Aristaeus

In myth and tradition outside the Georgics, as far as can be ascertained, Aristaeus is an exemplary figure, a culture hero, a true benefactor of mankind through his teaching of agriculture, cattle breeding, hunting, and beekeeping.^[54] The Georgic poet makes Aristaeus representative of all Iron Age men in that the glory of his mortal life, as he himself declares, is his productive labor:

en etiam hunc ipsum vitae mortalis honorem,
quem mihi vix frugum et pecudum custodia sollers
omnia temptanti extuderat, te matre relinquo.
(4.326–28)

Look, even this mere honor of mortal life, which I won
So hardly by craft and much resourcefulness from the care of
Harvest and herd—though you are my mother—I abandon.

The phrase vitae mortalis honorem ("honor of mortal life" 326) suggests that Aristaeus represents the continuing aspirations of all mortals as he strives to achieve his greatest ambitions, in his case the hope of divinity:

quid me caelum sperare iubebas?
(4.325)

Why tell me to hope for heaven?

In his relationship to nature as well he epitomizes Iron Age man, for he seeks through his labor to dominate nature, to make it productive for himself, and consequently to achieve gloria and honor . In this poem, then, he is suitably guilty of the rape of Eurydice, for she is a figure of nature,^[55] and as we have seen, it is a thematic leitmotif of the Georgics that agricultural productivity or progress absolutely requires the domination of natural things. If one sees rape as an act of domination, it becomes clear that rape is the paradigmatic gesture of productive man to nature. Therefore, by making Aristaeus, the tutelary god of agriculture, guilty of rape and, inadvertently, of the death of Eurydice—not at all a goal in itself but rather an instance of accidental destruction^[56] —the Georgic poet makes him represent the Iron Age experience in relation to nature as a whole. It is suggestive that in this instance Aristaeus wishes merely to rape, not to kill; thus he does not succeed where he wishes and is more destructive than he intends. As he needs to control nature's creatures for his glory, so it is consistent that he acts violently, exploitively, and without sentiment towards Eurydice.

Violence and struggle are again required, as Cyrene reveals, for Aristaeus to learn the cause of his suffering and its cure:

nam sine vi non ulla dabit praecepta, neque illum
orando flectes; vim duram et vincula capto
tende
(4.398–400)

Except to violence he yields not one word of advice; entreaties
Have no effect: you must seize him, offer him force and fetters

ad haec vates vi denique multa
ardentis oculos intorsit lumine glauco,
et graviter frendens sic fatis ora resolvit.
(4.450–52)

At this the seer, yielding at last to mighty force,
Rolled his glaring eyes so they shone with a glassy light,
Harshly ground his teeth, and thus gave tongue to fate.

Aristaeus is successful in his quest because this necessary violence is not uncongenial to him. Proteus, having endured his assault, addresses him as iuvenum confidentissime ("boldest of youths" 4.445). Yet his aggression is not represented as daring or courageous, for Eurydice is an undefended female, and Proteus, another figure of nature,^[57] an exhausted old man:

vix defessa  senem passus componere membra
cum clamore ruit magno, manicisque iacentem
occupat.
(4.438–40)

Scarcely letting the old man lay down his weary limbs,
He rushed him with a great shout and shackled him where he lay.

This scene parallels the sacrifice of the calf in the bougonia (4.299–302), also defenseless, whose sufferings and terror are narrated in some detail.

Like the Romans in 1.501–2, Aristaeus is, according to Proteus, in the position of having to atone for his guilt:

non te nullius exercent numinis irae;
magna luis commissa: tibi has miserabilis Orpheus
haudquaquam ob meritum poenas, ni fata resistant,
suscitat, et rapta graviter pro coniuge saevit.
(4.453–56)

Not without sanction divine is the anger that hunts you down.
Great is the crime you pay for. Piteous Orpheus calls
This vengeance against you—if fate did not interpose—far short
Of your deserts; bitter his anguish for the wife taken from him.

Further, he is like the farmers (ignaros . . . viae 1.41) in his ignorance of the causes of his suffering. An unreflective character, he fails to put the blame for his actions on himself, where, as the reader ultimately learns, it would seem to belong,^[58] but

instead attributes the blame to his mother, whom he charges with cruelty (4.321–32).

Most significant, when we recall that the stated purpose of the Georgic poet's poem is pity (1.41), is that—in contrast to Orpheus—Aristaeus, though guilty of attempted rape and indirectly responsible for Eurydice's death, voices no acknowledgment or understanding of guilt nor regret for his action once its consequences have been revealed to him.^[59] He expresses no awareness of loss, no pity for his victims. Except when directed towards himself (cf. 4.321–32), the quality of pity is lacking in him. With respect to his bees, he cares for them only as they subserve the ultimate purpose of his glory. Certainly he is not bound to them by sentiment, and, consequently, he is satisfied with a replacement. This is not an unreasonable position for him, given that he cannot perceive his bees as individuals. His hope for future divinity is what drives him—not sentiment, appreciation of the unique, regret for the past, or compassion.^[60]

In his labor, then, in his striving for honor, in his aggression against natural forces, in his need to atone, in his ignorance of the causes of his suffering, Aristaeus epitomizes Roman and Iron Age experience. The poet would seem to imply that it is precisely this vitality and aggression, when deliberately channeled, that allow him to survive. Thus Aristaeus, though guilty, survives crime and punishment, while the bees, the sacrificed cattle, Orpheus, and Eurydice perish. Aristaeus' success is bought at a high price, for his passion—misdirected—destroys Eurydice and, more importantly to him, his bees, and thus nearly dooms his entire labor and hope for honor . This portrait, as we see, differs strikingly

from tradition and thereby emphasizes, to the extent that Aristaeus is a culture hero, the aggressive and destructive quality of culture as it relates to nature in this poem.

