1. INTRODUCTION
Roughly half way through the fourth Georgic, Virgil confronts a sad reality: on occasion the entire population of a hive can perish without warning and leave the bee-keeping farmer bee-less.Footnote 1 In response to such a devastating loss, the poet describes an Egyptian procedure, to which modern critics have given the name bugonia,Footnote 2 whereby the farmer acquires a new swarm of bees from the putrefying carcass of a dead ox (4.281–314). After the account of bugonia, the poem takes a notoriously unexpected turn. Virgil asks the Muses about the origins of this practice and then recounts the exploits of Aristaeus, an inhabitant of the georgic world whose own bees once succumbed to famine and disease. In the narrative that follows, Aristaeus consults his mother Cyrene and the seer Proteus, who tells him about Orpheus’ descent to the underworld. The narrative ends when Aristaeus, thanks to the teaching of his mother, performs a series of activities that culminates in a new swarm of bees bursting forth from the putrefying carcass of a dead ox (4.315–558). The aetiological character of the Aristaeus narrative is clear—Virgil promises to trace the Egyptian procedure back to its first origo (4.286), and when he addresses the Muses, he specifically asks what god discovered the practice and whence it took its first beginnings (4.315–16). But for what activity does the story actually offer an aition?Footnote 3
Most readers simply treat Aristaeus as the prōtos heuretēs of bugonia, and he surely is.Footnote 4 A more contested view is that Aristaeus’ slaughter constitutes an aition for Graeco-Roman animal sacrifice.Footnote 5 In this paper, however, I argue that the story offers an aetiology for didactic poetry itself. I begin by demonstrating that Cyrene and Proteus play the role of didactic poets and that Aristaeus functions as the addressee of their didactic songs. I then suggest that the aetiological nature of the episode allows us to read the interactions of all three characters as a dramatic staging of the origins of didactic poetry. Through Cyrene, we trace the beginning of didactic back to Hesiod's Works and Days, while Proteus stands in the tradition of Hesiod's Theogony. Finally, I consider what this reading implies about the relative competency of these two traditions and Virgil's place within them. In particular, I argue that the notorious discrepancies between Egyptian bugonia and Cyrene's lesson suggest historical rupture, which undermines trust in both didactic and the promise of renewal that bugonia seems to offer. Virgil, however, positions himself as the telos of the didactic tradition, the sole individual able to transcend these difficulties. If the reader chooses to believe his account of bugonia, in spite of all the hurdles, she too might be able to regain what she has lost, just like Aristaeus.
First, a word about didactic poetry itself.Footnote 6 I take the essential element of a didactic poem to be the relationship between a teacher and a student—someone, usually the poet, teaches an addressee and/or ‘you’, the reader.Footnote 7 Within this broad didactic framework, there is ample room for engagement with other poetic traditions, especially epic, and epic poets regularly engage the didactic tradition or adopt, in passing, the persona of the didactic teacher. While the distinction between didactic and epic is never absolute, the most significant contrast is that the epic poet does not have a second-person addressee whom he attempts to instruct.
An important caveat is in order here. Sider argues that we should not think of didactic poetry as a static category that persisted essentially unchanged throughout antiquity.Footnote 8 In archaic and classical Greece, many different kinds of poems presented themselves as educational or were interpreted as containing important lessons. It was only in the Hellenistic period that the idea of didactic poetry as a distinct genre began to emerge, and this idea was then ‘retrojected backward in time to include only those earlier poets that conformed to Hellenistic notions’.Footnote 9 The earlier poets were, first and foremost, Hesiod but also Xenophanes, Parmenides and Empedocles. Through programmatic engagement with these authors, Hellenistic poets begin to forge a recognizable genre, and subsequent poets, especially at Rome, reinforce the impression of generic continuity, despite significant innovation, by strategically invoking not only the relevant archaic and fifth-century texts but the Hellenistic ones as well.Footnote 10 In what follows, then, I use the term didactic and I discuss didactic as a genre from the perspective of Hellenistic and Roman literary production.
