Part 1 (2/2)
From this time Varro eschewed politics and devoted himself to letters, although his troubles were not yet at an end: after the death of Caesar, the ruthless Antony despoiled his villa at Casinum (where Varro had built the aviary described in book Three), and like Cicero he was included in the proscriptions which followed the compact of the triumvirs, but in the end unlike Cicero he escaped and spent his last years peacefully at his villas at c.u.mae and Tusculum.
His literary activity was astonis.h.i.+ng: he wrote at least six hundred books covering a wide range of antiquarian research. St. Augustine, who dearly loved to turn a balanced phrase, says that Varro had read so much that it is difficult to understand when he found time to write, while on the other hand he wrote so much that one can scarcely read all his books. Cicero, who claimed him as an intimate friend, describes (_Acad_. Ill) what Varro had written before B.C. 46, but he went on producing to the end of his long life, eighteen years later: ”For,” says Cicero, ”while we are sojourners, so to speak, in our own city and wandering about like strangers, your books have conducted us, as it were, home again, so as to enable us at last to recognize who and whence we are. You have discussed the antiquities of our country and the variety of dates and chronology relating to it. You have explained the laws which regulate sacrifices and priests: you have unfolded the customs of the city both in war and peace: you have described the various quarters and districts: you have omitted mentioning none of the names, or kinds, or functions, or causes of divine or human things: you have thrown a flood of light on our poets and altogether on Latin literature and the Latin language: you have yourself composed a poem of varied beauties and elegant in almost every part: and you have in many places touched upon philosophy in a manner sufficient to excite our curiosity, though inadequate to instruct us.”
Of Varro's works, beside the _Rerum Rusticarum_, there have survived only fragments, including a considerable portion of the treatise on the Latin language: the story is that most of his books were deliberately destroyed at the procurement of the Church (something not impossible, as witness the Emperor Theodosius in _Corpus Juris Civilis_. Cod. Lib. I, t.i.t. I, cap. 3, -- I) to conceal St. Augustine's plagiarism from them; yet the _De Civitate Dei_, which is largely devoted to refuting Varro's pagan theology, is a perennial monument to his fame. St. Augustine says (VI, 2): ”Although his elocution has less charm, he is so full of learning and philosophy that ... he instructs the student of facts as much as Cicero delights the student of style.”
Varro's treatise on farm management is the best practical book on the subject which has come down to us from antiquity. It has not the spontaneous originality of Cato, nor the detail and suave elegance of Columella. Walter Harte in his _Essays on Husbandry_ (1764) says that Cato writes like an English squire and Varro like a French academician. This is just comment on Cato but it is at once too much and too little to say of Varro: a French academician might be proud of his antiquarian learning, but would balk at his awkward and homely Latin, as indeed one French academician, M. Boissier, has since done.
The real merit of Varro's book is that it is the well digested system of an experienced and successful farmer who has seen and practised all that he records.
The authority from which Virgil drew the practical farming lore, for which he has been extolled in all ages, was Varro: indeed, as a farm manual the _Georgics_ go astray only when they depart from Varro. It is worth while to elaborate this point, which Professor Sellar, in his argument for the originality of Virgil, only suggests.[6]
After Philippi the times were ripe for books on agriculture. The Roman world had been divided between Octavian and Antony and there was peace in Italy: men were turning ”back to the land.”
An agricultural regeneration of Italy was impending, chiefly in viticulture, as Ferrero has pointed out. With far sighted appreciation of the economic advantages of this, Octavian determined to promote the movement, which became one of the completed glories of the Augustan Age, when Horace sang
Tua, Caesar, aetas Fruges et agris rettulit uberes.
Varro's book appeared in B.C. 37 and during that year Maecenas commissioned Virgil to put into verse the spirit of the times; just as, under similar circ.u.mstances, Cromwell pensioned Samuel Hartlib.
Such is the co-incidence of the dates that it is not impossible that the _Rerum Rusticarum_ suggested the subject of the _Georgics_, either to Virgil or to Maecenas.
There is no evidence in the _Bucolics_ that Virgil ever had any practical knowledge of agriculture before he undertook to write the _Georgics_. His father was, it is true, a farmer, but apparently in a small way and unsuccessful, for he had to eke out a frugal livelihood by keeping bees and serving as the hireling deputy of a _viator_ or constable. This type of farmer persists and may be recognized in any rural community: but the agricultural colleges do not enlist such men into their faculties. So it is possible that Virgil owed little agricultural knowledge to his father's precepts or example. Virgil perhaps had tended his father's flock, as he pictures himself doing under the guise of t.i.tyrus; certainly he spent many hours of youth ”patulae recubans sub tegmine f.a.gi” steeping his Celtic soul with the beauty and the melancholy poetry of the Lombard landscape: and so he came to know and to love bird and flower and the external aspects of
wheat and woodland tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd,
but it does not appear that he ever followed the plough, or, what is more important, ever laid off a ploughgate. As a poet of nature no one was ever better equipped (the highest testimony is that of Tennyson), but when it came to writing poetry around the art of farm management it was necessary for him to turn to books for his facts. He acknowledges (_Geo_. I, 176) his obligation only to _veterum praecepta_ without naming them, but as M. Gaston Boissier says he was evidently referring to Varro ”le plus moderne de tous les anciens.”[7]
Virgil evidently regarded Varro's treatise as a solid foundation for his poem and he used it freely, just as he drew on Hesiod for literary inspiration, on Lucretius for imaginative philosophy, and on Mago and Cato and the two Sasernas for local colour.
