The Golden Age in Book 2

Turning now to the Golden Age passages of Book 2—the praises of Italy, spring, and country life^[18] —we approach three of the best-known passages of the entire poem. These passages, often read independently of the poem as a whole, have been taken as expressions of the poet's uncomplicated confidence in various aspects of Roman life. All recall in numerous ways the Golden Age as it was described in Book 1. All also have features at variance with the Golden Age described there, and these discrepancies are equally important for the poet's purpose. While these passages express traditional Roman ideals and values, they do so in such a way as to provoke the reader's attention and to challenge his assumptions. In their provocative dissonance from Book 1, in their extravagant overstatement, or in their manifest untruth, these passages draw the reader's attention to those ways in which life's real ambiguities exceed the truth of facile formulations. Thus the Georgic poet is not uncritically limited to the bounds of conventional Roman patriotism, for his real purpose is to enlarge the reader's sensibility.

The Praises of Italy

The laudes Italiae (2.136–76), as it is often called, is frequently read as a set piece because, independent of the poem as a whole, it can be taken as a charming expression of Roman patriotism and as a vision of Italy as a contemporary embodiment of the Golden Age.^[19] Indeed the poet explicitly uses the term laudibus ("praises" 138) in beginning the passage:

Sed neque Medorum silvae, ditissima terra,
nec pulcher Ganges atque auro turbidus Hermus
laudibus Italiae certent
(2.136–38)

But neither the Median forests, that rich land, nor fair Ganges,
Nor Hermus rolling in gold
Compares in praise with Italy

and the vigorous apostrophe

salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus,
magna virum
(2.173–74)

Hail, great mother of harvests! O land of Saturn, hail!
Mother of men!

in closing.

Let us first note the parallels between contemporary Italy as described in the following passage and the Golden Age of Georgic 1.125ff.:

hic ver adsiduum atque alienis mensibus aestas:
bis gravidae pecudes, his pomis utilis arbos.
at rabidae tigres absunt et saeva leonum

semina, nec miseros fallunt aconita legentis,
nec rapit immensos orbis per humum neque tanto
squameus in spiram tractu se colligit anguis.
(2.149–54)

Here is continual spring and a summer beyond her season;
Cattle bear twice yearly, apples a second crop.
No bloodthirsty tigers are found here, no fierce young lions roar.
No aconite grows to deceive and poison the wretch who picks it,
Nor does the scaly snake slither at such great length
On the ground or gather himself into so many coils here.

These verses suggest that contemporary Italy retains features of a primeval paradise, examples of which are her extraordinary fertility (149–50) and the absence of predatory animals (151–52), poisons (152), and snakes (153–54). These features have led critics to see here the poet's vision of a new Golden Age to come in Italy. A variation on this interpretation is that of Klingner, who sees Italy as representing the Golden Mean, a contrast to the excessive abundance of exotic growths of the decadent East.^[20] In Italy, on the other hand, all is on a human scale, healthfully abundant, offering wholesome challenge, perfect for the farmer:

haec loca non tauri spirantes naribus ignem
invertere satis immanis dentibus hydri,
nec galeis densisque virum seges horruit hastis;
sed gravidae fruges et Bacchi Massicus umor
implevere; tenent oleae armentaque laeta. hinc bellator equus campo sese arduus infert,
hinc albi, Clitumne, greges et maxima taurus
victima, saepe tuo perfusi flumine sacro,
Romanos ad templa deum duxere triumphos.
(2.140–47)

This land of ours has never been ploughed by bulls fire-breathing
Nor sown with dragon's teeth;
It has never known a harvest of serried helmeted spearmen;
Rather is it a country fulfilled with heavy corn and
Campanian wine, possessed by olives and prosperous herds.
Here the charger gallops onto the plain in his pride,

Here the white-fleeced flocks and the bull, a princely victim
Washed over and over in Clitumnus' holy water,
Lead Roman triumphs to the temples of the gods.

Klingner relates the passage also to the contemporary political situation, taking the East as an embodiment of "unmeasure" and hubris, of Antony's opposition to Rome and to her traditions of loyalty and manliness.

These observations have textual referents and are plausible. They do not, however, account for the entire content of this passage, which reflects as well a certain ambivalence towards Roman values. An undercurrent of verses of ambiguous import, too many to be easily ascribed to consistent carelessness (a concept difficult in itself), suggests a subtle tension determining the structure of this passage. In order not to lose the reader in tedious detail, let us restrict observations to some significant points of tension in this passage.

