3
The Poet's Truth

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the nature and value of the poet's truth. My essential thesis is that there is a tension within the poem, most clearly reflected in the poem's final book, between two types of knowledge and value. The one is materially useful and real, the farmer's knowledge, based—to use the poem's terms—on observed signa ("signs") and distilled into praecepta ("maxims" or "precepts"). The other knowledge, the poet's, is not aimed at material usefulness, but, embodied in myth and mystery, it adumbrates a vision of the quality of human experience. This knowledge, the insights of which are intuitive and imagistic, aims at qualities of spirit and emotion and thus is antithetical to the farmer's, which is rational and material. In the Georgics the farmer's truth, as embodied in praecepta, and his values of material survival and utility are in tension with the figure of the poet and his values, as represented by Orpheus and the Georgic poet and as embodied both in myth and in the particular morality, harmony, and community of which the Georgic poet sings. Although this poem is called Georgica and would, therefore, be presumed to emphasize and value ars ("skill" or "craft"), we see—clearly at the poem's conclusion—the poet's ultimate concern not with knowledge appropriate to a practical, agricultural handbook, which the Georgics initially proclaims itself to be, but rather with mystery, myth, and divine revelation. This explains why the poet has chosen to conclude an ostensibly practical poem with the fabulous tale of bougonia, a precept completely without georgic truth.^[1] To conclude a geor-

gic, didactic poem in this way seems necessarily to pose an alternative to the very presumptions and values of the genre, and thus to point to a tension between the poet, who appears as a figure in the poem, and the values implicit in the genre that he has chosen. It poses the question of poetic truth and the role and function of the poet in the practical, material, Roman world. It poses also the question of the nature of society and of the real value of technology (artes ) and man's work (labor ).

As we have seen, the poem opens with a series of questions (1.1–4) and closes with mystery (i.e., with the bougonia, of unexperienced reality, imperfectly understood). The ultimate revelation of the poet's truth and values is precisely the bougonia, which concludes the poem with a powerful and significant paradox: the bougonia is unreal but true. The carcass of a calf, no matter how treated, will not yield bees; but bougonia as an image, as a representation of the poet's vision of Iron Age existence—with its message of the brutality of success, of the cost of survival, of the pathos of loss—is true, and thus reveals the limitations of the merely real. This paradox of being unreal but true reveals the essence of the opposition between the farmer's knowledge and the poet's knowledge, for the poem concludes with the new myth of Aristaeus and Orpheus, created by the poet, and the image of bougonia, which as praeceptum is false or useless but as symbol is true. Thus the farmer and the poet

engage in two different modes of discourse, aiming at two different claims to truth. The poet's truth, as embodied in myth, unverifiable and impractical, is consequently at variance with the assumptions of a georgic poem, which must esteem as valuable such praecepta as are aimed at tangible, profitable ends. The magnificence of this paradox is that, in this georgic poem, it undermines the values of the "real," thus using the form of the genre to challenge its own values.

The myth of bougonia embodies a truth higher than the merely useful, because man's life is shown in the poem to be defined and limited by unanswerable questions, by a spiritual or metaphysical ignorance that praecepta do not address. Farmers are described at 1.41 as ignarosque viae ("ignorant of the way," i.e., ignorant of an enlightened way of life) and at 2.458 as ignorant of their blessings (o fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint/agricolas! ). Further, the placing of the farmer at the primal moment of cutting an unknown field (1.50) epitomizes the condition of ignorance with which the Georgic poet is absorbed throughout the poem. Here the poet is returning the reader to the paradigmatic moment of man's initial confrontation with nature, the moment when, without the aid of obfuscating tradition or others' labor, we (at prius ignotum ferro quam scindimus aequor, "but before we plough an unknown plain" 1.50) confront our primal and defining ignorance. The poet's use of the first-person plural here expresses the universality of this moment and of this undertaking.

Unanswerable, troubling questions such as the following are among the most resonant verses of the poem:

quid labor aut benefacta iuvant? quid vomere terras
invertisse gravis?
(3.525–26)

Of what avail are toil or services? Of what avail to have
turned the difficult
Earth with the plough?

quid faceret? quo se rapta bis coniuge ferret?
quo fletu Manis, qua numina voce moveret?
(4.504–5)

What could he do, where go, his wife twice taken from him?
What lament would move death now? What voice might alter
Heaven's will?

When, for example, the very purpose of labor and accomplishment is, as especially in the first citation here, unknown, the relative unimportance of praecepta is necessarily implied. Praecepta do not acknowledge or touch upon the unresolvable and defining mysteries of existence to which above all the poet is sensitive and to which he responds through the image of bougonia . While the farmers are "ignorant of the way" and "do not know their blessings," the poet aspires precisely to knowledge—not of praecepta but of causae ("causes"), that is, of ultimate truths, which he represents as the gift of the Muses (2.475–82). Significantly, the poet does not look to the scientific method, that is, to the Epicurean atomism, materialism, and rationalism of Lucretius to reveal these ultimate truths, but rather to the poetic tradition and mode of experience, as we infer from his explicit assumption that the Muses are privy to the mysteries of nature's functioning. This association of the Muses and of poetry with knowledge of mystery is a significant conception here since it implies that the Muses transcend praecepta, which are expressions of the Iron Age—material, rational, useful, and limited. The poet, although he professes to know and to be able to hand on praecepta, implies that these are in themselves low and vulgar. Perhaps others will disdain them also:

Possum multa tibi veterum praecepta referre,
ni refugis tenuisque piget cognoscere curas.
(1.176–77)

I can repeat for you many ancient precepts
Unless you recoil and are loath to learn slight cares.

The poet's truth, therefore, is other than georgic, material truth, for his ultimate concern is with metaphysical, moral questions—urgent and essential—that praecepta do not address. The poet, however, acknowledges these most urgent questions and responds to them through myth and image, his poetry aiming at divine revelation (as from the Muses or Proteus) and at apprehension of mystery. By opening with questions (1.1–5) and clos-

ing with mystery (4.548–58), by posing unanswerable questions, the poet suggests the primacy of mystery and thereby touches upon the limitations of the merely real and hence also suggests his own true value. As poet he apprehends and represents mystery, through myth and metaphor, in all its ambiguity, complexity, and contradiction.

In the final half of the poem's final book, the poet portrays himself as the agent of the Muses, of a tradition and of a power greater than and outside of himself. Knowledge comes to him from the Muses, that is, from inspiration or revelation, rather than from trial and error. This contrasts importantly with the farmer's random and experimental mode:

ut varias usus meditando extunderet artis
paulatim
(1.133–34)

So that practice, by taking thought, might forge man's various
crafts
Little by little.

Similarly we encounter in this book Proteus, the divine seer, who knows all—everything that is, was, or will be:

novit namque omnia vates,
quae sint, quae fuerint, quae mox ventura trahantur;
quippe ita Neptuno visum est
(4.392–95)

for as a seer he knows all
That is, that has been, and all that is about to be—knows all by
the god Neptune's
Grace.

In knowledge (but not in power, significantly) he is the most privileged figure in the poem; and his knowledge, as it is Neptune's gift, also comes from divine revelation, not experiment and discovery. Proteus is not interested in and hence does not hand on praecepta, rather he reveals causae, as Cyrene indicates:

ut omnem
expediat morbi causam eventusque secundet.
(4.396–97)

so that he'll tell you
The whole cause of your bees' sickness and put things right.

Proteus' focus on causae is confirmed by his own words:

haec omnis morbi causa
(4.532)

Here is the whole cause of your bees' sickness.

It is left to Cyrene, Aristaeus' mother, to prescribe the remedy, to give praecepta (e.g., 534–547, 548; cf. 448), thus to deal in the material and corporeal:

'quattuor eximios praestanti corpore tauros,
qui tibi nunc viridis depascunt summa Lycaei,
delige, et intacta totidem cervice iuvencas.
quattuor his aras alta ad delubra dearum
constitue, et sacrum iugulis demitte cruorem,
corporaque ipsa boum frondoso desere luco.
post, ubi nona suos Aurora ostenderit ortus,
inferias Orphei Lethaea papavera mittes,
et nigram mactabis ovem, lucumque revises:
placatam Eurydicen vitula venerabere caesa.'
haud mora: continuo matris praecepta  facessit.
(4.538–48)

"Choose four bulls of excellent body that now on the heights of
Green Lycaeus are grazing,
And as many heifers whose necks have never felt the yoke.
Build for these four altars beside the lofty shrines
Of the goddesses, and let the sacred blood from their throats,
Then leave the oxen's bodies alone in a leafy thicket.
When the ninth day has dawned
You shall send oblivion's poppies as a funeral gift to Orpheus,
Slay a calf in honor of Eurydice placated,
Slaughter a black ewe and go to the thicket again."
Without delay he acts at once on his mother's prescriptions.

The need for this distinction between inspiration or revelation and instruction or maxim may explain why Proteus does not, in fact, give praecepta as Cyrene had said he would.^[2]

The conclusion of the poem, then, brings sharply into focus the contrast between the farmer's practical, Roman, Iron Age knowledge, embodied unambiguously in praecepta, and the poet's visionary knowledge, embodied in myths both traditional and of his own creation. These constitute his revelation in mythic image of the nature of human existence. The poem, therefore, is not protreptic in that it does not prescribe specific measures to restore the state to political or moral health. Rather it expresses an apprehension of certain oppositions that are not capable of resolution: victor vs. vanquished, material vs. spiritual, agriculrural vs. poetic, Iron Age vs. Golden Age.

