Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

Virgil in Love 99
Finally, this “georgic” view of love is epitomized in the story of Aristaeus,
Orpheus, and Eurydice that appears at the end of Book 4 of the Georgics. A tale
within a tale, the story of Eurydice’s death fleeing the advances of the shepherd
Aristaeus and her husband Orpheus’ subsequent quest to bring her back from the
underworld is deftly set within the larger myth of Aristaeus’ mission to restore
his beloved bees which he had inexplicably lost “through famine and disease”
(Geor. 4.319). Calling to his mother, the sea nymph Cyrene, Aristaeus pleads
with her to tell him how to recover his lost bees. When she urges him to seek an
answer from the watery, shape-shifting seer Proteus who knows “[a]ll that has
been, is now, and lies in store,” Aristaeus sets off to “capture him with ruthless
force and fetters” in order to coerce the reluctant god into revealing the cause of
the mysterious disease (Geor. 4.393, 4.398-9). Proteus, thus forced, reveals that
Aristaeus’ hardships have arisen as a result of his guilt in the death of Orpheus’
wife, Eurydice (Geor. 4.457).
It was as she fled Aristaeus’ lustful advances across a stream that Eurydice
was killed by the bite of “a monstrous serpent” hidden in the grass on the riverbank
(Geor. 4.459). Devastated by his loss, Orpheus, the greatest of minstrels,
made his way to the underworld in order to free his young wife from an
untimely death. The sheer power of his music warmed “hard hearts no human
prayer can hope to soften,” and it afforded him the rare opportunity to bring
Eurydice back from the dead, so long as he did not glance back at her until they
had exited the underworld. On their journey upward, however, “a madness
overcame” Orpheus, who, “yielding in his will, looked back at his own
Eurydice,” thus voiding his noble efforts to bring her back from the grave (Geor.
4.489-91). Orpheus then wandered the earth ceaselessly lamenting the second
loss of Eurydice for months on end until Bacchic Thracian women tore him to
shreds in anger over his devotion to his dead wife.
Thus learning the reason for the destruction of his bees, Aristaeus obeys
his mother’s instructions to restore them by sacrificing animals for Orpheus and
Eurydice in a very peculiar fashion: leaving the carcasses of sacrificed bulls out
in the open for many days to rot. “Then, after the ninth rising of the dawn . . .
there suddenly is seen a miracle: throughout the putrid flesh of the oxen’s
innards bees are buzzing” (Geor. 4.552-57).
These two brilliantly spun tales illustrate Virgil’s “georgic” assessment of
love as a volatile emotion capable of both causing great destruction if left uncultivated
and also of fueling great artistic efforts and yielding creative miracles if
properly attended to. Like Corydon in Eclogue II and the sparring bulls in Book
3 of the Georgics, Aristaeus suffers for his inability to control his own passion.
Wantonly chasing Eurydice to her death due to unchecked lust, he loses his precious
bees as a result of his inability to control himself. By binding the watergod
Proteus, however, thus commanding nature to do his bidding, and by carefully
performing a ritual sacrifice, thus molding the very bodies of his sacrificial
victims to suit his own needs, Aristaeus is able to restore his lost bees through
carefully-directed labor inspired by his love for them. Orpheus, whose story runs