Georgics (Oxford World's Classics)

by Virgil

  and laying down the law—enough to earn his place in heaven.

  And I, Virgil, was lying in the lap of Naples, quite at home

  in studies of the arts of peace, I, who once amused myself

  with rustic rhymes, and, still a callow youth,

  sang of you, Tityrus, as I lounged beneath the reach of one great beech.

  EXPLANATORY NOTES

  BOOK ONE

  O Liber … O god of Tegea: Virgil adds gods and culture heroes from Greek tradition. Liber: Bacchus. Neptune … a snorting horse: in their mythical contest to be divine patron of Athens, Poseidon/Neptune offered the horse, which sprang from the ground at a blow from his trident, while Athene/Minerva won with her offering of the olive tree. patron of shady woods … chaparral of Ceos: Aristaeus of Ceos, son of the nymph Cyrene and Apollo, seen here as shepherd, but he was also honoured as a cult hero or discoverer of arable farming and beekeeping (cf. note to 4.283–4 and 4.327–31: he will be the farmer’s model hero who overcomes disaster by patience and perseverance in Book 4. Pan … Tegea: Pan, the Greek god of herds, came from Arcadia, whose chief city was Tegea, and he was worshipped on its mountains Lycaeus and Maenalus.

  that youth, too, creator of the crooked plough: the first of three references (see also lines 39 and 166) to the myth of Demeter/Ceres which was celebrated in the mysteries of Eleusis near Athens. The youth is Triptolemos (also called Iacchus), the baby whom Demeter tried to make immortal when she acted as his nurse during her time on earth seeking for her kidnapped daughter Persephone/Proserpina. Interrupted by his anxious mother, she gave the mortal Triptolemos the power to invent the plough and so create agriculture.

  you too, O Caesar: Octavian had named his own adoptive father Caesar as a god after his death, and so was expected to join the gods himself in due course. Virgil follows the mythical tradition which divided the universe into three divine kingdoms, assigning Jupiter earth and sky, Neptune the sea, and Dis the underworld. The poet of the countryside naturally stresses that Octavian may be ‘in charge of countryside … begetter of the harvest or as master of the seasons’ (lines 26–7), and alludes (line 28, ‘a garland of your mother’s myrtle’) to the myrtle as flower of Venus, who as mother of Aeneas was ancestress of the Julian family.

  Tethys forfeits all her waves to have you as a son-in-law: here, Octavian is assimilated to Achilles, son of the sea-nymph Thetis.

  you will add a new star to the zodiac: as Julius Caesar was identified with the comet seen after his death, so his son Octavian may be deified as a constellation: the old version of the zodiac assigned two segments to the Scorpion and its Claws, until the Claws were replaced by Libra in honour of Octavian, born on 23 September.

  let not the nether world of Tartarus … she hears her calling her: the underworld offered the virtuous a blessed afterlife in the Elysian fields, which was also the reward of initiates in the Eleusinian mysteries. The mysteries assimilated the grain beneath the earth to Proserpina, who stayed with her husband Dis in winter and returned only for part of each year.

  Deucalion cast… a hardy race!: Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha were the only survivors when Jupiter’s great flood destroyed mankind. They were instructed by the oracle of the goddess Themis to throw stones behind them which became the new race of men, hard(y) like stones.

  Mysia … Gargarus: here and elsewhere (e.g. line 120, ‘Strymon cranes’ from Thrace), Virgil uses exotic lands as a foil for his celebration of Italy. Mysia and Gargarus were in north-west Anatolia, near Troy, Rome’s original city.

  Dodona: in Epirus, the site of a famous oracle of Zeus/Jupiter, which gave prophecy from its oak trees, the source of acorns, man’s first primitive food (cf. ‘acorns of Epirus’, line 8).

  Iacchus’ marvellous riddle: another allusion to the symbolic use of farm tools (here a winnowing fan) in the mysteries at Eleusis. Cf. line 19 and note.

  sky formations: most of these constellations are still known by Virgil’s names, but note that Taurus (line 217) is gilt-horned as if an ox adorned for sacrifice; the Seven Sisters (line 221) are the Pleiades, and the Star of Knossos (line 222) identifies Ariadne, princess of Crete, whom Bacchus took as his consort and honoured by setting her crown in the sky.