The poet is, as we have already seen in other ways, in tension with the Iron Age agricultural ethic, that is, with the implicit assumptions of the genre of a didactic poem. This tension manifests itself not only in his having pity or compassion as his mission (as expressed in 1.41), not only in his preserving as a moral ideal his Golden Age vision of the past, namely, of a harmonious, noncombatant community among men and between men and nature; but above all in his perpetuating a mode of thought and value that poses an alternative to contemporary convention.

This tension between, on the one hand, mystery and the poet's truth and, on the other, praecepta and the farmer's truth can be approached and confirmed in a variety of ways.^[3] While the bougonia image, emphatically placed as it is at the end of a major

dramatic episode and at the poem's conclusion, is the best example of the primacy of mystery and of the inadequacy of praecepta, there are also other motifs that illuminate this vision in the poem. After discussing the symbolic value of bougonia I would like to treat the motif of ignorance and knowledge in the poem overall. As noted above, the poem opens with questions and closes with mystery. We can see upon reflection, however, that the entire poem moves towards enhancement of mystical, mysterious, or poetic modes, which are insufficiently acknowledged by Iron Age materialism. The poem is punctuated by troubling, unanswered questions that reflect the urgency of mystery in our lives. The presence of mystery and of the unique (as in the unprecedented portents of civil war following upon the assassination of Caesar) demonstrates the limitations of the farmer's human knowledge. As the poet contrives to show, past experience, that is, knowledge or science, is inadequate for controlling or even understanding the present and future.

Another motif we will consider, also reflective of the limits of knowledge, is prayer. In the context of an agricultural poem, the ritual of prayer necessarily implies dependency and ignorance. The act of prayer is especially dramatic as it opens and closes Book 1, thus setting the natural, political, and divine worlds (the subjects, variously, of both prayers) as the major fixed points of mystery, of the unknown, in the poem.

I will also look at mythical vs. "scientific" explanations of various phenomena in the poem and at how the poet implicitly challenges the power of the latter. The effect of this, it will be argued, is to suggest the limitations of scientific knowledge and to enhance the power of myth. Thus the poet adumbrates the value of the poetry that preserves and even creates the mythological vision.

Finally I shall look at the poet's share in mystery—that is, his unique power to create new myths, to structure the poem and its episodes, and thus to reveal meaning in experience through the medium of myth, of metaphor, and of the nonmaterial. In so doing the poet suggests most powerfully the limitations of praecepta, for it is through mystery and myth that he reveals his ultimate truths.

On the Bougonia

In chapter 1 I treated the image of bougonia in terms, first, of its unreality and, second, of its dynamics as a process. This is important because the dynamics of the process of bougonia contribute to its ultimate symbolic value in the poem. To review my earlier arguments, we must not assume that the ancients, without ever having witnessed or practiced bougonia, believed uncritically in its reality. Rather it occasioned scepticism among them, as may be seen in Varro (3.16.4, 37–38) and Columella (9.14.6). Further, several features of the poet's telling of the tale suggest that he intends the reader to be distanced from and doubtful about it. These include an unusually impersonal style ("a place is chosen," "they enclose it" 4.29 5ff.); the setting of the tale in a distant country from which there is only hearsay; and the representation of the tale as fama (286, 318), thus unverified, something of which neither he nor his compatriots had experience. The poet would, then, be only repeating a story told by others, which he himself declines to authenticate. Of the bougonia he does not assert masterfully "I sing" (cano )^[4] but rather, at this point alone in the poem, asks the Muses to tell him what to sing (4.315).

The unreality of bougonia relates to the second important point about it, namely, its symbolic value. While a common view is that bougonia signifies resurrection and a positive future for Rome, the dynamics of bougonia, as the ancients appear to have understood them, do not seem to support this interpretation. Bougonia was not, as scholars have inferred, thought to bring about rebirth or resurrection from death to life but rather an exchange of death and life, since the soul of the slain calf is required in order to animate the new bees. Further, in Aristaeus' case, new bees are indeed born, but they are not re born, as there is no regeneration of the bees that he had previously lost. These remain irretrievable. As a symbol, therefore, the process of bougonia embodies the ambiguous qualities of Iron Age culture in this poem—characteristically aggressive, destructive, and neg-

ligent of cost. The effect of crediting Aristaeus, a culture hero, with this suspect and distasteful process of contriving life out of death is to comment, if obliquely, on the particular quality or character of the culture that he is made to epitomize. In emotional tension with Aristaeus stand the figures of the Georgic poet, the Corycian gardener, Orpheus, Proteus, Eurydice, and the nightingale (4.511–15), all of whom have—variously—sentiment, appreciation of beauty, or capacity for sorrow and pity.

In this chapter the central importance of bougonia is its relationship to the tension between the farmer's and the poet's knowledge and truth. Through the paradox of being unreal but true, bougonia as symbol suggests the limitations of the materially real, as embodied in praecepta, and consequently the higher value of the poet's truth as it is revealed in myth and mystery. Here the effect is to clarify the distinction between the farmer's and the poet's truth, and, in some sense, to validate the latter. The material truth of profit and productivity is ultimately less urgent than poetic truth. The significance of bougonia, then, is critical for the entire poem, not only as a representation of the quality of Iron Age culture but also as a demonstration of the limitations of the useful and material and of the transcendent nature of the poet's truth and value. This is the essential vision of the poem.

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

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.

Scientific Explication

In this section it is suggested that the poet uses the language of science in such a way as to question, if subtly and discreetly, its truth value for the reader, with the result that he can ultimately privilege the value of his own mode of myth and mystery. The poet, it is argued, exploits scientific terminology and the formal qualities of scientific explication in a consistently compromised fashion, thus suggesting the limitations of the scientific method and of truth acquired through science. That is to say, in those passages where the poet alludes in form or in language to scientific or technical reasoning, he significantly and suggestively fails to achieve a result that is substantively sound.

In an attempt to demonstrate this thesis, I will discuss the poet's use of particular scientific modalities: sign theory, Epicu-

rean explanation by plural causes, and primary opposites. I shall argue that the implication of the poet's use of the language of signs is that sign theory is often inadequate to reality as we experience it, for the unique phenomenon confounds previously established hypotheses or correlations. With respect to the (largely) Epicurean practice of explanation by plural causes, I shall argue that Virgil, diverging from the characteristic practice of Epicurus or Lucretius, adduces plural causes that are contradictory or mutually exclusive, thus undermining the potential truth value of any and allowing the method of explanation by plural causes to seem inferior to the unitary vision of myth. Finally, I will suggest that in his use of primary opposites he is deliberately vague, thereby declining to advance in any substantive way our understanding of the phenomenon in question. To his presentation of myth, however, he gives a fine resonance and emotional impact, which allow it to outweigh in significance and power the scientific insights sketched in the poem.

Sign Theories

To suggest the primacy of mystery and the inadequacy of praecepta, the poet has given to each book its share of mysteries or happenings whose cause is not known or that exceed previous knowledge and experience.^[6] Nature is therefore seen to remain unencompassed by praecepta or previously observed signa . Unprecedented outbursts—of storm, for example, or passion or plague—defy previous experience and controvert familiar, trusted signs (signa ). Therefore nature's power is seen to remain mysterious, vaster than man's ability to catalogue.

From the several possible examples of unprecedented and disordering phenomena in the poem, I would like to consider two: the signs at Caesar's death in 1.427–97 and the Noric plague in 3.478–566, also marked by signs.

There are twenty-two occurrences of signa or the verbal form signare in the Georgics . While signa once denotes sculptures

(3.34) and twice denotes military standards (3.236, 4.108), its primary uses in the poem are clustered around the two meanings of constellations as weather signs (1.229, 239, 257, 351, 354, 439 [twice], 463) and of symptoms of disease (3.440, 503; 4.253). That Virgil's use of signs clusters around astronomy/astrology and medicine suggests that he is alluding to or making use here of sign theory as it reflected and expressed the field of natural scientific inquiry from the pre-Socratic philosophers through the Roman period.^[7] While the method of inference from signs characterized many fields, from zoology to metaphysics, popular interest in signs focused above all on astrology and medicine, with knowledge of mathematics and other areas of natural science being restricted to an intellectual elite.^[8]

There was a variety and complexity of sign theory in the ancient world with which Virgil might have been familiar. For our purposes it is not necessary to distinguish between Stoic and Epicurean sign theories or to distinguish, for example, the commemorative from the indicative sign.^[9] It suffices to know that sign theories constituted an important and characteristic dimension of philosophy and natural scientific inquiry in the ancient world. For natural scientists in general, who were seeking an "alternative, naturalistic, rationalist framework"^[10] for understanding experience, sign theory provided one form of systematic inquiry and discourse. Sextus Empiricus expressed the thought that the method of inference by signs is of the very essence of human intelligence:

They [the doctrinaire philosophers] say that it is not uttered speech but internal speech by which man, differs from nonrational ( ) animals; for crows and parrots and jays utter articulate sounds. Nor is it by the merely simple impression that he differs . . . but by impressions produced by inference

