Audience

Having somewhat embarrassed myself last class with an admission of not being thrilled by the content of the Georgics, I've been thinking quite a bit about who read the Georgics and why. I took a second look at Nobility and Rustication, and while we seemed generally frustrated with the author's conclusion, I think one of his secondary points has much to offer. 

Consider, from the conclusion on consoling former city-dwellers, "Of course, it is all a fantasy, a fiction, and perhaps Vergil's reader understood that it was false. Yet a fiction that is repeated often enough begins to acquire a truth of its own, particularly when poetry adds its spell, and belief in the myth brings relief from pain".  I'm not 100% sold on the idea that the "spell" of poetry or the belief in myth would ease a reader's anxiety, but I am interested in the highlighted sense of "fantasy" and "fiction". 

Not only is real country life very much unlike the ideal and pleasant existence often described, but there are also a number of contradictions running throughout the Eclogues and Georgics. Amor (correct me if I am mistaken) is an urban goddess, and a particularly jealous one at that. The integration of love and the worship of country gods, although often paired together, may not actually be fundamentally compatible. For a more concrete example, at different times and at different places, shade is either a favorable circumstance or a harmful one. The excessive praise of both Caesar and the simple country worker also seem to be at odds. 

What I find most interesting, however, is how smoothly Virgil weaves his contradictions together, adapting whatever model suits his present needs. The fantastical marriages of love and country, pleasure and hard living, etc, create a sort of lullaby. With the reader somewhat lulled into this dreamworld, I wonder if Virgil's political agenda may have a greater effect. 

Internal contradictions are characteristic of a number of Latin authors such as Catullus, Tibullus, Seneca, etc, but I find none of their works as seemingly docile and "kosher" as the Georgics. Virgil's poetry is wrapped in traditional form and content, and it does have a sort of soothing flow. Without getting too deep into Inception-esque conspiracies, might we say that Virgil's poetry "loosens" the reader's tight code of rationality, thus creating a more flexible space for his own agenda? 

On Existential Bees and KR's "Mora"

Patrick Stewart raises major questions about B's, no doubt building on the angst of Monty Python:
Eric the Half a Bee.

Callimachus and a Few Thoughts on Georgics I

Callimachus was a third century author. Originally from Cyrene, he eventually lived in Alexandria as a scholar at the library there. His Aetia is an elegiac poem of four books. Literally, aetia means “causes.” Callimachus’ work focuses on explaining the origins of cities and various customs of interest in the Mediterranean world. He often structures his work so that he asks a question for which he provides an explanation, a pattern similar to the questions Vergil asks in the Georgics.

With the thoughts of Callimachus in mind while translating the selections from the first book of the Georgics, the myths Vergil references and the etiological meanings behind some of them seemed an interesting choice for the opening of the poem, fittingly including beginnings in his beginning.

The end of the book takes a tone similar to the Eclogues, though openly darker. Where the Eclogues hint at the harm war inflicts on the country, the Georgics fully states it. The contrast between the divine country-side at the start of the book and the war-plagued one at the end shows a marked progression through Georgics I.

One specific point of interest for me was lines 126-127. When I thought it was odd to write ne…fas rather than simply using nefas, I noticed that the ne and fas both begin their lines. It shows the same interlinear notion as the acrostic. Although this is not as interesting as the acrostic, it is a another clever arrangement by Vergil.

Our man Vergil seems uncommonly fixated on arboreal reproduction!  Let's be clear about what's going on:

Natural Reproduction
1.  Plants that grow spontaneously. 
V. cites 4 examples.  Two are described as growing in fields.  These are both low-growing, flowering shrubs.
siler  Well, lots of debate about this one!  I'll go with Parker's identification of this as , known in English as staveacre, lice bane, or lousewort. It was said to have been a cure for the very unpleasant disease phthiriasis [φθειρίασις < φθείρ ‘louse’]), a condition in which lice lay their eggs between the eyelashes.  Sulla is said to have suffered from this disease.

Delphinium staphisagria

sparteum iunceum

 genista-- Spanish broom, Sparteum iunceum.







Two are described as living by rivers.  These are both tall trees, familiar to us from the Eclogues:  the poplar (populus) and the willow (salicta).  Whether deliberately or not,  Vergil is telling an untruth here, as these plants come from seeds rather than from spontaneous generation.


2.  Plants that grow from seeds.  Vergil gives two examples here, the chestnut (castanea) and the oak (aesculus), the tree that grows in the groves of Jupiter and that the Greeks believed was oracular (oracle at Dodona).  The nuts of both trees are elements of the Golden Age/ primitive diet.

3. Plants that grow from shoots that grow up from the mother trunk:  V. cites the (sour) cherry (cerasa), the bay laurel (Laurus), and the elm (ulmus). 

Agricultural methods of propagation requiring human labor:
1.  Rooting cuttings from the mother plant-- Vergil's language here is surprisingly violent--
hic plantas tenero abscindens de corpore matrum/ deposuit sulcis, cutting the shoots from the mothers' tender bodies, he placed them in furrows.

2. Tip-layering!
That is what these difficult to understand lines are about:
silvarumque aliae pressos propagine arcus
exspectant et viva sua plantaria terra:











 3.  Grafting-- here is a video about grafting We did not read all of the section on grafting, but note that of the 6 grafts Vergil proposes, 2 are possible (i.e., mightproduce fruit) and 4 are impossible.  For a graft to be successful, the stock and scion must be of the same family.  According to Thomas, even the two that are possible are unlikely; grafts are generally between species of the same genus.

Possible:  apple on pear tree (33)
Impossible:  cornel on plum (34)
Impossible:  walnut on arbutus 69
Impossible: plane and apple (70)
Impossible: pear and elm (71-2)
Possible (perhaps); chestnut and beech (71)
 Thomas notes that Vergil "did realize the impossibility of his choices, for he places such grafts in the area of the marvel (thauma) when in Ecl. 8.53-53, in a series of adynata, he writes: nunc ut ovis ultro fugiat lupus, aurea durae/ mala ferant quercus, narcisso floreat alnus."

Again, Thomas:  "The discussion of impracticable or impossible grafts constitutes the first of a number of deliberate falsehoods in Georgics 2...the ultimate effect of these falsehoods is to pose certain questions about the 'success' which is generally perceived in this book."