And second, the critical background. A number of literary and intellectual traditions inform the Aristaeus narrative, and numerous critics have interpreted the traces of these traditions from a generic perspective. To begin with, the entire account draws heavily on multiple epic scenes, particularly Iliad Books 1 and 18 and Odyssey Book 4; Proteus resembles the bucolic shepherds of the Eclogues but in some sense the poet of the Georgics; Orpheus looks like a singer of amatory elegy, perhaps recalling Cornelius Gallus, but also the poet of the Georgics; and Cyrene's language, especially in her instructions to her son, suggestively recalls Virgil's own language.Footnote 11 This has led critics to conclude that, through the Aristaeus narrative, Virgil rejects epic poetry; explores the relationship between Homeric and Neoteric epic, or between Homeric epic and didactic, or between bucolic and didactic; contrasts the narcissism and withdrawal of erotic elegy with the practical values and social engagement of didactic; develops a complex allegory about poetic inspiration and creation more generally; or perhaps undermines the very legitimacy of didactic itself by contrasting it with other, more profound modes of discourse.Footnote 12 My argument builds off this last critical trend and offers several important correctives. Despite acknowledged connections between either Proteus or Cyrene and Virgil, the status of the divinities as didactic poets has not been properly understood, and the aetiological character of their performances and their respective associations with Hesiodic poetry have escaped notice. Moreover, analyses of poetry and/or genre in the Aristaeus episode are often dominated by Orpheus, envisioned as the quintessential poet, even though his story is only reported at second hand and he himself is not an actor within the dramatic setting of the aition.Footnote 13 Without denying the importance of other debates about poetry and/or genre in which the text as a whole may engage, I focus squarely on the actual agents within the narrative framework that Virgil establishes.
To complicate matters even further, it is possible that Virgil draws on Orphic literature and/or ideas about the afterlife.Footnote 14 By the first century, numerous theogonic poems circulated under the name ‘Orpheus’, and critics have detected some parallels between what we know of these poems and various passages in the Aristaeus narrative.Footnote 15 While I argue that Proteus has strong ties to Hesiod's Theogony, it remains conceivable that Virgil connected him, via his song about Orpheus, to one or more of these Orphic texts as well.Footnote 16 From a related point of view, traces of Orphic eschatology in the Aristaeus story have led critics to argue that Aristaeus basically undergoes a mystic journey of initiation, moving symbolically from a life of ignorance, sin and death towards knowledge, redemption and rebirth.Footnote 17 The violence of bugonia, on this reading, is purifying and constructive, and the entire story offers an allegory about Roman society at the end of the Republic. Although the influence of Orphic material seems likely, I am not convinced by such allegorical readings. But whatever one's position on the matter, my conclusions punctuate any hopeful or positive interpretation of Aristaeus's story with a question mark: does bugonia actually lead to renewal? If we choose to answer yes, we are forced to acknowledge that this is a choice and that we are acquiescing in one particular representation of history and perhaps even of reality.Footnote 18
In addition, while the discrepancies between the georgic poet's account of Egyptian bugonia and Cyrene's praecepta to her son are well known, critical approaches to them have been inadequate.Footnote 19 Some have seen such inconsistencies as evidence of the incomplete or imperfectly revised state of the poem, particularly in light of two notorious comments made by Servius about the fate of Cornelius Gallus; such an approach no longer seems warranted.Footnote 20 Most critics, however, attribute the differences between the passages, either explicitly or implicitly, to the aetiological structure of the narrative as a whole. I will argue that this approach ignores the peculiarities of Virgil's aition and that the very presence of the discrepancies impacts how we interpret the Aristaeus narrative itself and, indeed, the poem as a whole.
2. THE TEACHER-STUDENT CONSTELLATION
I begin with what is least controversial. Aristaeus, a rustic pastor (4.317), clearly corresponds in some way to the poem's didactic addressee. In addition to keeping bees, he mentions his own cereal crops, trees and vines, and animals (4.326–32), all of which leads Gale to conclude that ‘the connexion with the themes of Virgil's four books is obvious’.Footnote 21 At the same time, Aristaeus demonstrates a pious attitude towards the gods that reflects Virgil's advice elsewhere in the poem, and in the end he ‘shows himself … to be capable of receiving didactic instruction and following it to the letter’.Footnote 22 Although Gale does not emphasize the point, the similarities between Aristaeus and the didactic addressee necessarily imply a parallelism between Cyrene and the georgic poet. Schiesaro has discussed these points of contact, stressing that Cyrene, ‘like the narrator, imparts praecepta’ (matris praecepta facessit, 4.548).Footnote 23 Indeed, Cyrene's straightforward matter-of-fact treatment of bugonia, addressed to Aristaeus in the second person (delige … constitue … demitte … desere, 4.540–3) pushes the reader to make a connection between the nymph and the poet, whose most recent lesson concerned precisely the same topic. Bracketing for now the content of the lesson, when Cyrene instructs her son in bugonia, the reader witnesses a dramatic staging of the process of reading a poem very much like the Georgics.
The connections between Proteus and didactic have not received sufficient attention.Footnote 24 Morgan, for instance, treats Proteus as a representative of Homeric epic but views his song, at the level of content and style, as characteristic of Neoteric epic.Footnote 25 Although the song does resemble the mythological narratives of epic, there are compelling reasons for connecting Proteus to didactic in addition to epic.
