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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
The end of the first Georgic is turbulent. The assassination of Caesar leads to civil war; Mars rages savagely; the charioteer can no longer control his chariot (512-14). But at the beginning of Georgic 2 normality seems to have returned, and the farmer is not only plowing but planting trees for his grandchildren (2.58). Later in the book, however, Virgil's instructions for planting grapevines include a puzzling simile which reminds the reader of the end of Georgic 1. He compares the arrangement of vines in a field to the deployment of battle troops on a plain.
A version of this paper was presented at the APA Georgics seminar in Atlanta, 1977.
1. Texts: Virgil, ed. Mynors (Oxford, 1969); Lucretius, ed. Bailey (Oxford 1947). Translations are mine.
2. Most commentators take indulge (2.277) to refer to the vines, and also assume that this simile describes the quincunx military formation; but Conington-Haverfield (London, 1898, repr. Hildesheim, 1963) and Richter, Will (Vergils Qeorgica, Munich, 1957Google Scholar), going back to Sandbach (CR 42[1928], 59–60), argue convincingly that this is only a general likeness to troops. Varro speaks of planting trees in a quincunx, arbusta in quincuncem, to please the eyes (D.R.R. 1.7.2) but does not use further military language. In ‘Varro and Two Military Similes in Virgil’s Georgics,’ CB 53 (1977), 54–56Google Scholar, Lidia Haberman suggests that Virgil expanded Varro’s quincunx into the legion simile but contradicted Varro’s esthetic advice (55).
3. Klingner, Friedrich, Vhgils Georgica (Zurich, 1963), 97–99Google Scholar.
4. Otis, Brooks, Virgil, A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford, 1964), 151Google Scholar.
5. This oscillation, often accomplished through incongruous juxtapositions, is as crucial to the Georgics’ thematic progression as are the Aeneid’s similes to that poem. W. F. Jackson Knight emphasizes ‘compromise’ and ‘reconciliation’ in Virgil’s use of alternation (Roman Vergil, London, 1944, 399Google Scholar). R. S. Conway, however, sees in Virgil’s epithets and narrative style an ‘antithesis’ or ‘dualism,’ derived from Greek thought, which results in incongruity (The Vergilian Age, Cambridge, Mass., 1928, 96–112Google Scholar). Most recently, W. R. Johnson insists on Virgil’s ‘impartial display of opposites’ and his ‘disciplined refusal to be committed to solutions’ (Darkness Visible, A Study of Vergil’s Aeneid, Berkeley, 1976, 20Google Scholar; 158, n. 17).
6. The farmer is also characterized as a sailor and his fields as aequora (1.50, 204, 303), because farming and sailing are equivalent technologies, and the Pleiades are vital signs for both. In 3.201 the meaning of aequora is unclear because of this equivalence. Richter traces the farmer/soldier analogy back to Cicero, De Sen. 51 (note 2 above, 134).
7. See 2.47–52, where the use of in luminis oras (‘into the shores of light’) and the juxtaposition of infecunda quidem, sed laeta et fortia surgunt (‘they grow up infertile, indeed, but happy and strong’) also suggest that Virgil is refuting Lucretius’ use of laeta and in luminis oras for natural elements unimpeded by man (1.14, 22–23, and passim). Catullus uses a similar antithesis in 62.39–58 (the flower and the grapevine).
8. For a perceptive analysis of this section of Georgics 1, see R. O. Lyne’s, A. M. ‘Scilicet et tempus veniet … Virgil, Georgics 1.463–514,’ in Quality and Pleasure in Latin Poetry, ed. Tony Woodman and David West (Cambridge, 1974), 47–66Google Scholar.
9. The size of the bones suggests the tradition that early men were giants, and perhaps also the Giants’ attack against Mt. Olympus. Richter notes the helmets’ insubstantiality and compares to these giants the bronze men who died by their own hands in Hesiod, WD 152, and the heroes who died in wars in WD 161. Compare G. 1.281, where Otus and Ephialtes try to pile Ossa onto Pelion. Grandia ossa here may be a play on that reference. See also the images of Priam’s huge headless trunk along the shore (Aen. 2.557–58), Aeneas’ bleached bones (Aen. 4.620), and Palinurus’ naked body washed ashore (Aen. 5.871).
10. Perhaps Virgil was thinking of Cat. 64.38–42 (squalida rubigo aratris …), a temporary but threatening cessation of farming in a joyful scene. Ovid puts the Virgilian scene into the past (Fasti 1.697–702).
