Georgics - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Georgics is a poem in four books, likely published in 29 BC

29 BC

Year 29 BC was either a common year starting on Friday or Saturday or a leap year starting on Thursday, Friday or Saturday of the Julian calendar and a leap year starting on Thursday of the Proleptic Julian calendar...

. It is the second major work by the Latin poet Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

, following his Eclogues and preceding the Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...

. It is a poem that draws on many prior sources and influenced many later authors from antiquity to the present. As its name suggests (Georgica, from the Greek word γεωργεῖν geōrgein, 'to farm') the subject of the poem is agriculture; but far from being an example of peaceful rural poetry, it is a work characterized by tensions in both theme and purpose.

Description and Summary

The work consists of 2,188 hexametric

Hexameter

Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter...

verses divided into four books.

Book One

Virgil begins his poem with a summary of the four books, followed by a prayer to various agricultural deities as well as Augustus himself. It takes as its model the work on farming by Varro

Varro Atacinus

Publius Terentius Varro Atacinus was an early Roman poet, more polished than the more famous and learned Varro Reatinus, his contemporary, and more widely read by the Augustans, who apparently dared not mention the other Varro's name...

, but differs from it in important ways. Numerous technical passages fill out the first half of Book 1; of particular interest are lines 160-175, where Virgil describes the plow. In the succession of ages, whose model is ultimately Hesiod

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...

, the age of Jupiter and its relation to the golden age and the current age of man are crafted with deliberate tension. Of chief importance is the contribution of labor to the success or failure of mankind’s endeavors, agricultural or otherwise. The book comes to one climax with the description of great storm in lines 311-50, which brings all of man’s efforts to naught. After detailing various weather-signs, Virgil ends with an enumeration of the portents associated with Caesar

Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....

’s assassination and civil war; only Octavian offers any hope of salvation.

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

Saturn (mythology)

In ancient Roman religion and myth, Saturn was a major god presiding over agriculture and the harvest time. His reign was depicted as a Golden Age of abundance and peace by many Roman authors. In medieval times he was known as the Roman god of agriculture, justice and strength. He held a sickle in...

and Jupiter. Like the first book, it begins with a poem addressing the divinities associated with the matters about to be discussed: viticulture, trees, and the olive. In the next hundred lines Virgil treats forest and fruit trees. Their propagation and growth are described in detail, with a contrast drawn between methods that are natural and those that require human intervention. Three sections on grafting are of particular interest: presented as marvels of man’s alteration of nature, many of the examples Virgil 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 foreign marvels: despite all of those, no land is as praiseworthy as Italy. A point of cultural interest is a reference to Ascra in line 176, 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 narrative 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 Virgil 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.

Book Three

The third book 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 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 a plague in Noricum. Both halves begin with a short prologue called a proem. The proems invoke Greek and Italian gods and address such issues as Virgil'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.

Book Four

Book four, a tonal counterpart to Book two, is divided approximately in half; the first half (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 (281-568) and frames the Aristaeus epyllion beginning at line 315. The tone of the book changes from didactic to epic and elegiac in this epyllion, which contains within it the story of Orpheus

Orpheus

Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...

and Eurydice

Eurydice

Eurydice in Greek mythology, was an oak nymph or one of the daughters of Apollo . She was the wife of Orpheus, who loved her dearly; on their wedding day, he played joyful songs as his bride danced through the meadow. One day, a satyr saw and pursued Eurydice, who stepped on a venomous snake,...

. Aristaeus

Aristaeus

A minor god in Greek mythology, which we read largely through Athenian writers, Aristaeus or Aristaios , "ever close follower of the flocks", was the culture hero credited with the discovery of many useful arts, including bee-keeping; he was the son of Apollo and the huntress Cyrene...

, after losing his bees, descends to the home of his mother, the nymph Cyrene

Cyrene (mythology)

In Greek mythology, as recorded in Pindar's 9th Pythian ode, Cyrene was the daughter of Hypseus, King of the Lapiths. When a lion attacked her father's sheep, Cyrene wrestled with the lion. Apollo, who was present, immediately fell in love with her and kidnapped her. He took her to North...

, where he is given instructions on how to restore his colonies. He must capture the seer, Proteus

Proteus

In Greek mythology, Proteus is an early sea-god, one of several deities whom Homer calls the "Old Man of the Sea", whose name suggests the "first" , as protogonos is the "primordial" or the "firstborn". He became the son of Poseidon in the Olympian theogony In Greek mythology, Proteus (Πρωτεύς)...

, and force him to reveal which divine spirit he angered and how to restore his bee colonies. After binding Proteus (who changes into many forms to no avail), Aristaeus is told by the seer 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, the backward look that caused her return to Tartarus

Tartarus

In classic mythology, below Uranus , Gaia , and Pontus is Tartarus, or Tartaros . It is a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides beneath the underworld. In the Gorgias, Plato In classic mythology, below Uranus (sky), Gaia (earth), and Pontus...

