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The Georgics as Description: Aspects and Qualifications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Peter Connor
Peter Connor*
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
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Extract

Within the structural economy of the Georgics there are a number of short sections or episodes. One of the most surprisingly abrupt, for example, is those few lines that are Virgil's equivalent of Hesiod's Days:

Ipsa dies alios alio dedit ordine Luna felicis operum. quintam fuge: pallidus Orcus Eumenidesque satae; tum partu Terra nefando Coeumque Iapetumque creat saevumque Typhoea et coniuratos caelum rescindere fratres. ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam scilicet, atque Ossae frondosum involvere Olympum; ter pater extructos disiecit fulmine montis. septima post decimam felix et ponere vitem et prensos domitare boves et licia telae addere. nona fugae melior, contraria furtis. (G.1.276-286)

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , 1979 , pp. 34 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1979

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References

1. Translations throughout from Lewis, C. D., The Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid of Virgil (Oxford, 1966Google Scholar).

2. Richter, W., Vergil. Georgica (Munich, 1957), 289Google Scholar; Page, T. E., Virgil. Bucolics and Georgics (1898Google Scholar), ad loc.

3. The passage is discussed by Wilkinson, L. P., The Georgics of Virgil. A critical survey (Cambridge, 1969), 19lfGoogle Scholar.

4. Klingner, F., Virgils Georgica (Zürich, 1963), 125Google Scholar.

5. Bovie, S. P., ‘The imagery of ascent-descent in Vergil’s Georgics’, AJP 77 (1956), 348Google Scholar.

6. Ibid., 353.

7. de St Denis, E., Géorgiques (Paris, 1963), xxxivGoogle Scholar.

8. ‘He now wishes to turn to the unique qualities of bees, which make them suitable to be held up as an example to men, and to contemporary Romans in particular.’ Wilkinson (n,3 above), 103. ‘The fourth book reaffirms order and regeneration with its account of the bee-community as a model of harmony and good government.’ Segal, C., ‘Orpheus and the Fourth Georgic: Vergil on nature and civilization’, AJP 87 (1966), 308Google Scholar. ‘The bees are images and symbols of men or, more exactly, their society is, in important respects, a simulacrum of human society, but they are not really taken with complete seriousness: they are also light, thin, airy beings quite at the mercy of the smallest human or natural disturbance.’ Otis, Brooks, Virgil. A study in civilised poetry (Oxford, 1964), 181Google Scholar. The proviso in the second part of this sentence is quite crucial; it seems to have been often overlooked. My own reading of the episode of the bees agrees in the main with Otis’ proviso, but I think there are important basic differences. Dahlmann, H., Der Bienenstaat in Vergil’s Georgica (Wiesbaden, 1954Google Scholar) on the bees as a symbol of human society, is reprinted in Dahlmann, , Kleine Schriften (Hildesheim, 1970), 181fGoogle Scholar.

9. Segal (n.8 above), 308.

10. Duckworth, G., ‘Vergil’s Georgics and the Laudes Galli’, AJP 80, 1959, 227Google Scholar.

11. Otis, (n.8 above), 182.

12. Segal (n.8 above), 319.

13. Segal (n.8 above), 321.

14. Segal (n.8 above), 311.

15. Johnston, Patricia A., ‘Eurydice and Proserpina in the Georgics’, TAPA 107 (1977), 168Google Scholar.

16. Wilkinson, L. P., ‘The intention of Virgil’s Georgics’, G & R 19 (1950), 26Google Scholar.

17. Wilkinson (n.3 above), 4.

18. Segal (n.8 above), 313; see also Williams, R. D. in Virgil (Oxford, 1967), 15Google Scholar. ‘The tension between the objective actuality of the techniques and the subjective imagery in which they are presented.’

19. Pliny, Epp. 8, 8, If.

20. The letters of the Younger Pliny, trans. Radice, Betty (Harmondsworth, 1963), 216 (letter 8, 8Google Scholar).

21. Cf. G.4.305; 4.51; 4.22.

22. Burck, Erich, ‘Der korykische Greis in Vergils Georgica’, Navicula Chiloniensis. Studia Philoioga Felici Jacoby oblata (Leiden, 1956), 167Google Scholar.

23. The strong influence of Catullus has been explored recently by Crabbe, A. M., ‘Catullus 64 and the Fourth Georgic’, CQ 29 (1977), 342ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. Buchheit, V., Der Anspruch des Dichters in Vergils Georgika (Darmstadt, 1972), 19Google Scholar.

25. See esp. Buchheit (tt24 above), 68.

26. Cf. Richter (n.2 above), 295: ‘Wichtiger ist, dass hier Verg. selbst durch sein Riickruf zum Thema (cura) den Anschein einer vorausgehenden Abschweiflung erweckt.’

27. Wilkinson (n.3 above), 77.

28. Lyne, R. O. A. M., ‘Scilicet et tempus veniet. …: Virgil, Georgics 1.463–514’, in Quality and pleasure in Latin poetry, ed. A. Woodman and D. West (Cambridge, 1974), 47Google Scholar.