As a first example one may consider 14off., in which the poet would seem to suggest that Italy is free from a mythologically monstrous past. Other lands, while fabled and wealthy, have disturbing, unnatural myths associated with their past, myths that, presumably, characterize in some real way aspects of their continuing present. Therefore these nations cannot compete with Italy for praise. This allusion to myths of the ancient past might, however, invite the reader to consider some of Rome's earliest myths, which, while offering nothing so fantastical as firebreathing bulls, do offer their own kind of horror. Fraternal murder marks the founding of the Roman state, as all readers knew.^[21] This myth was deeply disturbing to Virgil's contemporaries, since they saw in Romulus and Remus prototypes of the civil wars that had shattered their lives. Crime and violence, although not monstrous or fantastical, mark Rome's history

from its very inception, a Roman version of original sin (cf. 1.502 and 2.537), so that the civil wars were perceived by some, and certainly treated in poetry, as proof of and payment for sin. This myth, then, to which the poet indirectly calls attention, was as fearful—in very real terms—to Roman eyes as any Eastern counterparts. Indeed it is a portrait of brothers rejoicing in the shedding of fraternal blood that closes this book (2.510), indicating the poet's present concern with fratricide and explicitly with the tale of Romulus and Remus (533) in this section of the poem.^[22]

Another point of some ambiguity in this passage involves the question of cities and man's labor and technology. As we saw in the labor improbus passage of Book 1 (118ff.), man's technology, the defining feature of the Iron Age, has a rather destructive, aggressive character that renders it morally ambiguous in some of its expressions. Labor has vanquished or conquered all things (1.145; similarly 1.150), with the consequence that man's relationship to other men and to nature has the quality of combat more than harmony, as in the Golden Age. The praise, therefore, of Italian cities as creations of labor points to a certain unhappy dimension of their origin.^[23] Cities are not natural or innocent but reflect the need for defensive posture that characterizes the Iron Age:

adde tot egregias urbes operumque laborem,
tot congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis
fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros.
(2.155–57)

Number our noble cities and the labor of our hands,
The towns piled up on toppling cliffs, the antique walls
And the rivers that glide below them.

The poet does not praise the city for its wealth of art or culture or as a refined expression of man's greatest creative acts; rather he praises it as a product of technology. Further to confirm the

poet's reticence or ambiguity here, we observe that this book concludes with an extended and thorough condemnation of city life for its pursuit of vain and destructive goals, the city absolutely epitomizing the dissolution of the Golden Age (2.503–12).

Another example in this passage of the praises of Roman life coming into implicit conflict with the ethic of the Golden Age is Romans' treatment of their seas:

an memorem portus Lucrinoque addita claustra
atque indignatum magnis stridoribus aequor,
Iulia qua ponto longe sonat unda refuso
Tyrrhenusque fretis immittitur aestus Avernis?
(2.161–64)

Shall I mention our harbors, the wall that was built to bar the
Lucrine
And made the deep cry out in mighty indignation
Where the Sound of Julius murmurs with the noise of the sea
locked out
And Tyrrhene tides flow through a canal into Averno?

Here enumeration of Italy's splendid resources modulates into the familiar motif of man's violation of the natural order. Indignatum (162) especially is a significant term here, given its other uses in Virgil.^[24] Assuming its usage here to be consistent with these other occurrences, we infer that the poet is—if subtly—suggesting that Agrippa, as agent of Octavian, is (like Xerxes and Alexander) outraging the sea and exceeding mortal bounds in his violence against nature. The Romans' technology is, as in 1.139ff., represented as aggressive against natural things. Finally, the phrase Iulia . . . unda (2.163), with its implication that

Caesar claims to own the waters, corroborates the notion that fas has been overturned (1.506), since, in the Golden Age, man did not claim for himself possession of the natural world.

A last example from this passage of discrepancy from the Golden Age is the portrait of Italian peoples:

haec genus acre virum, Marsos pubemque Sabellam
adsuetumque malo Ligurem Volscosque verutos
extulit, haec Decios Marios magnosque Camillos
Scipiadas duros bello
(2.167–70)

Fierce her breed of men—the Marsians and Sabellians,
Ligurians used to hardship, Volscian javelin-throwers;
Mother she is of the Decii, Marii, great Camilli,
The Scipios relentless in war.