  Five spheres make up the heavens: these are the celestial zones reflected in the division of the earth between glacial poles, intolerable equatorial heat, and the two temperate zones habitable by men. Virgil is adapting the poetic description of the Alexandrian geographer Eratosthenes (fr. 16 Powell), also known to Lucretius, who interpreted the nature of the earth more pessimistically (Lucretius, 5.195–205).

  its counterpart/lies underfoot: this account (with lines 247–51) seems to blend the idea of the Antipodes on the opposite side of the globe (whose night is our day) with the Stygian underworld beneath the earth (cf. lines 36–9).

  the sky’s enormous serpent… the Big and Little Dipper: these are the polar constellations Draco (line 205) and the Great and Lesser Bear (cf. ‘Lycaon’s child’, line 138, referring to Callisto daughter of Lycaon, who with her son was transformed by Jupiter into the two constellations). Cf. line 246 (‘that disdain to be touched’): viewed from Mediterranean latitudes, the constellations were always above the night horizon, and so were interpreted by myth as never sinking into the surrounding Ocean. From Homer onwards Greeks and Romans knew these constellations by both the mythical names and a homely alternative: what we call the Big Dipper they called ‘the waggon’.

  days suitable for certain work: Virgil is offering a pastiche of Hesiod’s teachings about lucky and unlucky days of the month, which were numbered by the phases of the moon. ‘Beware the fifth’: cf. Works and Days 802.) But he has conflated several of the monstrous enemies of the Olympian gods, the Titans, Coeus, and Iapetus (Theogony 134 f.), Typhoeus (821), children of Earth, and the brothers Otus and Ephialtes (Odyssey 11.305–20). Homer had both Pelion and Ossa, the great Thessalian mountains, heaped on Olympus. Virgil’s variation reverses this.

  Athos, Rhodope, and the peaks of Ceraunia: Athos is in the Greek peninsula of Pallene, Rhodope in Thrace, and Ceraunia a mountain range on the north-west coast of the Greek peninsula nearest to Italy.

  Nisus comes into view … she stole: Nisus, king of Megara, was betrayed to his enemy Minos by his daughter Scylla, who cut off his magic lock of purple hair. Minos rejected her and both Scylla and Nisus were turned into sea-birds: she became a shearwater (ciris). The story is told by Ovid (Metamorphoses 8) and in the short pseudo-Virgilian epic Cms.

  Glaucus … and Ino’s son, Melicertes: the human fisherman Glaucus became a sea-god; Ino, aunt of Bacchus, was driven mad by Hera/Juno and jumped into the sea with her son Melicertes. They became sea-gods and protectors of sailors. At Rome they were worshipped as the goddess Mater Matuta and the god Portunus.

  that time that Caesar fell: historians reported dreadful portents both before and after the assassination of Caesar, but the solar eclipse referred to here occurred six months after Caesar’s death, in October 44. ‘Infidels’ (line 468) marks the sins against the gods of Rome’s civil wars, assimilated to the iron age of conflict within the family and country denounced by Virgil’s predecessor Catullus, and later Ovid.

  Philippi observed… in a civil war: the battle of Philippi in Macedonian Thrace in 42 BCE, when Octavian and Antony defeated the forces of Caesar’s killers, Brutus and Cassius, is deliberately assimilated to the battle fought at Pharsalus in Thessaly at which Caesar defeated Pompey and the Republican forces six years earlier, in 48.

  Emathia: a region of Thessaly.

  Haemus: a Thracian mountain range; cf. 2.488.

  the lies Laomedon told at Troy: Laomedon, king of Troy, deceived Neptune and Apollo into building him defensive walls around Troy and then reneged on his payment. He also cheated Hercules of his reward for killing the sea-monster sent by Neptune, and was punished, first when Hercules captured and sacked the city, and later, posthumously, when the Greeks again took the city under his grandson Priam. It was pa
rt of Augustan ideology to stress the guilt of Troy as one cause of Rome’s own sufferings in the civil war.

  chariots … no control: representing Rome’s young leader as a charioteer will have appealed to popular admiration for these races, but may have suggested either of two Greek traditions. It is more likely that Virgil was alluding to the Platonic allegory comparing the moral aspect of the soul to a charioteer who must control his unruly horses of spirit and base appetite (see Plato, Phaedrus 253d–254e), than to the cautionary tale of Phaethon, who tried to drive the chariot of his father, the Sun, and caused a conflagration on earth.