11. For discussions of early farming, coloni, latifundia, and returning veterans, see Cicero, De Sen. 51–60; White, K. D., Roman Farming (London, 1970), 336Google Scholar; Wilkinson, L. P., The Georgics of Virgil, A Critical Survey (Cambridge, 1969), 53–54, 174Google Scholar; and Scullard, H. H., From the Gracchi to Nero (London, 1970 3), 178–179Google Scholar. Haberman (note 2 above) hypothesizes that Virgil uses military imagery here and elsewhere in the poem to appeal to veterans who have become farmers by using language they understand (56). This is superficially plausible but does not account for the resonances and tensions in the imagery, especially at the end of Georgic 1.
12. Klingner (note 3 above), 98–99.
13. Lucretius’ attempt to ‘convert’ war imagery continues in Proem 2, where military vocabulary is converted to the constructive if metaphorical ramparts of Epicureanism: ‘but nothing is sweeter than to hold well-fortified sanctuaries built up with the serene teaching of wise men’ (sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere/edita doctrina sapientum templa serena, 2.7–8).
14. Commentators often cite Homeric passages; they also criticize Lucretius for conventionality, exaggeration, and contrivance. See Leonard & Smith; Bailey; Merrill; and Gordon Williams, Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (Oxford, 1968), 667Google Scholar.
15. R. F. Arragon reaches a similar conclusion in a brief discussion of this passage in ‘Poetic Art as a Philosophic Medium for Lucretius,’ Essays in Criticism 11 (1961), 372–89Google Scholar. This ideal view implicitly transcends the conflict between physics and ethics. In physics, reality and ideal converge; in ethics, the difference between, the two is vital to mankind. Here physics provides a dazzling ideal at the cost of personal involvement. Lucretius’ treatment of war in the last part of Book 5 corrects this ideal with an analysis and evaluation of mankind’s progress, both constructive and destructive, through technology, especially metallurgy. When war is dominant, it destroys agriculture, converting the vocabulary of farming and seafaring to its own violent uses (5.1289–90). Over and over, as people overstep natural boundaries in their avarice and greed, the war descriptions escalate towards disaster (5.1434–35; 1305–7). The reality of war, as Lucretius describes it here, does not supersede his earlier distancing or conversion of it into the peaceful metaphors of philosophy.
16. Cf. Cicero, De Sen. 53: ‘not only utility … but also cultivation and nature herself delight me’ (non utilitas me solum … sed eticrm cultura et ipsa natura delectat). Inanis (285) is one of Virgil’s most evocative words: G. 3.3; Aen. 1.464, 4.433, 449, etc. For another example of utility and esthetics, see Adam Parry on the ‘ideal’ cow in ‘The Idea of Art in Virgil’s Georgics,’ Arethusa 5 (1972), 40Google Scholar.
17. Later the farmer/soldier must apply harsh control (dura imperia) to the vines, even though they shrink back from the iron (ferrum, 367–70).
18. Paul Jal notes that Roman historians distinguished carefully between foreign war (bellum externum) and civil war (bellum civile), but also acknowledged links between the two. Poets tended to equate Pharsalus and Philippi, to make Actium into a foreign war, and to give civil war cosmic effects (La Guerre civile à Rome, Paris 1963, 283Google Scholar), e.g., to see these wars generically. Virgil seems to separate out the various kinds of war later in the poem, so that he can give a sympathetic picture of the Roman soldier in foreign lands (3.346–48) and end 4 with Augustus’ victories in foreign wars.
19. Virgil does use horridus for war in the Aen., notably at 6.86 and 7.41; the hypothetical threat of the present simile is real in Aen. 7.526 where farming reverts to war (‘the crop bristles with drawn swords,’ horrescit strictis seges ensibus). In the Georgics: hail, ice, winter cold (1.449, 3.366, 442); arbutus vine (2.69); the losing bee (4.93); Proteus as a bristling boar (sus horridus, 4.407).
20. In a suggestive comparison, William R. Nethercut concludes that Lucretius and Virgil contrast negative with positive in opposite directions, Lucretius turning from birth to death, Virgil from death to birth (‘Virgil’s De Rerum Natura,’ Ramus 2 [1973], 41–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Alternation between optimism and pessimism seems to me a more accurate way to describe Virgil’s attitude.
21. Even Romulus and Remus are at peace in this revisionist mythology (2.533). This farmer’s Golden Age is described earlier in Georgics 2 in a series of idyllic impossibilities (adunata) come true (69–72, 80–82).
