The First Lines of ‘Georgics’
What makes the cornfield smile; beneath what star Maecenas, it is meet to turn the sod Or marry elm with vine; how tend the steer; What pains for cattle-keeping, or what proof Of patient trial serves for thrifty bees;- Such are my themes.
O universal lights Most glorious! ye that lead the gliding year Along the sky, Liber and Ceres mild, If by your bounty holpen earth once changed Chaonian acorn for the plump wheat-ear, And mingled with the grape, your new-found gift, The draughts of Achelous; and ye Fauns To rustics ever kind, come foot it, Fauns And Dryad-maids together; your gifts I sing. And thou, for whose delight the war-horse first Sprang from earth’s womb at thy great trident’s stroke, Neptune; and haunter of the groves, for whom Three hundred snow-white heifers browse the brakes, The fertile brakes of Ceos; and clothed in power, Thy native forest and Lycean lawns, Pan, shepherd-god, forsaking, as the love Of thine own Maenalus constrains thee, hear And help, O lord of Tegea! And thou, too, Minerva, from whose hand the olive sprung; And boy-discoverer of the curved plough; And, bearing a young cypress root-uptorn, Silvanus, and Gods all and Goddesses, Who make the fields your care, both ye who nurse The tender unsown increase, and from heaven Shed on man’s sowing the riches of your rain.
Work Is a Gift
The poem begins by listing basic human tasks: raising crops, tending to fruit trees and vines, raising animals, and beekeeping. While these first lines are about what humans do, they are followed by a much longer section describing what gods do—and what human beings receive. It is almost as if Virgil was rushing to this point. Since he knows that even the mention of work is often distasteful, he does so only to immediately challenge this human attitude and then propose a higher perspective.
The same applies to wine. Tending to vines and crushing grapes and all the paraphernalia of wine-making are work, but the grape and fermentation process are not the work of man but given to him, and this makes our participation in the process a gift.
Work Is Painful
Although humans should be grateful for work, Virgil remains a realist. After all, one cannot really appreciate the joy of work without appreciating the suffering it entails. Farming requires watchfulness and worry for what one has invested so much in—it’s “care,” “trial,” and “pains.”
Later in the poem, Virgil suggests that much of this pain is self-inflicted. In war, men destroy the land which are required for living. Moreover, not only wars, but individual wrongdoing reaps its punishment in painful work, such as in the story that concludes “Georgics.” Aristaeus, a mythical farmer and beekeeper, brings about the death of an innocent woman. His bees die as a punishment, and he has to make amends by sacrificing some of his livestock.
Pain, Gifts, and Gratitude
Life would be so much better if everything were bestowed as a gift, just pleasure, just satisfaction. Virgil addresses this issue in his invocation of Liber (another name for Bacchus, the god of wine) and Ceres by hearkening to the myth of the Golden Age: Once upon a time, human beings fed on acorns and water (the Achelous was a river in Greece famed for its purity), without any need for labor.
However, there was no bread or wine either. There was no cultivation at all, and since there was no cultivation, there was no culture. Men enjoyed no celebrations or even true meals, eaten in community. Virgil implies that this situation cried out for divine help, and that help came in the form of work.
Higher gifts require pain. If humans ate only acorns and water, they would have it easy. ... However, they also could not attempt the beautiful, risky, and painful task of forming and maintaining communities.
Everything is a gift, but human work allows a participation in this giving. There are greater and deeper joys in working for these gifts than in just receiving them.