, and at last Orpheus' 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 general.

Greek

Virgil's model for composing a didactic poem in hexameters is the archaic Greek poet Hesiod

Hesiod

, whose poem Works and Days
Works and Days
Works and Days is a didactic poem of some 800 verses written by the ancient Greek poet Hesiod around 700 BC. At its center, the Works and Days is a farmer's almanac in which Hesiod instructs his brother Perses in the agricultural arts...

shares with the Georgics the themes of man's relationship to the land and the importance of hard work. The Hellenistic poet Nicander

Nicander

Nicander of Colophon , Greek poet, physician and grammarian, was born at Claros, , near Colophon, where his family held the hereditary priesthood of Apollo. He flourished under Attalus III of Pergamum.He wrote a number of works both in prose and verse, of which two survive complete...

'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

Aratus

Aratus was a Greek didactic poet. He is best known today for being quoted in the New Testament. His major extant work is his hexameter poem Phaenomena , the first half of which is a verse setting of a lost work of the same name by Eudoxus of Cnidus. It describes the constellations and other...

for astronomy and meteorology, Nicander for information about snakes, the philosopher Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

for zoology, and Aristotle's student Theophrastus

Theophrastus

Theophrastus , a Greek native of Eresos in Lesbos, was the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He came to Athens at a young age, and initially studied in Plato's school. After Plato's death he attached himself to Aristotle. Aristotle bequeathed to Theophrastus his writings, and...

for botany, and others, such as the Hellenistic poet Callimachus

Callimachus

Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...

for poetic and stylistic considerations. The Greek literary tradition from Homer on also serves as an important source for Virgil's use of mythological detail and digression.

Roman

Lucretius

Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is an epic philosophical poem laying out the beliefs of Epicureanism, De rerum natura, translated into English as On the Nature of Things or "On the Nature of the Universe".Virtually no details have come down concerning...

' De Rerum Natura serves as Virgil's primary Latin model in terms of genre and meter. Many passages from Virgil's poetry are indebted to Lucretius: the plague section of Book 3 takes as its model the plague of Athens

Plague of Athens

The Plague of Athens was a devastating epidemic which hit the city-state of Athens in ancient Greece during the second year of the Peloponnesian War , when an Athenian victory still seemed within reach. It is believed to have entered Athens through Piraeus, the city's port and sole source of food...

that closes the De Rerum Natura. Virgil is also indebted to Ennius

Ennius

Quintus Ennius was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was of Calabrian descent...

, who, along with Lucretius, naturalized hexameter verse in Latin. Virgil often uses language characteristic of Ennius to give his poetry an archaic quality. The intriguing idea has been put forth by one scholar that Virgil also drew 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. Virgil draws on the neoteric poets at times, 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 the poem as a whole.

Philosophical context

The two predominant philosophical schools in Rome during Virgil's lifetime were Stoicism

Stoicism

Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...

and the Epicureanism

Epicureanism

Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom...

. Of these two, the Epicurean strain is predominant not only in the Georgics but also in Virgil's social and intellectual milieu. Varius Rufus

Lucius Varius Rufus

Lucius Varius Rufus was a Roman poet of the Augustan age.He was the friend of Virgil, after whose death he and Plotius Tucca prepared the Aeneid for publication, and of Horace, for whom he and Virgil obtained an introduction to Maecenas...

, a close friend of Virgil and the man who published the Aeneid after Virgil's death, had Epicurean tastes, as did Horace

Horace

Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...

and his patron Maecenas.

The philosophical text with the greatest influence on the Georgics as a whole was Lucretius’ Epicurean epic De Rerum Natura. G. B. Conte notes, citing the programmatic statement in Georgics 2.490-502, which draws from De Rerum Natura 1.78-9, “the basic impulse for the Georgics came from a dialogue with Lucretius.” Likewise, David West remarks in his discussion of the plague in the third book, Virgil 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.”

Political context

Beginning with Caesar's assassination in 44 BC and ending with Octavian's victory over Anthony

Mark Antony

Marcus Antonius , known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general. As a military commander and administrator, he was an important supporter and loyal friend of his mother's cousin Julius Caesar...

and Cleopatra at Actium

Battle of Actium

The Battle of Actium was the decisive confrontation of the Final War of the Roman Republic. It was fought between the forces of Octavian and the combined forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII. The battle took place on 2 September 31 BC, on the Ionian Sea near the city of Actium, at the Roman...

in 31 BC, 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

Second Triumvirate

The Second Triumvirate is the name historians give to the official political alliance of Octavius , Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and Mark Antony, formed on 26 November 43 BC with the enactment of the Lex Titia, the adoption of which marked the end of the Roman Republic...

