in whose honor the poem was written, was a confidant and advisor to Octavian. Suetonius reports that Virgil and Maecenas read the Georgics to Octavian while he was ill in the summer of 29 BC. There is debate as to whether Virgil's treatment of Octavian in the poem is entirely positive; but if Suetonius' report is accurate, it casts doubt upon the likelihood that the poem would contain any severe criticism of Octavian.

[edit] Summary

[edit] Book One

Vergil begins his poem with a summary of the four books, followed by a prayer to agricultural deities and then to Augustus himself. The tone is didactic. The model is closely related to Varro, but dissimilar in important ways.^[2] Jupiter’s role throughout Book 1 and the larger work is unclear. In the succession of ages, a standard trope whose model is Ovid and ultimately Hesiod, the age of Jupiter and its relation to the golden age and the current age of man Vergil crafts with deliberate tension.^[3] Of chief importance is the effect of labor on the success or failure of man’s endeavors, especially agricultural. Numerous technical passages sprinkle the fist half of Book 1, of particular interest to scholars has been lines 160-175, where Vergil describes the plow. Book 1 climaxes with the advent of a great storm in lines 311-50, which brings all of man’s efforts to naught. After further concern with weather-signs, Vergil ends with the enumeration of portents of Caesar’s assassination and civil war. Octavian is hoped to be a salvation from this. The passage as a whole mirrors closely with the great storm.

[edit] Book Two

Prominent themes of the second book include agriculture as man's struggle against a hostile natural world, often described in violent terms, and the ages of Saturn and Jupiter. Like the first book, it begins with a proem addressing the divinities associated with the matters about to be discussed: viticulture, trees, and the olive. In the next hundred lines Vergil treats forest and fruit trees. Their propagation and growth are described in detail, drawing a contrast between the ways which happen naturally and those which are initiated by man. Three sections on grafting are of particular interest: presented as marvels of man’s alteration of nature, many of the examples he gives are unlikely or impossible. Also included is a catalogue of the world's trees, set forth in rapid succession, and other products of various lands. Perhaps the most famous passage of the poem, the Laudes Italiae or Praises of Italy, is introduced by way of a comparison with the foregoing foreign marvels: despite all of those, no land is as praiseworthy as Italy. A point of cultural interest is a reference to Ascra, which an ancient reader would have known as the hometown of Hesiod. Next comes the care of vines, culminating in a vivid scene of their destruction by fire; then advice on when to plant vines, and therein the other famous passage of the second book, the Praises of Spring. These depict the growth and beauty that accompany spring's arrival. The poet then returns to didactic address with yet more on vines, emphasizing their fragility and laboriousness. A warning about animal damage provides occasion for an explanation of why goats are sacrificed to Bacchus. The olive tree is then presented in contrast to the vine: it requires little effort on the part of the farmer. The next subject, at last turning away from the vine, is other kinds of trees: those that produce fruit and those that have useful wood. Then Vergil again returns to grapevines, recalling the myth of the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs in a passage known as the Vituperation of Vines. The remainder of the book is devoted to extolling the simple country life over the corruptness of the city. '

[edit] Book Three

The Third book of the Georgics is chiefly and ostensibly concerned with animal husbandry. It consists of two principal parts, the first half is devoted to the selection of breed stock and the subsequent breeding of horses and cattle. It concludes with a description of the furor induced in all animals by sexual desire. The second half of the book is devoted to the care and protection of sheep and goats and their byproducts. It concludes with a description of the havoc and devastation caused by the Noric plague. Both halves begin with a short prologue called a proem. The proems invoke Greek and Italian gods and address such issues as Vergil’s intention to honor both Caesar and his patron Maecenas, as well as his lofty poetic aspirations and the difficulty of the material to follow. Many have observed the parallels between the dramatic endings of each half of this book and the irresistible power of their respective themes of love and death

[edit] Book Four

Book four, a counterpart to Book two, is divided approximately in half; the first half (lines 1-280) is didactic and deals with the life and habits of bees, supposedly a model for human society. Bees resemble man in that they labor, are devoted to a king and give their lives for the sake of the community but they lack the arts and love. In spite of their labor the bees perish and the entire colony dies. The restoration of the bees is accomplished by bugonia, spontaneous rebirth from the carcass of an ox. This process is described twice in the second half (lines 281-568) and frames the Aristaeus epyllion beginning at line 315. The tone of the book changes from didactic to lyric in this epyllion containing within it the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Aristaeus, after losing his bees, descends to the home of his mother, the nymph Cyrene, where he is given instructions on how to restore his colonies. He must capture the seer, Proteus, and force him to reveal what divine spirit he angered and how to restore his bee colonies. After binding Proteus who changes into many forms to no avail, Proteus tells Aristaeus that he angered the nymphs by causing the death of the nymph Eurydice, wife of Orpheus. Proteus describes the descent of Orpheus into the underworld to retrieve Eurydice , of his backward look which caused her permanent return to Tartarus and of Orpheus' subsequent death at the hands of the Ciconian women. Book four concludes with an eight line sphragis or seal in which Virgil contrasts his life of poetry with that of Octavian the warrior.

