Georgics (Oxford World's Classics)
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and other bushes still in leaf, full access to free-flowing streams,
and a stall whose back abuts the wind but which can take advantage
of sun’s highest heat in winter time, when cold Aquarius is waning
and sprinkles dew on a departing year.
If we tend these as carefully as sheep
equal good will come of them (despite the high prices
Milesian wool dyed with Tyrian reds will fetch).
For they give a greater yield, of both young and milk—however full
froth fills your pail, once you’ve stripped their udders
you’ll find another flow if you pull on their spins again.
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And that’s not all—some shave the smigs off their grizzly chins
and shear the bristling hair off bucks from Cinyps*
for use by troops and as loose coverlets for sad and sorry men at sea.
They’re kept to browse the woods and hills of Arcadia,
thorns and prickly brambles that thrive on higher grounds,
and—no need to call them—come back themselves, their kids in tow,
struggling to drag bags of milk across the threshold of the parlour.
So spare no efforts to shield them from the bite of frosts and icy winds—
they need so little minding in exchange for all they give;
leave mangers brimming over with hay and roughage
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and them in reach of what’s stored in the loft all winter long.
But when the west wind’s gentle breezes summon them,
the sheep and goats, to summer in the outfields,
we’ll make our way at crack of dawn and take to chilly pastures—
the day still young and grass a frosty glisten—
while dew the cattle love still lingers on fresh shoots.
Then, when the risen sun has honed a thirst
and crickets stir the plantings with their brittle song,
I’ll bring the flocks to springs and standing pools
and let them drink from hardwood troughs.
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But by high noon I’ll have them forage for and find
a shady glen where one of those ages-old,
great girthed oaks of Jupiter stretches out stout branches
or a thickly planted holly grove lours in its own hallowed shadows.
I’ll have them drink again cool runs of water and browse again
until the setting sun when twilight starts to chill the air,
its dews refresh the grazing, and cries of birds ring out again—
kingfishers from the shoreline, wood-warblers from the woody groves.
You know those Libyan shepherds? Should I go on about them in my verses—
their grazing-grounds and huts in settlements scattered here and everywhere?
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Many’s the time they’ve spent the whole long day, and all night too, for weeks on end,
tending flocks, out under stars, month after month,
and no sight or sign of anybody’s house, so expansive is the desert.
The African herd brings with him all he owns, hearth and home,
his weaponry, a hound from Amyclae, a quiver from Crete.
Much the same as any Roman brave, armed in his country’s cause,
advances bent beneath the burden of his kit and, still, before you know it,
there he is, his camp already pitched, his enemy surprised.*
Not like these the tribes of Scythia and the Sea of Azor
where the Hister runs turbid with ochrous sands
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and the Rhodope range reaches back to the central pole.*
They keep their cattle enclosed in stalls up there,
where there’s neither a grass blade to be seen nor on the trees a single leaf.
Instead, the ground goes on as far as far as eyes can see
and land looks all the same under mounds of snow and ice that’s more than four men deep.
Every day’s a winter day, with hordes of north-west winds marauding.
And never once can Sun sneak through that washy desolation—
not when he rides to reach the heights of heaven, no,
nor when his team draws him to dip into the reddening brine.
And suddenly, in running rivers, the water grows a skin of bone.
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The wave can bear wheels rimmed with iron;
what once was home to sterns of ships plays host to broad-beamed waggons.
Bronze vessels smash in smithereens, clothes harden on you back,
wine that flowed before is hacked with axes,
whole lakes transform to solid ice,
while icicles make unkempt beards hard as a board.
Meanwhile the snow continues falling.
Cattle catch their death of cold, ox hulks stand crouched
beneath a crust of frost; stags huddle numb beneath a bulk
the like of which they’ve never known, their antlers barely visible.
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You don’t need hounds to hunt them down, no, nor nets,
nor violaceous tassels for ‘scares’ to start them to stampede—
for as their breasts strain in vain against the massive piles
men simply slay them with the knives they have to hand and cut them up
to solemn sounds of sacrifice, and bear them off with shouts of celebration.
As for those men, they carry on at ease in caves
they’ve gouged out underground, with stacks of hardwood by the hearth,
whole elms, in fact, to roll on to the roaring flame.