These tribes are defined by their harsh and military character. No other qualities are attributed to them. Acre ("fierce" 167), adsuetum malo ("accustomed to hardship" 168), verutos ("armed with a javelin" 168), duros bello ("relentless/hard in war" 169) are the phrases that occur here, making the Italians' aptitude for war and hardship their salient characteristic. Richter points out that this list of heroes parallels that in Horace Epode 16.1ff., which regrets Rome's apparently inexhaustible taste for war.^[25] The list also anticipates the parade of heroes in Aeneid 6.756ff., which combines just the same tone of pride in Roman achievements with dismay at excessive actions committed on behalf of Rome and glory:

infelix utcumque ferent ea facta minores:
vincet amor patriae laudumque immensa cupido.
(Aen. 6.822–23)

Unhappy, however late ages will extol his deeds.
Love of country will conquer and boundless passion for praise.

The patriotism of Anchises, speaker of these words, is ardent, yet he seems to imply that there is a danger in uncritical love of country.

It is at this point that the poet asserts his intention of singing Hesiodic song throughout Roman towns, implicitly pointing to an absence in his homeland of art and all that it connotes in this poem (1.174–76). The poet's patriotism and commitment to Italy are also great, even if different in character from the soldier's.

In sum, while vital patriotic spirit resonates in this passage, most especially in 136–39, subsequent verses (e.g., 149–54), which reproduce topoi, or commonplaces, of the Golden Age, invite comparison of contemporary Italy with a previously stated ideal, and it is here that the ambiguities of the passage are found. More subtle and ambiguous than often assumed, the praises of Italy suggest a spirit moved, on the one hand, by deep sentiment for country and, on the other, inclined to a certain thoughtful perspective on its character and values.

The Praises of Spring

Like the praises of Italy, the praises of spring recall the Golden Age.^[26] Characteristic of the Georgic poet's retrospective point of view is the notion that spring recalls a former period of ideal vitality. Spring is conceived as the partial reenactment of the birth and primeval perfection of the world:

non alios prima crescentis origine mundi
inluxisse dies aliumve habuisse tenorem
crediderim: ver illud erat, ver magnus agebat
orbis et hibernis parcebant flatibus Euri,
cum primae lucem pecudes hausere, virumque
terrea progenies duris caput extulit arvis,^[27
] immissaeque ferae silvis et sidera caelo.
(2.336–42)

So it was, I believe, when the world first began,
Such the illustrious dawning and tenor of their days.

nec magnos metuent armenta leones
neither shall the herds fear huge lions.

It was springtime then, great spring
Enhanced the earth and spared it the bitter breath of an east wind—
A time when the cattle first lapped up the light, and men
Children of earth themselves arose from the raw champaign,
And wild things issued forth in the wood, and stars in the sky.

Spring is lovely, but is compared to something lovelier and past. The present is positive in the degree to which it reflects a past perfection. The tenses are past, suggesting that earth's greatest vigor and clarity preceded altogether the creation of human beings. The vitality, joyousness, and fertility of spring are marked by the songs of birds (avibus . . . canoris 328) and by pathless thickets (avia . . . virgulta 328), which parallels the poet's joy at seeing fields untouched by man (2.438–39). This nostalgic placing of perfection in a period without mechanization or commerce is a characteristic note in this poem and absent from the Lucretian model of this passage, which will be discussed below.

Another characteristic note here, as also in English rural poetry, is the continuing tension between contrasting perspectives, as Raymond Williams puts it, "summer with winter, pleasure with loss, past or future with present."^[28] In this passage spring represents only a transient peace for nature's creatures between the rigors of winter, on the one hand, and summer, on the other:

nec res hunc tenerae possent perferre laborem,
si non tanta quies iret frigusque caloremque
inter, et exciperet caeli indulgentia terras.
(2.343–45)

Nor could so delicate creatures endure the toil they must,
Unless between cold and heat there came such quietude
And the gentleness of heaven embraced the earth and comforted
her.

One type of experience always implies its opposite in the continuing cycle of seasons and men's lives. This passage oscillates

between the alluring ideal of spring's peace and the impossibility of maintaining this peace in any permanent way.