[edit] Sources

[edit] Greek

Virgil's model for composing a didactic poem in hexameters is the archaic Greek poet Hesiod, whose poem Works and Days shares with the Georgics the themes of man's relationship to the land and the importance of hard work. The Hellenistic poet Nicander's lost Georgics may also be an important influence. Virgil used other Greek writers as models and sources, some for technical information, including the Hellenistic poet Aratus for astronomy and meteorology, Nicander for information about snakes, the philosopher Aristotle for zoology, and Aristotle's student Theophrastus for botany, and others, such as the Hellenistic poet Callimachus for poetic and stylistic considerations. The Greek literary tradition, from Hesiod and Homer on, also serves as an important source for Virgil's extensive use of mythological detail and digression in the poem.

[edit] Roman

Lucretius' De Rerum Natura serves as Virgil's primary Latin model in terms of ostensible genre and its accompanying meter. Several lines of Virgil's text are heavily indebted to Lucretius, and the Plague or Horses section has as its model the plague of Athens that closes the De Rerum Natura. Virgil is also indebted to Ennius, who, along with Lucretius, made great contributions to the fitting of Latin to the hexameter verse. Virgil often uses language characteristic of Ennius to give his poetry an archaic quality. An intriguing idea that has been put forth by one scholar is that Virgil also draws on the rustic songs and speech patterns of Italy at certain points in his poem, to give portions of the work a distinct, Italian character.^[4] Virgil uses some of the neoteric poets at certain points in his poem as well, and Catullus Carmen 64 very likely had a large impact on the epyllion of Aristaeus that ends the fourth Georgic. Virgil's extensive knowledge and skillful integration of his models is central to the success of different portions of the work, and that of the poem as a whole.

[edit] Cultural Contexts

[edit] Philosophical Context

As one commentator has noted in his review of Vergil’s philosophical background, the two predominant philosophical schools of thought in Rome during Vergil’s early career were the Stoics and the Epicureans.^[5] Of these two, the Epicurean strain is the predominant one not only in the Georgics but in Vergil’s social and intellectual milieu. Varius Rufus, a close friend of Vergil and the man who published the Aeneid after Vergil’s death, had Epicurean tastes, as well as Horace and, coincidentally, Maecenas.^[6] The philosophical text which had the most impact upon the Georgics as a whole was Lucretius’ Epicurean epic, De Rerum Natura. As G. B. Conte notes, citing the programmatic statement in G. 2.490-502 which draws from DRN 1.78-9, “the basic impulse for the Georgics came from a dialogue with Lucretius.”^[7] And as David West remarks in his discussion of the plague in the third Georgic, Vergil is “saturated with the poetry of Lucretius, and its words, phrases, thought and rhythms have merged in his mind, and become transmuted into an original work of poetic art…”^[8]

[edit] Political Context

Beginning with Caesar's assassination in 44 B.C.E. and ending with Octavian's victory over Anthony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 B.C.E., Rome had been engaged in a series of almost constant civil wars. After almost 15 years of political and social upheaval, Octavian, the sole surviving member of the Second Triumvirate^[9], became firmly established as the new leader of the Roman world. Under Octavian^[10], Rome enjoyed a long period of relative peace and prosperity. However, Octavian's victory at Actium also sounded the death knell of the Republic. With Octavian as the sole ruler of the Roman world, the Roman Empire was born.

It was during this period, and against this backdrop of civil war, that Vergil composed The Georgics. While not containing any overtly political passages, politics are not absent from The Georgics. Not only is Octavian addressed in the poem both directly and indirectly, but the poem also contains several passages that include references and images that could be interpreted as political, such as the description of the plague in Book III and Vergil's famous description of bee society in Book IV. It is impossible to know whether or not these references and images were intended to be seen as political in nature, but it would not be inconceivable that Vergil was in some way influenced by the years of civil war. Whether they were intentional or not, if we believe Suetonius^[11], these references did not seem to trouble Octavian, to whom Vergil is said to have recited The Georgics in 29 B.C.E. We can be fairly sure that if Octavian had been displeased by these references, they would not have been included in the published poem.