Virgil probably had also the advantage of personal contact with Varro during the seven years he was composing and polis.h.i.+ng the _Georgics_.
He spent them largely at Naples (_Geo_. IV, 563) and Varro was then established in retirement at c.u.mae: thus they were neighbours, and, although they belonged to different political parties, the young poet must have known and visited the old polymath; there was every reason for him to have taken advantage of the opportunity. Whatever justification there may be for this conjecture, the fact remains that Varro is in the background every where throughout the _Georgics_, as the ”deadly parallel” in the appended note will indicate. This is perhaps the most interesting thing about Varro's treatise: instructive and entertaining as it is to the farmer, in the large sense of the effect of literature on mankind, Virgil gave it wings--the useful cart horse became Pegasus.
As a consequence of the chorus of praise of the _Georgics_, there have been those, in all ages, who have sneered at Virgil's farming. The first such _advocatus diaboli_ was Seneca, who, writing to Lucilius (_Ep_. 86) from the farm house of Scipio Africa.n.u.s, fell foul of the advice (_Geo_, I, 216) to plant both beans and millet in the spring, saying that he had just seen at the end of June beans gathered and millet sowed on the same day: from which he generalized that Virgil disregarded the truth to turn a graceful verse, and sought rather to delight his reader than to instruct the husbandman. This kind of cheap criticism does not increase our respect for Nero's philosophic minister.[8] Whatever may have been Virgil's mistakes, every farmer of sentiment should thank G.o.d that one of the greatest poems in any language contains as much as it does of a sound tradition of the practical side of his art, and here is where Varro is ent.i.tled to the appreciation which is always due the schoolmaster of a genius.
NOTE ON THE OBLIGATION OF VIRGIL TO VARRO
At the beginning of the first _Georgic_ (1-5) Virgil lays out the scope of the poem as dealing with three subjects, agriculture, the care of live stock and the husbandry of bees. This was Varro's plan (R.R. I, I, 2, and I, 2 pa.s.sim) except that under the third head Varro included, with bees, all the other kinds of stock which were usually kept at a Roman steading. Varro a.s.serts that his was the first scientific cla.s.sification of the subject ever made. Virgil (G. I, 5-13) begins too with the invocation of the Sun and the Moon and certain rural deities, as did Varro (R.R. I, I, 4). The pa.s.sages should be compared for, as M. Gaston Boissier has pointed out, the difference in the point of view of the two men is here ill.u.s.trated by the fact that Varro appeals to purely Roman deities, while Virgil invokes the literary G.o.ds of Greece. Following the _Georgics_ through, one who has studied Varro will note other pa.s.sages for which a suggestion may be found in Varro, usually in facts, but some times in thought and even in words, viz: Before beginning his agricultural operations a farmer should study the character of the country (G. I, 50: R.R. I, 6), the prevailing winds and the climate (G. I, 51: R.R.
I, 2, 3), the farming practice of the neighbourhood (G. I, 52: R.R. I, 18, 7), ”this land is fit for corn, that for vines, and the other for trees,” (G. I, 54: R.R. I, 6, 5). He should practise fallow and rotation (G. I, 71: R.R. I, 44, 2), and compensate the land by planting legumes (G. I, 74: R.R. I, 23); he should irrigate his meadows in summer (G. I, 104: R.R. I, 31, 5), and drain off surface water in winter (G. I, 113: R.R. I, 36). Man has progressed from a primitive state, when he subsisted on nuts and berries, to the domestication of animals and to agriculture (G. I, 121-159: R.R. II, 1, 3). The thres.h.i.+ng floor must be protected from pests (G. I, 178: R.R. I, 51). Seed should be carefully selected (G. I, 197: R.R. 40, 2); the time for sowing grain is the autumn (G. I, 219: R.R. I, 34).
”Everlasting night” prevails in the Arctic regions (G. I, 247: R.R.
I, 2, 5); the importance to the farmer of the four seasons (G.I. 258; R.R. I, 27) and the influence of the Moon (G.I. 276: R.R. I, 37).
The several methods of propagating plants described (G. II, 9-34: R.R.
I, 39), but here Varro follows Theophrastus (H.P. II, 1); trees grow slowly from seed (G. II, 57; R.R. I, 41, 4); olives are propagated from truncheons (G. II, 63; R.R. I, 41, 6). ”The praise of Italy” (G.
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