On Virgil

Georgics. Trans. David Ferry. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2005.

Publius Vergilius Maro was born in Cisalpine Gaul in 70 BC. It is uncertain whether he was a descendant of Roman colonists, Celtic inhabitants of the mountainous north, or Etruscan and Umbrian ancestors. At the age of twenty-one, he would have witnessed the outbreak of civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey. In his early twenties, he seems to have settled in Naples, where he studied philosophy under Siro and Philodemus of the Epicureans, and where he began to write poetry. His first book, the Bucolics (or Eclogues) consisted of ten long poems modelled on the pastoral poetry of the Greek Theocritus. Afterwards, he came to the attention of Maecenas, friend of Octavian and patron of the arts, who provided Virgil with a villa in one of his gardens. In the circle of Maecenas and Octavian, he met Quintus Horatius Flaccus, or Horace, who would also become a famous poet. In his early forties, he is thought to have written the Georgics, a poetic manual on farming, which extolled the good agrarian life of the early republic, and may have been commissioned or suggested by Octavian, who was resettling veterans of the civil wars on farms throughout the Italian peninsula. The last work that Virgil wrote was the great Roman epic, The Aeneid, the story of Aeneas and the escaped Trojans that survive the destruction of Troy by the Greeks and who settle in Latium, setting in motion the future founding of Rome. Like his earlier books, the Aeneid also lauds the country life in its sympathetic, if not romantic, portrayal of the less-sophisticated but noble Sabines, Rutulians, Etruscans, and other tribes whom the Dardans encounter in Italy. While traveling through Greece to research the settings for his great epic, the fifty year-old Virgil fell ill, and died on his return at Brundisium, in 19 BC. The great work of his life was unfinished, and he requested that it be destroyed after his death, but fortunately Augustus forbid its destruction.

Like the Aeneid, the Georgics of Virgil sparkle with an organic warmth and sensitivity that create lasting impressions of depth and clarity. Nothing changes more than nature, and yet nothing seems more permanent. Written around 30 BC, the Georgics draw on a variety of sources: Homer, Callimachus, Lucretius, Aristus, Cato ,Varro and Gallus. Cato and Varro had written on agriculture, farming, and the rustic life, the sources of Roman greatness. Virgil wrote this long manual during a time of uncertainty in Roman history, and thus it stands as a monument of hope, a testament of the good earth.

Drawing on Roman tradition, and perhaps on Stoic philosophy, the poetic manual praises hardship as a significant source of culture, productivity and human character. Virgil writes: "For Father Jupiter himself ordained/ That the way should not be easy. It was he/ Who first established the art of cultivation,/ Sharpening with their cares the skills of men,/ Forbidding the world he rules to slumber in ease" (11); "all of this so want should be/ The cause of human ingenuity,/ And ingenuity the cause of arts" (13). Virgil's portrait of the laborer or farmer is that of homo faber, man the maker ever involved in work: "When the cold rains come and they have to stay indoors,/ The laborers are able to get things done/ That in better weather they'd have to hurry to do:/ One hammering on the share where it was blunted;/ Another hollowing branches making wine troughs;/ Others are sorting out and labeling/ The heaps of garnered grain; branding the beasts;/ Sharpening stakes and two-pronged forks; or making/ Willow-shoot ties to bind up the sagging vines;/ Weaving new baskets, using pliant twigs;/ Roasting corn on the fire of the household oven,/ Or on the hearthstone grinding it into meal" (23). There is never any need for boredom or idleness; the world never lacks tasks that need to be done. Through labor, man builds his greatness and the greatness of the world: "And then there are so many wonderful cities,/ that so much toil has built, and all those towns,/ The hand of man has made, high up upon/ The rocky cliffs above the mountains and streams/ That flow along beneath their ancient walls" (59). Thus, cultivation itself is depicted as struggle using almost militaristic language to emphasize the hardship involved as well as the virtue and strength required: "Now I must tell about the weapons the farmer/ needs for sowing his seeds and raising his crops:/ The plow blade in the curved plow's wooden frame,/ Ceres' lumbering wagon, the heavy carts/ And the heavy threshing-sledge, the ponderous hoes/ The wicker hurdles and all the other tools/ The Celeus of Eleusis thought of,/ And Iacchus' mystic winnowing-basket./ You have to have all these for when you need them,/ If you want to win the glory the land can offer" (15). Virgil describes the work of making orchards as warfare: "Space out the plantings with exactitude,/ As when before the battle the cohorts are all/ Deployed and ready, rank after regular rank,/ The gleam of steel reflecting the gleam of steel" (69). Through hardship, man discovers the riches of the earth and fills his life with good things; through struggle he makes good things, but needs all the care, discipline and endurance that struggle requires.