  BOOK TWO

  the groves of Jupiter: his oracle at Dodona.

  the other one: Virgil is distinguishing two varieties of oak: the English oak (quercus) and the durmast oak (aesculus).

  laurels of Parnassus: Delphi, on Mt. Parnassus, was the prophetic shrine of Apollo, and leaves of his tree, the laurel, were chewed by the Pythoness for inspiration.

  Ismarus… Taburnus: here and repeatedly in Book 2 Virgil combines and contrasts exotic places (Ismarus is a mountain range in Thrace) with Italian sites like Taburnus in Samnium.

  orchards of Alcinous: the king of mythical Phaeacia, whose gardens and orchards are described in Odyssey 7.112–32.

  Crustumine … Tarentine: from Crustumerium and Tarentum, in different regions of Italy.

  Lesbos … Rhaetia: again Virgil lists popular wines from around the Mediterranean, the islands of Lesbos, Thasos, Chios, and Rhodes, and Egypt and Lydia (western Turkey). Lagean (line 93), from the Lagid dynasty of Ptolemies who ruled Egypt, alludes to Egyptian wine. Rhaetia (line 95) is the Roman name for Alto Adige and Tyrol, and this wine was a favourite of Augustus, according to Suetonius (Augustus 77). In contrast, Virgil cites Falernian (line 97), and wine from Aminnea (line 97), both from Italian Campania, as superior to the wines of Lydian Mt. Tmolus and Phanae in Chios.

  how many grains … how many waves: Virgil’s first comparison echoes a famous poem of Catullus (Cat. 7), measuring the kisses he wants from his Lesbia by the uncountable sands of Libya, but he has substituted the waves of the Adriatic for Catullus’ second allusion to the countless stars of the sky.

  the ends of earth … Scythian tribes: this choice of climatic opposites anticipates the fuller accounts of North Africa and Scythia in 3.339–83.

  the Indies … Chinese: the Romans knew of these lands beyond their own empire only indirectly from the middlemen who traded spices from Arabia (Virgil names them with the Latin form of the name Sheba), rare wood like ebony from the Indian peoples of South Asia, cotton from East Africa, and silk from China. These places will be recalled in lines 136–9, where the Lydian river Hermus is cited for the gold panned from its stream.

  the citron … product of Media: Virgil gives special treatment to the citron (malus Medica) as a cure-all against poison, bad breath, and breathlessness. Romans of his time identified the ancient Medes (line 134) with their contemporary enemies, the Parthians. Here and elsewhere in Book 2 he is drawing on the Greek botanist Theophrastus, and Pliny quotes him and partly corrects him in Natural History 11.278.

  no oxen … serries of spears: the fire-breathing oxen and warriors born from dragon’s teeth of mythical Colchis (and Thebes). Italy is free of mythical monsters, as it is less plausibly said to be of wild beasts and poisonous plants.

  Clitumnus: a lake with sacred springs in Umbria where white oxen were bred for sacrifice to Jupiter and other gods at Rome.

  Larius… Lucrine: praise of the northern lakes Maggiore and Garda is combined with praise for Agrippa’s recent engineering feat of linking Lake Avernus and the Lucrine lake in Campania to the Tyrrhenian coast to provide an inland naval basin. His artificial harbour is also praised by Propertius (3.18), writing soon after 23 BCE, but seems to have been abandoned within a generation.

  Marsians … Volscian lancers: hill peoples of central Italy subdued by Rome and long since incorporated in her Italian confederation. The Ligurians from the north-west were brought under control in the second century BCE.

  Decii… Scipios: in listing Roman military heroes Virgil is not bound by chronology; the Decii won great victories over the Samnites and Etruscans in the fourth and third centuries: Camillus conquered Veii and defeated the Gauls at the beginning of the fourth century, the elder Scipio (Africanus Maior) defeated Carthage at the end of the third century and his adoptive grandson (Aemilianus) destroyed the city in 146 BCE. Only Marius is recent, and he is mentioned here not only because he conquered Jugurtha of Numidia and defeated the Teutones and Cimbri, but as husband of Julius Caesar’s aunt, he was virtually an ancestor of Octavian.

  Caesar … rebuffs the craven Indian: this may refer to diplomatic overtures from India. It goes beyond any campaigning by Octavian or his deputies during the years 36–29 BCE when the Georgics were being written.