That Proteus is a poet-figure seems clear. To begin with, Cyrene twice calls him a uates (4.387, 4.392), and the narrator characterizes him with the same word (4.450). The strong emphasis on Proteus’ vatic identity constitutes an addition to Virgil's primary intertextual model, Odyssey Book 4, where Menelaus does not make Proteus into a ‘prophet’ or ‘seer’.Footnote 26 The conspicuous nature of the addition surely points to the term's well-known status as catchword for Roman poets writing in the learned Alexandrian tradition.Footnote 27 The equation between prophet and poet that uates signifies prompts the reader to construe Proteus’ narration as a poetic performance. Since Proteus addresses his song to Aristaeus in the second person (non te nullius exercent numinis irae; | magna luis commissa: tibi has miserabilis Orpheus …, 4.453–4), it makes sense to construe it as part of the didactic tradition.
Echoes of Lucretius confirm that Proteus sings a didactic song. Cyrene tells Aristaeus that he must subdue Proteus ‘so that he may unfold the entire cause of the disease’ (ut omnem | expediat morbi causam, 4.396–7). When Proteus finishes his tale and dives back into the sea, Cyrene informs a fearful Aristaeus (timentem, 4.530) that Proteus has in fact succeeded: ‘My son, you can put your sad cares out of your mind. This was the whole cause of the disease’ (nate, licet tristis animo deponere curas. | haec omnis morbi causa, 4.531–2). The phrase morbi causa has strong Lucretian connotations, as Freudenburg has shown.Footnote 28 The use of expediat at 4.397 enhances the Lucretian texture of the passage, since Lucretius often employs the same verb in the first person and in the same metrical sedes at the outset of an exposition (for example 2.66, 4.634, 5.77). In addition, when Cyrene tells a frightened Aristaeus to forget his previous anxieties (tristis animo deponere curas), she treats Proteus’ narrative as if it performed a very Lucretian task. The De Rerum Natura (= DRN), as a whole, aims to free mankind from the fear of death, and curae (frequently in the plural) constitutes one of the Epicurean poet's favourite terms for describing the emotional havoc that such fear causes unenlightened human beings (for example 1.51, 2.19, 2.46, 2.48, 3.82, 3.116). After Proteus’ disappearance, Cyrene tells Aristaeus not to worry about death, because he has now heard a Lucretian song that explains the whole matter once and for all.
And then there is the fateful moment when Orpheus glances back and ‘the treaty of the harsh tyrant was broken’ (immitis rupta tyranni | foedera, 4.492–3). In context, the tyrannus is Dis, and the foedera refer to the stipulation that Orpheus refrain from looking back until he has emerged from underground.Footnote 29 And yet, Virgil's language suggests a more metaphorical reading. In the DRN, the atoms regularly form foedera, and these foedera essentially constitute the physical world; they are the foedera naturai (1.586).Footnote 30 Virgil models tyranni foedera on precisely this phrase, pointedly intensifying the anthropomorphism of the imagery.Footnote 31 To what end? Lucretius uses the language of foedera to talk about the bonds that connect cause to effect. In his account of the swerve in DRN Book 2, the Epicurean poet emphatically stresses that there is no freewill if (2.253–5)
the atoms, by swerving, do not create a certain beginning of motion such as to break the treaty of fate, so that cause should not follow cause indefinitely.
When Orpheus, by looking back, breaks the treaty of the harsh tyrant, he plays the role of the Lucretian atom, swerving in all its chaotic unfettered freedom.
All of these connections between Proteus and Lucretius serve two primary functions. On the one hand, they highlight Virgil's own rejection of Lucretian teaching about death. Even the most cursory comparison between Proteus and Lucretius reveals that the basic world-view of Proteus’ narrative is antithetical to the entire thrust of the DRN. Through Proteus, the reader finds out that supernatural beings actually do take an interest in the lives of men, the underworld does in fact exist, and the immortal souls of the dead do indeed descend there upon departing this life; Proteus’ Lucretian song is pointedly anti-Lucretian.Footnote 32 On the other hand, the connections between Proteus and Lucretius push the reader to see both poets as performing similar tasks, namely singing songs about the nature of life and death and the human soul.
So, the interactions between Cyrene and Aristaeus, on the one hand, and Proteus and Aristaeus, on the other, resemble the interactions between the poet-teacher and the student that are central to the didactic tradition.
