Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-ckgrl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-10T07:26:57.352Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Vergil's Georgics and the Pastoral Ideal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

P. J. Davis
P. J. Davis*
Affiliation:
University of Tasmania
Get access

Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , 1979 , pp. 22 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. The otium of Tityrus is of this kind (E. I. 6).

2. See E. V. 60f. Note that the clause amat bonus otia Daphnis summarises the preceding line and a half. The question of otium in pastoral poetry has been well discussed by Rosenmeyer, T. G., The Green Cabinet (Berkeley, 1969Google Scholar), Ch. 4, and Edquist, H., ‘Aspects of Theocritean Otium’, Ancient Pastoral: Ramus Essays on Greek and Roman Pastoral Poetry, ed. A. J. Boyle (Berwick, Victoria, 1975), 19–32Google Scholar.

3. The evidence for the Epicurean character of otium is discussed in André, J-M, L’Otium dans la Vie Morale et Intellectuelle Romaine (Paris, 1966), 205ffGoogle Scholar. André notes (209) that Pliny the Elder actually calls Epicurus otii magister (Nat. 19. 51). Note that Vergil points to the concept’s Epicurean connections at E. V. 64 by his oblique reference to Epicurus. Cf. Lucr. V. 8.

4. See note 7 below.

5. The text I have used throughout is Mynors, R. A. B. (ed.), P. Vergili Maronis Opera (Oxford, 1969Google Scholar). All translations are my own.

6. The nature of earthquakes is also a Lucretiam subject (VI. 577ff.), as is the length of days in winter.

7. The relationship between these two passages has been well discussed by Fenik, B., ‘Horace’s First and Sixth Roman Odes and the Second Georgic’, Hermes 90 (1962), 72–96Google Scholar.

8. With foribus … superbis here we can compare the foribus … superbis used at A. VIII. 196 of the dwelling of Cacus.

9. Note too that 461 is laden with sibilants, sounds appropriate for the expression! of contempt — si non ingentem foribus domus aha superbis.

10. For the force of undam see Martyn, J. R. C., ‘Virgilius Satiricus’, in Martyn, J. R. C. (ed.) Cicero and Virgil: Studies in Honour of Harold Hunt (Amsterdam, 1972), 169–91Google Scholar. Martyn comments: ‘And finally, its sense is qualified, I suggest, by the vivid imagery of uomit; not merely a “mob” (C. Day Lewis), nor even a “tide” (H. R. Fairclough; Loeb), but rather the nauseated mansion’s “fluid intake”.’

11. Since Roman laws were in fact inscribed on bronze the expression ferrea iura must be metaphorical, i.e. they possess the qualities characteristic of the iron age.

12. On the representation of the farmer in the first Georgic see my ‘Unity and Meaning in Vergil’s Georgics’ forthcoming in Latomus.

13. In this context culpa might well mean ‘wrong-doing’. We could then translate as follows: ‘Yes, Bacchus has provided causes of wrong-doing’. So Heyne ad loc and K. R. McKenzie in his translation (London, 1969).

14. Reference to war-like games disturbs because of the close connection of such games with reality. Vergil makes this connection in Georgics III. The best horses for racing, for example, are also the best for war (72ff.). For a discussion of similar themes in the Aeneid see Putnam, M. C. J., The Poetry of the Aeneid (Harvard, 1965Google Scholar), Ch. 2.

15. Putnam, M. C. J., ‘Italian Virgil and the Idea of Rome’, Janus, ed. L. L. Oxlin (Ann Arbor, 1975), 180Google Scholar.

16. Cf. Evander’s account of the golden age (A. VIII. 319ff.).

17. I take dulcis to be a translation of Theocritus’ hadus. Hadus is a thematically significant word in many of Theocritus’ pastorals and is indeed one of the most common words in his vocabulary. On his use of hadus see Edquist (note 2 above). For a contrary view see Miles, G. B., ‘The Ideal of Innocence in Theocritus’ Idylls’, Ramus 6 (1977), esp. 155CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. Sexual passion is an invincible force because all the farmer’s efforts to curb it fail. See G. Ill, 209ff. and cf. 253–4, 269–70. For a different view see Miles, G. B. ‘Georgics 3. 209–94: Amor and Civilisation’, CSCA 8 (1975), 177–97Google Scholar.

19. Otis, B., Virgil: A Study in Civilised Poetry (Oxford, 1964), 180Google Scholar.

20. Dahlmann, H., ‘Der Bienenstaat in Vergils Georgica’, Abb. Mainz (1954), no. 10, 547–62Google Scholar, esp. 555–6.

21. The translations from Epicurus are based on the text of Arrighetti, G. (ed.), Epicuro Opere (Torino, 1960, 1973Google Scholar). The text at this point is doubtful and difficult.

22. The exceptions are the rose, the cucumber, vegetables, the lime tree, the wild laurel and the plane tree.

23. Servius suggests in his note on G. IV. 127 that the old man is one of those ex-pirates whom Pompey settled in Calabria. If this suggestion is right, them it seems ito me that Virgil must be attempting to hint at the therapeutic effects of pastoralism. He also notes that the Corycians were famed for their gardens and that the old man is called ‘Corycian’ for this reason. He does not favour this view.

24. B. Otis (note 19 above), 194ff. Klingner, F., Virgil: Bucolica Georgica Aeneis (Zürich & Stuttgart, 1967), 333ffGoogle Scholar.