Page:The Works of Virgil - Davidson - Buckley.djvu/48

VIRGIL'S GEORGICS.

 

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BOOK I.

This admirable Poem was undertaken at the particular request of that great patron of poetry, Mæcenas, to whom it is dedicated, and has justly been esteemed the most perfect and finished of Virgil's works. Of the Four Books of which it consists, the First treats of plowing and preparing the ground; the Second, of sowing and planting; the Third, of the management of cattle, etc.; and the Fourth gives an account of bees, and of the manner of keeping them among the Romans.

What makes the harvests joyous; under what sign, Mæcenas, it is proper to turn the earth and join the vines to elms; what is the care for kine, the nurture for breeding sheep;^[1] and how much experience for managing the frugal bees; hence will I begin to sing. Ye brightest lights^[2] of the world, that lead the year gliding along the sky; Bacchus and fostering Ceres, if by your gift mortals exchanged the Chaonian acorn for fattening ears of corn, and mingled draughts of Achelous^[3] with the invented juice of the grape; and ye Fauns propitious to swains, ye Fauns and Virgin Dryads, advance your foot in tune: your bounteous gifts I sing. And thou, O Neptune, to whom the earth, struck with thy mighty trident, first poured forth the neighing steed; and thou, tenant of the groves, for whom three hundred snow-white bullocks crop Cæa's^[4] fertile

1. Pecori. Pecus here, as opposed to boves, signifies the lesser cattle, as sheep and goats, but especially sheep; as the word, I think, always signifies in Virgil when it stands by itself. See Ecl. i. 75; iii. 1, 20, 34; v. 87. Georg. ii. 371.
2. Vos, ô clarissima mundi, etc. Varro, in his seventh book of Agriculture, invocates the sun and moon, then Bacchus and Ceres, as Virgil does here; which sufficiently confutes those who take the words, vos, ô clarissima lumina, to be meant of Bacchus and Ceres.
3. Achelous (Aspro Potamo), a river of Epirus in Greece, said by some to have been the first river that sprung from the earth after the deluge; hence it was frequently put by the ancients, as it is here, for water. Davidson. Servius observes, "Acheloum generaliter, propter antiquitatem fluminis, omnem aquam veteres vocabant." B.
4. Cæa (Zea), an island in the Archipelago, one of the Cyclades.