[edit] Reception and Influence

[edit] Reception in Antiquity

If Virgil’s “carmen” of the Georgics delights the readers with its luxuriant poetic descriptions embedded in an impressive intertextual richness, it is nonetheless of a different character than the song composed for the idyllic Theocritean pastoral world of his Eclogues. The main theme framed in the Georgics is announced at the very beginning of the poem: the praise of the country life, where labor ommnia vicit (G 1.145) and where the farmer with his “weapons,” the plough, the hoe and the sickle, is striving along with his oxen. The focus is emphatically directed on the role of man in nature and on the aspects in which man and land and nature interact. Considering the distinctive didactic aspect of the poem and the contemporary stylistic developments and practice of poetry in the late first century BCE in Rome Virgil’s genius took a bold undertaking to embark on a theme alien to the educated reader. The work on Georgics was launched when agriculture had become a science and Varro has already published his Res Rusticae on which Virgil relied as source—fact known through Servius’ preservation of the lines (4th Century AD). Virgil’s scholarship on his predecessors produced an extensive literary reaction as well as reception by the following generations of authors. Seneca’s account that “Vergil… aimed, not to teach the farmer, but to please the reader,” underlines that Virgil’s sources both poetic and philosophic were abounding in his hexametric lines (Sen., Moral Letter 86.15). The didacticism of Hesiod (Works and Days), the Homeric metaphor and invocation, the drawing from Theophrastus on technical treatment of trees, the Hellenistic poets Aratus, Callimachus and Theocritus are only a few examples of sources which are included, transformed and adapted in Virgil’ literary accomplishment. The Alexandrian elegance and refinement of the Virgilian lines are rich with metaphors, analogies and symbols that in the Georgics are more than a reference to the natural world, but merely point to the programmatic motifs, such as the poet’s prayer to the Muses to show him the “ heaven’s pathways” (G 2.475-86). Rejecting the grand epic in favor for a lesser genre he announces that “it is hard to capture in words and to do honor to a humble theme” (G 3.289-93). “And perhaps the superior uniformity of the Roman’s excellence balances Homer’s pre-eminence…” (Quintil. Instit. Or. 10. 1. 85). Virgil’s view on the relationship between human beings and physical universe connects with some basic Epicurean doctrines and reflect a reliance on Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. (Notably is that Vigil took part in the Epicurean community of Philodemus and Siro among whom he also associated with Horace). The transition from the Saturnian Golden Age when the earth produced freely and spontaneously to the Iron Age changes man’s condition and relationship with the nature itself. Now in the age of Jupiter or Augustus Virgil says that “the father himself willed that the path of husbandry should not run smoothly and first stirred the fields with skill, sharpening men’s minds, not letting his kingdom slumber in heavy lethargy” (G 1.121–123). “Ceres was the first to teach men to turn the earth with iron” (G 1.147). In the Georgics’ theodicy the labor is both a curse and a blessing. Vigil informs us that Jupiter is the one that gave qualities to bees (G 4.149). They are the only creatures besides men capable to produce, example of devotion for their community and leaders, in perpetual recreation, always ready to yield their lives for the good of their hives. As the narrative advances towards the end of the poem Virgil’s philosophical reflections connect in a remarkable syncretism between Epicurean, Stoic and Pythagorean influences. The bees share a “divine intelligence” and “since there is a god in everything,” a source from where everything on earth, including men, originates and to where “all return, and dissolved, and then remade… and fly to the order of stars and to climb to the high heavens. ” (G 4.219-227). The episode describing the bees and Ovid’s version of the myth of Aristaeus (Fasti) and the myth of Orpheus reveal Virgil’s view of a man living in a world aggregated by events in which he tries to maintain an emotional distance and intellectual peace, away from the destructive power of passion. ^{[12] [13]}

[edit] Reception in the 18th Century

Dryden’s 1697 poetic translation of Vergil’s Georgics sparked a renewed interest in agricultural poetry and country life amongst the more educated classes during the eighteenth century. In England poets wrote their own Vergilian styled georgics and country themed pieces with an emphasis on withdrawal from city life, the rustic arts, and an embracement of a happy life on the country estate. Dutch influence on English farming also paved a way for the poem’s rebirth since Roman farming practices still prevailed in Holland. English farmers had a go at imitating what they thought were genuine Vergilian agricultural techniques. In 1724 the poet William Benson wrote, “There is more of Virgil’s husbandry in England at this instant than in Italy itself.”^[14] Vergilian styled farming manuals finally gave way to the agricultural revolution which supplanted its use with technical graphs and statistics. Everywhere throughout Europe agriculture underwent a change as the long standing ancient influence gave way to science and reason.^[15]

[edit] See also

• Bugonia
• Interview with Virgil scholar Richard Thomas and poet David Ferry, who recently translated Virgil's "Georgics," on Thoughtcast

In 2003 the German company Icon Genetics encoded the lines from Georgics "Nec vero terrae ferre omnes omnia possunt" (Neither can every soil bear every fruit) into the genome of an Arabidopsis thaliana plant.

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Buckham, Philip Wentworth; Spence, Joseph; Holdsworth, Edward; Warburton, William; Jortin, John, Miscellanea Virgiliana: In Scriptis Maxime Eruditorum Virorum Varie Dispersa, in Unum Fasciculum Collecta, Cambridge : Printed for W. P. Grant; 1825.
• Parker, Holt. "Vergil's Garden" or the "Hortus Vergilianus" at the University of Cincinnati. An interactive text of the poem with plant names linked to their translations into English, German, French, and Italian, modern Latin scientific names, and pictures.
• Bibliography: Vergil, Georgica: Eine Bibliographie

[edit] Online Text

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Georgics

• The Georgics at MIT
• Georgics (English) at Project Gutenberg
• Georgicon at Perseus Digital Library, Latin text with J.B. Greenough translation