A collection of critical essays on Virgil's Georgics needs no defence. A great, a magnificent poem, widely read, if not universally applauded, the Georgics has received far less critical attention than either the Eclogues or the Aeneid. Index in part of the apparently uncongenial nature of ‘didactic’ verse, the relative dearth of critical activity on the poem is particularly to be regretted in view of the Georgics' chronologically central position in Virgil's poetic career, its crucial role in the development of his style and thought. Indeed, given the peculiar and self-conscious unity of Virgil's poetic oeuvre, its complex system of evolving themes, images, structures, its bonding, meditated network of inter-poem reference, the critical neglect which the Georgics has received — there are brilliant, recent exceptions — seems less omission, more outrage. Even the Georgics' influence on later European poetry — one thinks, for example, of the Italian humanists, Politian and Alamanni, the eighteenth century English poets, especially Thomson and Cowper, and that remarkable twentieth century English georgic, The Land, by Virginia Sackville-West — while not of the magnitude of that of either the Eclogues or the Aeneid, ought to have elicited a more substantial investigation of the poem than has transpired. No boast, Wilkinson's claim that his 1969 book on the Georgics was the first to appear in English was sad affirmation of this major critical gap.

In a recent book L. P. Wilkinson has said, ‘The chief obstacle to appreciation of the Georgics has been its ostensible genre: it was deceptive and has abundantly deceived. This is no more a didactic poem than Ovid's Ars Amatoria: it simply masquerades as such.’ Throughout the Georgics, however, Vergil explicitly identifies his work as a didactic poem, both by use of didactic convention and through many specific references to the works of earlier didactic poets. Why, then, does Wilkinson reject Vergil's own definition of his work? What is it that makes readers of the Georgics so reluctant to classify it as a didactic poem? Part of the problem, I believe, has to do with the genre itself. Since this literary type is not popular with modern readers, its methods and objectives are not well understood. I will therefore begin this essay with a discussion of didactic convention and of the assumptions that underlie its use. The linguistic structure of didactic poetry provides the poet with an unusual degree of authority and autonomy but it also involves him in certain difficulties. The seriousness of these difficulties is already apparent in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, a work which profoundly influenced Vergil's development as a poet. In the second part of the paper I will examine Vergil's use of didactic language in the Georgics, placing particular emphasis on the poet's narrative or rhetorical stance. There I hope to show that Vergil makes new demands on this literary genre, for he uses didactic convention as a means for examining and calling into question the fundamental assumptions on which all didactic poetry is based.

The concept of otium (peace) is central to Vergil's pastoral vision in the Eclogues. Not only is it a necessary condition for the well-being of the shepherd poets but also an ideal whose realisation would transform the world into a more joyous, more peaceful and less deceitful place. As well as pastoral, otium has philosophical associations for it is a key concept in the philosophy of Epicurus. It is not in the Eclogues, however, but in the Georgics that Vergil's most mature examination of otium is to be found.

Having depicted in the first book the farmer's life of unrelenting toil and the horrors of Rome's civil wars, Vergil turns in the second book of the Georgics to a world in which the necessity for work is balanced by the land's natural fertility, and the martial quality of the Italian peoples by their land's potentiality for peace. Whereas in Book I the farmer is represented as a military figure, in Book II he is presented under two aspects: as the embodiment of both military and pastoral ideals. Since it is with the farmer as the expression of pastoral ideals that we are primarily concerned let us turn to the classic description of the life of otium, the conclusion of the second Georgic.

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:

I have several times in the past given my students the following oversimplified scheme. Each of Virgil's three works was based on a Greek original: the Eclogues on the Idylls of Theocritus, the Georgics on Hesiod's Works and Days, the Aeneid on Homer's two epics. The difference among these Greek poets (I used to say in my opinionated way) is that while Theocritus was a very fine poet, and Homer of course a genius, Hesiod was only mediocre; therefore Virgil depended on him less and was able to be freer and more genuine in the Georgics than in the Eclogues or the Aeneid. And that, I used to conclude, is why only the Georgics surpasses its model, and justifies Dryden's description of it as the most perfect poem by the most perfect poet.

After spending some time working with the literary sources of the Georgics, I am still inclined to the same final conclusion, that the Georgics is Virgil's masterpiece. I have, however, come to some new observations about the relation of the Georgics to its literary predecessors, which may help in a small way to illuminate the poem.

The pessimism of the Eclogues is pronounced. Often denied, that of the Georgics is yet evident.

In contrast to heroic epic and Homer's silence about himself, didactic epos was self-conscious right from the beginning, for Hesiod named himself and described his poetic consecration by the Muses in the proem to the Theogony (22-34). It was not usual for Greek poets to dwell upon their role as poets, and Pindar's attention to this theme makes him a notable exception. With Roman poets things were different, since the conditions under which Latin literature came into being forced upon its exponents an awareness of creating in a context, as part of a tradition in which much had already been accomplished. Accordingly, Ennius did not preserve Homeric anonymity, but actually claimed to be Homer reborn, and possibly added, as well, a ‘Hesiodic’ meeting with the Muses. Moreover, he did not hesitate to criticize his Latin predecessors and to point out how he differed from them. In turn, his successor in the hexameter, Lucretius, felt the need to situate himself in the tradition by acknowledging poetic descent from Ennius, as well as originality in his own enterprise (I.117-9, I.921-30; cf. IV. 1-5). The stance that combined homage of the inuentor of a genre with specific criticism of him became the framework for showing what was special about one's own handling of a genre. We see this in Horace's discussion of his relation to Lucilius in Satires I.4 and I.10.

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.