In the closing chapter of Candide, Voltaire writes: "We must cultivate our garden." This statement summarizes the task of civilization. For Virgil, it would not really be a metaphor. In the Georgics, cultivation is civilization. It requires knowledge: "It's necessary to study the ways of the winds/ And the changing ways of the skies, and also to know/ The history of the planting in that ground,/ What crops will prosper there and what will not./ In one place grain grows best, in another vines;/ Another's good for the cultivation of trees" (7). When read symbolically, these verses provide a reason and meaning for history as well as an inclusive and cosmopolitan worldview. History and the knowledge gleaned through observation lead to good cultivation and good harvests; they become tools against stagnation and degeneration. Chaos is connected to the abandonment of cultivation: "Right and wrong are turned into one another;/ War everywhere in the world; crimes everywhere,/ In every way and every shape and form;' No honor at all is given to the plow;/ The fields are barren and empty, the farmers gone; The crooked sickles are beaten into swords" (41). Cultivation cuts back chaos and wildness, as demonstrated in the taming of trees (49) or the extension of dominion through pruning (75).

Besides being the source of civilization, cultivation also works upon the individual. it is a way of life that creates a certain kind of character. The farming life, for Virgil, is the ideal life: "O greatly fortunate farmers, if only they knew/ How lucky they are!/ Far from the battlefield/ Earth brings forth from herself in ample justice/ The simple means of life, simply enjoyed…/ His sleep at night is easy, his life knows nothing/ About deceit or trickery, and his life/ Is rich in many things: tranquility/ Of the broad fields, of grottoes, and of lakes,/ Of cattle lowing while in the shade of a tree…/ When Justice left the earth,/ She left her footprint here, among such people" (83-85). Though quite idealized, the Virgilian peasant is an attractive model. Obscurity and simplicity are key to this model lifestyle and character: "Then may I find delight in the rural fields/ And the little brooks that make their way through valleys,/ And in obscurity love the woods and rivers./ I long for such places, oh I long to be/ By Spercheus or at Taygeta in Sparta/ Where maidens celebrate the rites of Bacchus,/ Or to be safe in the cool Haemian glade,/ Protected in the shade of those great branches" (85); "The farmer works the soil with his curved plow;/ This is the work he does, and it sustains/ His country, and his family, and his cattle,/ His worthy bullocks and his herd of cows./ No reset from this, but the year will abound with fruits,/ With newborn livestock, and with Ceres' sheaves/ Filling the fields and overflowing the barn./ Then winter is coming: the olive press is turning;/ The pigs come home well-fed, made happy by acorns;/ The woods offer arbutus and autumn yields/ All its variety; high up, on the rocks,/ The year's vintage mellows in the sunshine" (87-89); "This is what it was like for the Sabines then,/ And for Romulus and Remus, in the old days// This must be how Etruria grew strong,/ And Rome became the most beautiful thing there is,/ One single wall surrounding seven hills" (89). Virgil perhaps wishes to see an idyllic greatness more than a martial greatness in Roman society. The model human is not a senator or a consul, but a man from the countryside, a nameless man of Tarentum: "For I remember, down by Tarentum,/ Where dark Galaesus waters the yellowing grain,/ I saw an old Corycian man, who lived there,/ Under the arches and towers of the fort,/ On a little patch of land that nobody wanted,/ Too poor for oxen to plow, unfit for pasture,/ Not right for planting vines. But this old man,/ Carefully planted white lilies, vervain, and poppies,/ And different sorts of vegetables for his table,/ And thus he made for himself a happiness/ that was equal to the happiness of kings,/ And when he came home at night his feast was free" (151). The Corycian man is a model, because he makes things flourish where they are least likely to. In the shadow of the city wall, he cultivates his garden and lives in his obscure but abundant Eden. To till the earth is to engage in the most basic and natural human activity—there must be something very rewarding in it. On a spiritual level, a good person is someone who can survive any situation, cultivating goodness even in the midst of evil.

The Georgics conclude with the haunting story of Aristaeus, who mourns the loss of his bees. Later on he learns that his loss was punishment for causing the death of Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus, and he must make atonement. The enchanting story contains three elemental truths: crime causes death, atonement is necessary, and life can overcome death. The carcasses of his victims burst open with swarms of bees, leaving the reader with a positive impression that life is strong, and it is good to live and to cultivate.