17 - The Georgics

Summary

POLITICAL BACKGROUND

By 39 B.C. Virgil had joined the circle of Octavian's right-hand man Maecenas. But Antony was still the dominant Triumvir. It was only with the defeat of Sextus Pompeius in 36 and the consequent lifting of the threat of starvation from Italy that Octavian, the man on the spot, brushing Lepidus aside, began to outshine his other colleague, absent in the East. From then on the final showdown, at Actium in 31, became inevitable. The misery of the years following Julius' murder are recalled in Virgil's next work, the Georgics, in the magnificent rhetoric of the finale of Book 1, 466–514, which represents the chaos as continuing and the young Octavian as the only hope. But by the time the proems to Books 1 and 3 and the epilogue were composed Octavian has emerged as sole leader, a triumphant candidate for divinity. One major misery had been the ruin of agriculture: small-holders were conscripted for war or evicted to accommodate veterans, many of whom would be less competent farmers even if minded to cultivate land at all.

To what extent was there already an ‘Augustan’ policy? As to agriculture, we hear of no legislation concerning land-tenure apart from the settlement of veterans. The development of large slave-run estates (latifundid), favoured by the geography of Italy and the economic trends of the times, continued. But there was a feeling abroad among thinking people, reflected also by Horace, that a simple, Sabine-type, peasant life was happier and morally healthier, at least for others.