( ) and combination ( ). This amounts to his possessing the conception of "following" and directly grasping, on account of "following," the idea of sign ( ).For sign is itself of the kind "If this, then that." Therefore the existence of signs follows from man's nature ( ) and constitution ( ).^[11
] (Math. 8.275–76)

Hellenistic epistemology attributed particular significance to signs, which it defined as evident or manifest facts that serve to disclose other nonevident facts. The essential characteristics of the method of inference from signs were the distinction between what is evident and what is nonevident, and the use of the evident ( , in Epicurus' terminology) as a "witness" of the nonevident ( ). Sextus Empiricus defines the (commemorative) sign as consisting in something evident that reminds us of something not evident at present but having been observed with it previously, as smoke with fire.^[12] An example of a sign in medicine is roughness of the tongue, indicating fever,^[13] or a wound in the heart, indicating death. In astrology an example of a sign, here based only on a sense of empirical data and not on an understood causal relationship, is that people born at the Dog Star do not die at sea.^[14] Knowledge of weather signs, what Lévi-Strauss would call "concrete science,"^[15] is acquired through this same empirical method, to which the Georgic poet alludes in Book 1:

Atque haec ut certis possemus discere signis
aestusque pluviasque et agentis frigora ventos,
ipse pater statuit, quid menstrua luna moneret,
quo signo caderent Austri,  quid saepe videntes
agricolae propius stabulis armenta tenerent.
(1.351–55)

So that we might be able to predict from manifest signs
These things—heatwaves and rain and winds that bring cold weather,
The Father himself laid down what the moon's phases should mean,
The cue for the southwind's dropping, the sign that often noted
Should warn a farmer to keep his cattle near their stalls.

Aratus, author of the Diosemeiae, or Weather Signs, an important source for Georgic 1, includes in his poem the caution that one should look for sign confirming sign, as there is greater certainty in two or three. From two signs indicating the same outcome one may have hope, from three real confidence:

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More generally he adds that the universal way of mortal men is to live from inferences from signs:

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For thus do we poor, changeful mortals win in diverse ways our livelihood, and all are ready to mark the signs at their feet and adopt them for the moment.^[16]

The method of prognosis and prediction is similar in what we would call both scientific and nonscientific endeavors, such as medicine and astrology/divination. For this reason those Hippocratic writers, for example, who sought to distinguish themselves from diviners argued that there was a genuinely scientific character to their prognoses, founded precisely on the reliability of the signs on which they based their predictions or forecasts. G. E. R. Lloyd cites a medical writer who denies that he is a diviner but

asserts rather that he makes inferences from reliable signs about the outcome of a given disease:

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.

I will not prophesy such things, but I will set out signs from which it is necessary to infer those who will recover and those who will die, and whether they will do so in a short or a long time.^[18]

The conception of the reliability of signs and of the predictability of routine, seasonal, or annual events forms the very basis of the assumption of a knowable world and of georgic endeavors. A georgic poem requires the assumption of cyclical experience, of the validity of past experience as a guide to the present and future. It therefore seems of great significance that two of the most dramatic events in the Georgics, the portents after Caesar's death (1.463–97) and the Noric plague (3.478ff.), both marked by signs, are represented as unique and unnatural occurrences, for which there is no rational, material, natural, or atomic explanation.^[19] These events are marked by signs, but the signs are

unique, thus suggesting that all experience is not routine and that, therefore, it has not yet been explained or even catalogued. The premise of a knowable world is clearly questioned by the occurrence of an unprecedented, unexperienced event. The realm of mystery has not yet, it appears in this poem, receded beyond the horizon of scientific discovery. We see that the poet undercuts the impact and persuasiveness of the conception of the knowable world expressed through reliable signs by focusing on events that are unique and whose signs are unfamiliar.

The portents attendant upon Caesar's death and presaging civil war are preceded by a lengthy passage on weather signs (351ff.), based largely, although not exclusively, on Aratus' Diosemeiae, as noted earlier. This passage is introduced by verses (cited on p. 155) that indicate that relationships between signs and heat, rain, or winds are securely predictable; the signs are "sure" (certis ), since they are based on frequent observation of correlation between sign and consequence (quid saepe videntes / agricolae 355). Similar passages concerning the sun (e.g., 1.424–26 and 438–40) indicate that the relationships between sun, moon, and weather are also ordered and sure. Indeed, the sun gives the surest signs (certissima signa 439), both at its rising and at its setting. Therefore the sequence of natural events attendant upon various signs of all sorts is represented as a reliable basis for human undertakings.

With these passages as background, then, we may find the passage on the sun signs (or solar eclipse) and other portents

following the assassination of Caesar to be striking and surprising:

tempore quamquam illo tellus quoque et aequora ponti,
obscenaeque canes importunaeque volucres
signa dabant. quotiens Cyclopum effervere in agros
vidimus undantem ruptis fornacibus Aetnam,
flammarumque globos liquefactaque volvere saxa!
armorum sonitum toto Germania caelo
audiit, insolitis tremuerunt motibus Alpes.
vox quoque per lucos vulgo exaudita silentis
ingens, et simulacra modis pallentia miris
visa sub obscurum noctis, pecudesque locutae
(infandum!); sistunt amnes terraeque dehiscunt,
et maestum inlacrimat templis ebur aeraque sudant.
proluit insano contorquens vertice silvas
fluviorum rex Eridanus camposque per omnis
cum stabulis armenta tulit. nec tempore eodem
tristibus ant extis fibrae apparere minaces
aut puteis manare cruor cessavit, et altae
per noctem resonare lupis ululantibus urbes.
non alias caelo ceciderunt plura sereno
fulgura nec diri totiens arsere cometae.
(1.469–88)

Though at that time the earth as well, the waves of the sea,
Mongrels and birds morose gave signs.
How often we saw Mount Aetna deluge
The fields of the Cyclops with lava from her cracked furnaces,
Rolling up great balls of flame and molten rocks!
In Germany they heard a clash of fighting echo
Through the whole sky; the Alps shook with unnatural shudders.
Likewise in stilly woods a voice was heard by many—
A monster voice, and phantoms miraculously pale
Were met at the dusk of night, and cattle spoke—an omen
Unspeakable! Rivers stopped, earth gaped, and ivories
In temples wept sad tears and brazen images sweated.
Po, the king of rivers, in maniac spate whirled round
Forests, washed them away, swept all over the plains
Herds and their byres together. A time it was when the guts of
Woe-working victims never failed to reveal the worst
Nor wells to seep with blood
Nor high-built cities to sound all night with the wolves' howling.
Never elsewhere have lightnings flickered so constantly
In a clear sky, or baleful comets burned so often.

A number of features of this passage are important to note. First, these portents or signs are not predictable but unique (e.g., non alias, "never" 487) and un natural (insolitis . . . motibus, "unnatural shudders" 475). As they fall outside of known, reliable signa, they undermine the premises of the georgic genre, namely, the very notion of an ordered world, suggesting how ignorant man is of the great forces that shape his life.

Lucretius, for his part, is very aware of the impact of irregular or unique occurrences on the religious sensibilities of his readers. He knows their inclination to interpret such events as instances of divine anger or intervention of other sorts. He, therefore, particularly devotes Book 6 to giving an atomic explanation or an explanation from natural causes for phenomena such as thunder and lightning (6.96–422), routinely associated with Jove's anger, and also for the occasional or unique occurrences to which popular superstition attributed religious significance, such as earthquakes (6.535–607), volcanoes (639–711), and pestilences (1090–1137).^[20]

In our passage, however, the Georgic poet adduces no natural explanation, but rather, above all, a mysterious or mystical one. He implies that the cause of the solar eclipse, the eruption of Aetna, and the other portents was the "sympathetic" revulsion of nature and of the whole cosmos at murder and war (miseratus 1.466). Nature reflected man's own moral disturbances (cf. impia . . . saecula 1.468), translating them into a physically disordered reality.^[21] While nature's laws are presumed to be eternal (continuo has leges aeternaque foedera certis/imposuit natura locis, "Nature imposed these laws, a covenant everlasting, on different parts of the earth right from the earliest days" 1.60–61), in this instance they are seen as disorderable, controverted by man's depravity. Obscenaeque canes importunaeque volucres/signa dabant (470–71): dogs and birds gave signs, the

term here clearly having the sense of portents. To the extent, then, that observation of signs reflected man's belief in an ordered and rational world, the correlation of Caesar's assassination and consequent civil war with irregular or unique phenomena would be subversive or troubling. And here, of course, the poet signs the event not only with solar eclipse, as was testified to by historians, but also with literary and/or unnatural signs, such as cattle speaking, ivory images weeping, blood in wells, and pale phantoms at dusk.