A very revealing, indeed critical, dimension of the quality of Aristaeus' success is that it is achieved through the bougonia . Whereas in other accounts Aristaeus is associated with the discovery of real and practical improvements in agricultural techniques, here alone is he credited with the fantastical process of bougonia . In order to estimate accurately the quality of Aristaeus' achievement and the symbolic value of the poem's conclusion, we must consider, for a moment, the specific significance of bougonia for the ancients.

Because of the fact that the carcass of a calf or an ox, no matter how treated, will not yield bees, we must assume—for this reason alone—that bougonia was for the ancients (as well as for moderns) a procedure of uncertain or suspect truth and value. At the least we are constrained to say that it could not have had for them the familiar truth of routine reality, since it never happened. Sure knowledge the ancients did not and could not have had. Possibly they believed in bougonia as if it were something on the order of religious faith. Possibly they doubted it. In fact, agricultural writers of antiquity evidence a certain diffidence in writing about bougonia . Varro, for example, does not authenticate it in his own voice at all, but rather cites another source (Merula), who in his turn cites another source:

Merula, ut cetera fecit, historicos quae sequi melitturgoe soleant
demonstrabit. Primum apes nascuntur partim ex apibus, partim
ex bubulo corpore putrefacto. Itaque Archelaus in epigrammate
ait eas esse  .
(Rust. 3.16.3–4)

Our well-versed Merula, as he has done in other cases, will tell
you of the practice followed by bee-keepers.
"In the first place, bees are produced partly from bees, and
partly from the rotted carcass of a bullock. And so Archelaus, in
an epigram, says that they are 'the roaming children of a dead
cow.'"^[61]

Varro omits bougonia altogether at 3.16.37–38, where he discusses treatment of ailing bees. Columella is equally diffident in declining to discuss it:

quam rationem diligentius prosequi supervacuam puto,
consentiens Celso, qui prudentissime ait, non tanto interitu pecus istud
amitti, ut sic requirendum sit.
(Rust. 9.14.6)

I think it unnecessary to pursue this method further, agreeing as I
do with Celsus, who most reasonably says that the hive is never so
annihilated that this cure must be sought.^[62]

Since bougonia is not a precept of verified and routine value (contrast ut varias usus meditando extunderet artis/paulatim 1.133–34), we may wonder why the poet attributes it to Aristaeus, elsewhere a true culture hero, and makes of it his crowning discovery in this poem. He may be suggesting that there is an illusory quality to ars or to cultural achievement overall. Consistent with this interpretation is the fact that bougonia merely regains for Aristaeus what he had lost through his own violence. As a consequence of the deaths of Orpheus, Eurydice, and the sacrificed cattle, he is not materially advanced but rather, in fact, restored to his previous condition. In this way he resembles the rower at 1.201–3, whose ceaseless striving succeeds only in preventing his headlong rush downstream. Another, less questionable, view (invoking the Büchner rule that the less the practical value of a praeceptum, the greater is its symbolic value) is that Virgil has chosen to epitomize or crown Iron Age technology with the bougonia because of its symbolic value, which, as will be argued here, is that of a dynamic or economy of exchange.

Although, as Büchner says,^[63] it would be difficult to prove

that Virgil did not believe in bougonia, it is nevertheless true that many features of his narrative suggest that he viewed bougonia as fantastical or mythical. Both Klingner and Büchner observe the change in narrative style at this point in the poem.^[64] It becomes impersonal instead of direct: "a place is chosen," "they enclose it" (4.295ff.). Said to originate in Egypt, the bougonia is made literally and emotionally distant from the reader's reality. It is not described as something that the reader knows, but rather as something unfamiliar and alien, occurring in a distant land from which there may be only hearsay.

To summarize, bougonia is not a practical precept for generating bees; it was not part of routine reality, regularly practiced and/or observed by the peoples of the ancient world. Therefore it seems prudent to assume, as is implicit in the ancient writers cited above, that the ancients were in varying degrees diffident in their approach to it as a praeceptum . Such reality as they may have accorded to it must have had a different quality from that of daily experience and must have resembled a matter of faith rather than a matter of knowledge.