, became firmly established as the new leader of the Roman world. Under Octavian, 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 Virgil 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 3 and Virgil's famous description of bee society in Book 4. 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 Virgil was in some way influenced by the years of civil war. Whether they were intentional or not, if we believe Suetonius, these references did not seem to trouble Octavian, to whom Virgil is said to have recited the Georgics in 29 BC. We can be fairly sure that if Octavian had been displeased by these references, they would not have been included in the published poem.

Laudes Galli

A comment by the Virgilian commentator Servius, that the middle to the end of the fourth book contained a large series of praises for Cornelius Gallus (laudes Galli means “praises of Gallus” in Latin), has spurred much scholarly debate. Servius tells us that after Gallus had fallen out of favor, Virgil replaced the praises of Gallus with the Orpheus episode. Those supporting Servius see the Orpheus episode as an unpolished, weak episode, and point out that it is unlike anything else in the Georgics in that it radically departs from the “didactic” mode that we see throughout, rendering it an illogical, awkward insertion. Indeed, the features of the episode are unique; it is an epyllion that engages mythological material. The episode does not further the narrative and has no immediately apparent relevance to Virgil's topic. The difficult, open-ended conclusion seems to confirm this interpretation.

In a highly influential article Anderson debunked this view, and it is now generally believed that there were not Laudes Galli and that the Orpheus episode is original. Generally, arguments against the view above question Servius' reliability, citing the possibility that he confused the end of the Georgics with the end of the Eclogues, which does make mention of Gallus. Further, they question its validity based on chronological evidence: the Georgics would have been finished a number of years before the disgrace and suicide of Gallus, and so one would expect more evidence of an alternative version of the end of the poem - or at least more sources mentioning it. Instead, the Orpheus episode is here understood as an integral part of the poem that articulates or encapsulates its ethos by reinforcing many ideas or reintroducing and problematizing tensions voiced throughout the text. The range of scholarship and interpretations offered is vast, and the arguments range from optimistic or pessimistic readings of the poem to notions of labor, Epicureanism, and the relationship between man and nature.

Georgic repetitions in The Aeneid

Within Virgil's later epic work the Aeneid, there are some 51 lines that are recycled, either whole or in part, from the Georgics. There is some debate whether these repetitions are 1) intrusions within the text of later scribes and editors, 2) indications pointing toward the level of incompleteness of the Aeneid, 3) deliberate repetitions made by the poet, pointing toward meaningful areas of contact between the two poems. As a careful study by Ward Briggs goes a long way to show, the repetition of lines in the Georgics and the Aeneid is probably an intentional move made by Virgil, a poet given to a highly allusive style, not, evidently, to the exclusion of his own previous writings. Indeed Virgil incorporates full lines in the Georgics of his earliest work, the Eclogues, although the number of repetitions is much smaller (only 8) and it does not appear that any one line was reduplicated in all three of his works.

The repetitions of material from the Georgics in the Aeneid vary in their length and degree of alteration. Some of the less exact, single line reduplications may very well show a nodding Virgil or scribal interpolation. The extended repetitions, however, show some interesting patterns. In about half the cases, technical, agrarian descriptions are adapted into epic similes. This is fitting, as the stuff of many epic similes is rooted in the natural and domestic worlds from which epic heroes are cut off. Virgil shows his technical expertise by recontextualizing identical lines to produce meanings that are different, or inverted from their initial meaning in the Georgics. Additionally, some of these reproduced lines are themselves adapted from works by Virgil's earlier literary models, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, Ennius’ Annals, and Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things. With a single line or couplet, Virgil links (or distances), expands (or collapses) themes of various texts treating various subjects to create an Aeneid that is a rich tapestry of literary influence, including his own.

For a full listing of all the repetitions found within the Aeneid and corresponding line numbers in the Georgics, see Briggs, W. Ward, 1982. “Lines Repeated from the Georgics in the Aeneid.” Classical Journal. 130-147. Also Briggs, W. Ward, 1980, Narrative and Simile from the Georgics in the Aeneid, ibid.

Reception in antiquity

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, a fact already recognized by the commentator Servius. Virgil’s scholarship on his predecessors produced an extensive literary reaction by the following generations of authors. Seneca’s account that “Virgil… aimed, not to teach the farmer, but to please the reader,” underlines that Virgil’s poetic and philosophic themes were abounding in his hexameters (Sen., Moral Letter 86.15).

Reception in the 18th Century

Dryden’s 1697 poetic translation of Virgil'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 Virgilian 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 Virgilian 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.” Virgilian-style 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.

Online Text

The Georgics at MIT
Georgicon at Perseus Digital Library, Latin text with J.B. Greenough translation

External Links

The Georgics: A Source of Inspiration of Quotations in Wilanów at the Wilanów Palace Museum

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