Virgil's list of prodigies following Caesar's assassination is the first and one of the longest in ancient literature. Since attempts to find literary antecedents for the prodigies in this passage have not been wholly successful, we may infer that in his selection or creation of marvels for this passage the poet is seeking the very unusual if not the unique.^[22] Furthermore, the collocation of literary or contrived portents with real phenomena, such as the solar eclipse or the (possible) eruption of Aetna in 44 B.C. , results in a striking confusion of real and supernatural or inscrutable phenomena surrounding a historical event. There is, therefore, a consequent confusion here of what is knowable and/or persuasive and how it comes to be so. Familiar scientific or weather signs modulate into portents and hence into mystery. As the poet conflates real and mysterious events, real and literary phenomena or prodigies, he suggests a mode of truth different from the historical or scientific—different, but not without truth value of an alternative sort. Beasts speaking is perhaps undocumented in history, but true as metaphor in poetry. Signs, such as metaphors, in poetry may be without literal truth, but not without literary or poetic truth, valid in the poet's discourse if not the historian's or scientist's. The poet offers, perhaps creates, a series of signs that show nature as disordered and hence as disorderable. The experience of the unprecedented and unnatural must tend to subvert confidence in the possibility of true scientific knowledge and must suggest also that man's ability to interpret

signs is limited by his experience and perhaps even by his intelligence. It would not suffice, as a counterargument, to suggest that routine signs signal routine events, unique signs unique events, thus leaving the method of inference by signs intact as a scientific methodology; for the point is that nature is disorderable, our experience and comprehension limited. The portents at Caesar's death have no natural or rationalist cause, but are rather a mysterious, unexplained collusion of celestial and terrestrial events. Ultimately mysteries elude scientific explanation and cataloguing.

The second event in the poem that is unprecedented and characterized by signs (as symptoms of disease) is the plague of Book 3.478ff. Though scholars have studied the poet's description of the plague's symptoms and compared them with the findings of modern veterinary science, it appears that, whatever historical basis there might possibly have been, this plague is a literary fiction, a creation of the poet's reading of Lucretius (6.1138–1286) above all and of his own imagination.^[23] Like the portents of civil war, which involve a grand expanse of territory, from Rome to the Alps and even into the heavens, this plague is represented as widely involving sea animals, snakes, and birds. The devastation occurred without discernible cause, without precedent, and without cure. It overwhelmed and poisoned lakes, pastures, cattle, dogs, pigs, birds, "melting bones with disease" (3.484–85). The plague is a furor or madness in nature (furiis 511), its manifestations recalling those of storm (cf. storm as pestes, or "diseases" 3.471) and love. Like the omens at Caesar's death, this plague is unnatural and unprecedented (insolitae 3.543), which recalls the unnatural movements (insolitis 1.475) of the earlier passage. Pervasive, wild, and deadly, this plague exceeds previous experience. Through his intensity and extravagance of detail the poet suggests how new experience may confound precedent.

A significant irony in this passage is that all man's technology, that is, the knowledge that he believes to be most useful, is worse than useless, even harmful:

quaesitaeque nocent artes; cessere magistri
(3.549)

Cures (artes ) they invented only killed: healers gave up.

Relief comes only through relinquishing the whole ethic of use-fulness and profit^[24] upon which Iron Age culture is based. Thus, again, the poet suggests the limitations of Iron Age values. In the face of death Iron Age acquisitiveness and domination are irrelevant. Unable to cat the flesh or wear the skins of infected animals, man had to abandon his drive to put things to use. Ars (549), usus (559), and the whole conquering ethic—as with vincere (3.560), where one cannot "conquer" the disease with fire, recalling how labor "conquered" all things (labor omnia vicit improbus 1.145–46)—are inadequate to this disaster. Hence the poet reasonably asks:

Quid labor aut benefacta iuvant?
(3.525)

Of what avail work or services?

The plague illuminates man's ignorance in another way as well. Not only is the form of the disease unprecedented, but it also by implication appears to punish some crime of which man is unaware. Such terms as culpa ("evil," "fault" 468) and vitium ("fault," "crime" 454), which the poet attributes to the diseases of sheep, or the phrase di meliora piis ("May gods grant better to the Pious" 513) suggest this notion. Yet religious practices also fail as diviners cannot interpret the signs of disease (nec responsa potest consultus reddere vates 3.491).

Because the cattle are represented as innocents, uniquely soft and vulnerable (299), an intense pathos and horror attaches to

their deaths.^[25] Innocence characterizes also the dying bull, whose freedom from worldly vanity recalls the farmers of Book 2. Parallels between the bull and the farmers are numerous. There is the emphasis on work (e.g., 2.61–61, 397, 412, 514–15; cf. 3.515, 519); the beauty of pastoral scenes, which constitute the essential appeal of the simple life (2.467–71, 3.520–22, 528–30); and the avoidance of wine and lavish feasts (2.472; cf. 3.526–27). The moral and epistemological problem is apparent and grave. This plague, like that of Lucretius in Book 6,^[26] has specifically moral overtones. Yet it is not fear and desire, most especially deplored in Epicurean thought, that bring about suffering here. Rather the cause is unknown; ignorance, therefore, becomes the greatest terror. Innocence and simple virtue neither guarantee reward nor protect against suffering. Rather, some other, unknown set of correlates is operative. From the human perspective there is no conviction of a moral universe, for if the universe were just, these creatures of simple virtue would be rewarded.^[27] The

suffering of the guiltless remains unexplained and epitomizes man's ignorance of forces that determine his life. As the unparalleled virulence of the plague demonstrates the limitations of experience, so the terms culpa, vitium, and piis hint at unresolvable epistemological and moral questions. Since all human efforts ultimately dissolve in death, the plague here may be seen to represent any and all death; and the necessity of death inevitably poses the fundamental question of the purpose and value of life—the most intense and urgent mystery that all people face.

Along these same lines one should note also that the poet observes that one cannot know all things (2.103–8). Significantly, he cites as mysteries, which he wishes that the Muses would reveal to him, a number of phenomena that Epicurus and Lucretius had already claimed to explain. The Georgic poet asks that the Muses

caelique vias et sidera monstrent,
defectus solis varios lunaeque labores;
unde tremor terris, qua vi maria alta tumescant
obicibus ruptis rursusque in se ipsa residant,

quid tantum Oceano properent se tinguere soles hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
(2.477–82)

reveal heaven's pathways, the stars
The several eclipses of the sun, the travails of the moon
The cause of earthquakes and the force that compels the deep sea
To swell, to break all bounds, to fall back on itself again;
The reason why winter suns race on to dip in ocean,
And what delays the long nights.

Yet Lucretius gives a series. of explanations precisely of eclipses of the sun and moon (solis item quoque defectus lunaeque latebras 4.751–70). Similarly he explains earthquakes (6.535–607) and the varying lengths of day and night (5.680–704). To the Georgic poet these phenomena endure as mysteries, since he remains, apparently, unenlightened by Epicurean scientific explanation.

Lucretius attempts to explain these phenomena and others with a series of natural hypotheses, in this way following the Epicurean procedure of adducing plural causes to explain obscure phenomena. This practice is, evidently, not persuasive to the Georgic poet, as we have seen above and will consider further now.

Plural Causes

Another way in which the poet suggests the primacy of mystery and the consequent value of the mythical or poetic mode is by vitiating or undermining the persuasiveness of such scientific explications of various phenomena as he does offer. "Scientific" explanations in the poem are outweighed in number and in impact by the mythical tales. Let us examine the two occurrences of scientific explanations in the poem (to which Richter also pointed ad loc.) as examples of the poet's method of attempted scientific explication or overview. These are 1.84ff., where the poet attempts to explain mechanistically the enhanced fertility of fired fields, and 1.415ff., where, affecting to doubt divine intervention or fate, he speculates in scientific terms on the causes of birds' apparent foreknowledge of weather changes, an indication of their mysterious sentience or sensibility.

Here in the first of the passages, the poet's presumed purpose is to explain why it is useful to set flame to barren fields. As we read the passage, however, we sense how the incompatibility of suggested causes (86–93) in fact detracts from the real power of any:

Saepe etiam sterilis incendere profuit agros
atque levem stipulam crepitantibus urere flammis:
sive inde occultas viris et pabula terrae
pinguia concipiunt, sive illis omne per ignem
excoquitur vitium atque exsudat inutilis umor,
seu pluris calor ille vias et caeca relaxat
spiramenta, novas veniat qua sucus in herbas,
seu durat magis et venas astringit hiantis,
ne tenues pluviae rapidive potentia solis
acrior aut Boreae penetrabile frigus adurat.
(1.84–93)

Or again it profits to burn the barren fields,
Firing their light stubble with crackling flame: uncertain
It is whether the earth conceives a mysterious strength
And sustenance thereby, or whether the fire burns out
Her faults and sweats away the profitless moisture,
Or whether that heat opens more of the ducts and hidden
Pores by which her juices are conveyed to the fresh vegetation,
Or rather hardens and binds her gaping veins against
Fine rain and the consuming sun's fierce potency
And the piercing cold of the north wind.

The language that the poet uses here, with its alternative hypotheses, has the ring of science to it. Yet he suggests the limitations of scientific thought in his selection of two sets of mutually exclusive explanations. Why do fired fields become more fertile? Either something goes into the earth from the fire (86–87) or something goes out (87–88). Either the earth becomes more porous (88–90) or less (91–92).

This passage, because it has seemed lacking in overall clarity, has perplexed and troubled commentators. T. C. Page, yielding to puzzlement, summarizes by saying that "it is hard to believe that the reasons here suggested are anything but fanciful."^[28] J. Conington is representative in thinking that the various expla-

nations are intended for various kinds of soil.^[29] Miles writes: "It is not immediately clear how many distinct alternatives Virgil is offering here—whether the later alternatives (89–93) are to be taken as new possibilities or as elaborations of earlier statements."^[30] However, it is very important to note, as Richter does, that this is the only place in the poem "where such a compendious overview of a philosophical topic is offered."^[31] Another way of stating this, perhaps, is that this is the poem's most elaborated exposition of the scientific method. The quality of argumentation, then, that the poet allots to this overview is reflective of his response (and of the desired response from the reader) to the scientific method.

