The Scythians

Book 3, because of its horrifying passages on love and on the plague, is generally considered the most pessimistic book of the poem and, as such, may initially seem a strange quarry for treatments of the Golden Age.^[37] In Book 3 the approach to the Golden Age seems to be parodic. For example, the passage on the plague (3.478ff.) has been widely recognized as a travesty of the Golden Age,^[38] for it results in a harmony among animals that recalls the Golden Age (cf. Ecl. 4.22; G. 1.129–30), since predatory relationships among animals cease after the plague:

non lupus insidias explorat ovilia circum
nec gregibus nocturnus obambulat: acrior illum
cura domat; timidi dammae cervique fugaces
nunc interque canes et circum tecta vagantur.
(3.537–40)

Wolves no longer lurk in ambush around the folds, nor lope
Towards the flock at night: more desperate the care

[37] See, for example, Otis, Virgil, 151, 180; Perret, 68; Klingner, Virgil, 296; Wilkinson, Georgics, 74–75; Parry, 42.

[38] By (among others) Wilkinson, Georgics, 208; Otis, Virgil, 179; Richter, 325. See also Putnam, Poem of the Earth, 210; Miles, 211

That makes them tame. Now timid fallow-deer and elusive Stags wander amongst the hounds and about men's houses.

This harmony, however, is not sustaining of community and spirit, but ironic, the bitter and brutalizing sharing of all creatures in death. The poet thus grimly parodies some conventionally conceived ideals with the effect of suggesting how they are, in themselves, incapable of creating or sustaining an enlightened moral community. Harmony, as above, can exist as an isolated and meaningless phenomenon, when achieved without deliberate moral choice or enlightened purpose.

Although this has not been commented upon previously, one could argue that the passage on the Scythians (3.349–83) also is a travesty or parody of certain Golden Age phenomena. The representation of remote and primitive peoples as living in a moral Golden Age was familiar practice to Roman readers. Horace (Odes 3.24) subsequently described the Scythians as living morally, in a contemporary Golden Age.^[39] He represents them in particular as figures of virtue. For example, after observing that even great wealth is of no avail against death, he proceeds

campestres melius Scythae,
quorum plaustra vagas rite trahunt domos,
vivunt et rigidi Getae,
immetata quibus iugera liberas

fruges et Cererem ferunt,
nec cultura placet longior annua,
defunctumque laboribus
aequali recreat sorte vicarius.

ille matre carentibus
privignis mulier temperat innocens,
nec dotata regit virum
coniunx nec nitido fidit adultero.

[39] See Lovejoy and Boas, especially 288–90 and 315–44, on the overall eulogistic treatment of the Scythians throughout antiquity for their "non-commercial and communistic life" and "general simplicity and lack of luxury" (327). Ross, Virgil's Elements, 176 and 177, takes the passage as genuinely idyllic—"scene of peace, ease, and delight," "strangely civilized wild men." With respect to Horace, even if he is indulging in some irony here, this would not detract from the conventional nature of the thought.

dos est magna parentium
virtus et meteuens alterius viri
certo foedere castitas,
et peccare nefas aut pretium est mori.
(Odes 3.24.9–24)

Far better live the Scythians of the steppes, whose wagons haul their homes from place to place, as is their wont; far better live the Getae stern, whose unallotted acres bring forth fruits and corn for all in common; nor with them is tillage binding longer than a year; another then on like conditions takes the place of him whose task is done.

There, matrons spare children of their mother reft, nor do them harm, nor does the dowered wife rule o'er her husband or put faith in dazzling paramour. Their noble dower is parents' virtue and chastity that shrinks in steadfast faith from the husband of another. To sin is wrong; or if they sin, the penalty is death.^[40]

They live better (melius 3.24.9). Among the comparable Getae the poet notes the sharing of crops and the unpossessed fields. Particularly relevant to our theme is the moral quality of their lives: virtus ("virtue" 22), castitas ("chastity" 23), certo foedere ("sure bond" 23). They are conscious of wrong (nefas 24), which is punished by death. Their simplicity of life, lack of sophisticated culture, and distance from the city correlate with a morally pure life.