3. THE AETIOLOGY OF DIDACTIC
The performances of Cyrene and Proteus do not contrast different genres but rather two different modes of didactic: one that transmits practical and/or moral instruction (Cyrene), and another that is primarily theoretical (Proteus). Clearly, no rigid division distinguishes poems that teach a practical skill or give moral advice from those that expound an abstract body of knowledge—the Georgics, in many ways, offers instruction of both sorts.Footnote 33 The Aristaeus narrative, however, presents this dichotomy as foundational to the didactic tradition, and because both strands of didactic are associated with particular texts, we can read the narrative as a whole as a reflection on the origins of didactic.Footnote 34
As we have already observed, Cyrene issues a series of straightforward instructions to her son (delige … constitue … demitte … desere …, 4.540–3). Orders and commands are typical of the practical didactic tradition.Footnote 35 Within the history of the genre, Cyrene's agricultural lesson evokes the world of Hesiod's Works and Days, where Hesiod gives similarly specific instructions, often of an agricultural nature, to his brother Perses. But even though many of Hesiod's lessons deal with agricultural tasks, they often have ethical or religious implications. We have to pay attention to the days, for instance, precisely because they ‘come from Zeus’ (ἤματα δ’ ἐκ Διόθεν πεφυλαγμένος εὖ κατὰ μοῖραν, Op. 765); to know what task to perform on what day is to know and to live in harmony with the order established by the god. In the Georgics, Cyrene's lesson has similar ethical/religious import, since the actions that Aristaeus must perform constitute his only means of atoning for his crime; for Aristaeus, to make amends amounts to recognizing and living in accordance with a higher order. From this vantage point, Cyrene's song and the Works and Days belong to the same strand of didactic.Footnote 36
The contrast between Cyrene and Proteus is evident at a very basic level, since Cyrene actually explains to Aristaeus how to do something, while Proteus explains the causa that accounts for Aristaeus’ present state. Although Proteus addresses Aristaeus several times, his lesson contains no imperatives, which is in keeping with the tendency of theoretical didactic to issue fewer orders than its practical counterpart.Footnote 37 It is easy enough to conclude that Lucretius’ poem counts as theoretical, especially given its prioritization of physics over ethics, but we should view the ultimate origin of the tradition as Hesiod's Theogony, which is fundamentally concerned with cosmogony and the origins (causae) of the hierarchies and rules that structure the world in which we live, beginning from Chaos (Theog. 116). Although Hesiod does not sing the Theogony to a second person addressee, Virgil assimilates Proteus to Hesiod in his capacity as author of the Theogony, and this constructs a line of generic filiation running from the Theogony to the DRN.
The second time that Cyrene calls Proteus a uates, she states that ‘he knows all things—what is, what was, what is being brought on and soon will come to pass’ (nouit namque omnia uates, | quae sint, quae fuerint, quae mox uentura trahantur, 4.392–3). Cyrene's language reworks a formulaic Greek phrase that occurs in two significant contexts. At Il. 1.70, the seer Calchas is said to have known ‘present things, future things and past things’ (ὃς ᾔδη τά τ’ ἐόντα τά τ’ ἐσσόμενα πρό τ’ ἐόντα). Similarly, at the beginning of the Theogony Hesiod declares that the Muses delight Zeus by singing about ‘present things, future things and past things’ (εἰρεῦσαι τά τ’ ἐόντα τά τ’ ἐσσόμενα πρό τ’ ἐόντα, Theog. 38). By assimilating Proteus to Calchas, Virgil underscores the ancient connection between poetic and prophetic speech.Footnote 38 Through the presence of Hesiod's Muses, however, the old man of the sea suddenly becomes a poet who sings a song very much like the Theogony. Moreover, once upon a time the Muses ‘taught’ Hesiod to sing (αἵ νύ ποθ’ Ἡσίοδον καλὴν ἐδίδαξαν ἀοιδήν, Theog. 22), and the lesson culminated in the Muses breathing a divine voice into Hesiod so that he himself might celebrate ‘future things and past things’ (ἵνα κλείοιμι τά τ’ ἐσσόμενα πρό τ’ ἐόντα, Theog. 32). The meeting between the Muses and the poet is usually regarded as a scene of poetic initiation (Dichterweihe), but from the perspective of the didactic tradition it constitutes the original instance of the teacher-student constellation.Footnote 39 The knowledge that Proteus possesses, then, resembles the kind of knowledge that the Muses teach Hesiod and that Hesiod himself teaches his own readers. It follows that the encounter between Proteus and Aristaeus mirrors the encounter between the Muses and Hesiod and/or between Hesiod and his own audience.Footnote 40
Proteus, then, represents the theoretical tradition of didactic that, from Virgil's perspective, traces its origins back to the Theogony. To frame the matter from a slightly different angle, we might compare Proteus to an epic poet, such as Homer, read from an allegorical perspective as teaching fundamental truths about the natural world.Footnote 41 Now, numerous critics have demonstrated Virgil's familiarity with such reading habits.Footnote 42 Within the Aristaeus narrative, however, this is precisely the role played by Clymene, the sister of Cyrene, who regales her fellow nymphs with a song about Ares and Aphrodite, and then enumerates ‘the countless love affairs of the gods, beginning from Chaos’ (aque Chao densos diuum numerabat amores, 4.347). Hardie suggests that the first half of Clymene's performance alludes to a well-established critical tradition that treats Demodocus’ Ares and Aphrodite narrative in Odyssey Book 8 as an allegory for the Empedoclean principles of Love and Strife.Footnote 43 In other words, both Clymene and Proteus sing mythological songs about natural philosophy. What is more, Hardie connects the second half of Clymene's performance with Hesiod's Theogony, which catalogues the sexual liaisons of the gods, starting precisely from Chaos (Theog. 116). If Clymene provides a model against which we can read Proteus, that parallelism confirms the ties between Proteus and Hesiod's Theogony. Although neither Hesiod, in this particular work, nor an allegorized Homer directly addresses a student in the second person, Proteus does, and his song represents a recasting of the Theogony and/or mythological epic as didactic.Footnote 44
