Clearing The Ground in Georgics 1

Abstract

CHAPTER 2 Clearing the Ground in Georgics 1 S. J. Heyworth New beginnings How to begin is a problem shared by farmer and writer. Vergil himself seeks a new beginning mid way through the Georgics when (as he presents it) he realises that uncultivated trees provide as much benefit to mankind as the vine — and wine is destructive too (2.454-6). He therefore seeks a new course. First of all he wishes to write natural philosophy in the Lucretian mode (2.475-82), but he does not have the capacity for this, whereas he does gain pleasure from the innocent life of the idyllic countryside far from the city, the world familiar from the Eclogues (2.483-9: n.b. siluas, 486; umbra, 489). Both are commendable; the urban and the rustic are compared at length (2.495-540), but no clear choice is determined before the book ends. Book 3 begins announcing pastoral as its subject (Te quoque, magna Pales, ... canemus, ‘You too we shall sing, mighty Pales’, 3.1), and rejecting mythological narrative; but then the poet seeks a way to raise himself from the earth (3.8-9), and promises to build a temple for Caesar (3.13-39). Even when he returns to siluae, and the animal husbandry that will form the topic of the third book, he describes the work as haud mollia iussa, and emphasizes the way he has delayed embarking on this material, and is continuing to defer the epic to come (3.40-3, 46-8): interea Dryadum siluas saltusque sequamur intactos, tua, Maecenas, haud mollia iussa: te sine nil altum mens incohat. en age segnis rumpe moras. ... mox tamen ardentis accingar dicere pugnas Caesaris et nomen fama tot ferre per annos, Tithoni prima quot abest ab origine Caesar.