1. The points to be made in this paper should be set beside the many valuable comments by which L. P. Wilkinson distinguishes Vergil from Lucretius. See The Georgics of Virgil (Cambridge, 1969Google Scholar), e.g. 63–65, 134–135, 140–141, for pertinent contrasts regarding the two poets’ views on life.

2. Tempestas and autumni occur together only in G.1.311 and 3.479 in Vergil.

3. Existit sacer ignis et ụrit corpore serpens/ quamcumque arripuit partim, repitque per artus (‘A sacred fire breaks out and burns in the body, snaking its way wherever it gains a hold, and it creeps through the limbs …’ 6.660–661). Vergil uses the verb serpo one time in the Georgics, in 3.469: Continuo culpttm ferro compesce, priusquam/ dira per incautum serpent contagia vulgus (‘Check what is wrong at once with the knife, before the dire contagion snakes throughout the unsuspecting herd’, G.3.469), as he writes of the diseases which beset flocks — a description which serves to bridge the picture of the venemous serpent roaming abroad in the heat, and his treatment of the plague.

4. Poeschl, V., Die Dichtkunst Virgils (Innsbruch, 1950), 23f. and 34fGoogle Scholar. Otis, Brooks, Virgil, A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford, 1963), 229–233Google Scholar.

5. Fulminare (‘to thunder and lighten’) is used only this one time in the whole Aeneid, and here, for the first time after the explicit reference to Caesar thundering at the end of the Georgics. Aeneas may well recall Octavian, whose thunder in Georgics IV implies the storm scene in Book I and the wind in verse 370 there. As is the case with the link between Octavian in G.1.27 and Aeolus and the winds of furor in A.1.80, we need both the Georgics and the Aeneid before us to appreciate the way in which Vergil has caused an idea to grow. Like the snake and the plague in Georgics III, which reappear in Aeneid II (cf. G.3.439 and the snake, Pyrrhus, in A.2.471–475; and cf. also the victims of the plague, [ardentes oculi, ‘their burning eyes‘, G.3.505] and the snakes that strangle Laocoon in A.2.210-ardentisque oculos), even so is the storm and wind motif, prominent in Aeneid I, IV, VII, an outgrowth of this image in the Georgics, and ultimately it goes back to Lucretius. The motif of storm and flood is a popular one among poets to describe the world in chaos following the assassination of Julius Caesar and during the years of civil war. Near the beginning of the Georgics, Vergil says that Rome’s present race are descendants of Deucalion, survivors of the flood (G.l.60–63). In Bucolic VI (41), commentators have wondered at the reversal, in a chronologically ordered list, of the original golden age of Saturn and, which stands first for emphasis, the age of the new beginning after Pyrrha and Deucalion. Steele Commager has elucidated the symbolism of the flood in his fine paper ‘Horace, Carmina I, 2’, AJP 80 (1959), 37–55Google Scholar; he sees in this Ode, which he places around 30/29 B.C., uncertainty as to whether Octavian will help set affairs on a secure basis, or will proceed to renew bloodshed with reprisals like those he took at Perusia in 41 B.C. Recently Womble, H. (‘Horace, Carmina I, 2’, AJP 91 (1970), 1–30Google Scholar) has argued that the poem is hopeful and even slightly sympathetic to Octavian. As for Vergil, the poet poses two possibilities for Octavian at the beginning of the Georgics: lord of storms, author of crops. And at the end of his last book, we find an answer.