As an aside, we should note the possibility that Proteus’ song might draw on a lost hexametrical katabasis in which ‘Orpheus’ himself narrated his descent to the underworld in search of Eurydice.Footnote 45 Although no verbatim quotations survive, the poem appears to have been addressed directly to the reader and to have transmitted essential eschatological information for those who had been initiated into the Orphic-Bacchic mysteries.Footnote 46 If Virgil used this poem, he must have regarded it as part of the didactic tradition, and its presence in the Aristaeus narrative can only enhance Proteus’ identity as a singer of theoretical didactic.Footnote 47
To return to my argument, these two strands of didactic poetry—the practical/ethical and the theoretical—play crucial roles throughout the Georgics, perhaps nowhere more conspicuously than at the end of Book 2, where the poet contrasts knowledge of natura and knowledge of the country (2.475–89). Virgil then famously blesses the individual ‘who was able to learn the causes of things’ (felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, 2.490), only to continue: ‘Blessed, too, is he who knows the gods of the countryside’ (fortunatus et ille deos qui nouit agrestis, 2.493). Although the exact referents of these lines have been the subject of considerable debate, many critics connect the felix with Lucretius and the fortunatus with Hesiod, author of the Works and Days.Footnote 48 The contrast, on this reading, symbolizes a profound tension that reverberates throughout the poem: the pull of traditional piety vs the enlightenment of scientific rationalism, a way of knowing the world rooted in custom and religion vs a commitment to philosophical analysis and the systematic enquiry into nature.Footnote 49 Through Proteus and Cyrene, Virgil presents an allegorized opposition that very much resembles the contrast of the makarismos: Proteus teaches Aristaeus about the basic laws of the natural world, the causa morbi and the foedera tyranni, while his mother teaches him about the concrete steps he must take to improve his situation, including the rustic divinities whom he must appease. The end of Book 4 thereby constitutes a dramatic staging of the twofold schema of didactic presented at the end of Book 2.Footnote 50 The reader, as it were, watches a series of interactions that explore the nature and history of didactic poetry itself. The two modes of didacticism come into being in close proximity to one another and might even coexist in one text, but the practical emerges as a commentary on or supplement to the theoretical. This seems strange from the vantage point of Book 2, where Hesiod's practical/moral didactic stands in opposition to the newness of Lucretius. But taking the Theogony as the exemplar of theoretical didactic sets the matter straight, since the Works and Days can be seen to follow on and complement the Theogony.Footnote 51
4. (DIS)CONTINUITY AND THE POWER OF VIRGILIAN DIDACTIC
How we interpret the relationship between Proteus and Cyrene will correlate with or perhaps depend on our view of the double makarismos. If we conclude that through the makarismos Virgil embraces two radically different visions of didactic and their respective world-views, we are likely to determine that Proteus and Cyrene represent two equally valid ways of teaching, one abstract and aloof, the other practical and down to earth.Footnote 52 If we see in the makarismos a rejection of theoretical didactic, we might be inclined to judge Proteus’ inaccessibility, abrupt departure, indifference to Aristaeus’ plight, and apparent inability to help Aristaeus in any tangible way as a condemnation of the tradition he represents, at least in a time of crisis.Footnote 53 I wish to build off this second position by demonstrating that Virgil problematizes not only the value of Proteus’ song but the value of Cyrene's song as well. Since the Aristaeus narrative is framed as an aition, we should examine how the aition actually connects past and present. As it turns out, numerous elements in the story create an awareness of historical rupture and this, in turn, undermines our faith in both Proteus and Cyrene. In the final analysis, though, Virgil's own brand of didactic combines the two Hesiodic traditions and offers the reader a possible way forward.Footnote 54
The reader's awareness of historical rupture and intellectual breakdown derives not only from the vastly different responses of Proteus and Cyrene to Aristaeus’ plight but also from the well-known fact that Virgil's account of Egyptian bugonia and the instructions that Cyrene gives to her son differ radically from one another. Virgil describes Egyptian bugonia thus: in the springtime, a young calf is sought out, smothered and beaten; special care is taken not to puncture the hide; the body is placed in a specially designed building; and sooner or later, after an unspecified interval, a new swarm miraculously bursts forth from the decaying body (4.295–314). Cyrene, however, calls for the slaughter of four bulls and four heifers, explicitly commands her son to slit their throats, orders him to leave their bodies in a grove by four altars that he is to construct for the occasion, and specifies the period of time that must elapse before he can return (4.537–47). It is clear that we have two sets of divergent instructions that both lead to the generation of bees from the bodies of dead cattle. As I noted above, most critics attribute the differences between the passages to the aetiological structure of the narrative as a whole. Aristaeus, according to this view, is simply the first individual to produce a swarm of bees from the carcass of an ox, and he left later generations to develop and refine his technique.Footnote 55 This reading ignores three crucial aspects of the narrative.