Commentators (e.g., Richter and Wilkinson, following him)^[32] have noted that this passage has formal parallels with the Epicurean practice of adducing multiple causes to explain obscure (typically, celestial) phenomena. Yet their method was not characterized by the proffering of mutually exclusive possibilities.

The most important sources for this practice are Epicurus' Letter to Pythocles 85–88 and Lucretius Books 5 and 6. In order to understand the nonapparent, particularly in the heavens, Epicurus endorsed the procedure of adducing several hypotheses, as long as they were consistent with the phenomena, that is, not contested or "counterwitnessed" by our sense perception or direct experience. For Epicurus it is appropriate to consider all these explanations useful—as they serve our "freedom from disturbance and our firm confidence"—and true. While some things, such as the existence of matter and void or the existence of atoms, have only one explanation, "in the case of celestial events this is not the case: both the causes of their coming to be and the accounts of their essence are multiple. . . . Now in respect of all things which have a multiplicity of explanations consistent with things evident, complete freedom from trepida-

tion results when someone in the proper way lets stand whatever is plausibly suggested about them" (Ep. Pyth. 86–87). For the purposes of this study the next assertion of Epicurus is critically important:

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But when someone allows one explanation while rejecting another equally consistent with what is evident, he is clearly abandoning natural philosophy altogether and descending into myth.

That is to say that to have one explanation only instead of several is the mode of myth rather than science. Let us consider, in contrast, an example of the practice of Epicurus, who does not adduce mutually exclusive causes.

Clouds may form and gather either because the air is condensed under the pressure of winds, or because atoms which hold together and are suitable to produce this result become mutually entangled, or because currents collect from the earth and the waters; and there are several other ways in which it is not impossible for the aggregations of such bodies into clouds to be brought about.^[33
] (Ep. Pyth. 99–100)

While Elizabeth Asmis observes that no ancient source accuses Epicurus of rejecting the principle of noncontradiction, scholars have noted that, although not attested, the possibility of Epicurus' having offered mutually exclusive hypotheses as being equally true could be a logical danger of his method. Therefore they have proposed alternatives to the possibility of contradiction. They incline to interpret "no counterwitnessing" loosely, as a criterion of possible, but not necessary, truth. (Epicurus held a scientific theory true whenever there was "no counterwitnessing" or contradiction by the phenomena, false when there

was "counterwitnessing.") Also, they give important acknowledgment to the concern of Epicurus to show not only compatibility of theory with the phenomena, but also "an incompatibility of the contradictory of the theory with the phenomena," thus assuring to a great degree that mutually contradictory theories not be found true.^[34]

Lucretius, in his use of plural causes, differs somewhat in focus from Epicurus. He appears to think only one cause to be true of any given incident, although many may be true either in general or in other worlds:

Sunt aliquot quoque res quarum unam dicere causam
non satis est, verum pluris, unde una tamen sit;
corpus ut exanimum siquod procul ipse iacere
conspicias hominis, fit ut omnis dicere causas
conveniat leti, dicatur ut illius una.
nam neque eum ferro nec frigore vincere possis
interiisse neque a morbo neque forte veneno,
verum aliquid genere esse ex hoc quod contigit ei
scimus. item in multis hoc rebus dicere habemus.
(Lucr. 6.703–11)

There are also a number of things for which it is not enough to name one cause, but many, one of which is nevertheless the true cause: even as if you should yourself see some man's body lying lifeless at a distance, you may perhaps think proper to name all the causes of death in order that the one true cause of the man's death be named. For you could not prove that steel or cold had been the death of him, nor disease, or it may be poison, but we know that what has happened to him is something of this kind. We can say the same thing in many cases.^[35]

Here he concludes his several explanations of the causes of the movements of the heavenly bodies:

nam quid in hoc mundo sit eorum ponere certum
difficile est; sed quid possit fiatque per omne
in variis mundis varia ratione creatis,

id doceo plurisque sequor disponere causas,
motibus astrorum quae possint esse per omne;
e quibus una tamen sit et hic quoque causa necessest
quae vegeat motum signis; sed quae sit earum
praecipere haudquaquamst pedetemptim progredientis.
(Lucr. 5.526–33)

For which of these causes holds in our universe it is difficult to say
for certain; but what may be done and is done through the whole
universe in the various universes made in various ways, that is
what I teach, proceeding to set forth several causes which may
account for movements of the stars throughout the whole
universe; one of which, however, must need be that which gives force
to the movement of the signs in our universe also; but which may
be the true one, is not his to lay down who proceeds step by step.^[36]

As Asmis puts it, Lucretius implies that the goal of science is to narrow the range of possible explanations.^[37] These passages show that Lucretius himself is aware of the limitations of his science. When one is too far away, one does not know enough to make distinctions between hypotheses. If one could be closer or could know more, one could make better inferences. Lucretius' passage on the moon's light illustrates the problem with the method. He says, to summarize, that the moon may shine (1) with reflected light from the sun or (2) with its own light, which may at times be obscured by some other opaque body passing in front of it. Alternatively it may be revolving and dark on one side, light on the other. Finally (3), a new moon may be made each day in succession, like the seasons (5.705–50). We see from this example that knowing the list of possible causes—even the correct one—is not the same as knowing the truth since there is here an inability to discriminate between the true and the untrue and to select the correct hypothesis.

We note that while the Georgic poet follows the form of this method (sive . . . sive . . . seu . . . seu . . . ), he does not follow the substance of it. The plural causes that he adduces are problematic since they are mutually exclusive, and as we can see from reading through the Letter to Pythocles or Lucretius Books

5 and 6, this is not the characteristic practice of either Epicurus or Lucretius. Yet the Georgic poet proposes two stark opposites: something goes into the earth or something goes out; the earth becomes more porous or less. We are advanced not at all in our understanding; rather we recognize to what degree the fertility of fired fields remains, in fact, mysterious to us. I am proposing that the poet here is neither discussing different soil types nor being fanciful or incompetent. Rather he is outlining a problem for which there are only pairs of mutually exclusive solutions and hence no real solution at all. A list of possibilities of plural causes is apparently the greatest state of confusion to which an Epicurean can admit. In this regard, as in others, Epicureanism is an optimistic philosophy. The Georgic poet, however, through his imperfect imitation of this method of scientific explication, finishes, in fact, by illuminating the pervasiveness of mystery in our experience.

There may also be some further irony intended here. Ordinarily the method of plural causes is directed at celestial phenomena. In this passage the method cannot clarify even the earth at our feet. In truth, even science cannot eliminate ambiguity and mystery from our world. The mysterious fertility (occultas vires 86 and caeca spiramenta 90 ) of the fired fields remains mysterious.

Primary Opposites

Let us move on to the other passage of scientific tone, in which the poet discusses birds' mysterious sensitivity to oncoming changes in weather:

tum liquidas corvi presso ter gutture voces
aut quater ingeminant, et saepe cubilibus altis
nescio qua praeter solitum dulcedine laeti
inter se in foliis strepitant; iuvat imbribus actis
progeniem parvam dulcisque revisere nidos.
haud equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis
ingenium aut rerum fato prudentia maior;
verum ubi tempestas et caeli mobilis umor
mutavere vias et Iuppiter umidus Austris
denset erant quae rara modo, et quae densa relaxat,
vertuntur species animorum, et pectora motus

nunc alios, alios dum nubila ventus agebat,
concipiunt: hinc ille avium concentus in agris
et laetae pecudes et ovantes gutture corvi.
(1.410–23)

Then rooks, the guttural talkers, three times or four repeat
A clear cool note, and often up there in the treetop cradles
Charmed by some unfamiliar sweet impulse we cannot guess at
Gossip among the leaves; they love, when rain is over,
To visit again their baby brood, their darling nests.
It's not, to my belief, that god has given them
A special instinct, or fate a wider foreknowledge of things; But when the weather and the inconstant moisture
Of the atmosphere shifts its course, and Jove
Wet with south winds makes dense what up to now
Was rare and rarifies what up to now
Was dense, the images of their minds are changed,
Their sense feels motions other than it felt
While the wind was herding the clouds.
Hence, the countryside over, begins that bird-chorale,
Beasts rejoice, and rooks caw in their exultation.