If we may adopt for a moment and for purposes of discussion the hypothesis that Virgil and his contemporaries either doubted the value of bougonia or attributed to it a kind of reality different from observable routine, we will then see that the conclusion of the poem, the character of Aristaeus, and the value of his achievement assume a significance different from that usually attributed to them. The prevailing view is that bougonia portends resurrection and a positive resolution to the conflicts of the poem.^[65] Such a positive view of bougonia does not seem to be supported by the dynamics or economy of bougonia as understood by the ancients. For them bougonia apparently signified an exchange of death for life rather than rebirth or resurrection. While new bees clearly are born, they are not re born, as there is no regeneration of the bees that had previously died and that

remain irretrievable. Most telling, this process requires the destruction of a calf, whose body and soul are needed to generate new bees, for the soul of the dead calf was perceived as animating the newly emergent bees. "The main idea seems to be that the life of the bull passes into that of the bees; the closing of the ears and nostrils, as well as the insistence on death by slow contusion, seem to aim at preservation of the soul within the carcass."^[66] As an image, then, bougonia signifies not resurrection but rather sacrifice or the exchange of death for life. Let us look at the passage now:

exiguus primum atque ipsos contractus in usus
eligitur locus; hunc angustique imbrice tecti
parietibusque premunt artis, et quattuor addunt,
quattuor a ventis obliqua luce fenestras.
rum vitulus bima curvans iam cornua fronte
quaeritur; huic geminae nares et spiritus oris
multa reluctanti obstruitur, plagisque perempto
tunsa per integram solvuntur viscera pellem.
sic positum in clauso linquunt, et ramea costis
subiciunt fragmenta, thymum casiasque recentis.
hoc geritur Zephyris primum impellentibus undas,
ante novis rubeant quam prata coloribus, ante
garrula quam tignis nidum suspendat hirundo.
interea teneris tepefactus in ossibus umor
aestuat, et visenda modis animalia miris,
trunca pedum primo, mox et stridentia pennis,
miscentur, tenuemque magis magis aëra carpunt,

donec ut aestivis effusus nubibus imber
erupere, aut ut nervo pulsante sagittae,
prima leves ineunt si quando proelia Parthi.
(4.295–314)

First a small place is chosen, a site that is narrowed further
For this same purpose: they close it in with a pantile roof
And prisoning walls: they add
Four windows with slanting lights that face towards the four winds.
A two-year old calf is obtained, whose horns are beginning to curve
From his forehead. They stopper up, though he struggle wildly, his two
Nostrils and breathing mouth, and they beat him to death with blows
That pound his flesh to pulp but leave the hide intact.
Battened down in that narrow room they leave him, under his ribs
Laying fresh cassia and thyme and broken branches.
This is done as soon as a west wind ruffles the water,
Before the meadows are flushed with vernal color, before
The talkative martin hangs her nest under the rafters.
Meanwhile, within the marrowy bones of the calf, the humors
Grow warm, ferment, till appear creatures miraculous—
Limbless at first, but soon they fidget, their wings vibrate,
And more, more they sip, they take the delicate air:
At last they come pouring out, like a shower from summer clouds,
Or thick and fast as arrows
When Parthian archers, their bowstrings throbbing, advance to battle.

As a symbol of exchange the bougonia exemplifies perfectly the central vision of the poem: the moral ambiguity and cost of Iron Age culture, the tense apprehension of an enduring opposition between certain kinds of material progress and humane value. The poet does not allow the reader to remain unaware of the cost of progress,^[67] for in describing the calf's death he arouses the

reader's sympathy for the calf's terrified struggle (4.299–302). We may compare also

hic vero subitum ac dictu mirabile monstrum
aspiciunt, liquefacta boum per viscera toto
stridere apes utero et ruptis effervere costis,
immensasque trahi nubes, iamque arbore summa
confluere et lentis uvam demittere ramis.
(4.554–57)

Here, to be sure, a portent sudden and miraculous to tell
They behold: from the oxen's bellies all over their rotting flesh
Creatures are humming, swarming through the wreckage of their ribs—
Huge and trailing clouds of bees, that now in the treetops
Unite and hang like a bunch of grapes from the pliant branches.

Any revulsion that a modern reader may experience cannot be merely an aberration of modern sensibility, for other similes used to describe the bees' birth also have negative connotations (e.g., 4.312–14). This birth is simultaneously miraculous and monstrous (dictu mirabile monstrum 4.554).

In sum, the emphasis here seems to be on the notion of death and destruction as the basis of new life rather than on resurrection and the uncomplicated joy of success. The poet evokes pity for the suffering victim and thus does not allow the reader to overlook the costs of progress. Bougonia, therefore, symbolizes exchange and unresolvable tensions; it illuminates the ambivalence of compromise and the pathos of loss.

To place bougonia in the context of the Georgics, then, and in the context of Aristaeus' whole experience, we may observe that while Aristaeus is indeed represented as a culture hero, he represents a culture or technology of a particular sort. Aristaeus' technology or contribution, symbolic rather than practical, is aggressive towards nature, even destructive of it. His technology is aimed at success as he sees it, according to his needs, and is

negligent of cost. It relies on a dynamic of exchange, here, of death for life, and thus embodies the moral ambiguity of the Iron Age towards nature and other men, a motif already familiar to readers of the Georgics .

Let us now move on to the portrait of Orpheus, the paradigmatic poet, in order to consider how Virgil represents him in relationship to the poem's major issues, as they have so far been set forth.