  Capua … Acerrae: Capua was chief city of Campania, the most sunny and fertile region of Italy with rich volcanic soils on the slopes of Vesuvius. The river Clanius and town of Acerrae are in the same region.

  run parallel/and still maintain right angles: the vines should be arrayed like legionary soldiers, with those in alternate rows placed midway between those in the previous row so that the distance between individuals is equal in all directions—the quincunx formation.

  almighty father, Air, marries the earth: the fertilizing union of sky and earth called the hieros gamos, or sacred marriage: Lucretius (1.250–3) also represents spring fertility as the union of father sky and mother earth; both may go back to Homer’s description of the union of Zeus and Hera on an open hillside in Iliad 14.346–51.

  And they’re the why … tender tokens: tradition (reported by Varro in his De re rustica and his scholarly works on the history of drama) was that the Athenians (whose first king was Theseus) sacrificed a goat (tragos) to Dionysus in atonement for the damage done to his vines and performed the first tragedies (tragos + ōdē = goatsong). Compare Horace, Art of Poetry 220: ‘The man who competed with tragic poetry on account of the worthless he-goat …’ Virgil’s account of the adoption of this custom by Italians is recalled by Horace in his ‘Letter to Augustus’ (Epistles 2.1), 139–67: ‘The farmers of old, sturdy and happy with a small stock, after storing the harvest, easing their bodies at a time of festival, and their spirits enduring hardship in hope of its end, along with their sons and workmates, and their loyal wives made sacrifice to earth with a pig and Sylvanus with milk …’

  boxwood … stands of pine near Narycum: Virgil first recalls Catullus 4, spoken by his yacht made of exotic box from the south coast of the Black Sea, then pairs it with pitch pine forests close to a small town in south Italy.

  Ituraean bows: named from a people in northern Palestine. Only foreign, usually eastern, troops were archers, and their bows also came from the east.

  swarms of bees: besides recalling a variety of trees, Virgil is setting the scene for the theme of Book 4.

  the maddened Centaurs: a Greek myth (see Odyssey 21.295–304 and Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.210–535) told how Pirithous, king of the Lapiths in Thessaly, invited his neighbours the Centaurs to his wedding but they could not hold their drink and when one of them tried to kidnap the bride there was a great battle. This is the first of a series of Thessalian legends invoked by Virgil, many associated with horse-breeding.

  Spercheus … Taygetus: both idyllic wild places are Greek: the river Spercheus is Thessalian, the mountains near Sparta. The young women of Sparta exercised with men and were thought of as fearless hunters, but ‘the one who’d lay me down to rest’ in the next sentence is not a Spartan maiden but some imaginary deity who will transport Virgil to Thracian Haemus.

  That man: the poet surely alludes here to Lucretius, who was proud of saving men from the fear of Hell by his Epicurean teaching that gods did not punish men for their sins and there was no afterlife. Lucretius also denounced the greed and political ambition which led to civil war at Rome (cf. Lucretius 3.59–73) in language close to Virgil
’s denunciation in lines 495–511.

  with country gods—/Pan and old Sylvanus: cf. 1.16 and 20, and note. Sylvanus, god of the uncleared woodlands, is the god who would protect the wild trees discussed in lines 413–53.

  a life in exile … in a fatherland: Virgil echoes his own language in Eclogue 1 (see Introduction), but it is not clear whether he has in mind here simple victims of political change or partisans who brought on their own exile by civil violence.

  the Sabines … from strength to strength: the Sabines were Rome’s neighbours in the hill region east of Rome: after the trick by which Romulus’ men abducted the Sabine women, a retaliatory war ended in alliance and the sharing of the city between Roman and Sabine. Virgil probably speaks of Remus rather than Romulus for metrical reasons (he addresses Romulus in 1.498) rather than as a reminder of Romulus’ alleged fratricide. Etruscan power was greatest between the eighth and early fifth centuries: Virgil probably has in mind the Etruscan dynasty of the Tarquins which ruled Rome and brought her new wealth.

  before a Cretan king … by splendid Saturn: the Cretan king is Jupiter, born on Mt. Ida in Crete, and Virgil is returning to the revolutionary moment (described in 1.121) when Jupiter took away from mankind the easy living of his father Saturn’s golden age. The last few lines recapitulate the marks of human decline from innocence, in the sacrifice of oxen, men’s fellow workers, and development of weapons and warfare.