The nights they pass by playing games—quite satisfied with brew they’ve made
of bitter berries of the rowan ash, their substitute for draughts of wine.
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For that’s the kind they’ve always been, barbaric tribes north of here, born and reared
beneath the Big Dipper; at the mercy of the worst those east winds have to offer,
they bundle up in dusky cattle hides and pelts of wild animals.
If a crop of wool be your concern, nip them in the bud,
those burrs and thistles; steer clear of pastures in too good a heart
and, from the start, select a flock with spotless fleeces.
As for the ram, however white his wool, if he has as much
as one black spot beneath the crown of his moist mouth,
cast him aside—that speck will smudge the pureness of his progeny.
You’ll find another soon enough; there’s a world of them to choose from.
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And so it was, if truth were told, that Pan of Arcadia wooed you,
the Moon.* By such immaculate designs he drew you to
the secret places of the wood, and you did not resist his call.
But if it’s milk you’re after, hand pick and put before the herd in pens
plenty of lucerne, and clover, and salted grass,
for the minerals will whet their thirst and swell their elders
and flavour what they yield with a briny taste.
(There are those who wean the kids at birth by muzzling them with iron spikes.)
The milk you strip by dawn-or daylight you’ll curdle in the night
and what you draw at dusk or dark
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you’ll cart away in wickerwork
when the shepherd goes to town
or sprinkle with a pinch of salt and set aside for winter use.
Nor let the care of dogs be the last thing on your mind,
but feed them up as one on fattening whey, fleet-footed Spartan puppies
and a fierce Molossian mastiff: with them as watchdogs you’ll need never fear
rustlers in your stalls at night, nor an attack of wolves,
nor Spanish thieves stealing up behind you.
And, as well, you’ll put to flight wild asses that are easily
scared
and course for hares and run down deer.
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Often, too, your baying pack will oust wild boars from wallows in the woods
or, with the yelps of whelps across high ground,
you’ll press a trophy stag into the nets you’ve set up there to trap him.
Back in the stalls, learn to burn juniper that makes sweet-smelling smoke
and with the fumes of allheal’s bitter resin evict any vile serpents.
Often underneath a disused shed you’ll find a viper lurking, one
you wouldn’t want to touch, that stole refuge from the light of day,
or else some other fanged creature, which takes to sneaking into the shed’s protection,
is snuggling there, quite at home, the scourge of cattle.
Good shepherd, grab a rock, pick up a thick stick quickly
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and, as he primes himself to threaten you, his cheeks puffed out,
finish him off. See, he’s fled already and hidden in a hole.
From head to tail his winding coils unreel
until his final writhing stops.
Then there is, deep in the gorges of Calabria, that ill-fated serpent,
with its protruding chest and coiling scaly back,
its lengthy belly blotched with distinctive markings,
and, as long as there are rivers gushing from their sources,
as long as earth is drenched by dews of spring and southern rain,
river banks are its abode, stagnant pools its dismal haunt,
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and there it gluts its greedy gullet with fish and burping frogs.
But when those marshy lands dry up and sunshine splits the earth
it takes to solid ground, its blood-red eyes ablaze,
and with its savage thirst, made mad with heat, rampages through the countryside.
Oh, let me never contemplate a nap in open air
nor, in a grove up on a ridge, think of lounging on the grass
the moment he, his skin just sloughed, in flush of youth, slithers past,
his seed and breed left behind him, hatched or still inside the shell,
and preens himself before the sun and flicks and flashes in his mouth his three-forked tongue.*
I’ll tell you, too, about diseases, their source and symptoms.
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You’ll have a flock tormented by the frantic itch of scab, when perishing showers
hit and run and midwinter’s cruellest frosts cut them to the quick,
sweat clots and clings just above the britch wool
and jagged briars prick their flesh.
That’s why the worthy shepherd dips his stock into fresh water—
and plunges rams into the flow to soak the fleece,
where they, let go, go sailing down the river.
Or else he’ll rub bitter dregs of olive oil onto the newly shorn
and concoct a potion out of litharge, that is ‘silver slag’, mixing it
with steaming native sulphur, and pine-pitch from Mount Ida, with greasy wax
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and squills, that is ‘sea onions’, and noxious hellebore and pitch-black bitumen.
