The Plague

The plague that the poet describes in 3.478–566 is of exceptional horror.^[41] An extract will suffice to suggest the gruesome details that the poet includes:

Hic quondam morbo caeli miseranda coorta est
tempestas totoque autumni incanduit aestu
et genus omne neci pecudum dedit, omne ferarum,
corrupitque lacus, infecit pabula tabo.

[41] Virgil's primary models for this passage are Thuc. 2.49ff. and Lucr. 6.1138ff. See Jean Bayet, "Un procédé virgilien: la description synthétique dans les Géorgiques, " in Studi in onore di Gino Funaioli (Rome, 1955), 9–18, for a useful examination of Virgil's method of synthesizing various sources and traditions in order to contrive one most dramatic event.

nec via mortis erat simplex; sed ubi ignea venis
omnibus acta sitis miseros adduxerat artus,
rursus abundabat fluidus liquor omniaque in se
ossa minutatim morbo conlapsa trahebat.
(3.478–85)

For here it was that once the sky fell sick and a doleful
Season came, all hectic with the close heat of autumn,
And it killed off the whole gamut of cattle and wild beasts,
Infected their drinking pools and put a blight on their fodder.
Death took them by two stages:
When parching thirst had seared the veins and shrivelled the poor
limbs,
Watery humors broke out again in flux till the bones all
Rotted and melted piecemeal as the malady ran its course.

Nevertheless, as many critics have noted, the plague results in a renewed, if horrific, Golden Age. Echoes between this passage and the passage in Book 1 that describes the transition from the Golden Age to the Iron Age are unmistakable. The significant terms ars, usus, cura, and labor occur in both passages (there are many other echoes as well), and thus invite comparison. For example, in inaugurating the Iron Age, Jove ordered wolves, previously gentle, to become predators (praedarique lupos iussit 1.130). After the plague wolves become, once again, docile:

non lupus insidias explorat ovilia circum
nec gregibus nocturnus obambulat
(3.537–38)

Wolves lurk no longer in ambush around the folds, nor lope
Towards the flock at night.

But this docility is not gentle or blessed; rather the wolves have been tamed brutally:

acrior ilium
cura domat
(3.538–39)

More desperate the care that makes them tame.

As another example, in the Iron Age, men had to contrive means to trap fish:

atque alius latum funda iam verberat amnem
alta petens, pelagoque alius trahit umida lina
(1.141–42)

One whips now the wide river with casting net and searches
Deep pools, another trawls his dripping line in the sea.

After the plague there is once again Golden Age plenty, and labor is not required. The earth recalls her Golden Age plenty only in parody, however. for the sea freely casts up quantities of fish, diseased and untouchable, a useless abundance of food:

iam maris immensi prolem et genus omne natantum
litore in extremo ceu naufraga corpora fluctus
proluit;
(3.541–43)

Now the deepwater tribes, yes, all the swimming creatures
Lie on the shore's edge, washed by the waves like shipwrecked
bodies.

As a final example, we may consider the fearfulness of poisonous snakes, which originated in the Iron Age through Jove's intervention:

ille malum virus serpentibus addidit atris
(1.129)

Jove put the wicked poison in the black serpent's tooth.

This fear vanishes, since the snakes perish from disease, but it does not thereby renew the Golden Age:

interit et curvis frustra defensa latebris
vipera et attoniti squamis astantibus hydri.
(3.544–45)

The viper perishes too, in vain defense of her winding
lair; and the startled snake, his scales standing on end.

A certain harmony exists among animals:

timidi dammae cervique fugaces
nunc interque canes et circum tecta vagantur.
(3.539–40)

Now timid fallow-deer and elusive
stags wander amongst the hounds and about men's houses.

Harmony exists among animals and men as well, for oxen are no longer exploited for plowing:

ergo aegre rastris terram rimantur, et ipsis
unguibus infodiunt fruges, montisque per altos
contenta cervice trahunt stridentia plaustra.
(3.534–36)

Painfully men scratched at the soil with mattocks, used their
Own nails to cover in the seed corn, harnessed their necks
To tug the creaking waggons over a towering hillside.

Yet these ancient enmities are not resolved with sympathy or felt community, but only by the terminal equality of death.

In sum, the aftermath of the plague shares with the Golden Age an absence of competition, of private property, and of predatory relationships among earth's creatures. Conventional adynata, such as harmony between sheep and wolves, ordinarily predicted only of a fantasized future, are realized.^[42] Mankind is once again freed from vain concerns and artifice. The Iron Age ethic of usefulness stands revealed as ill conceived, for salvation lies precisely in abandoning technology:

quaesitaeque nocent artes; cessere magistri
(3.549)

Cures (artes ) they invented only killed; healers gave up

and in abandoning the Iron Age ethic of profitable materialism:

nam neque erat coriis  usus
(3.559)

the hides were of no use .

Yet, although Iron Age flaws are eliminated, a new Golden Age does not ensue. Iron Age values of ars, usus, and technological achievement are abandoned;^[43] but they are abandoned through

[42] Wilkinson, Georgics, 208.

[43] Büchner, RE 8 Az (1958): 1302, observes that man learned to deal with the plague not through the ethic of use but, paradoxically, of uselessness.

compelling disaster and without deliberate choice. Here, although without technology, man does not attain a new innocence but a new barbarism, as he is driven to dig the earth with his nails (3.534–3 5). Quid labor aut benefacta iuvant? ("Of what avail are work and good services?" 525 ).^[44] The poet poses this question at the poem's grimmest moment, implying that the purpose of achievements and morality is unknown.

As a whole, then, this passage highlights the necessity of a certain spiritual quality or moral community, which alone might sustain Golden Age values. Such a quality does not exist as a consequence of the plague, for the harmony achieved there is grotesque and without spirit or volition. The poet has taken up conventional Golden Age features in successive isolation and permutation and finely revealed thereby what is absent—a spark of willed mutuality and illumined purpose.