lore of Alexandrine writers,-the philosophic and imaginative conceptions of Lucretius,-with the knowledge of natural history contained in the treatises of Aristotle and Theophrastus, and the systematic practical directions of the old prose writers on rural economy, such as the Carthaginian Mago', whose work had been translated into Latin,-Democritus and Xenophon among Greek prose writers,-Cato, the two Sasernae, Licinius Stolo, Tremellius, and Varro among Latin authors. The purely practical precepts of the Georgics were apparently selected and condensed from these writers 2. But no literary inspiration or ideas were likely to have come from any of these last-named authors, unless the Invocation in the first Book may have been suggested by the example of Varro, who begins his treatise with an invocation to the XII Di consentes. The proverbial sayings or rustic songs embodying the traditional peasant lore, such as the 'Quid vesper serus vehit?' and the 'hiberno pulvere, verno luto, grandia farra, Camille, metes", which add an antique and homely charm to the poem, may have become known to Virgil from the book of the Sasernae, who are quoted by Varro as authorities for many of the old charms used by the primitive husbandmen, such as 'Terra pestem teneto, salus hic maneto,' which is to be repeated 'ter novies.' Servius notes that the words 'sulco attritus splendescere vomer' recall an old saying of Cato, 'Vir bonus est, mi fili, colendi peritus, cuius ferramenta splendent. The notices of ceremonial observances, such as Cf. Col. iii. 15 : ‘Ut Mago prodit, quem secutus Vergilius tutari semina et muniri sic praecepit,' etc. 2 Cf. Col. iv. 9: Nam illam veterem opinionem non esse ferro tangendos anniculos malleolos quod aciem reformidant, quod frustra Vergilius et Saserna, Stolonesque, et Catones timuerunt,' etc. Also ix. 14: Ceterum hoc eodem tempore progenerari posse apes iuvenco perempto Democritus et Mago nec minus Vergilius prodiderunt.' As a trace of Virgil's imitation of Varro, compare the passage where, after speaking of the injury done by goats to the vine, Varro says, 'Sic factum ut Libero Patri repertori vitis hirci immolarentur,' with Georgic ii. 380, 'Non aliam ob culpam,' etc. 3From dust in winter, from mud in spring time, you will reap great crops, Camillus.' He, my son, is a worthy man, and a good farmer, whose implements shine brightly.' $ 3] RELATION TO HESIOD 193 the account of the Ambarvalia, and the enumeration of things that might lawfully be done on holy days', were probably derived from the pontifical books and the sacred books of the other priestly colleges, of which Virgil made large use also in the Aeneid. In all the writers on practical farming, from Cato to Varro, he found that strong appreciation of the supreme worth of rural industry and that strong interest in its processes and results which justified him in identifying his subject with the thought of the national life. Among the sources of literary inspiration from which Virgil drew in the Georgics, the oldest, and not the least abundant, was the 'Works and Days' of Hesiod. Yet a comparison of the two poems shows immediately that the Georgics do not, either in form or substance, stand in that close relation to their prototype, in which the Eclogues on the one hand, and the Aeneid on the other, stand to the idyls of Theocritus and to the epic poems of Homer. The immediate influence of Hesiod is most apparent in the first Book of the Georgics, in which the subject is treated in connexion with theological ideas; while in the second Book and in the later Books, in which the philosophical conception of Nature, though in subordination to the conception of a supreme Spiritual power, becomes more prominent, the spirit of Hesiod gives place to the spirit of Lucretius. There is, however, a real affinity between the primitive piety of the old Boeotian bard and the attitude in which Virgil contemplated the world, though the faith of Virgil has become more rational under the speculative teaching and enquiry which had taken the place of earlier modes of thought among the Greeks. Virgil is ever seeking to produce a poetical reconcilement between primitive tradition and more enlightened views both of moral and physical truth. Thus he introduces the old fable of the creation of the present race of men in immediate juxtaposition with the assertion of the 'laws and eternal conditions imposed by Nature on certain places.' He accepts the belief in a Golden Age and in the blight which fell on the 1 i. 269. world under the dispensation of Jove; but he regards this blight as sent, not in anger, but as a discipline and incentive to exertion. He describes the natural progress of the various arts of life under this stimulus, but still leaves room for divine intervention in the more important discoveries : Prima Ceres ferro mortalis vertere terram Instituit1. Again, the teleological view of Nature, which appears in the Georgics in antagonism to the teaching of Lucretius, in such passages as i. 231 Idcirco certis dimensum partibus orbem, etc., and i. 351 Atque