Despite its clear relationship to the Golden Age motif, Wilkinson, for example, saw in this passage an essentially meaningless interlude "introduced with little particular relevance save that this is to be a happy book."^[29] Klingner and Will Richter, on the other hand, see the passage as a kind of exalting proof of the immanence of God in nature, Richter adducing the epithet omnipotens (325) and the phrase caeli indulgentia ("heaven's gentleness" 345) to corroborate this reading.^[30] One might feel, though, that pater Aether ("Father Air" 325) is an insufficiently emotive term to be the focus of such intense religious feeling as Klingner and Richter perceive here. One might feel that this term, since accompanied by such scientific and dispassionate language as semina genitalia ("seeds of new life," "generative seeds" 324), tener umor ("mild moisture" 331), and ver utile ("good, beneficial spring" 323), works to create a philosophical or scientific tone more than a religious one. The conception, expressed here in scientific language, of perfection as past is a scientific or philosophical analogue of the Golden Age myth and seems to invite comparison with its Lucretian models, especially Lucretius 1.10–20 and 250–61.^[31] Virgil's regressive emphasis in his praise of spring and his emphasis on the absence of negative elements emerges clearly when juxtaposed to these Lucretian passages, one of which follows:

postremo pereunt imbres, ubi eos pater Aether
in gremium matris Terrai praecipitavit;
at nitidae surgunt fruges ramique virescunt
arboribus, crescunt ipsae fetuque gravantur;
hinc alitur porro nostrum genus atque ferarum,
hinc laetas urbes pueris florere videmus

frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique silvas;
hinc fessae pecudes pingui per pabula laeta
corpora deponunt et candens lacteus umor
uberibus manat distentis; hinc nova proles
artubus infirmis teneras lasciva per herbas
ludit lacte mero mentes perculsa novellas.
(Lucr. 1.250–61)

Finally, rains are lost when Father Heaven
Has dropped them into the lap of Mother Earth.
But shining grainfields sprout, and twigs grow green
On trees; the trees grow, too, and bear their fruits;
Hence our land and the animal kind are fed,
Hence we see happy cities bloom with children
And leafy woods all filled with young bird-song;
Hence flocks wearied with fat lay themselves down
Out in the fertile fields, and bright white liquor
Leaks from their swollen teats; hence newborn lambs
Gambol on wobbly legs through tender grass,
Their baby hearts tipsy with winy milk.

As Richter notes, Lucretius' concern is with the physical power of nature, positive and vigorous, as manifest in renewed growth every spring. The finely noted details of artubus infirmis ("wobbly legs" 260) and mentes perculsa novellas ("their baby hearts tipsy" 261) reveal deep sympathy with animals and pleasure in their growth. There is no touch of retrospect or of melancholy here. The notion of a Golden Age or past perfection is antithetical to Epicurean doctrine. Through Epicureanism the spiritual ideal of peace and the opportunity of a better life are ever available. Though the physical condition of the world may he morally flawed or degenerate, Epicurus' truth offers relief from care and fear. Spiritual peace, the discovery of Epicurus, results from an individual's insight into truths of existence (i.e., the gods are distant from human affairs; death, merely a rearrangement of eternal atoms, is not fearful). The ideal time for human beings beckons in the future, a function of an individual's conversion to Epicurus and as permanent as one's ability to

maintain one's conviction of Epicurean truth. The Georgic poet, however, offers no prescriptions for spiritual peace, in respectful deviation from the message of Lucretius (2.490ff.)^[32]

The Praises of Country Life

The laudes ruris, or "praises of country life" (2.458ff.), the last Golden Age passage of Book 2, makes the points conventionally associated with that theme: he who lives simply avoids the vanities of political life, the dangers of war, the distress of envy and poverty; he experiences the uncorrupted pleasures of family, friends, and the bounty of nature. Since the farmer's life is free from political ambition, he—unlike his urban counterpart—is not driven to defile family ties or to abandon his country in criminal exile (511); rather it is he who sustains country and family (514). The farmer's relationships and purposes, in correspondence with the eternal motions of earth, endure, while political matters have only transient importance (498). Only nature is continually renewed, and the farmer, bound to nature's cycles, participates in its larger eternity. That these points are conventional detracts neither from their truth nor from their power to move readers.^[33] Yet such a summary of the passage ignores its implication that the farmer's life, even as it epitomizes early Roman virtue, is, in its own way, flawed and limited. This passage, like many others in the poem, reflects a tension between the farmer's kind of knowledge and the poet's sensibility.