In the Georgics, by contrast, we find a different and more probing perspective on life among the Scythians. In the Georgics also they are without urban vice, competition, or war. Free from sophisticated criminality, they have no money and hold all in common. In these particular features they recall the Golden Age. Yet the poet suggests that despite these apparently Golden Age features the Scythians are more brutal and devoid of humanity than the animals whose skins they so aptly wear (gens effrena virum, "an unbridled race of men" 3.382). They sustain themselves virtually without labor or ars (contrast, for example,

[40] C. E. Bennett, trans., Horace: Odes and Epodes, Loeb Classical Library (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1974).

1.122, 133, 145), for neither of these is required to trap animals already immured in ice:

intereunt pecudes, stant circumfusa pruinis
corpora magna boum, confertoque agmine cervi
torpent mole nova et summis vix cornibus exstant.
hos non immissis canibus, non cassibus ullis
puniceaeve agitant pavidos formidine pennae,
sed frustra oppositum trudentis pectore montem
comminus obtruncant ferro graviterque rudentis
caedunt et magno laeti clamore reportant.
(3.368–75)

Cattle die, the bulky oxen stand about
Shrouded in frost, and herds of deer huddling together
Grow numb beneath new-formed drifts, their antlers barely
showing.
Men hunt them not with hounds now, nor do they use the nets,
No scarlet-feathered toils are needed to break their nerve;
But the deer vainly shove at the banked up snow with their
shoulders,
The men attack them at close quarters, they cut them down
Belling loud, and cheerfully shout as they bring them home.

Here there is no harmony between men and nature, no pity, no moral community. While these Scythians have an abundance of food, secure leisure (secure . . . otia 376–77; cf. secure . . . quies 2.467), games (ludus 379), and are joyful (laeti 379), they lead a brutal life, without conscience or thoughtful consciousness. The image of animals, defenseless from cold (torpent 370), that are raucously and callously killed (magno laeti clamore reportant 375), repels. These people are not, in the Georgics, a moral ideal but a gens effrena, a "wild race," as the poet says (382). They have no Golden Age, since no humane or moral purpose animates them. Their spiritual destitution is perhaps reflected in their surroundings. They inhabit a place of pallentis . . . umbras ("pale shadows" 357), rather like Hades, where the sun never shines, where running water freezes, where the sea's surface is solid, and wine must be split with axes (3.35 6–66). These people, devoid of sensibility and pity, are in need of a "lesson of poetry." Without this moral or spiritual quality animals, even if not predatory, or mankind, even if free from

modern crime, cannot live a humane, illumined existence. As we saw in chapter 1, spiritual illumination, sensibility, and pity are the province of the poet and essential to a humane age.

The passage on the Libyans, though far briefer, makes points comparable to those on the Scythians. As the Scythians live in the far north, so the Libyans live in the south, and thus Scythians and Libyans together could express a range of possibility. The Libyans have simple lives. Unencumbered by possessions, they take everything with them (omnia secum/armentarius Afer agit 343–44).They have no elegance, wealth, or competition and hence are free from the decadence of Rome. On the other hand, there is no suggestion of peace or happiness in their lives. They have no security of possessions or of spirit. The comparison of these shepherds to Roman soldiers suggests the menaced and difficult quality of their lives, as if spent in anticipation of enemy attack: iniusto sub fasce ("under an excessive load" 347), et hosti/ante exspectatum positis stat in agmine castris ("till the column is halted, the camp pitched, the foe surprised" 348). There is no illumined purpose in their lives, no community. The geographical expanse of vacant fields (tantum campi iacet 343) seems to parallel their own spiritual vacancy. The Golden Age in its essence, although not in all its particulars, eludes them.