The first is the simple fact that Virgil describes both procedures in detail. Although aetiological discourse often forces the reader to make connections between past and present, aitia do not usually confront the reader with instructions for an activity that conflict with how that activity is performed in the present,Footnote 56 and when present practice does differ from historical precept, the author of the aition generally states a reason.Footnote 57 Thus, when Virgil attributes the invention of agriculture to Ceres in Book 1, he does not indicate what Ceres actually told her mortal audience to do, and this silence elides any differences that might distinguish historical from present-day agricultural practice.Footnote 58
The second factor is the abruptness with which the narrative ends. Some 250 lines must pass from the moment Virgil initially promises to trace Egyptian bugonia back to its origo (4.285–6) until the reader encounters anything even remotely resembling that procedure (4.537–47). Since Cyrene's praecepta do not in any way correspond to the Egyptian technique, the reader is ultimately left wondering how to construe those praecepta as an origo at all.Footnote 59 When the poet breezily abandons the world of myth and returns to the present day, it is as if the aetiological motivation of the story never even existed.
The third factor concerns Aristaeus himself. At the beginning of the poem, Virgil refers obliquely to Aristaeus as a woodland herdsman on Ceos/Cea (cultor nemorum, cui pinguia Ceae | ter centum niuei tondent dumeta iuuenci, 1.14–15). At his next appearance, in Book 4, Aristaeus hails from Arcadia and is connected above all with his bees—the reader wonders whether this is even the same person.Footnote 60 I return to the introduction to Egyptian bugonia (4.281–4):
But if the entire race suddenly fails a man and he has no way to acquire a new stock, then it is time to reveal the noteworthy discovery of the Arcadian master.
Setting aside the question of Aristaeus’ homeland and his favourite farm-animal, this description is odd. As a member of the georgic world who raises livestock, Aristaeus certainly counts as a magister, but within the didactic framework of the story, he cannot lay claim to such a title; he is a student, not a teacher. If the narrative constitutes an aition for didactic itself, the necessary conclusion is surely that the student eventually becomes the teacher. And yet, Virgil's Aristaeus is a terrible candidate for making this kind of intellectual transformation. He is impetuous and aggressive, ignorant and curiously passive, and shows no sign of actually understanding the lessons that Proteus and Cyrene convey, even if he manages to follow his mother's instructions. The reader struggles to imagine how such a figure makes intellectual progress, how the didactic tradition propagates and sustains itself.Footnote 61
So, the reader is likely to find it disconcerting that Cyrene's praecepta differ so completely from the georgic poet's description of bugonia, and yet both procedures lead to the exact same result. How on earth, the reader protests, can both procedures actually be right? Virgil's aition appears to break down, and the reliability of the didactic tradition, both as a whole and as represented by Cyrene, comes into question.
If, however, we compare Virgil's description of the results of Egyptian bugonia (4.308–14) and his description of the results of Aristaeus’ slaughter (4.554–8)—not, that is, the actual procedure for Egyptian bugonia (4.295–307) and not Cyrene's actual praecepta (4.537–43)—we discover verbal echoes that link both passages, particularly in the accounts of the process of generation.Footnote 62 These cross-references hint at an underlying conceptual framework that explains why a dead body can produce living organisms at all, namely philosophical theories of spontaneous generation.Footnote 63 In both narratives, the bees emerge from the liquefied contents of the animals’ body (interea teneris tepefactus in ossibus umor | aestuat, 4.308–9 ~ liquefacta boum per uiscera toto | stridere apes utero et ruptis efferuere costis, 4.555–6). In the first instance, it is specifically the application of heat to liquid that produces the stirrings of life (tepefactus … umor | aestuat).Footnote 64 In the case of Aristaeus, the liquid is implicitly warm (liquefacta… per uiscera, and efferuere). By invoking the generative interaction of heat and moisture, Virgil reminds the reader of philosophical theories of spontaneous generation such as those first put forward by Anaxagoras and Empedocles and later developed by Aristotle.Footnote 65 From this angle, the spontaneous generation of bees starts to resemble Lucretius’ treatment of the spontaneous generation of worms.Footnote 66 These resonances imply that basic scientific principles underlie the efficacy of both Egyptian bugonia and Cyrene's praecepta. But there is absolutely no indication that any of the actors in the poem—neither the present-day Egyptians nor the gods of the mythological past—grasps the fundamental theory. Indeed, Virgil describes what the Egyptians do, and he recounts Cyrene's instructions, but he does not vouch for the particulars of either.Footnote 67 The poet's silence highlights the potential limitations of didactic poetry. All of the details, all of the specifics, ignore the basic reality, the purely physical mechanisms at work. It is only through Virgil's depiction of the results of both procedures that the astute reader begins, slowly, to recognize the possibility of continuity between past and present and to glimpse a viable way forward for the farmer who has suddenly lost his bees.
