In this book T. offers a valuable introduction to the pleasures of reading the Georgics. In an age when the text's popularity has been hampered by the inescapable fact that it is, at least on the surface, a didactic poem about farming, T. sets out to show that Virgil's representations of rural life are not just interesting but even enchanting. To achieve this goal, T. focuses on what he calls the poem's ‘saliences’ (p. 14): passages and motifs that exerted a special pull on the Georgics’ enthusiastic early readers. The analysis then proceeds by way of compare and contrast. Over the course of the five main chapters, T. situates various salient passages and motifs in the context of ancient Rome's agrarian discourse, and then shows how Virgil has departed from the conventions of that discourse in order to create a decorous fantasy of rustic life.
The first chapter addresses the perennial question of the Georgics’ audience. Does the poem really speak to the agricolae it frequently addresses, or was Seneca right to claim that Virgil meant not to teach farmers but to enchant readers (nec agricolas docere … sed legentes delectare, Ep. 86.15)? By exploring the considerable semantic stretch of the Roman word agricola, T. is able to suggest that Virgil's land-owning readers were agricolae – at least potentially. Hence, for them, the charm of a poem that draws its readers into an ennobled rustic world and casts them as everything from gentleman-farmer to stable-boy. The chapter also includes a clear introductory overview of farm management in the Roman Republic.
The second chapter delves into the fantasy of farm life that the Georgics offers its readers. Looking again to a comment made by Seneca, T. argues that the world of the poem is governed by the principle of ‘decorum’ (p. 40), which demands three key distortions of economic reality. First, Virgil erases the bailiff (uilicus), so that no intermediary stands between the landowner and the hands-on management of his farm. Second, he dignifies the manual labour now required of the landowner-farmer by presenting it in the context of extreme poverty, which few if any of his readers would actually have experienced. Third and finally, the poet eliminates money from the world of the poem, so that even in times of bounty his farmers avoid the notorious vice of monetised wealth.
The third chapter turns to another aspect of fantasy in the world of the Georgics, namely that of ‘noble rustication’ (p. 76). T. argues that whereas other Roman authors present life outside the city as a kind of social or political death, Virgil suggests that ‘even a landowner dwelling in the country and cut off from normal political life could tap authentic sources of pride and prestige’ (p. 76). T. points to three strategies by which Virgil ennobles the rustic life: the use of prestige language associated with honour and glory; antiquarian aetiologies for festivals and farming practices; and the presentation of rural festivals as an opportunity for aristocratic euergetism. This chapter constitutes T.’s contribution to the debate over the political stance of the poem. By ennobling the rustic life, he suggests, Virgil is consoling Roman elites who were forced to retreat to their country estates during and after the fall of the Republic. Some readers may be surprised that T. does not comment on whether this consolation entails a positive, negative or even conflicted attitude towards Octavian, but it is precisely by shifting attention away from the princeps that T. succeeds in expanding the discussion of the Georgics’ politics.
The fourth chapter changes tack somewhat, from the ennoblement of rustic life to the ennoblement of agriculture as a technical subject worthy of study. T. here acknowledges that, qua agronomist, Virgil is ‘digressive, imaginative, manic, occasionally befuddled, and not a little bit mad’ (p. 117) – but he defends this as a posture designed to awaken but not quench the reader's thirst for agricultural expertise. Once again, three key strategies are identified. Working with the psychological concept of the ‘scarcity principle’ (p. 118), T. proposes that Virgil intentionally scants important topics in order to increase their perceived value and pique his readers’ curiosity. Conversely, lengthy digressions on non-agricultural topics (ethnography, physics, myth) are seen to enhance the status of agriculture by association with these more elevated subjects. Finally, T. suggests that Virgil introduces wonders to the world of the Georgics, not to produce scepticism about the reliability of the text, but to require from his readers an intellectual response. T. insists that Virgil leaves the shape of this response ‘radically open ended’ (p. 140), which unfortunately requires him to make an argument largely from silence. None the less, his analysis provides a valuable counterpoint to more pessimistic interpretations of thaumata in the Georgics (see, e.g., R. Thomas, Virgil: Georgics [1988], ad. 2.32–4; D. Ross, Virgil's Elements [1987], pp. 104–28, 214–18; and C. Perkell, The Poet's Truth [1989], pp. 74–6, 147).
While the second, third and fourth chapters explore Virgil's decorous elevation of the practice and science of agriculture, the fifth changes focus, asking what an interpretation of the Georgics would look like if it took as its premise Seneca's claim that Virgil primarily wanted to enchant his readers. What follows is an attempt to ‘map out the “psychagogy” of the Georgics’ (p. 154), first by showing how Virgil represents and evokes the passions in his portrayal of the rustic world, and second by considering how this treatment of the emotions intersects with the poem's discourses of exhortation and wonder. Although its connection to the larger argument of the book could have been more clearly explained, the chapter contains a number of thought-provoking close readings and a novel analysis of the Aristaeus epyllion as a double cycle of catharsis through wonder.
In place of a conclusion, the sixth and final chapter provides an overview of the reception of the Georgics in Early Imperial Rome, intended to demonstrate that early readers and imitators seized primarily on the features of the poem examined in preceding chapters: fantasies about farm labour, the ennoblement of rustication and the evocation of the passions. The evidence collected here certainly speaks to the popularity and impact of the Georgics, and will no doubt serve as an excellent springboard for future work on the poem's afterlife in Latin literature.
T.’s style throughout is clear and engaging, and he presents his material so that it is accessible to those not already familiar with the Georgics and Virgilian scholarship. There is much here that will contribute to existing debates over the poem's ideology, genre and poetics, but T.’s greatest success lies in calling our attention back to the Georgics’ charms – charms that exist in, and not in spite of, Virgil's representation of the rustic life.
