Prayer

The Georgics are punctuated by questions—implicit and explicit—that are unknowable and unresolvable. This persistent motif of the unknowable is one of the ways in which the poet suggests the presence of mystery in life. The prayers that open and close Book 1 are another expression of mystery in the poem, for prayer necessarily implies ignorance and dependence with respect to some greater force. The ritual of prayer reveals a vulnerability that is not eliminated by technology, by praecepta, no matter how sophisticated. Particularly in a didactic and georgic poem, the act and counsel of prayer reveal man's dependence on powers that exceed his control and understanding. Even so practical a man as Cato, always confident in his instructions for

dealing with difficulties, nevertheless counsels sacrifice and prayer to the gods.^[5] Thus he acknowledges the reality that technology is not, in fact, in complete control.

Through the prayers that bracket Book 1 the poet touches on the mysteries of the political, natural, and divine worlds. The opening prayer invokes particularly Greek and rural gods, while the closing prayer addresses uniquely Roman and essentially political gods. The opening prayer speaks for the farmer in his confrontation with the mysteries of nature and of the gods. This prayer is a highly literary—but not, therefore, necessarily meaningless—expression of a stance of dependency and ignorance because the poet invokes those rustic gods who are in charge of things not controlled by man (e.g., 22–23). While this prayer opens spiritedly, with the poet expressing high confidence in his ability to sing with knowledge of those subjects that he has set for himself (1.1–5), the major motif of man's ignorance, both of nature and of the ultimate causes of those forces that determine his life, emerges in the address to Caesar:

tuque adeo, quem mox quae sint habitura deorum
concilia incertum est, urbisne invisere, Caesar,
terrarumque velis curam et te maximus orbis
auctorem frugum tempestatumque potentem
accipiat cingens materna tempora myrto;
an deus immensi venias maris ac tua nautae
numina sola colant, tibi serviat ultima Thule,
teque sibi generum Tethys emat omnibus undis;
anne novum tardis sidus te mensibus addas,
qua locus Erigonen inter Chelasque sequentis
panditur (ipse tibi iam bracchia contrahit ardens
Scorpius et caeli iusta plus parte reliquit):
quidquid eris (nam te nec sperant Tartara regem,
nec tibi regnandi veniat tam dira cupido,
quamvis Elysios miretur Graecia campos
nec repetita sequi curet Proserpina matrem).
(1.24–39)

You too, whatever place in the courts of the immortals
Is soon to hold you—whether an overseer of cities

[5] See especially Agr. 131–132, 134, 139–141 for prayer and ritual of sacrifice.

And warden of earth you'll be, Caesar, so that the great world
Honor you as promoter of harvest and puissant lord
Of the seasons, garlanding your brow with your mother's myrtle:
Or whether you come as god of the boundless sea, and sailors
Worship your power alone, and the ends of the earth pay tribute,
And Tethys gives all her waves to get you for son-in-law:
Or whether you make a new sign in the zodiac, where amid the
Slow months a gap is revealed between Virgo and Scorpio
(Already the burning Scorpion retracts his claws to
Leave you more than your heaven):—
Become what you may—and Hell hopes not for you as king
And never may so ghastly a ruling ambition grip you,
Though Greece admire the Elysian plains, and Proserpine
Care not to follow her mother who calls her back to earth.

We note that when the poet invokes rural gods, their names and functions are clearly delineated, as is characteristic of Greek and Roman invocations. In this sense all appears known. Octavian, addressed as a god, is invoked in a period, lavish and elaborate, whose formal opulence sets in relief its one substantive element: the poet does not know the nature of Octavian's destiny or future power. Although Octavian is perhaps a god, the poet is ignorant of what form his power will take in the future—incertum est (25), quidquid eris (36). Will it be on earth? On the sea? In the sky? Even Hades (dira cupido 37) is possible. While the functions of the rural gods are apparently known and defined, Caesar's are not. Unknown yet surely momentous, his will be the future of Rome. Thus the reader, along with the poet, is drawn from the opening of the poem into acknowledging his own ignorance of this major determinant of his future.

Additionally, the call to Caesar for pity (1.41) surprises, as it is a discordant note following the spirited, positive invocation of nurturing gods, along with the positive world view it implies, that opens the poem. If startling, however, it is also suggestive of the truth of the Romans' desperate situation, which is further elaborated in the closing prayer.

Significantly, both prayers are identical in expressing uncertainty as to Octavian's future power:

di patrii Indigetes et Romule Vestaque mater,
quae Tuscum Tiberim et Romana Palatia servas,

hunc saltem everso iuvenem succurrere saeclo
ne prohibete! satis iam pridem sanguine nostro
Laomedonteae luimus periuria Troiae;
iam pridem nobis caeli te regia, Caesar,
invidet atque hominum queritur curare triumphos;
quippe ubi fas versum atque nefas
(1.498–505)

O gods of our fathers, native gods, Romulus, Vesta
Who guard our Tuscan Tiber and the Roman Palatine,
Hinder not our young prince from rescuing this shipwrecked era!
Long enough now have we
Paid in our blood for the promise Laomedon broke at Troy.
Long now has the court of heaven grudged you to us, Caesar,
Complaining that you care only for mortal triumphs.
For Right and Wrong are confused here.

The second prayer, however, is depressed throughout and negative in tone, thus different from the first prayer. In the second prayer the poet asks the gods only to refrain from prohibiting Octavian from saving his homeland. Therefore there is implied a fear of divine menace rather than a confident hope of divine nurturance, as in 1.21, for example. The poet senses that the Roman people are marked by—and still expiating through suffering—some primal crime. And perhaps, it is delicately suggested (504), Caesar himself, too influenced by political ambitions, is not appropriately concerned about moral questions. Impious or unholy Mars rages throughout the world (1.511), and Jove's intervention in human history may well have allowed the confusion of fas and nefas (1.505). Hence we infer that the gods do not sustain the moral order. There is no necessary coincidence or relationship between the divine and the moral or scrutable. The whole world, overwhelmed by criminal and civil wars (vicinae ruptis inter se legibus urbes/arma ferunt 1.5 10–11), is experiencing the gravest moral upheaval, to which Caesar may be responding inadequately. The prayer concludes with an image of the world as a chariot out of control, dragged by a horse that is powerful, passionate, and irrational (1.512–14). This prayer to Roman gods, then, in its ambiguity and anxiety, mirrors the desperation and confusion of the present moment. It expresses

uncertain hope for future peace, not a conviction of fulfillment of that hope. If prayer in itself expresses ignorance and dependence, this prayer, in particular, expresses massive, monumental uncertainties, thus confirming the original description of farmers (and, indeed, all persons) in 1.41 as ignarosque viae . The natural, political, and divine orders are in gravest upheaval. Caesar's potential impact on any of these is unknown. His future, and equally that of Rome, is imponderable.

An illuminating progression emerges from comparison of the two prayers. In the first, the relationship of the farmer to nature illuminates with unique clarity the human condition as a whole. The farmer is subject continually to immense, imponderable natural upheaval that limits his productivity and impinges upon the quality of his life. The closing prayer speaks for political, Roman man as he confronts war and moral disorder, that is, his own nature out of control. From one to the other prayer, then, the movement is from the external and universal (man in confrontation with nature) to the internal and particular (Roman man in confrontation with the consequences of his political life). Thus the intractable realities of the natural, human, and divine worlds are the fixed points of mystery for the poem, the poles that generate the poem's major themes.