To rephrase, through a comparison of these two passages—that is, the description of the results of Egyptian bugonia and the effects of Aristaeus’ slaughter—Virgil offers the reader an opportunity to believe in (1) the historical continuity that the aetiological discourse promises, but which the aition itself actively undermines, and (2) the renewal that bugonia, in particular, represents, even though no one has ever seen it work.Footnote 68 At the same time, the poet combines the two Hesiodic traditions of didactic: the reader learns a practical activity (how to acquire a new swarm) on the basis of theoretical knowledge (spontaneous generation), but only if she puts her faith in the accuracy of Virgil's descriptions. Within the aetiological narrative, this manoeuvre situates Virgil as the telos of the didactic tradition. In contrast to Proteus, who does not give Aristaeus any practical assistance, and Cyrene, whose arbitrary praecepta in no way guarantee the desired result, Virgil offers the outline or contours of a theoretically informed, efficacious lesson—the combination is programmatic.Footnote 69 However, if we accept this lesson and the reality of the regeneration of the hive, whatever it symbolizes, we must acknowledge that we are choosing to see continuity in a story that confronts us with historical rupture, and that we are opting to believe in an intellectual tradition that cannot be fully trusted. The power of Virgil's voice might be strong enough to prevail upon us, but we remain aware that it is very much Virgil's voice.Footnote 70
This delicate balancing act (between continuity and discontinuity, between faith in and scepticism of both bugonia and didactic) mirrors a manoeuvre that Virgil performs at the start of the account of Egyptian bugonia, which in turn lends support to my interpretation of the Aristaeus narrative. Initially, Virgil declares that he will unfold the whole story: omnem | expediam … famam (4.285–6). We have already seen Cyrene say something similar about Proteus (omnem | expediat morbi causam, 4.396–7), and we noted the Lucretian associations of both expediat and morbi causam. The contrast is striking. Fama is potentially destabilizing, and its effects are immediate.Footnote 71 In the following lines, Virgil transports the reader to Egypt, where, he claims, bugonia is actually practised. In accordance with ethnographic tradition, he defines the land by reference to its boundaries: Canopus in the west, Persia to the east, and India to the south.Footnote 72 Here, India is identified as the source of the Nile (et diuersa ruens septem discurrit in ora | usque coloratis amnis deuexus ab Indis, 4.292–3). Virgil's statement omits a great deal. It was a commonplace in antiquity that no one could positively identify the source of the Nile, so much so that the question of the river's origin had come to represent a paradigmatic example of the unknown or even the unknowable.Footnote 73 Virgil's all too casual assertion, in other words, is unsubstantiated fama masquerading as indisputable fact. The attentive reader might hesitate to believe anything the poet says. What is more, after he invokes the Muses (4.315–16), the poet encourages the reader to question the source, and hence the reliability, of his information yet again: perhaps it is all fama (pastor Aristaeus fugiens Peneia Tempe, | amissis, ut fama, apibus morboque fameque, 4.317–18). In context, the Alexandrian footnote militates against our trust in the Muses, which must also undermine our faith in the poet and his narrative.Footnote 74 Perhaps he passes on reliable information, perhaps it is all fama, or maybe we should accept the reality that Virgil conspicuously creates. Orpheus’ voice may not be able to save Eurydice, but Virgil's can change the world, if we only allow it.
5. CONCLUSION
I conclude by situating my reading of the Aristaeus narrative within three related contexts. The first is a familiar topic in Georgics scholarship: Virgil's notorious inconsistencies and apparent falsehoods. It is well known that the poem contains numerous statements that are inconsistent or seem verifiably false.Footnote 75 At the end of the poem, the tale of Aristaeus affirms the ability of Virgilian didactic to make real what had previously seemed contradictory or impossible, to reveal continuity where discontinuity had appeared to reign. We have the option, in other words, of accepting a new reality in the aftermath of devastating loss.
