This book examines the relationships between plants and people (both gods and mortals) in Vergil's works. The goal is to determine ‘what plants mean’ in Vergil. There are two main aspects to the book. The first is a kind of catalogue of plants in the poems. In this respect Armstrong's book is a sophisticated update of Sargeaunt's Trees and Shrub Plants of Virgil (1920). The book's second aspect is its analysis and foregrounding of the ambiguities of Vergil's plants. Ambiguities include plants that are both literal and symbolic, and plants that are both good and bad for people. Armstrong intertwines these two aspects of the book to present multiple sections in which a thematic argument is followed by a plant catalogue. For example, in the discussion of flowers (240–52) we get a list of species followed by two subsections on what the flowers signify (Iron Age toil and Golden Age ease in relation to bees; the interchange of flower metaphors of desire and death). The book is organised into two main sections (numen and homo), each containing two chapters, preceded by an introduction and followed by a brief conclusion.
The introduction addresses the scope of the work and proceeds to general considerations regarding ‘environmental’ approaches to ancient literature. Armstrong surveys ancient conceptions of botany, then addresses the somewhat vexed issue of the ancient Romans’ ‘environmentalism’. Interestingly, Armstrong is ambivalent about characterising her work as ‘ecocriticism’. On the one hand, the book is plainly ecocritical in that it focuses on plants in Vergil. On the other hand, Armstrong is reluctant to theorise her approach beyond paying attention to ‘what plants mean’. What Armstrong does not do (apart from a discussion here of Vergil's beeches and tamarisks) is to engage much with metapoetic interpretations of plants, about which the author defers to previous scholarship. Instead, Armstrong proposes to investigate the interactions of plants with both gods and humans in Vergil's works.
Ch. 1 (‘Numinous Habitats’) examines the presence of the divine in Vergil's landscapes, both forests and cultivated lands. After surveying the complex Roman attitudes toward the divine elements of the natural world, Armstrong first examines the woodlands of Vergil's works. In the Eclogues the trees are strongly associated with Pan (e.g. Ecl. 8.22–4) or other generic woodland gods (e.g. Ecl. 5.20–1). In the Georgics the woodlands are present around the margins of the largely cultivated landscape of that poem, yet exhibit a numinous quality (e.g. the ‘tragic’ birds and the clearing of the grove: Geo. 2.207–11). In the Aeneid, woodlands have a sinister divine quality originating in the underworld (e.g. the influence of groves in Aen. 6 on Faunus’ sacred grove in Aen. 7). Woods in the Aeneid may also be associated with gods and civilisation (e.g. the sacred grove of Juno in Carthage). In examining the divinity of cultivated sites, Armstrong explores the metonymic ambiguities of Bacchus (wine) and Ceres (grain). Armstrong concludes that these names occupy a ‘midpoint’ between divinities and their plant(s) (109). An example is when the Trojans ‘eat their tables’ (Aen. 7.107–17): this scene alludes both to pastoral landscapes (shady trees) and, significantly, to a rustic religious festival (Geo. 2.527).
Ch. 2 (‘Gods’ Special Species’) focuses on traditional associations of gods and plants. This chapter is perhaps most catalogue-like in the entire book. We are presented with a survey of trees and other flora and their various, often ambiguous, religious associations in Vergil. For example, the oak is associated with both Jupiter/Iron Age (via the implied succession of kingship) and Saturn/Golden Age (the references to acorns as food) in the ‘agricultural theodicy’ in the Georgics (1.147–59).
In ch. 3 (‘Tame Plants’), Armstrong focuses on examples of harmony and conflict between plants and people in Vergil. We learn that the aesthetic pastoral ease of the Eclogues does not preclude real agricultural work, while in the Georgics the reverse is true. Additionally, Armstrong explores adjectives like laetus (both ‘happy’ and ‘productive’) connected with crops, as well as examples of ‘giving trees’. As for conflict, Armstrong focuses on Vergil's language of luxury, excess and violence (esp. in the Georgics), as well as the ‘reverse similes’ in the Aeneid where killing is compared to agriculture.
Ch. 4 (‘Wild Plants’) begins with further problematisation of the tame/wild distinction, this time with reference to ancient philosophical sources (esp. Theophrastus). Once again, a catalogue of plants and their ambiguous connotations follows. Flowers, trees, degenerate or feral species and weeds are all examined in ‘good’ and ‘bad’ contexts in Vergil's works. The weeds in Ecl. 5, repeated in ‘theodicy’ in the Georgics, provide a case in point: in mourning for Daphnis the earth loses its normal productivity (symbolised by the weeds), while lack of labor causes their presence (via quotation of the Eclogues) in the Georgics.
The conclusion summarises the complexity of Vergil's plants, perhaps best summed up by Armstrong's double reading of the poet's supposed epitaph: cecini pascua, rura, duces may be read both as a chronological bibliography and as a statement of thoroughgoing theme. Armstrong ends the book by analysing the many valences, both literary and botanical, of the tree-felling scene in Aen. 6.
This book serves several purposes by providing a catalogue of Vergilian plants in context, by serving as an introduction to ecocritical readings of Vergil's works, and by offering sophisticated interpretations of Vergil's flora.
