4.281–294

Restocking your hives if your bees have all died: an introduction. 

If your hives have completely failed, you should recall the discovery of Aristaeus, the Arcadian master, who revealed how bees can emerge from the corpses of slaughtered cows. Vergil will reveal the entire story of how this practice came about from the beginning. It is a practice of Egypt (that is, of the peoples of Pellaean Canopus), who farm along and sail upon the Nile River, a territory that is bordered by Persia. The Nile runs in seven streams into the Mediterranean, originates in India, and enriches the banks with its silt. All of Egypt relies on this method of producing bees. 

281  quem: for aliquem, after sī (AG 310a).

281  dēfēcerit: “lets down,” “fails” + acc. (ali)quem, future perfect indicative in a future more vivid condition (likewise habēbit) (AG 516a, c). 

282  nec…habēbit = nec habēbit unde genus novae stirpis revocētur. habēbit here means “know.” The subject is the aliquis who has lost all his hives. novae is logically inconsistent with revocētur.

283  tempus: supply erit/est. This construction, tempus est, is regularly followed by an infinitive (AG 504n.2). 

283  et: “also.” 

283  Arcadiī…magistrī: this is Aristaeus, the god credited with the discovery of beekeeping. Arcadia is a region in the middle of the Peloponnese, noted in antiquity for its remoteness and rusticity. 

283  inventa < inventum, -ī (n), “discovery” or “invention.”

284  quōque modō: quō + que, not quoque “also.” Take quō closely with modō. 

284  caesīs…iuvencīs: “from slaughtered calves,” ablative of material (AG 403.2n.1). 

284  iam saepe: take closely with tulerit. In reality, honeybees are not created from, nor nest in, slaughtered cows.

285  īnsincērus: “decomposed” or “rotting.”

285  tulerit: perfect active subjunctive in an indirect question (AG 574).

285  altius: “more fully.” Thomas suggests it might mean “in higher mode,” especially in combination with expediam, which often conveys a loftier tone.

286  prīmā: ablative singular feminine with orīgine, an ablative of source (AG 403).

286  fāmam: “story” or “tradition.” The characterization of the story as a “report” from faraway and exotic Egypt is perhaps meant to distance the story from the poet.

287-293: Scholars are puzzled by the order of these lines and there is considerable disagreement about their order (or even if they were all intended to be included in this section). I have chosen to follow the order given by Mynors.

287  quā: “where” (and at line 290). 

287  Pellaeī … Canōpī: “of Pellaean Canopus.” Pella is in Macedonia and the birthplace of Alexander the Great, who conquered Egypt and founded Alexandria. Canopus was a town in the Nile delta, some 25 kilometers east of Alexandria. This is Vergil’s allusive way of saying “Egypt.” 

288  effūsō stagnantem flūmine: “overflowing after the stream has poured forth.”

Take stagnantem as a predicate, effūsō flūmine as an ablative absolute (AG 419, 420). The Nile flooded annually, leaving a fertile layer of silt on its banks.

289  et…phasēlīs = et <gēns> vehitur circum sua rūra pictīs phasēlīs. The Egyptians must use boats to get around when the Nile is in its flood stage. 

289  phasēlīs: a phasēlus is a bean, but here a little, lightweight boat.

290  pharetrātae vīcīnia Persidis urget: the “vicinity of the quiver-bearing Persian presses;” that is, as far as Egypt’s eastern border. At the time of Vergil’s writing, that old Persian empire was past, and the great power to Rome’s east was the Parthian empire, though it did not in fact come close to Egypt’s borders. 

292-291  et…harēnā: the subject of both discurrit and fēcundat is amnis in line 293. 

292  dīversa…septem…in ōra: in antiquity the Nile delta was commonly said to have seven mouths which flowed into the Mediterranean. Now there are only two main branches. 

293  usque colōrātīs…ab Indīs: “all the way from sunburnt Indians.” The Nile does not flow through India, but the source of the Nile was unknown in the west until 1858, a topic of debate in antiquity, and Ethiopia and India were sometimes seen as a single area. 

291  nigrā…harēnā: not sand, but “black silt,” that the annual flooding of the Nile washed onto the banks of the Nile, providing the rich soil for the crops of “green Egypt.”

294  certam…iacit…salūtem: “places (literally ‘casts’) its hope of sure safety.” The metaphor is from the casting down foundations for large structures such as walls or harbor moles (OLD iacio 6). 

294  in hāc…arte: that is, the art of producing bees. This startling claim is explained in the lines that follow.