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The Georgics1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Extract

‘The best poem of the best poet’, said Dryden. And Spence (a generation or so later): ‘The most beautiful and most correct poem that ever was wrote in the Roman language.’ It is not hard to see why the Georgics had such a powerful appeal to the English Augustans, nor why the English Georgic became a poetic genre in its own right in the eighteenth century. The absolute control of the medium, the perfection of finish such as we do not find uniformly in the unrevised Aeneid, put it alongside Horace’s Odes as an example of artistic excellence of the highest degree. The elaborate diction, with its elevation of the ordinary and the common into ornate and cultivated paraphrase, naturally pleased those whose ears were attuned to listen for elegance, dignity, and propriety.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 1: Virgil , 1967 , pp. 14 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1967

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Footnotes

page no 14 note 1

E. de Saint-Denis’; Budé edition of the Georgics (1956) is excellent; there is much information in Richte. (Munich, 1957); H. H. Huxley’s smaller-scale edition of Georgics i and iv (London, 1963) is very good. There has been no full commentary in English since Conington and Page. For literary appreciation see Otis, Guillemin, Perret (p. 4 n. 2); F. Klingner, Virgils Georgica (Zürich, 1963); and the older books by Sellar, Glover, Prescott, Rand (p. 4 n. 1). K. Büchner in Pauly-Wissowa RE s.v. Vergilius (1955) tabulates the factual material and has some useful remarks on the themes of the poem.

References

page no 14 note 2 See Dudley, D. R., Proc. Virgil Soc. iv (1964-5), 41 Google Scholar ff.; Nitchie, E., Vergil and the English Poets (New York, 1919), ch. viii Google Scholar.

page no 14 note 3 Wilkinson, L. P., Golden Latin Artistry (Cambridge, 1963), esp. 74 Google Scholar ff.

page no 15 note 4 For example Book ii is practically all about vines, with only a few lines devoted to olives; Book iii is mostly about horses and cattle, with less on sheep, very little on dogs and nothing on pigs. See Wilkinson, L. P., Greece & Rome xix (1950), 19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ff., Otis, 147 ff. For Virgil’s agricultural knowledge and source-material see Saint-Denis (Intro.), Perret, 56-59, Büchner, 306 ff., Jermyn, L. A. S., Greece & Rome xviii (1949), 49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ff.; xx (1951), 26 ff., 49 ff., and Billiard, R., L’Agriculture dans l’antiquité d’après les Géorgiques de Virgile (Paris, 1928)Google Scholar. See also note 2 on p. 16.

page no 15 note 2 The medium had of course to be acceptable as a poetical genre: Hesiod and the Alexandrian didactic poets served him here, as Theocritus had served him in the Eclogues and Homer was to serve him in the Aeneid; cf. Geo. ii. 176; Prop. ii. 34. 77. For Hesiod and other Greek poetic sources, see Sellar, 191 ff.

page no 16 note 1 Some of the outstanding descriptive passages are precisely on this topic, as, for example, the reward of the farmer from friendly Nature (Geo. ii. 458 ff. O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint / agricolas . .. secura guies et neseta fallere vita), or the beauties of bountiful spring (Geo. ii. 323 ff.); or the moments of disaster when Nature is hostile, like storm and flood (Geo. i. 316 ff.), fire (ii. 303 ff.), pestilence (iii. 440 ff.).

page no 16 note 2 Some of the books and articles concerned with Virgil’s countryside are Royds, T. F., The Beasts, Birds and Bees of Virgil (Oxford, 1918)Google Scholar; Sargeaunt, J., The Trees, Shrubs and Plants of Virgil (Oxford, 1920)Google Scholar; d’Hérouville, P., A la campagne avec Virgile (Paris, 1930)Google Scholar and Champs, Vergers, Forêts (Paris, 1942); Abbe, E., The Plants of Virgil’s Georgics (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; Whitfield, B. G., Greece & Rome N.s. iii (1956), 99 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ff.; Haarhoff, T. J., Greece & Rome N.s. v (1958), 67 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ff. and N.s. vii (1960), 155 ff.

page no 17 note 1 On this whole topic see Glover, 154 ff., Sellar, chs. v-vii, Perret, 82 ff., Wilkinson, L. P., Greece & Rome xix (1950), 19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ff.

page no 17 note 2 The term iussa is of course conventional for a poet to use to his patron; the epithet haud mollia does not mean ‘harsh’, but ‘not easy of fulfilment’. A3

page no 18 note 1 Cf. Martial viii. 55. 5 sint Maecenates non derunt Flacce Marones.

page no 19 note 1 See F. Klingner’s essays in Römische Geisteswelt (note 2 on p. 4).

page no 20 note 1 On Virgil’s relationship to Lucretius see Sellar, 199 ff., C. Bailey, Proc. Class. Ass. (1931), 21 ff., Paratore, E., Athene e Roma xli (1939), 177 Google Scholar ff., and Taylor and Ryberg (n. 4 below).

page no 20 note 2 See Wilkinson, L. P., ‘Virgil’s Theodicy’, CQ N.s. xiii (1963), 75–84 CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘we are made to feel that Jupiter’s substitute for the Golden Age was worth all the trouble’; ‘work may be improbus, but there is, after all, divini gloria ruris’. See also Perret, 78 ff., Otis, ch. v.

page no 20 note 3 For an analysis of this passage see Klingner, F., Hermes lxvi (1931), 159 Google Scholar ff., and Virgils Georgica, 119 ff.; cf. also Gossage, A. J., Proc. Virgil Soc. i (1961-2), 35 Google Scholar ff., and Wilkinson (n. 2 above).

page no 20 note 4 On this see Taylor, M. E., AJP lxxvi (1955), 261 Google Scholar ff., Ryberg, I. S., TAPA lxxxix (1958), 112 Google Scholar ff.

page no 21 note 1 On the use of imagery in general poetic intention see Bovie, S. P., ‘The imagery of ascent-descent in Vergil’s Georgics ’, AJP lxxvii (1956), 337 Google Scholar ff.

page no 21 note 2 See Liebeschuetz, W., Greece & Rome N.s. xii (1965), 64 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ff.

page no 21 note 3 See Dahlmann, H., Der Bienenstaat in Vergils Georgica (Wiesbaden, 1954)Google Scholar, on the bees as a symbol of human society.

page no 21 note 4 Anderson, W. B., CQ xxvii (1933), 36–45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page no 22 note 1 Recent studies include Duckworth, G. E., AJP lxxx (1959), 225-37Google Scholar; Coleman, R., AJP lxxxiii (1962), 55 Google Scholar ff.; Segal, C., AJP lxxxvii (1966), 307 Google Scholar ff.; see also Klingner, 193 ff., and Otis, Appendix vii.