You’ll find no quicker cure, however, than if you brace yourself
to take a knife to lance an open sore,
for it’s a fact infections thrive best undetected,
while a dithering herd hesitates to put his helping hand onto the wound
and instead sits idly by, imploring gods for better fortune.
What’s more, when pain pierces to the marrow those that bleat,
and rages there, a parching fever gnawing on their limbs,
you’ll do well to cut into a vein at the bottom of their feet,
one that throbs with blood, to steer away the scalding heat,
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as was the custom with the Bisaltae and fierce Gelonians
when they roved around the mountain ranges and the outposts of the Getes
and drank a mix of clotted milk and horse’s blood.
Then, if you happen to catch sight of a ewe that’s seeking refuge
in a far-off shade or picking listlessly at just the tips of grass,
that dilly-dallies way behind the others, or is lying slump down
in the middle of the field, or at night slinks off all on her own,
waste no time in exscinding that malignance with your blade
before the dread disease creeps through your whole unwitting flock.
They’re no more plentiful, nor furious, those squalls that strike from out at sea,
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than the onset of these plagues*—it’s not one here, another there,
death smites, but all in one fell swoop, the fill of outfields,
what is now and what’s to come, the hope of herds, root and branch and blossom.
So let him learn by looking, who casts his eye from the apex of the Alps
to the ramparts of Noricum and the plains by the Timavus,
how after all that fell the shepherd’s realm is now deserted,
and the grazing grounds left to waste, the length and breadth of them.
For here it was that once, with its seed in disease that wafted on the wind,
a time of misery took hold and festered in the sweat of autumn
to decimate all kinds of animals, including savage ones;
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it contaminated drinking water and spoiled the foodstore with a blight.
Nor was the road to death straightforward: rather,
when thirsts had parched every vein and made each joint shrivel up in agony,
there was a second flood of fluids which caused the very bones
to crumble, as bit by bit this cancer did them in.
Indeed, there have been times, mid-ceremony, that the victim of the offering
standing by an altar, as the snow-white woolly bandeau was being wreathed
around its head, dropped dead before the acolytes could act,
or when the priest had struck the sacrificial blow
the entrails laid out on the altar failed to flare into flame
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and the best of prophets were defeated in attempts to read
and to unravel what’s to come. Stick a knife beneath the skin and the blade’s
hardly marked; what trickles out barely leaves a blemish in the dirt.
There are calves dropping in droves in the middle of rich pastures,
giving up the ghost in sight of hay-filled mangers.
House-trained dogs go raving mad; a fit of coughing
racks the pigs, blocks their swollen windpipes and leaves them bereft of breath.
Even that horse, a champion once, falls victim to ill-fortune,
and, off both his food and drink, totters as he stamps the floor,
his ears fall forward and a fitful sweat surrounds them,
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the one that signifies the final onslaught.
Hard to the touch, his coat you pat, and there’s no give in it.
Such are the signs in the early days of being at death’s door—
but if disease proceeds to tighten its grip,
then, yes, the eyes begin to flicker, laboured breath
is interspersed with moans and groans, a rattle
shudders from the groin, blackened blood oozes from the nostrils,
clogged passages close in around an arid tongue.
Some deemed it a help to drench them with a winey liquid poured through a horn,
one chance to make the dying well. But soon this too proved useless:
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they were restored just long enough for fevers to flare up again,
and though they were already under a mortal pall (forfend that we
have such a fate, we who stayed true to you; send such ends to our enemies),
with their bare teeth they tore their own frayed limbs to shreds.
&nbs
p; Behold a bull, all hot and heavy, his shoulder to the plough,
how he collapses, drooling blood and foam and froth, and with a moan
heaves his last. The ploughman goes with heavy heart
to untack his mourning mate, then simply walks away
and leaves his plough plonk in the middle of the field.
Not tall trees’ shade, nor the pleasures of sweet meadows
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proffer consolation, no, nor that river scampering over rocks,
more pure than amber, as it makes its way towards the plain.
His flanks cave in, a glazed look overcasts his eyes,
and his neck’s a stone as it inclines towards the earth beneath the burden of itself.
All the work he did, all he contributed—and to what end? What came of it,
his turning of the heavy acres? His like was never once in thrall to wines