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Labor Improbus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

R. Jenkyns
R. Jenkyns
Affiliation:
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford
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Extract

The paragraph in the first book of the Georgics, running from lines 118 to 159, which describes the loss of the golden age and man's subsequent history, has been very diversely interpreted. But one sentence, at 145f., has been especially controversial:

labor omnia vicit

improbus et duns urgens in rebus egestas.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , May 1993 , pp. 243 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1993

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References

1 It is misleading to call the passage ‘Virgil's Theodicy’, not only because this implies a Christian concern to justify the ways of God to men which Virgil does not have, but also because the divine motivation plays only a small part in the passage, which is centred upon the consequences for humanity.

The following works are cited in this article:

Altevogt, H., Labor improbus, eine Vergilstudie (1952)Google Scholar

Geymonat, M. (ed.), P- Vergili Maronis Opera (1973)Google Scholar

Huxley, H. H. (ed.), Virgil: Georgics I and IV (1963)Google Scholar

Klingner, F., Virgil (1967)Google Scholar

Mynors, R. A. B. (ed.), Virgil Georgics (1990)Google Scholar

Putnam, M., VirgiFs Poem of the Earth (1979)Google Scholar

Richter, W. (ed.), Vergil Georgica (1957)Google Scholar

Thomas, R. F. (ed.), Virgil Georgics (2 vols., 1988)Google Scholar

Wilkinson, L. P., The Georgics of Virgil (1969)Google Scholar

Williams, R. D. (ed.), Virgil: the Eclogues and Georgics (1979)Google Scholar.

2 Commentators ad loc; Wilkinson, p. 141.

3 Mynors's commentary is delphic; in his lectures he was plainly of the pessimist school.

4 Putnam, pp. 32–6.

5 Klingner, pp. 203–5.

6 ‘peior est egestas, quam paupertas: paupertas enim honesta esse potest, egestas enim turpis est.’

7 Compare English ‘toil’ in such usages as the ‘toil and trouble’ of Shakespeare's witches.

8 This sense of ‘labor’ may perhaps help us with one of the most perplexing passages in Virgil: Jupiter's, speech at Aen. 10. 104–13Google Scholar. ‘sua cuique exorsa laborem fortunamque ferent’ (11 If.) is commonly taken to mean ‘let each man's efforts bring him his task and allotted outcome'. More probably ‘labor’ and ‘fortuna’ are in disjunction to each other: ‘woe’ and ‘success’. One might translate, ‘Let each man's efforts bring him ill fortune or good’. A consequence of this would be that ‘fortunam’ in line 112 carries a meaning very different from that of ‘fata’ in 113; some take them as near synonyms.

9 Contrary to Servius, and to TLL. Huxley translates ‘unremitting drudgery’ –fairly, since the blame is conveyed by the noun. But ‘unremitting labour’ or even ‘unremitting toil’ would not do.

10 Epist. 1.7.63.

11 Geo. 1.388. Some nuances are lost to us. One might ask, tentatively, if a ghost of ordinary language does not survive even in such a passage of high emotion as Aen. 4.412, ‘improbe Amor’ – is the tone of ‘Love, you bastard’ just hinted at?

12 Geo. 1.119.

13 Compare Thomas, K., Man and the Natural World (1983), pp. 274fGoogle Scholar. (on early modern England): ‘It is easy now to forget just how much human effort went into warring against species which competed with man for the earth's resources. Most parishes seem to have had at least one individual who made bis living by catching snakes, moles, hedgehogs and rats … Every gardener destroyed smaller pests, and it was usual for the gardening-books to contain a calendar like the one drawn up by John Worlidge in 1668: “January: set traps to destroy vermin. February: pick up all the snails you can find, and destroy frogs and their spawn. March: the principal time of the year for the destruction of moles. April: gather up worms and snails. May: kill ivy. June: destroy ants. July: kill … wasps, flies.” And so on throughout the year.’

14 Klingner, p. 204.

15 For a similar use of ‘heu', compare Tibullus 2.3.2 and 49.

18 It is a misjudgement to mark a new paragraph at line 147, as Geymonat and Thomas do, masking the poetic architecture.