by Virgil
of sticky sticks for birds and rounding game in glades with packs of hunting hounds.
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And by this time someone was dragging rivers with a net,
plumbing their depths; another trawled the open sea with his soaking mesh.
Then came tempered iron and the saw-blade’s rasping rhythm
(for earlier man was wont to split his wood with wedges).
All this before the knowledge and know-how which ensued.
Hard work prevailed, hard work and pressing poverty.
It was Ceres who first taught to men the use of iron ploughs—
that time wild strawberries and oak berries were scanty in the sacred groves
and Dodona* was miserly with her support.
Soon growing grain grew into harder work.
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Blight rusted stalks, and thistles mustered into view to lord it over
all that you accomplished; crops began to flounder, a rough growth to advance—
goosegrass, or ‘cleavers’, and bristling burrs—while wild oats
and dreaded darnel ruled head and shoulder over your well-tended plot.
So, unless you’re set to spend the whole day hoeing weeds,
and making noise to scare off birds, and slashing back with hooks
the branches darkening the lands, and all your prayers for rain are answered,
alas, my friend, heaps of grain next door will stare you in the face
and you’ll be raiding oaks for acorns to ease the ache of hunger.
Now let me tell about the tools and tackle unflagging farmers had to have
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in their arsenal, for none has sowed or saved a crop without them.
The ploughshare first, and the curved plough’s solid board,
and Ceres’ hefty carts for sheaves,
threshing rakes and sledges, and the heavy-weighted mattock.
And then the lighter implements of wickerwork—arbutus gates and hurdles,
and Iacchus’ marvellous riddle* which serves to sort the chaff from grain.
So think ahead—stockpile a cache of these in time
if you’re to earn the satisfactions of that heavenly estate.
To make the plough’s main curve, fashion by force
a pliant elm while it’s still growing in the ground.
Then to its stock fit and fasten an eight-foot pole,
earth-timbers, and a twin-backed beam.
Light lime you will have kept aside to make the yoke,
and for the tiller a length of beech to steer it from behind.
Hung in the hearth, smoke will season wood components.
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I could, if I’d not seen you back away from such concerns,
regale you with a store of ancient learning.
To begin: grade the threshing floor with the heavy roller,
taking pains to tamp it tight with chalk
so that no growth breaks through and it holds firm and doesn’t crumble.
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Let no blights of pests or parasites squat there;
for often, underground, the mouse sets up his house and home
and the groping mole excavates a bolt-hole
and you come upon a shrew or fieldmouse in a hollow
and other creatures earth turns out—the beetle scurries
to spoil heaps of wheat, the emmet hurries to safeguard against a want some rainy day.
And so pay close attention when stands of walnut trees
disport themselves with blossoms and their fragrant boughs bend down—
if they produce abundant fruit, your corn crop will be bountiful,
great heat will follow and guarantee your harvest.
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But if, instead, a luxury of leaves abounds and throws a shadow over everything,
you’ll waste a world of time at grinding, end up all chaff and little grain.
I’ve seen with my own eyes plantsmen steeping seeds
before they set them down, drenching them in saltpetre and the dregs of olive oil,
so that their deceiving pods would grow a greater yield,
one that might amount to something over a low flame.
And I have seen long-tried and-tested crops begin to fail
where no one took the time each year to sort and save
the finest grain, seed by seed. For that’s the way it is—
world forces all things to the bad, to founder and to fall,
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just as a paddler in his cot struggling to make headway up a river,
if he lets up a minute, will find himself
rushed headlong back between the banks.
What’s more, you need to keep a weather eye on sky formations*—
such as Arcturus, the twin kids of the Charioteer, or Draco, that bright light,
and stay vigilant as those mariners who, homeward bound, ride stormy seas,
yet venture close to Pontus, the Straits of Abydos and their oyster beds.
And when September’s equinox doles to day as many hours as to night
and splits the world in two fair halves, both equal light and dark,
then set to work the oxen, men, broadcast barley in the fields,
until midwinter’s whelming showers slap you in the face.
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Then, too, it’s time to plant linseed and seeds of poppies (loved by Ceres),
time to tie yourself to the plough while the still-dry earth
accepts it and the settled weather lingers.
Set beans in springtime, the time alfalfa happens in collapsing furrows,
and millet clamours for its annual attention,
when Taurus, gilt-horned and incandescent, gets the new year
up and running, and the Dog succumbs to his advance.
But if you’ve been working towards a strong output of wheat
or you’re heartset on hardy ears of corn,
hold off until one of the Seven Sisters steals away from you at dawn
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and the Star of Knossos, the shining Northern Crown, retires
before you entrust to the ground seed you’ve pledged
and invest in soil that couldn’t keep its promise to repay the hopes of a whole year.
Some cropsmen thought that they could not delay till May began to wane
and the crops that they were counting on jeered them with hollow heads of oats.
But if you’re the kind who’s satisfied with sowing seeds of vetch and tares
and second-rate green beans and don’t look down even on Egyptian pulses,
you won’t mistake in any way the signs a setting Boötes transmits—
you might as well get on with it, and carry on your sowing until you’re up to here in frosts!
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This is the very reason the sun god is so faithful to his path
between each of the dozen fixed divisions of his orbit.
Five spheres make up the heavens,* of which one, and only one,
is always blushing brightly and always flushed by his flaming fire.
And all around, left and right, a cyanic realm stretches far as far can be,
hard frosts and ice and gloomy spills.
Between this and the middle sphere a pair of zones is given
by godly grace to pitiful man, through both of which a way’s laid down
and the series of signs takes turns along their roundabout way.
