Politics and the Georgics | Dickinson College Commentaries

Although a poem about farming practices, the Georgics can undeniably be interpreted as a political work. Published soon after Octavian’s (Augustus’s) ultimate victory over Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BCE, the poem reflects the decade of political instability under which it was produced. The Georgics appear to have been written after the publication of the Eclogues (in 39 BCE) and were published in 29 BCE. We have an account of Octavian stopping by Vergil’s home on his way back from the East to hear a performance of the work in April 29 BCE (Suetonius, Life of Vergil 27), surely indicating that it was polished enough to bear the scrutiny of the new ruler of Rome. Thus, the Georgics are the fruit of a poet writing at the height of civil turmoil. Given this context, we might interpret Vergil’s work as a nostalgic fantasy of rural life at a moment when the Roman state has been suffering the consequences of civil strife for decades. At the same time, it is also a text that directly addresses men in power (Maecenas and Octavian) and militarizes the agricultural world (as in the hives of Book 4).

It is difficult to imagine today the toll that warfare took on ancient communities. Civil discord would by necessity require a huge amount of manpower, and the campaign season fell in the spring and summer, that is, in the months where the need for farm labor is at its height. Even as early as 49 BCE Julius Caesar notes that part of Pompey’s naval force was composed of slaves, freedmen and tenant farmers (BC 1.34, 56). In addition to labor shortages, we know that the old ideal of the citizen farmer-soldier was increasingly a myth, and land was consolidated into latifundia (large scale agricultural farms) worked primarily by enslaved people. Add to this the thwarted attempts at land-reform that go back as far as the Gracchi, and veterans returning home to nothing but unemployment. The state of agriculture during the period when Vergil was composing the Georgics was likely less than idyllic: lands choked with weeds and fallow with no one to work them, smallholdings taken over by landlords to be added to already large estates, and people still (like Horace, Ep. 2.2.49-52) losing the land they had owned.

In contrast to this grim picture is Vergil’s Georgics. Unlike Varro’s De re rustica, a near contemporary agricultural work (37-36 BCE) which assumes a large estate as the norm, Vergil writes of the smallholder, working in a countryside that is able to sustain him, seemingly far from the cares of the city. In all his precepts, the “do this” voice of the author indicates that the reader is the farmer, who himself will plow, or graft vines to trees, or treat his honeybees for diseases. The contrast between the regulated, carefully managed farm, and the world of war beyond its borders could not be starker. This is not to say that the farm is without problems or dangers—if so, who would need an instruction manual? Rather, didactic literature is premised on the notion that one can learn and apply ars (art, skill) to problems. One’s plot can be managed in a way that warfare, out in the world or impinging upon your own border, cannot.

At the same time, both the context for war—and even warfare itself—is ever-present in the Georgics. Vergil opens the poem by addressing his literary patron, Maecenas, an aristocrat and intimate of Octavian (Augustus), indicating from the start the way that the composition of this poem is adjacent to and endorsed by those in power (G 1.1-5). In addition, Vergil directly addresses Augustus/Octavian three times, at the opening of the poem (G 1.24-42), in a lengthy prayer to him in the middle (G 3.1-48), and at the poem’s conclusion, where Vergil observes that while he was singing about fields and flocks, “great Caesar flashes with war along the depths of the Euphrates and as victor spreads laws among the willing peoples and lays claim to a path for himself to Olympus” (G 4.560-62). Whatever personal views of Octavian or the principate that Vergil may have held, his words at the conclusion of the Georgics indicate reverence for the labor of Octavian/Augustus (in contrast with his own ease), and an endorsement of the leader’s imperial project.

Finally, though the natural world contains violence and discord, the poet throughout maintains a focus on the rural locale and the absence of military conflict in the Georgics. Still, armed conflict intrudes in various places (e.g., G 3.17-36), including in Vergil’s description of hive societies (G 4.67-87). The poet describes rival “kings” and their troops. The bees exit their hives, stirred by a martial hum in imitation of the battle horn. The bee soldiers gleam, sharpen their stingers, cluster around their leader in the headquarters and call out to the enemy. After they burst forth from the gates (portis, 78) they fall upon the enemy in battlelines (acies, 82) and stir their huge spirits in their narrow chests. They strive to rout their enemy, though Vergil is clear that military and political leadership is critical—bee kings who neglect their communities cause them to sink into disorder, while those that are well-managed remain strong and resilient. Nevertheless, he humorously reminds the reader that a battle between honeybee factions is merely a tempest in a teacup (“these stirrings of their spirits and great struggles will subside with a toss of a handful of dust,” 86-87). By anthropomorphizing the bees, one might think Vergil only attempts to render the animal world intelligible to the honeybee novice. Yet, bee colonies do not fight in this way, as the other ancient agricultural and scientific writers attest. Instead, Vergil appears to introduce the violence unique to human communities here as an anti-epic. In doing so he further cultivates the ambiguity inherent in this work, suggesting by analogy that the works of “great Caesar” are no match for the longevity of the agricultural world, where such squabbles are fleeting and a distraction from the work of the land.

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