6. Evidence for the negative side of Vergil’s feelings about the path of Roman destiny is offered by Putnam, M. C. J., The Poetry of the Aeneid (Harvard, 1965Google Scholar) and by Nethercut, W. R., ‘Invasion in the Aeneid’, G & R 15 (1968), 82–95Google Scholar; ‘The Imagery of the Aeneid’, CJ 67 (1971-2), 123–143Google Scholar. Most recently, see the very thorough and politically sensitive evaluation by Boyle, A. J., ‘The Meaning of the Aeneid: A Critical Inquiry’, Ramus I (1972), 63–90, 113–151CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In addition to the subtle and negative allusions Virgil develops around the figure of Octavian elsewhere in the Aeneid and Georgics, there is an ambiguous passage at the end of Georgics I. In 491–492, the poet refers to Pharsalus and Philippi: Nee fuit indignum superis bis sanguine nostro/ Emathiam et latos Haemi pinguescere compos (‘Nor did the gods consider it unworthy for Emathia and the broad plains of Haemus twice to grow rich with our blood’). The phrase I have underlined, (bis) sanguine nostro, ‘(twice) with our blood’, occurs a second time directly thereafter (501): Satis iam pridem sanguine nostro Laomedonteae luimus periuria Troiae, iam pridem nobis caeli te regia, Caesar, invidet, atque hominum queritur curare triumphos, quippe ubi fas versum atque nefas … (G.l.501–505) (Long since have we atoned in full with our blood for the perjuries of Laomedon and his Troy; long since has the royal palace of heaven begrudged to us your presence, complaining that you take thought for mortal triumphs at a time and place where right and wrong have been exchanged …) In this way Rome’s atonement for Troy’s deceit is equated with the shedding of the blood of citizens. Now note that the words iam pridem (‘long since’) are repeated in 503 from 501. This repetition makes the period of civil strife identified by sanguine nostro (‘with our blood’) coextensive with the time that heaven has been begrudging mortals the presence of Caesar and complaining of Octavian’s ‘concern’ with triumphs over humankind. At first glance, therefore, the above lines may be taken as a graceful compliment, a glance back to the proem in which the young leader was invoked and marked out for apotheosis. Wilkinson (above, note 1), 159–161, reminds us that an earnest expression of appreciation would indeed fit the year 36 B.C. when Rome had been lifted from beneath the hardships imposed by Sextus Pompey — the year when Vergil is believed to have been at work on Georgics I. Careful scrutiny of our passage, however, indicates that the force of 501–505 is to identify Caesar’s triumphs with the suffering of Troy’s progeny. The gods have been wanting Octavian in their midst for too long a time already — this remark is tantamount to a wish that the ultor had passed from the scene before now.

7. Wilkinson (above, note 1), 162–165, pursues this more positive approach to Octavian’s portrait in the first proem of the Georgics.

8. Donatus, Vita, 22.80 ff.: Cum Georgica scriberet, traditur cotidie meditatos mane plurrmos versus dictare solitus ac per totum diem retractando ad paucissimos redigere, non absurde carmen se ursae more parere dicens et lambendo demum effingere. (‘There is an account that when he was writing the Georgics, he was accustomed every day to dictate a number of verses which he had thought out — this, early in the morning — and then, during the remainder of the day, to polish these and reduce them to a very lew. He is supposed to have said — and with good reason — that he was giving birth to his poetry like a mother bear, who at the end licks her offspring into shape.’)

9. Otis, (above, note 4), 148–154. Wilkinson (above, note 1), 74–75, treats matters of formal design in Vergil and Lucretius only briefly.

10. For the structure of Lucretius, cf. Barra, G., Struttura e Composizione del ‘De Rerum Natura’ di Lucrezio (Naples and Rome, 1952Google Scholar); Minadeo, R., ‘The Formal Design of the De Rerum Natura’, Arion 4 (1965), 444–461Google Scholar; Nethercut, W. R., ‘The Conclusion of Lucretius’ Fifth Book: Further Remarks’, CJ 63 (1967), 97–106Google Scholar; Minadeo, R., The Lyre of Science (Detroit, 1969Google Scholar).

