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THE GEORGICS
Lucretius, whose De rerum natura appeared when Virgil was at school. Lucretius
would show him how a didactic poem could be moving by its descriptive power
and its moral-philosophic fervour. Many passages show specific influence,
whether they agree, as in detestation of war, or disagree, as on Stoic providence
against Epicurean fortuity in the universe. • The attraction of poet for poet is
stronger than any difference of mentality and temperament:
felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. . .
fortunatus et ille deos qui nouit agrestis. (2.490, 493)
Happy the man who has been able to find out the causes of things. . . Fortunate too
is he who has found the gods of the countryside.
Scientific sources
As for agricultural lore, many of Virgil's possible sources are lost. 2 But he
clearly used Theophrastus for Book 2, Aristotle for 3 and 4. No Roman would
disregard Cato's extant De agri cultura, of which we find traces. But paramount
was Varro's Res rusticae, which appeared in 37/6, just when he was starting
work. This dialogue had literary pretensions, and may have suggested certain
literary features, such as the opening invocation to twelve gods (cf. Varro 1.4—6).
It certainly influenced some technical passages. But above all it is a standing
reminder that for any Roman farmer who, ignarus uiae, needed technical advice
there were real handbooks available, far fuller than the Georgics. Those who
praise Virgil's knowledge of husbandry should recollect that, while he gives the
impression of being a keen countryman, his knowledge may always be secondhand,
and that he sometimes gives advice which first-hand knowledge would
have precluded. This opens the whole question of the intention and nature of
the poem.
3. INTENTION AND NATURE OF THE POEM
Seneca (Epist. 86.15) said pertinently that Virgil was interested in what could be
said most gracefully (decentissime), not most truthfully (uerissime), and wrote
not to teach farmers but to delight readers. Even Hesiod had tempered didactic
with descriptive as well as narrative set-pieces (e.g. winter and summer, Works
and days 504-35, 582-96) and endowed it with moral import. In Lucretius the
scientifically didactic had to be exhaustive to validate his message, but it is
blended with descriptive and moral-philosophical elements to form a whole of
cosmic imagination. In Virgil the technically didactic matter is eclectic, yet it
forms too large a part of the poem for it to be taken as purely symbolic. Addison
may supplement Seneca: 'this kind of poem addresses itself wholly to the
1 See also Eel. 6.33ff.; Aen. 6.7241?".
1 On Virgil's sources, scientific and literary, see Biichner (1955) 305—9.
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