Virgil is by no means an easy poet. TheOdysseyis read by school children, and theIliadcan be understood by the average college student more easily and (I think) more accurately than any other work of classical literature likely to be encountered in survey courses. TheAeneid, however, often seems tedious and mechanical to these same students and more often than not frustrates the lecturer who tries to convey to a general audience some idea of the depth and beauty of Virgil’s verse and the poem’s profound power over mind and emotions. Yet theAeneidis far better...

TheGeorgicsbegins with a simplicity of vocabulary and word order that would be natural enough to prose, a four-and-a-half line statement of the subjects of each book in order:

Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram vertere, Maecenas, ulmisque adiungere vitis conveniat, quae cura boum, qui cultus habendo sit pecori, apibus quanta experientia parcis hinc canere incipiam.

(I. 1–5)

(What makes fields fertile, under what constellation to plow the earth, Maecenas, and to tie vines to the elms, what care there is for cattle, what practice for the maintenance of flocks, how much knowledge for keeping thrifty bees...

The basic opposition of Ceres and the acorn is still present in the second book, though somewhat altered to fit a different context The first book is concerned with man in his immediate environment and in the universe, and considers as well certain changes that affected an idealized past. Ceres is thus part of a transition from that past to the present, and as well a fact of the present condition. The second book is concerned more (though hardly exclusively) with this present condition and with man’s efforts to deal with it; its focus is narrower in space and more...

The third book, like the first, ends in obvious and utter disaster, the total devastation resulting from the plague. That this is a particularly bleak scene with which to end the book is generally conceded—there is no way around it after all. Comparisons with Thucydides and Lucretius serve to distract the scholarly reader from the portrayal of total desolation that Virgil clearly intended (so he began—desertaque regna / pastorum et longe saltus lateque vacantis, 3.476–77), but do not reach very far beyond a few not especially interesting parallels. Why such a bleak conclusion is a question which...

The fourth book of theGeorgicsseems to stand apart from the first three: field crops, trees and vines, and animals form three basic divisions of agriculture which can be found in the ethnographical tradition, and though we have no agricultural work that clearly follows these divisions, it is not unlikely that such a work had existed. We can say, though, that Virgil knew what he was doing when he appropriated these divisions for his poem. The subject of the fourth book, however, is incongruous: bees simply do not compare in importance with crops, trees, and animals. Virgil might just...

Virgil does not offer conclusions, the final lines of the poem provide no grand answer We have had, though, the final patterns, created from familiar pieces, revealing shapes similar to those seen before but different still in dimensions and outline The pieces are again the elements, both the real matter of the actual world and the basis of our perceptions and understanding, our knowledge. Here, in fact, is Virgil’s poem, it is concerned with nature (the real world) and our knowledge of it.

Our study of theGeorgicsis only half completed. We should now begin again and read the...