Here again Richter is sensitive in noting the similarity of scientific tone between this passage and 1.86–93.^[38] In this passage the poet, affecting to doubt divine intervention in the birds' behavior, suggests instead the material or physical cause of atmospheric changes (415–423). The poet affects to explain scientifically or mechanistically the birds' sensibilities, choosing, with the terms "rare" and "dense," one of the typical correlates of primary opposites as proposed by Aristotle, for example. Aristotle says that "it seems evident that [these four primary opposites of hot and cold and dry and wet] are practically the causes of death and of life, as also of sleep and waking, of maturity and old age, and of disease and health" (Part. an. 648b4ff.).^[39] He believes that other qualitative differences, among which are "rare" and "dense" and "heavy" and "light," correlate with and can be subsumed by these. In alluding to primary opposites, then, the poet appears to participate in one of the

central scientific discourses of the ancient world. As with the instance of plural causes, however, he compromises the scientific power of his explanation, this time by thoroughgoing vagueness. The essence of his explanation is that when things change, things change. When what was rare becomes dense and what was dense becomes rare, the birds feel different ("the images of their minds are changed"), and consequently they make different sounds, begin to sing. Thus changes in weather produce changes in their moods. I propose that the lack of clarity or substance here prevents the explanation from being illuminating or persuasive. Other terms of the discussion intensify its vagueness. For example, the wetness of the sky is mobilis ("inconstant" 417), therefore perhaps, implicitly, not susceptible to rational analysis. The birds' minds "are changed" (vertuntur 420), the passive verb form revealing no agent and hence obscuring understanding. Alios, alios ("sometimes one motion, sometimes another" 421) also tends to suggest that the procedure in question here is random and again, therefore, possibly not susceptible to rational analysis.

Further compromising the scientific substance of this passage, the poet introduces Jupiter as the personified and divine cause of storms. Richter understands this Jupiter as merely "meteorological" and as a touch of "poetic coloring." However, this remark takes insufficient note of the inappropriateness, in a passage that affects exclusive commitment to mechanistic explication, of an equation of Jupiter with storm.^[40] In the very moment of proffering a mechanistic or purely physical theory of factors affecting birds' responses, the poet implicitly challenges it by injecting the notion of god and of divine presence into the experience of mortal creatures. Additionally, the words motus and species (420) are deliberately ambiguous, each connoting not only physical movement and appearance but also emotional changes and visionary or phantom appearances.^[41] Therefore, even the terms that the poet uses for his ostensibly physical explanation of the

birds' sentience connote as well something of a spiritual sort. Again we can only conclude that the poet has consistently compromised the persuasiveness of proffered scientific or mechanistic theories.^[42]

By contrast we may consider the following passage from Lucretius, part of his proof of the existence of unseen particles. This is an admirable example of scientific thought, which allows the reader to grasp an idea and evaluate its plausibility:

denique fluctifrago suspensae in litore vestes
uvescunt, eaedem dispansae in sole serescunt:
at neque quo pacto persederit umor aquai
visumst nec rursum quo pacto fugerit aestu.
in parvas igitur partis dispergitur umor
quas oculi nulla possunt ratione videre.
quin etiam multis solis redeuntibus annis
anulus in digito subter tenuatur habendo,
stilicidi casus lapidem cavat, uncus aratri
ferreus occulte decrescit vomer in arvis,
strataque iam volgi pedibus detrita viarum
saxea conspicimus; tum portas propter aena
signa manus dextras ostendunt adtenuari
saepe salutantum tactu praeterque meantum.
haec igitur minui, cum sint detrita, videmus.
sed quae corpora decedant in tempore quoque,
invida praeclusit speciem natura videndi.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
corporibus caecis igitur natura gerit res.
(Lucr. 1.305–321, 328)

To continue, clothing hung where breakers clash
Grows damp, then dries when spread out in the sun.
And yet, how water-moisture settled there,
Cannot be seen, nor how heat drove it off.
Into small parts, then, water is disposed,
Parts that the eye in no way can perceive.
Still more: as years and years of sun roll round,

The inner side of a ring is thinned by wearing;
Water-drip hollows rock, the iron plow
Grows imperceptibly smaller in the field,
And paving stones we see worn down by feet
Of people passing; then, near city-gates,
Bronze statues show their right hands worn away
By touch of the many who greet them and pass by.
Once they're worn down, we see these things are smaller,
But how many particles leave at given times,
A niggard nature has blocked our power to see.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Therefore nature works by means of bodies unseen.

This passage is one from among many that one could cite from Greek or Latin writers that demonstrates the possibility of tight and persuasive scientific reasoning. The Georgic poet has, however, not availed himself of the most powerful and cogent insights that ancient science had to offer. He has declined, ultimately, to bring his poetic discourse and the mental world that it entails into congruence with scientific value and methodology.

Mythological Paradigms

I have suggested, then, that the scientific explanations in this poem are not and are not meant to be as compelling as the mythical tales, which function in a more frequent and more powerful way in the poem as paradigms or alternative illuminations of human experience. Through their power to absorb the imagination, to resonate in memory, and to suggest meanings beyond themselves the mythical tales have great emotional impact and value as a mode of perceiving and interpreting experience.

Myths figure with increasing importance in the poem. One proceeds, for instance, from Book 1 with its brief allusion to Deucalion (1.61–63), to the somewhat more elaborated stories of Bacchus and the centaurs (2.455) and Hero and Leander (3.258–63), to give only two examples, and finally to the Aristaeus epyllion, which fills half of Book 4. While the notable scientific passages of the poem are restricted to Book 1, as we come to

Book 4, the close of the poem, we enter a world of nymphs, of descents variously to life or death, of an enthralling poet-vates —Orpheus—whose music animates the woods and charms the dead. Allusions to Homer openly recall the world of poetry. The stories of Jupiter's birth and of Aristaeus, Orpheus, and Eurydice absorb the reader's attention with myth's powerful appeal. Poetic and mysterious processes dominate the book. For example, only here does the poet ask for knowledge from the Muses:

Quis deus hanc, Musae, quis nobis extudit artem?
(4.315)

What god was it, O Muses, who forged for us this craft?

In thus presenting myth the poet suggests his agreement with Epicurus' view of the similar purposes of myth and science, although he differs as to what value to assign to each of them. Epicurus asserted, for example, that if one makes correct inferences from signs, there is no use for myth:

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Only let myth be excluded [from explanation of thunderbolts]; and it will be excluded if one properly makes inferences from signs consistent with the phenomena concerning the unseen.^[43]

We observe, then, the extent to which Epicurus conceived of both science and myth as modes—but antithetical modes—of interpreting experience. And we have already noted his view that the choice of a single explanation—as opposed to multiple explanations—characterizes the (low) mode of myth. To envision only one cause is neither rational nor thorough, in his opinion. The Georgic poet also, it appears, views science and poetry as competing modes of interpreting experience, yet he accords the higher value to the modality of myth, which he chooses for the expression of his truth.

A good starting point for understanding the functioning of myth in the poem is the description of the zones of heaven:

quinque tenent caelum zonae: quarum una corusco
semper sole rubens et torrida semper ab igni;
quam circum extremae dextra laevaque trahuntur
caeruleae, glacie concretae atque imbribus atris;
has inter mediamque duae mortalibus aegris
munere concessae divum, et via secta per ambas.
obliquus qua se signorum verteret ordo.
mundus, ut ad Scythiam Riphaeasque arduus arces
consurgit, premitur Libyae devexus in Austros.
hic vertex nobis semper sublimis; at illum
sub pedibus Styx atra videt Manesque profundi.
maximus hic flexu sinuoso elabitur Anguis
circum perque duas in morem fluminis Arctos,
Arctos Oceani metuentes aequore tingi.
illic, ut perhibent, aut intempesta silet nox
semper et obtenta densentur nocte tenebrae;
aut redit a nobis Aurora diemque reducit.
(1.233–49)

Five zones make up the heavens: one of them in the flaming
Sun glows red forever, forever seared by his fire:
Round it to right and left the furthermost zones extend,
Blue with cold, ice-bound, frozen with black blizzards.
Between these and the middle one, weak mortals are given
Two zones by grace of the gods, and a path was cut through both
Where the slanting signs might march and countermarch. The
world,
Rising steeply to Scythia and the Riphaean plateaux,
Slopes down in the south to Libya.
This North pole's always above us: the South appears beneath
Our feet, the darkling Styx and the deep-dead shadow people.
Here the great snake glides out with weaving, elastic body
Writhing riverwise around and between the two bears—
The bears that are afraid to get wet in the water of Ocean.
At the South pole, men say, either it's dead of night,
Dead still, the shadows shrouded in night, blacked out forever;
Or dawn returns from us thither, bringing the day-light back.

Here, what we see in the sky is balanced by what we do not see in Hades or below. The visible modulates subtly and without acknowledgment into the mythological or rather into what can be described only in myth since it is not perceptible with the eye.

What one must note in observing the poet's technique is that this modulation from the real into the mythical is unacknowledged by the poet and thus catches the reader unaware. He is led, without consciousness or volition, into envisioning his world as informed by myth.^[44]

Similarly at 1.404ff. the myth of Nisus and Scylla is subtly integrated into a description of weather signs:

at nebulae magis ima petunt campoque recumbunt,
solis et occasum servans de culmine summo
nequiquam seros exercet noctua cantus.
apparet liquido sublimis in aëre Nisus
et pro purpureo poenas dat Scylla capillo:
quacumque illa levem fugiens secat aethera pennis,
ecce inimicus atrox magno stridore per auras
insequitur Nisus; qua se fert Nisus ad auras,
illa levem fugiens raptim secat aethera pennis.
(1.401–9)

Rather do mists hang low and crouch along the plain,
And the little owl, perched on a gable, watching the sun go down,
Keeps at her crazy night-call.
Aloft in the lucid air Nisus
Appears, and Scylla pays for that purple hair she stole:
Wherever in flight she parts the thin air with her wings,
Look! her enemy, cruel, down the wind loudly whistling,
Nisus follows her close; where Nisus zooms upwind,
Frantic in flight she parts the thin air with her wings.

