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From Hesiod to Homer by Way of Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Dorothea Wender
Dorothea Wender*
Affiliation:
Wheaton College
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I have several times in the past given my students the following oversimplified scheme. Each of Virgil's three works was based on a Greek original: the Eclogues on the Idylls of Theocritus, the Georgics on Hesiod's Works and Days, the Aeneid on Homer's two epics. The difference among these Greek poets (I used to say in my opinionated way) is that while Theocritus was a very fine poet, and Homer of course a genius, Hesiod was only mediocre; therefore Virgil depended on him less and was able to be freer and more genuine in the Georgics than in the Eclogues or the Aeneid. And that, I used to conclude, is why only the Georgics surpasses its model, and justifies Dryden's description of it as the most perfect poem by the most perfect poet.

After spending some time working with the literary sources of the Georgics, I am still inclined to the same final conclusion, that the Georgics is Virgil's masterpiece. I have, however, come to some new observations about the relation of the Georgics to its literary predecessors, which may help in a small way to illuminate the poem.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , 1979 , pp. 59 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1979

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References

1. E.g. Brooks Otis, Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford, 1964) and Gretchen Krotner, ‘Beginnings and Endings in Virgil’s Georgics’, seen in ms.

2. 508–510; 530–1.

3. 24–5.

4. Putnam, M. C. J., ‘Italian Virgil and the Idea of Rome’, in Janus (Ann Arbor, 1975), 171–199Google Scholar.

5. Cf. (Stigers), Eva Stehle, ‘Virgil’s Georgics: The Threat of Sloth’, TAPA 104 (1974), 347–370Google Scholar, who is particularly enlightening about umbra.

6. II, 47–60. Note especially 55f.: nunc altae frondes et rami matris opacant/ crescentique adimunt fetus uruntque ferentem (‘as it now is, the mother tree’s towering foliage and branches overshadow it and rob it of fruit as it grows and wither it as it produces’).

7. II, 273–425, esp. 420–425, and 454–457.

8. For a similar view of Eclogues IX and X, cf. A. J. Boyle, ‘A Reading of Virgil’s Eclogues’ in Boyle, A. J. (ed.), Ancient Pastoral: Ramus Essays on Greek and Roman Pastoral Poetry (Berwick, Victoria, 1975), 105–21Google Scholar.