And the universe, just as it rises to the lofty slopes of the Riphaean ranges,
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pitches downward in the south, in Africa.
There’s a pole that always looms above us, while its counterpart
lies underfoot* in Stygian dark and the infernal shades.
Here the sky’s enormous serpent slithers in and out,
the image of a river, between the Big and Little Dipper,*
those constellations that disdain to be touched or taint
ed by Atlantic’s waters.
There, or so they say, either it’s the dead of night and so still—
a black shadow stretching over everything as if for ever—
or dawn comes back to them on its way back from us, daylight’s chaperone,
and, when morning first inspires us with its puffing horses,
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there the lamps of evening are coming on, and glow.
And so we have the power to anticipate uncertain weather—
the day to reap, the day to sow—
and when the time is right to plunge our oars into
untrustworthy seas, when to launch an armed armada,
when’s best, even, to fell a pine tree in the forest.
It’s not for nothing we keep an eye on sky for signs
that come and go, or on the year’s four equal parts.
Say the farmer’s grounded by a cold snap’s burst of rain,
he’ll seize the time for odd jobs he’d be rushing when it’s fine.
The ploughman points the blunted share with hammer blows
or gouges troughs from trees,
or brands the herds, or checks the stocks of grain;
another whittles stakes and twin-pronged forks
and readies sally switches to tie the dangling vine.
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And now might be the time to weave fruit baskets out of brambly branches
or roast the corn beside the fire before you crush it with the quern.
For it’s a fact, on holidays you’re actually allowed by gods’ laws and by men’s
to attend to certain labours—so let no scruple deflect you
if you would clear a drain, or fill a gap around the cornfield,
set traps for birds or fire to briars,
and dip the whole flock in the flow to stave off scab.
These are the times the farmer weighs the little donkey
down with creels of olive oil and fruit he’s picked
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and comes back later from the town with a grinding stone or a supply of pitch.
The moon herself prescribed days suitable for certain work.*
Beware the fifth, the day on which grim Death
was born, as were the Furies, the day the Earth whelped ghastly giants—
Coeus, Iapetus, and restless Typhoeus—and another heinous brood,
the brothers who conspired to bring down the very heavens.
Three times did they essay to heap Mount Ossa on Mount Pelion,
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and then—it followed—to impose on Ossa Olympus’ leafy heights.
And three times he, the Father himself, blasted those piled hills with lightning.
The seventeenth’s a lucky day for laying down the vine,
for rounding up and breaking in an ox or heifer, for setting up the loom.
The ninth day smiles on anyone who runs away, but frowns on those who steal.
It’s true, the small small hours are best for many things,
or that very moment the sun is fledging and the land’s still dabbed with dew.
Night’s the best for cutting lighter crops, night’s best for well-drained meadows,
for then there is no lack of lingering moisture.
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There’s a certain sort of man who by winter firelight
stays up all night edging iron implements.
And all the while, with soothing songs lightening the load of her routine,
his helpmeet runs across her loom her rattling reed,
and in the hearth a flame reduces the sweet-scented must,
its bubbles simmering in a pot she skims with brush-strokes of broad leaves.
While, on the other hand, in midday’s highest heat, you’re better off
knocking red or ruddy grain or bruising parched produce on the threshing floor.
Plough on days you’d strip to the waist; sow the same.
Winter’s the time for farmers to unwind. In colder months
countrymen enjoy themselves, taking turns to entertain.
Congenial winter is a treat: it banishes their woes and worries,
as if a laden ship just docked in a safe haven
and sailors had begun to decorate its stern with garlands.
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Still and all, that season has its labours, they file away the hours—
the gather-up of acorns, bayberries and olive-berries, and the purple berries of the myrtle.
What’s more, it’s time for you to set out traps for herons, cast nets for stags,
to course the long-lugged hare and fell a hind
by hurling your coarse hempen slings the way they do in the Balearics—
all this while snow falls from the heavens, and floods advance their loads of ice.
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What can I tell about the storms of autumn and its signs,
or, even, when the days are closing down and summer sun’s abating,
what then must men beware of? Or, say, when spring comes tumbling
down in showers and crops of corn are tall already,
their green stalks standing proud with sap?
How often I have seen, just as the farmer’s driven in to reap
the flaxen field and top the fragile barley crop,
the clash of squalls and gales in battle mode
as they ripped up from roots the swathes of ripe and ready corn
and held them up, the way malefic whirlwinds
toss beardless stalks around the place, hither and yon.
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At other times a rush of water cascades from the sky,
clouds spill their mass into the foul darkness of a deluge,
as the heavens open and the rainfall wipes the smiles
off the faces of the crop the oxen worked so hard to make.
Ditches fill to the brim, rampant channels overflow,
the sea rampaging up each boiling inlet.
Then Jupiter, squire of the sky, straddling the night clouds, dispatches
from his gleaming hand a thunderbolt and makes the whole world quake.
Wild beasts take off, and everywhere human hearts
are laid low in a panic. He hurls that blazing dart
onto Athos, Rhodope, and the peaks of Ceraunia;*
south winds redouble and rains intensify;
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now the great groves in the gale, and now the shores, burst into tears.
So, in apprehension, keep an eye on each month’s constellations,
and note where the cold star of Saturn steals away to,
and in which orbits the planet Mercury is wandering.
Above all else, venerate the gods and pay your yearly offerings
to Ceres, when the grass is in good heart,
at the very end of winter when spring brings on clear skies.
Then lambs are fit, wine’s at its best.
Sleep’s pure delight, and on the heights deep shadows lie.
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Have all your workers be worshippers of that goddess,
and offer milk and honey and mild wine,