Here again there is no acknowledgment of transition to another, mythical mode of thought. As a useful contrast we may consider the description of the bees' work (4.169–78), a rare example in this poem. In this passage the phrases ac veluti ("just as when")

and non aliter ("not otherwise" or "even so") signify to the reader that a comparison is being made between two things that, although similar, are not in fact identical. The simile is an apparent poetic artifice of which the reader is made aware. In the passages on the zones of heaven and on weather signs, typical of the poet's method in this poem, the subtle modulation from real to mythical results in the unacknowledged pervading of the entire poem by mythical modes of vision, that is, the invasion and even the appropriation of the real by myth.^[45]

The value or truth of myth as paradigmatic of experience is illustrated in the poem by the way in which the poet makes myth become real. By allowing myths to be realized and reiterated in the poem, he makes mythical paradigms become the poem's reality. For example, one first reads of lightning in 1.278–82, when Jupiter uses his thunderbolt to punish the hubris of the Giants:

tum partu Terra nefando
Coeumque Iapetumque creat saevumque Typhoea
et coniuratos caelum rescindere fratres.
ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam
scilicet atque Ossae frondosum involvere Olympum;
ter pater exstructos disiecit fulmine montis.
(1.278–82)

Then Earth spawned the unspeakable
Coeus and Iapetus and the ogre Typhoeus
And the brothers who leagued themselves to hack the heavens
down.
Three times they tried, three times, to pile Ossa on Pelion—
Yes, and to roll up leafy Olympus on Ossa's summit;
And thrice the father dashed apart the heaped-up hills with a
thunderbolt.

Because the storm incident recounted in 1.278–82 is the first description of a storm in the poem, the reader is implicitly invited or may be predisposed to perceive in storms a reiteration of a mythological paradigm. This storm prefigures the occurrence of another storm, real within the poem's action, which is described

shortly thereafter (1.316–27) in an awesome scene, the reality of which the poet personally confirms with the words ego . . . vidi ("I have seen" 1.318). After these initial descriptive verses, the storm is most powerfully imagined or revealed as Jove hurling lightning and casting terror upon all creatures:

ipse pater media nimborum in nocte corusca
fulmina molitur dextra, quo maxima motu
terra tremit, fugere ferae et mortalia corda
per gentis humilis stravit pavor; ille flagranti
aut Atho aut Rhodopen aut alta Ceraunia telo
deicit; ingeminant Austri et densissimus imber;
nunc nemora ingenti vento, nunc litora plangunt.
(1.328–34)

The Father, enthroned in midnight cloud, hurls from a flashing
Right hand his lightning: the whole
Earth trembles at the shock; the beasts are fled, and human
Hearts are felled in panic throughout the nations; on Athos,
Rhodope or the Ceraunian massif his bolt flares down:
The south wind doubles its force and thicker falls the rain.
Now wail the woods with that gale tremendous, now the shores
wail.

The presence of Jove as agent of this lightning storm would seem to corroborate the paradigmatic value of the myth of Jove and the Giants at 1.278–83. Consequently the reader is implicitly or by suggestion invited to envision storms, most especially violent ones, as the flashing anger of Jove.^[46] For the issue of scientific vs. mythological knowledge, which is our subject here, this image of Jove hurling lightning is especially significant because Lucretius had selected for particular ridicule the notion of Jove hurling his thunderbolt as a cause of storms (e.g., Lucr. 2.1093–1104; 6.379–422.). The Georgic poet would, then, be reasserting the symbolic value of this notion, reasserting the validity of mythology (or, as Lucretius would say, of superstition) over the scientific mode.

Myth serves as a paradigm of real experience, as seen above, and also as a paradigm of the poet's new myth of Aristaeus, Orpheus, and Eurydice. The myth of Hero and Leander is a

typically Hellenistic tale of destructive passion, which the poet tells in, as we may infer, a conventional way:^[47]

quid iuvenis, magnum cui versat in ossibus ignem
durus amor? nempe abruptis turbata procellis
nocte natat caeca serus freta, quem super ingens
porta tonat caeli, et scopulis inlisa reclamant
aequora; nec miseri possunt revocare parentes,
nec moritura super crudeli funere virgo.
(3.258–63)

What of the young man, burning with cruel love to the bones?
Late in the blindfold night he swims the narrows
That are vexed by headlong gales, while above his head the huge
Gates of heaven thunder and the seas collide with a crash Against the capes: powerless to recall him his sorrowful parents
And the girl who is soon to die of grief over his body.

In its tragic ending (there are no happy love stories in Virgil), it prefigures the outcome of the newly cast stories of Aristaeus and Orpheus, both of which are structured by the poet to be equally compelling and fresh paradigms of experience. Thus the poet selects and creates his myths to reiterate the same truth. The myths have a unitary vision. The tale of Glaucus, also one of unhappy sexuality, is a variation on this motif of sexuality and tragic passion; and we may note that Virgil alone makes the tale an aition of the love-fury of mares.^[48] Because Glaucus refused to allow his mares to breed, he was torn apart by them when they were maddened by Venus:

scilicet ante omnis furor est insignis equarum;
et mentem Venus ipsa dedit, quo tempore Glauci
Potniades malis membra absumpsere quadrigae.
(3.266–69)

But of all, beyond doubt, the fury of mares is the most
remarkable:
Venus herself incited
The chariot-team that day they champed the limbs of Glaucus.

We may see, further, that the Glaucus myth prefigures the story of Orpheus in another way as well. Orpheus attempts a lonely denial of sexuality and refuses to mate. He suffers dismemberment, just as does Glaucus. In the case of Orpheus dismemberment results from refusal to mate, since the spurned (spretae ) Ciconian women, in fury, tear him apart. Punishment comes roughly from Venus to mortals who struggle against the powerful drive that she represents. The poet's myths reiterate and embody similar visions, and therefore, as Epicurus says, to envision one truth is the practice of myth. Yet in the Georgics the fact that mythical visions are continually reiterated appears to be a subtle affirmation of their truth.

To summarize the poet's use of myth in this poem, we may suggest first that through his fine integration of the mythological into the real he seductively informs the reader's whole vision of the world with mythical images. Second, he contrives to adumbrate the truth and value of myth by allowing certain myths to become real within the poem's reality. Third, he structures the poem in such a way that familiar, traditionally told myths parallel his own newly created myth so that the truth, value, and impact of both old and new myths seem corroborated.

The poet seeks to address the mysteries of existence most powerfully through the medium of myth and not, as we have seen, through scientific inquiry. Myths for him seem to have greater power than science because, first, they have emotional impact and resonance in the imagination, absorbing the reader's feelings and memory. Second, they do not have alternatives as the scientific explanations do, but rather they present a reiterated singleness of vision. Hence we see that the poet's use of myth in this poem serves to rival the value of the technological mode that the poem purports to esteem. Myth's powerful presence in this ostensibly practical tract is part of the poet's compelling argument for his own value and truth.

The Poet's Truth

Thus far we have seen the poet-figures in the poem, Orpheus and the Georgic poet, as essentially parallel, most especially in their

nonmaterial goals and in their idealized vision of the past. For Orpheus this idealized past is embodied in Eurydice; for the Georgic poet it is embodied in the Golden Age. Orpheus and the Georgic poet are parallel also in daring. Orpheus is courageous in descending alone to the fearfulness of hell and in never abandoning his ideal of Eurydice. Instead he sings forever of his sorrow pure and uncompromised, at her loss. His music, like that of the nightingale to which he is compared (4.511–15), does not solace suffering but rather preserves it. The beauty of his song, at variance with the tragedy of which it sings, makes a beautiful thing of tragedy itself. Beauty is a value that the poet lends to the present. Similarly the Georgic poet terms himself daring (1.40, 2.175, 4.565). He too, throughout the Georgics, memorializes a retrospective ideal in his vision of the Golden Age. Both of these figures are different from Aristaeus, who never looks back but only forward—to success, to power, to apotheosis. If Eurydice does in some way embody an ideal, whether of nature or of the past, Aristaeus surely does not observe that fact. Much less, then, can he mourn it.^[49] From Orpheus' point of view, as well as from the Georgic poet's, Aristaeus would necessarily appear obtuse, ignorant of the true value of things, indifferent to beauty, without insight or pity. He expresses neither understanding nor regret; he does not see the consequences of the tale of Proteus for himself. These must be interpreted for him by his mother.^[50] (We remember that the original request that the poet makes of Caesar is that he have pity. Aristaeus never pities, but only succeeds.) In sum, Orpheus and the Georgic poet have some parallel visions and also differ in similar ways from Aristaeus.

If, however, we wish to understand the poet's truth, we must appreciate an important distinction between Orpheus and the Georgic poet, for they do not see entirely the same vision. The Georgic poet's truth, as reflected in his creation of the Aristaeus epyllion, with its myth of Aristaeus, Orpheus, and Eurydice and

also with its image of the bougonia, reflects a vision more penetrating and subtle than that attributed to Orpheus.

Orpheus' song, as we have seen, is powerfully moving, sad, and nostalgic, as expressed in 4.464–66, 471–74, 481–84, and 510. His vision seems to linger on sorrow since he sees in Hades scenes of particular pathos (4.475–77). He sings what he sees, and consequently his song is continually of loss. Although there is a haunting, sorrowful beauty to his song, it is perhaps limited by its lack of complexity. Orpheus seems more interested in the past and in the tragic than in the true.