The first verse of the passage (O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint,/agricolas! "O happy, too happy, if they were to know their luck, are the farmers!") is suggestive for it recalls the ignorance that was adduced as the farmer's defining problem in

1.41 (ignarosque viae mecum miseratus agrestis, "pitying with me the farmers who are ignorant of the way"). Farmers, as representative of all men, lack illumined purpose in living. There is much of mystery that we can never know, and this mystery limits us. For farmers this inevitable epistemological limitation is compounded by a certain narrowness of experience. Farmers live a rural life and thus have a chance virtue, not virtue as the result of deliberate moral choice. If farmers are fortunate or blessed in their existence, yet without knowing it, they have no awareness or knowledge of their situation in life. Their experience is inadequate to give them the perspective and conscious thoughtfulness to come, for example, to a sophisticated rejection of the extravagance and urbanity of which they are involuntarily deprived. That farmers are ignorant of their "blessings" suggests something of the restricted quality of their lives.^[34]

The next two verses

quibus ipsa procul discordibus armis
fundit humo facilem victum iustissima tellus
(2.459–60)

For them most just earth, of her own accord, far from discordant
Arms, pours forth from the soil an easy living

are at variance with the truth of the farmer's life as it was described in Book 1. There he is not "far from discordant arms," but is swept up into the whirlpool of war, exchanging pruning hook for sword:

non ullus aratro
dignus honos, squalent abductis arva colonis,
et curvae rigidum falces conflantur in ensem.
(1.506–8)

The plough has so little
Honor, the laborers are taken, the fields untended,
And the curving sickle is beaten into the sword that yields not.

War is reality, and we have seen in Book 1 the easy exchange of roles between farmers and soldiers. The effect of this discrepancy between Books 1 and 2 is to create a tension between certain conventional assumptions about rural virtues and perceived reality.^[35]

Such verses as 2.460 (cited on p. 112), and

at secura quies et nescia fallere vita
(2.467)

but calm security and a life that will not cheat

are starkly inconsistent with Book 1 and therefore similarly create tension for the reader, who cannot rely on the narrator for a unified perspective. Consequently the reader must come to an independent perspective on these oppositions. As we saw in Book 1 the farmer's security is vulnerable to disease, storm, or political intrusion, for example; his efforts to make earth productive must be ceaseless (cf. nec requies, "no rest" 2.516) and can nevertheless be unavailing (e.g., 1.324–26). These inconsistencies thrust upon the reader the real conflicts of experience and constitute a challenge to his thoughtful awareness of which problems might be solved by country life and which might not.

To confirm further the moral ambiguity of the whole, the poet indicates that Justice, although planting her last steps among rural people, has departed even the country (2.473–74). Nowhere is there justice, not even among rural people. This ultimate departure of justice from the earth remains unexplained—as is consistent with the poet's method in this poem. A murky multiplicity of causes for the degenerate condition of man is suggested

in the poem's course: the will of Jove (1.121), Laomedon's perjury (1.502), the tendency of all things to deteriorate (1.199–200), the slaughter of animals for food (2.537). The essential thing to note in considering this passage is that, in closing, the poet reminds us that, despite rural virtues, Justice has departed even from the country and hence that no Iron Age life, not even the farmer's, is without moral ambiguity.

Analogous to the departure of Justice from the country is Rome's fratricidal history:

hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini,
hanc Remus et frater, sic fortis Etruria crevit
scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma,
septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces.
ante etiam sceptrum Dictaei regis et ante
impia quam caesis gens est epulata iuvencis,
aureus hanc vitam in terris Saturnus agebat—
(2.532–38)

Such was the life the Sabines lived in days of old,
And Remus and his brother: thus it was, surely, that
Etruria grew strong and Rome became of all things the finest,
Ringing her seven citadels with a single wall.
Before the rise of the Cretan
Lord, before impious men slaughtered bullocks for the banquet,
Such was the life that golden Saturn lived upon earth.

Romulus and Remus, although living a golden life in the Saturnian Age, nevertheless became the very symbols of fratricide.^[36] Since Remus and the Sabines (2.532) were victims of violence even in the Saturnian Age, was Rome corrupt in some way from its inception? In the strengths and virtues of Rome's Saturnian or rural Golden Age, the very foundation of its power and glory, lay—evidently—the seeds of its dissolution:

sic fortis Etruria crevit
scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma
(2.533–34)

Thus it was, surely, that
Etruria grew strong and Rome became of all things the finest.

For this difficulty no facile explanation is offered; the problem is only posed. Even in the Saturnian Age Romans built citadels that reflect the defensive posture characteristic of the Iron Age (2.535). As Richter points out here, ensis ("swords" 2.540) is the last word of the book proper. The poet does not allow the reader to forget, even in reverie, the reality of contemporary experience. While acknowledging the virtues that convention respects, the poet suggests the irresolvable ambiguities of Roman life in particular and of the human condition in general.