Virgil's Georgics

Many of us had had at least a smattering of Latin in the distant past, but no one was proficient enough in it to appreciate the language.  (Me, Virgil defeated.  I could pick out words here and there, but I don't have nearly enough vocabulary to make out complete sentences.)  So we could only comment on the content, and the translation.  (Ferry for most people.  Dryden for me.)  

Four books, each treating a different aspect of farming - crops, trees, livestock and bees.  He provided, in poetical form, a great deal of facts - how to find good soil, how far apart to plant your vines, how to breed sheep to get white wool - most of which sounded plausible.  But really?  Bee kings?  And bee wars where the kings did battle with each other?  Was that the ancient Romans' interpretation of a mating flight?

But every so often Virgil takes a detour and sets off to describe some ancient myth, or not so ancient battle, or some praise-worthy contemporary.  It was written after the series of civil wars that wracked the Roman Republic after the death of Julius Caesar, but before Octavius had made the transition to Emperor Augustus.  Maybe all that death and destruction gave Virgil a hankering to write about the simple life back on the farm.  Or maybe the poem was meant as propaganda to usher in the empire.  Because, just as a community of bees needs its 'king', then surely a community of men needs the same thing.