My first foray into Vergil. In The Georgics (jor-juhks), Vergil imitates the two signal works of the Ancient Greek poet Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days. In Works and Days, Hesiod created what amounted to an ancient farmer’s almanac that dispensed advice about agriculture and animal husbandry to his younger brother. Similarly, in the Georgics, Vergil breaks his poem into four “books” that deal with tillage and astrological identification, horticulture, animal husbandry, and the responsibilities of an apiarist. On one level, Vergil stands out as one of those ancient sources that is beautiful in how it successfully chronicles a body of common knowledge and preserves it for posterity. To a certain extent, one could still hone their “green thumb” by reading the advice laid down by Vergil.

There is another level of analysis here where Vergil’s paean to the natural world includes similes, metaphors, and analogies to human civilization. For example, he draws a comparison between bees and humans implying that an ideal human society would mimic the unity of purpose that bees embrace to collect nectar and produce honey. There are also commentaries here beneath the surface on Roman politics, the unpredictability of war, and other human foibles.

It is also interesting that Vergil builds on the intellectual tradition of Hesiod, and the English poet Vita Mary Sackville-West (a contemporary of Virginia Woolf) built on Vergil’s The Georgics when she wrote “The Land”—this is a work I hope to read in the near future.