I

It is my view – by no means an original one – that the key to an understanding of the Georgics lies in the myth of Aristaeus with which Virgil chose to conclude the poem. Thomas talks of ‘the great question of the poem’: ‘What of Aristaeus, what of the song of Proteus depicting Orpheus’ failure and loss?' The passage will be the main focus of this book. A central tenet will be that any possible propagandistic agenda such as I have postulated in my introduction will necessarily carry implications of a distinctly literary nature. In the course of developing his political/propagandistic argument, in other words, Virgil at every stage considers its implications for himself, the poet, not in any Romantic, autobiographical way but in a highly literary way, according to the conventions of contemporary poetry. This depiction by the poet of his own implication in the events he describes is a motif very familiar from other poetry of the period.

This first chapter, then, will be concerned with one aspect of the literary-generic dimension of the Aristaeus myth. At present, study of this dimension of the passage is dominated – and, I will suggest, somewhat vitiated – by the notion that the Aristaeus is an epyllion, that is, a short mythological epic of a type favoured in the Hellenistic period which contains, characteristically, a digression from the main narrative. More or less hand in hand with this notion has gone the idea that the main narrative and digression of this epyllion – roughly the myth of Aristaeus (315–452, 528–58) and the myth of Orpheus (453–527) – are in stylistic contrast to each other, the myth of Aristaeus being essentially ‘Homeric’ (or just ‘epic’) and the myth of Orpheus ‘Neoteric’ (or ‘elegiac’), respectively. This, in outline, was the schema articulated nearly three decades ago by Otis, and it remains in essentials the accepted view today. It is also, I think, in many respects sound, but unfortunately as commonly presented too confused to be particularly useful.