11. Barra (note 10, above), 226.

12. Stated independently by Minadeo (1965) and Nethercut (1967), (above, note 10).

13. Minadeo, The Lyre of Science (above, note 10), 29–30, expressed the opinion that isonomic rhythm pervaded Vergil’s Georgics just as it does Lucretius’ poem. My point now is that Vergil uses the alternation of positive and negative in just the opposite direction from Lucretius. The resulting view of man and of nature is quite distinct from that of Vergil’s predecessor.

14. Catervatim is used only once in all of Lucretius. Cf. Roberts, Louis, A Concordance of Lucretius (Supplement to AGON, Berkeley, 1968), 35Google Scholar. The word appears once in Vergil, under obvious inspiration from Lucretius, in G.3.556.

15. The following parallels may be cited, in G.2.458–540, from Lucretius’ work: (1) the basic contrast, beginning in G.2.461 ff., is present in Lucretius 2.24–36; (2) the famous line, felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas (‘Happy the man who has been able to understand the causes of things’, G.2.490), has been taken as a clear allusion to Epicurus and his disciple, Lucretius — the phrase rerum cognoscere causas (‘to understand the causes of things’) in Vergil is from naturam … cognoscere rerum (‘to understand the nature of things’) in Lucretius, 3.1072; (3) G.2.493–499 states that the farmer and the philosopher of the countryside likewise know Epicurean peace — cf. G.2.495–496 with Lucretius 3.70–73, for the topic of brothers murdering brothers for power — again, G.2.499 (neque ille/aut doluit,‘nor is he grieved’) with Lucretius 2.13–21 on the negative power of dolor (‘pain, grief’), which disrupts any possibility for human calm, and, in the same verse of Vergil (G.2. 499), invidet habenti (‘he envies the man who possesses’) with Lucretius 3.75 (macerat invidia, ‘envy torments him’). Vergil denies that the farmer is tormented by dolor or envy. (4) G.2.506 recalls specifically Lucretius 2.34–36; (5) G.2.507 may well represent a nod at a contemporary poet of Epicurean persuasion, Horace, in Sat. 1.70–71 — both Vergil and Horace picture the greedy miser sleeping, or barely falling asleep, on top of his buried treasure; (6) G. 2. 508, hiamem (‘his mouth agape’), appears in Lucretius 3.1084 (sitis aequa tenet vital semper hiantis, ‘an equal thirst of life holds their mouths ever agape’) of vain hopes and limitless desires; (7) G.2.510, gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum (‘they rejoice, steeped in the blood of their brothers’) brings before us Lucretius 3.72 (crudeles gaudent in tristi funere fratris, ‘they rejoice cruelly in the unhappy death of a brother’); (8) G.2.511 matches Lucretius 3.48–49 in speaking of the power-hungry, whose deeds lead them to undergo exile; (9) G.2.523 is modelled on Lucretius 3.895 (dulces pendent circum oscula nati, ‘sweet children will hang about his kisses’, Vergil — dulces occurrent oscula nati/praeripere, ‘sweet children will run up to snatch kisses’, Lucretius); and (10) G.2.527, which pictures the farmer stretched out at peace on his own grassy land, enjoying the season, echoes Lucretius 2.29–31, in which the same scene is described.

16. Forms of Lenaeus occur as follows, almost exclusively in the Georgics: the vocative, Lenaee, sounds a major note for Book II, appearing symmetrically near the opening, G.2.4 and 7, and at the end, G.2.529. The last use of this name, adjectivally, appears in the plague in G.3.510 — the moment we are now discussing. There is one use of the adjective Lenaeum in A.4.207.

17. Lucretius’ advice for one in Orpheus’ dilemma is found in 4.1065: et iacere umorem collectum in corpora quaeque. The sane man will not allow himself to suffer from the vision of her who is absent, but will ‘toss the pent-up seed into any old body’. Cf. too, Lucretius 4.1070–1071 ff., in which the reader is advised to follow along with any prostitute if he finds his equanimity endangered by excessive concentration of desire in any one young lady (volgivagaque vagus Venere, ‘strolling after some publicly strolling Venus’, 1071).