haec ut certis possemus discere signis is in the spirit of Hesiod, though in advance of his conception of Zeus, who appears in him not as a beneficent Providence, but rather as a jealous task-master. So too the constant inculcation of prayer and ceremonial observances Umida solstitia atque hiemes orate serenas, Agricolae Votisque vocaveris imbrem In primis venerare deos, atque annua magnae the specification of lucky and unlucky days, the reference to the old Greek fables of Coeus, Iapetus, and Typhoeus, are, though not directly imitated from Hesiod, yet conceived in his spirit. But, besides appealing to primitive religious and mythological associations, the poet of Andes aims at reproducing some flavour of the sentiment of a remote antiquity and of the quaint naïveté characteristic of the sage of Ascra. The very use of such an expression as 'quo sidere terram Vertere,' 1 'Ceres first taught mortals to turn up the earth with iron.' 2 Pray, farmers, for wet summers and dry winters'-'And may have called forth the rain by vows'-'Especially worship the Gods, and offer the yearly sacrifices to mighty Ceres. Cf. Εργ. καὶ Ἡμ. 463 : Εὔχεσθαι δὲ Διὶ χθονίῳ Δημήτερί θ ̓ ἁγνῇ. §3] RELATION TO ALEXANDRINE POETS 195 -the thought of the husbandman's labours as being regulated not by the Roman Calendar', with its prosaic divisions of the month by kalends, nones, and ides, but by the rise and setting of the constellations,-the picturesque signs of the change of the seasons, as in the line Candida venit avis longis invisa colubris 2,— the use of such quaint expressions as 'nudus ara, sere nudus,' -seem all intended to remind the reader that the subject is one 'antiquae laudis et artis,'-the most ancient and unchanging of the great arts of life,-that too in which man's dependence on Nature and the Spiritual power above Nature is most vividly realised3. This infusion into the practical realities and prosaic details of his subject of something of the wonder and 'freshness of the early world' Virgil derives from the relation which he establishes between himself and his Boeotian prototype. Though in spirit and poetical inspiration Virgil's debt to Hesiod is greater, yet the Georgics present more direct traces of imitation of the Alexandrine poets. It is in accordance with the learning and science of Alexandria that the subject is illustrated by local epithets, such as 'Strymoniae grues,' by reference to the products of distant lands nonne vides croceos ut Tmolus odores, etc., by recondite mythological and astronomical allusions and by the substitution of the names of various deities, such as Liber and Ceres, for the natural products which were supposed to be 1 The great confusion into which it had fallen before its reformation by Julius Caesar may have made this return to the primitive Shepherd's Calendar' familiar to Virgil's youth. 6 2 When the white bird, abhorred by the long snakes, has come.' Cf. Εργ. καὶ Ἡμ. 448 : Φράζεσθαι δ ̓ εἶτ ̓ ἂν γεράνου φωνὴν ἐπακούσῃς. 3 The same suggestion of the ancient and unchanging nature of this art is vividly conveyed in the Chorus of the Antigone : Θεῶν τε τὰν ὑπερτάταν Γᾶν ἄφθιτον ἀκαμάταν ἀποτρύεται, ἰλλομένων ἀρότρων ἔτος εἰς ἔτος, ἱππείῳ γένει πολεύων. their gifts. But to several special authors his debt is more direct. Thus the passage, i. 233 Quinque tenent caelum zonae, etc., is copied from Eratosthenes. The account of the signs of the weather, from i. 355 to 465, is taken from the Alooŋueia of Aratus, a work so popular at Rome, that it was not only imitated and almost incorporated in his poem by Virgil, but had been translated by Cicero in his youth, and was subsequently translated by Germanicus. Again, the description at iii. 425, of the dangerous serpent that haunts the Calabrian pastures, is closely imitated from the extant Onpiaká of Nicander; nor can we doubt that there were in the fourth Book imitations of the lost Meλioσoupyiká of the same author, who probably anticipated Virgil in the use which he made of Aristotle's observations on the habits of bees. A comparison of the passages in the Georgics with those of which they are imitations produces the impression not only of Virgil's immense superiority as a poet over the Alexandrine Metaphrastae, but of the immense superiority of the Latin hexameter, as an organ for expressing the beauty and power of Nature, over the exotic jargon and unmusical jingle which those writers compounded out of their epic studies and their scientific nomenclature. To take one or two instances of Virgil's imitations from these writers:-in the passage Georg. i. 233-246, Virgil reproduces very closely scientific statements of Eratosthenes and Aratus. But of the five lines which follow Illic, ut perhibent, aut intempesta silet nox There, as they say, there is either the silence of midnight, and a thicker darkness beneath the canopy of night, or else the dawn returns to them from us and brings back the day; and when the morning sun breathes on us with the first breath of his panting steeds, there the glowing star of evening is lighting up her late fires.' |