The Georgic poet's vision is subtler and more inclusive than that of Orpheus, for the Aristaeus epyllion, which he creates, expresses ambiguity and exchange, not only loss. The Georgic poet's vision is of the exchange of calf for bees, of death for life, of loss for gain. To the question of how to perceive the relative value of these terms he has no explicit answer, although the deaths of the calf and of Orpheus and Eurydice are presented with pathos, while the bees merely exist, undifferentiated and unreflective. They do not elicit the poet's (or, consequently, the reader's) involved sympathy. Orpheus and Eurydice perish definitively, while new bees take the place of those lost.

The poet intends to reveal true things (2.45–46) and not trite things for the thoughtless (3.3–4). He wants, therefore, something true and new, and he does not aim at vacuas mentes ("idle minds"). He explicitly disdains commonly told myths (3.4–8). The myth of Aristaeus and Orpheus as told here is his truth: a new myth, especially for Romans, a myth that embodies the oppositions between power and beauty, profit and art, material and spiritual in their society. It shows the brutality of victory and the pathos of loss, for the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice is only imperfectly redeemed by the birth of the impersonal swarm of bees. Aristaeus, while ultimately successful, appears unreflective, insensitive, and without regret. Although responsible for the deaths of his original bees, of Eurydice, and of Orpheus, he voices no understanding of guilt nor regret for his actions once their consequences have been revealed to him. Significantly, the poet engages the reader's sympathy with the victims—with Orpheus, flawed as he too is, with Eurydice, and

with the struggling calf—and thus expands the reader's sensibility. The reader learns identification with victims and losers, and thus learns compassion and pity. The poet does not suggest an alternate route to survival or victory, for there is none. That is to say, he does not propose the elimination of Aristaeus and what he stands for. The effect of his poem is rather to suggest compassion in confronting the truth of experience, to make readers sensitive to loss, and to create a "community of pity."

To appreciate the value of the poet's truth, we must observe that the outcome of the poem affects the figures in the poem differently from the way in which it affects the readers. Neither Aristaeus nor Orpheus learns a lesson, but readers can; for the fates of Aristaeus and Orpheus are related and meaningful to us, if not to them. The poet has shaped the poem to show the immediate triumph of material man—Aristaeus or the analogous figure of Caesar—while simultaneously eliciting from the reader an appreciation of and pity for Orpheus (and similarly for Proteus, Eurydice, and the nightingale) as a figure of poetry, music, and beauty. The Georgics, through its representation of the Golden Age and most especially through the story of Orpheus, expands the reader's awareness of life's ambiguity, his sensitivity to loss, and his capacity for sorrow. Hence the sensitive reader becomes morally superior to Aristaeus and Cyrene, who never experience or express regret. Moral superiority, however, does not bring change; it is not an exhortation to action. It merely makes possible the apprehension of tragic conflict.

Aristaeus is successful and forfeits the reader's sympathy. While he has the immediate triumph, since he and not Orpheus is allowed atonement, and while his questions have answers (4.321–25) as opposed to those of Orpheus (4.504–5) and Eurydice (4.495), which do not, he nevertheless does not triumph through merit:

haud quamquam ad meritum poenas, ni fata resistant^[51
] (4.455)

This vengeance against you—if fate did not
interpose—far short of your deserts.

Aristaeus has Proteus to reveal causae (4.532) and Cyrene to teach praecepta (4.534–47). Thus fate is not just.^[52] On the other hand, the loss of Orpheus, with what he represents of sentiment and beauty, is not solaced. The poem ends, as the reader is made to feel, in unresolved and unresolvable tragedy: in the loss of Orpheus and Eurydice and in the defeat of their love. Orpheus perishes somehow wrongly, since Hades does not know of pity or forgiveness:

nesciaque humanis precibus mansuescere corda
(4.470)

The hearts that know not how to be touched by human prayer

ignoscenda quidem scirent si ignoscere Manes
(4.489)

Pardonable indeed, if Death knew how to pardon.

Yet the beauty of Orpheus' song, with its memory of Eurydice, endures eternal, through the song of the Georgics . The tragic vision of the Georgics is undermined only by the beauty of the poetry that sings the tragedy.

Since the tragedy of Aristaeus, Orpheus, and Eurydice is not resolved by the poet, the poem is not protreptic. Art is useless, and therefore, as noted above, it does not occur in the theodicy of Book 1, since it has no practical value. The poem simply shows the truth. Neither consoling nor false, it is tragic and true. The poet tells the truth and therefore is truly audax ("bold" 4.565). To Page this adjective signifies only that Virgil was the first to sing pastoral poetry in Latin; but perhaps it relates rather to his function as poet overall. In the opening of Book 3 he had already described his projected poetic achievements in heroic terms:

temptanda via est, qua me quoque possim
tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora.
primus ego in patriam mecum, modo vita supersit,
Aonio rediens deducam vertice Musas;
primus Idumaeas referam tibi, Mantua, palmas.
(3.8–12)

Now, I must venture a theme will exalt me
From earth and give me wings and a triumph on every tongue.
If life enough is left me,
I'll be the first to bring the Muses of song to my birthplace
From the Aonian peak; the first to wear the Idumaean palm for Mantua.

At 4.565 the term audax is even emphatic, since it is juxtaposed to Caesar's military feats, which are not described as requiring courage (4.560–62). While Caesar triumphs over the volentis ("willing" 4.561) and his enemies are imbellem ("war-worthless" 2.172), the poet's challenges are awesome. (We recall Orpheus' descent to the sorrow and fearfulness of hell, where he sees the king explicitly described as fearful [regem . . . tremendum 4.469].)

The truth of the poet's myth of Aristaeus and Orpheus is confirmed in the epilogue, for the relationship there described between the historical figures Caesar and Virgil^[53] is analogous to that between Aristaeus and Orpheus. While we see in the epilogue the poet's graceful acknowledgment of Caesar's success in the political world, we see also his magnificently subtle assertion of his own difference from the farmer and the conqueror, those more conventional embodiments of Roman virtue:

illo Vergilium me tempore dulcis alebat
Parthenope studiis florentem ignobilis oti,
carmina qui lusi pastorum audaxque iuventa,
Tityre, te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi.
(4.563–66)

This was the time when I, Virgil, nurtured in sweet
Parthenope, did flower in pursuits of inglorious ease,
And dallied with songs of shepherds and, by youth emboldened,
Tityrus, sang of you in the shade of a spreading beech.

The clear echo in the concluding verse of the Georgics of the first verse of the first Eclogue

Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi
(Ecl. 1.1)

Tityrus, you, lying under the covert of your spreading beech

further corroborates the political ramifications of the relationship between the poet and Caesar.^[54] Caesar is immediately victorious, yet the Georgic poet has a power other, perhaps even greater, than his. Through his poetry he suggests to his readers how to perceive, interpret, and value experience. In structuring the readers' visions of experience he creates their values. Caesar aspires to divinity, but the Georgic poet concludes his poem by affirming his own characteristic and enduring boldness and song (4.565–66). Nevertheless, we cannot take as wholly ironic the poet's derogation of his own achievements in relation to Caesar's (studiis florentem ignobilis oti, carmina qui lusi ), for the poet is not deluded with respect to his own power in the political world. As we have seen, despite his beautiful song, Orpheus is impotent in the world. Similarly, for the Georgic poet the mission of pity, while in one sense daring, is also easy and even self-gratifying, as poet and readers risk feeling complacent in their superior sensibility, while the world's conflicts remain unresolved and its losses inadequately redeemed.

Conclusion

In sum, while the poem purports to be didactic and to teach praecepta, it embodies, in fact, a whole range of values that function in tension with the conventional, material, and Iron Age values upon which a georgic poem might be expected to be based. The poem privileges mystery, not solution; complexity and ambiguity, not certainty. The overall effect of this poem is to highlight the mysteries of existence, to challenge and even to transcend the values of the technological mode that it ostensibly accepts and endorses. In the Georgics, then, the ultimate meaning is at variance with the assumed or implicit values of the form. The Georgic poet is more like Proteus than like Cyrene, for he too is more interested in causae than in praecepta . Hence the bougonia, although false as praeceptum, does embody the poet's sensed truth of the quality of Iron Age existence. The Aristaeus-Orpheus story, parallel in significance to the bougonia, constitutes the poet's revelation in mythic image of the nature of human experience.

The poem should be seen neither as an agricultural tract nor as prescriptive of a return to country values.^[55] Rather it expresses an apprehension of certain oppositions that are not capable of resolution (e.g., victor vs. vanquished, agricultural vs. poetic, Iron Age vs. Golden Age, material vs. spiritual). The poem is not antimaterial or anti-imperial as much as it is an apprehension of the cost of material progress and imperial expansion. The poem provokes the responsive reader to a sense of compassion and of sorrow for loss that is the essence of humanity. The poem forges a community of readers sensitive to loss and capable of pity. It enlarges and deepens the reader's appreciation of those spiritual and artistic values that do not lead to quantifiable progress. In the poem's tragic and beautiful conclusion we see reflected the opposition between the truth of myth and poetry and the value of the agricultural, material poem that the Georgics on its surface professes to be.