Bugonia | Dickinson College Commentaries

The bugonia may be the most memorable part of Georgics 4 (lines 281-314); namely, Vergil describes a method for restocking one’s hives by spontaneously generating honeybees from the rotting carcass of a young bull. It is, indeed, hard to get Vergil’s description out of one’s head, and more than any other aspect of the Georgics, it is a technique that we know most certainly does not work.

While Vergil’s creativity is prodigious, he did not invent this method of bee procurement. Throughout ancient Mediterranean literature, we see references to bees dwelling in all kinds of vacant spaces, including the dried remains of animal bones and skin (see Herodotus 5.114 and Judges 14.8). Bees most certainly would not take up residence in any animal while still decaying, but some have suggested that drone flies (Eristalis tenax), gold and black insects which do reproduce in putrefying carcasses, may have been mistaken for bees. Given the greater knowledge of and attention to the natural world among all agricultural practitioners, and especially those in pre-industrial societies, we may rightly be skeptical of this solution, yet it is hard to find any more plausible reason for the description of the bugonia and its tenacity in the agricultural record.

The propagation of swarms from an ox or bullock carcass seems to have been a widespread notion, and one that Vergil’s audience would likely have been familiar with. References to it in poetry appear in Philitas, Callimachus, Archelaus, Nicander, and Theocritus, and perhaps its Hellenistic flavor appealed especially to Vergil. Varro also mentions that bees are born “partly from bees and partly from the decayed body of a calf” (RR 3.16.4), though he does not offer a process for acquiring them in this way. On some points Vergil seems to agree instead with the account in the Geoponica, a Byzantine compendium of agricultural knowledge, suggesting that the two works may share an earlier common instructional source. The bugonia is conspicuously absent in the work of Aristotle, which may suggest that it was never endorsed as a scientifically observable phenomenon. Indeed, as some scholars are surely correct to observe, knowledge of this fantastical process could be widespread without its familiarity being equated with belief in its effectiveness.

Many think instead of the bugonia as a thaumasion, a wonderous, miraculous, fantastical event (Ross 216, Thomas 85). As such, it creates a break between the didactic style of the rest of the Georgics, in which the author explicitly tells us “do this,” and instead offers the kind of advice that is perhaps more appropriate to the mythologic, otherworldly epyllion of the Aristaeus episode. The description has all the hallmarks of a mystical practice: it originates in Egypt, often a source of marvelous phenomena; there are specific instructions that must be followed precisely, in a particular order; and sacrifices must be made to the gods, to procure their favor. Indeed, the fact the Vergil explains the process using the impersonal “one must” suggests a real and imaginative distance from the here-and-now of Italy. All of this helps to move the practice of the bugonia from the real into the imaginary.

Even if the bugonia represents a familiar bee-related wonder, we might still ask why it has been included here and tied to Aristaeus, Orpheus and Eurydice for the first time, as far as we know. Certainly, the bees stand as a symbol of resurrection. The loss of bees and their magical return, through a method that does not require sexual activity, signals all kinds of possible wondrous restorations. Likewise, loss is figured as temporary: Aristaeus may lose his bees and Orpheus may lose Eurydice, but the favor of the gods—and adherence to their strictures—can produce a positive outcome, turning the clock backward.

Others, however, observe that Vergil’s description of the bugonia as a quasi-religious, quasi-agricultural ritual works only in the fairy-tale like setting of the Aristaeus story. Only in this never-never land could the human troubles of work and effort that define the farmer’s life be resolved so easily. For the real agriculturalist who loses his bee colonies, there is no magical solution. Work is hard, labor is long, and the storms and plagues of the earlier books show that what Jupiter gives he is just as likely to take away. And, as more than one scholar has noted, should you be so lucky to possess a hardy, male calf, why would you sacrifice such a valuable commodity for a hive of bees? The bugonia only mesmerizes because it is clearly situated in fantasy.

If the Georgics is a work of ambiguity (see essay on Vergil and the Georgics), we see it no less so here, where Vergil seems to pull us into paradox upon paradox. The directions are ghastly and grotesque, and require meting profound suffering in a way that most animal sacrifices do not. Yet, it is through this pain that those creators of honey—sweet, golden liquid—come about. For Aristaeus the ritual is both restoration and expiation—ironically, perhaps, since to atone for sexually assaulting Eurydice he must brutalize another mammal. Yet we also see his engagement in the ritual as another step on his journey as master technologist, and toward his own divinity and immortality. It is a secret practice brought from Egypt, yet disclosed in Latin, performed in Greece for an international audience. That is, the bugonia is and is not what it purports to be, and as such marks a fitting end to this ineffable poem.

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