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Concept
Georgics
Summary
The Georgics (ˈdʒɔrdʒɪks ; Georgica ɡeˈoːrɡɪka) is a poem by Latin poet Virgil, likely published in 29 BCE. As the name suggests (from the Greek word γεωργικά, geōrgiká, i.e. "agricultural (things)") the subject of the poem is agriculture; but far from being an example of peaceful rural poetry, it is a work characterized by tensions in both theme and purpose.
The Georgics is considered Virgil's second major work, following his Eclogues and preceding the Aeneid. The poem draws on a variety of prior sources and has influenced many later authors from antiquity to the present.
The work consists of 2,188 hexametric verses divided into four books. The yearly timings by the rising and setting of particular stars were valid for the precession epoch of Virgil's time, and so are not always valid now.
Virgil begins his poem with a dedication to Maecenas, then a summary of the four books, followed by a prayer to various agricultural deities as well as Augustus himself. It takes as its model the work on farming by Varro, but differs from it in important ways. Numerous technical passages fill out the initial half of the first book; of particular interest are lines 160–175, where Virgil describes the plow. In the succession of ages, whose model is ultimately Hesiod, the age of Jupiter and its relation to the golden age and the current age of man are crafted with deliberate tension. Of chief importance is the contribution of labour to the success or failure of mankind's endeavours, agricultural or otherwise. The book comes to one climax with the description of a great storm in lines 311–350, which brings all of man's efforts to nothing. After detailing various weather-signs, Virgil ends with an enumeration of the portents associated with Caesar’s assassination and civil war; only Octavian offers any hope of salvation.
Prominent themes of the second book include agriculture as man's struggle against a hostile natural world, often described in violent terms, and the ages of Saturn and Jupiter.
Official source
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