The second context concerns the didactic tradition itself. By claiming the power to reconcile inconsistencies and to assert the reality of what had hitherto appeared suspect, Virgil actually plugs into a very ancient didactic theme. The theme itself goes back to Hesiod, who prominently highlights the ability of the Muses to bend reality at the start of the Theogony (26–8). Even more to the point is the opening of the Works and Days, where Hesiod corrects a statement from the earlier poem: ‘It turns out after all that there was not one birth of Strifes, but rather upon the earth there are two’ (οὐκ ἄρα μοῦνον ἔην Ἐρίδων γένος, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ γαῖαν | εἰσὶ δύω, Op. 11–12). There is a tension between the narratives, and hence between the world-views, of the two works. This tension becomes even more pronounced when we realize that Hesiod tells the story of Prometheus and Pandora in both the Theogony and the Works and Days, in each case shaping the narrative to fit the immediate ideological context.Footnote 76 For us, how we make sense of Hesiod's contrasting storylines, which are themselves aitia, matters less than the simple fact that the didactic tradition contains within itself an impetus or even an imperative to confront its readers with competing versions of reality.Footnote 77 On the one hand, what Virgil's aition suggests about the potency of his poetry is entirely Hesiodic, and it is altogether fitting that the aition itself traces the origins of the didactic tradition precisely to the Theogony and the Works and Days. Then again, Hesiod corrects himself in an entirely different poem, where he explains the nature of the two kinds of Strife and deals at great length with Prometheus and company. Virgil slides from one version of bugonia to another within a single text and dramatically stops short, as if to pose a riddle to his readers, to challenge them to detect his sleight of hand.
Finally, we can locate Virgil's practice within the broader intellectual and political framework of the Late Republic and Early Principate. By the time Virgil was writing the Georgics, the search for origins and causes played a significant role in elite Roman culture. Varro's numerous antiquarian works, for instance, contained significant amounts of aetiological material. In a famous passage of the Academica, Cicero lavishes praise on his friend for having reacquainted his fellow citizens with their city, and singles out, among the antiquarian's numerous intellectual accomplishments, his illumination of causae (Acad. 1.9). Wallace-Hadrill has argued that the spread of this kind of enquiry both resulted from and contributed to the breakdown of traditional power structures.Footnote 78 As a pervasive sense of cultural crisis undermined faith in the nobiles, who had always been charged with maintaining Rome's customs and identity, antiquarian research exposed the shortcomings of the elite and simultaneously laid claim to their ability to define and monitor what it meant to be Roman. Far from being traditional or conservative, the search for origins and causes reveals ruptures and activates fault lines.Footnote 79 Augustus brilliantly exploited the antiquarians’ assault on the nobiles, and in the process made his own disruptive agenda appear completely traditional.Footnote 80 We can apply this same critical lens to the end of the Georgics. When Virgil goes in search of an origo, he shines an uncomfortable spotlight on the vast gulf that separates past from present, and undermines our trust in both traditional and newer forms of understanding the world. At the same time, however, the poet offers a vision of historical continuity and grounds in that vision a promise of renewal. While the future Augustus thunders ominously on the banks of the Euphrates (G. 4.560–2), violently bending the world to his will, Virgil bends the world through language. Will loss and bloodshed lead to renewal and regeneration? Cicero was well aware that aetiologies could be falsified and that antiquarian learning could mislead and misdirect; Virgil's readers remain on edge.Footnote 81
Bugonia provides a particularly apt image for the difficult projects of aetiology and didactic. Prior to Virgil, we find allusions to bugonia in Philetas (fr. 22 Powell), Callimachus (fr. 383.4 Pfeiffer) and Nicander (Ther. 741, Alex. 446–7), among others. The systematic treatises of Varro (Rust. 3.16.4; cf. 2.5.5) and Columella (9.14.6) and the encyclopedia of the Elder Pliny (HN 11.70) mention the procedure but only in passing and with more than a little trepidation—Columella, for one, summarily declares that it is unnecessary to treat bugonia in depth, since bees are never actually wiped out so completely as to require recourse to such a procedure. Bugonia hovers epistemologically between the worlds of myth and history, religious belief and scientific knowledge, moral instruction and philosophical rigour. In this context, the culturally crucial practice of aetiology appears to falter—does bugonia actually exist? what is the connection between past and present? what does the future hold in store? The generic point, however, is crucial. Aristaeus is first and foremost a didactic reader, and the entire lesson unfolds within a specific generic framework. The didactic tradition, symbolized by the lessons of Proteus and Cyrene, finds its origin in the Hesiodic poems and its telos in the Georgics. But, in the end, whether we believe in historical continuity and the promise of renewal depends on our willingness to submit to the demands of the poet's didactic voice.
