While the title ‘Georgica’ reminds us that the form of the poem, like the form of the ‘Bucolica’ and the ‘Aeneis,’ was derived from the Greeks, the subject of which it treats was one of peculiarly national interest. As the Aeneid may be said to be inspired by the idea of Rome and her destiny, and as the practical purpose of that poem was to confirm the faith of the Romans in their Empire and in the ruler in whom that Empire was vested, so the Georgics may be said to be inspired by the idea of Italy; and the true aim of the poem was to revive and extend the love of the land, and to restore the fading ideal of a life of virtue and happiness, passed in the labours of a country life. But while much of the materials and of the workmanship of the Aeneid is originally due to Greek invention, the general substance of the Georgics and the most essentially poetical passages are of native origin.
The chief modes of rural industry treated in the various books are those which flourished in Italy,—the tillage of the land for various crops, the cultivation of the vine and the olive, the breeding and rearing of cattle, sheep, and horses, and the tending of bees. It is noticed by Servius that the agricultural precepts of the poem apply only to Italy and not to other lands: ‘Sane agriculturae huius praecepta non ad omnes pertinent terras, sed ad solum situm Italiae.’ The frequent references to the products of other lands serve to suggest by contrast the superiority of Italy in those which are the special subject of the poem and which are most essential to human well-being. Cato also is represented by Cicero[282] as resting the charm of a country life in the contemplation of the same operations of Nature as those indicated in the opening lines of the Georgics:—
Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram
Vertere, Maecenas, ulmisque adiungere vites
Conveniat[283],—
The number of Roman writers who treated in prose of this subject, both before and after Virgil, testifies further to the strong national interest attaching to it. Among these writers, Varro, the immediate predecessor of Virgil, associates the subject directly with the pride which the Romans felt in their country. He introduces the speakers in his Dialogue as holding their conversation in the Temple of Tellus, and examining a map or painting of Italy on the wall. One of the speakers addresses the others in these words, ‘You who have travelled over many lands, have you ever seen any more richly cultivated than Italy? I, indeed, have never seen any so richly cultivated.’ He especially characterises the excellence of its corn-crops, its vines, olives, and fruit-trees: ‘What spelt shall I compare to the Campanian? what wheat to the Apulian? what wine to the Falernian? what oil to that of Venafrum? is not Italy planted with trees, so that the whole of it seems an orchard[284]?’ Other authors, Virgil himself among them[285], and Columella in the Introduction to his treatise[286], testify to the pride which the Italians took in their breed of horses and herds of cattle. And though the Italian bees and their product were not so famous in poetry as the bees of Hymettus and ‘the honey of Hybla,’ yet Horace speaks of the country near Tarentum as one ‘where the honey yields not to the honey of Hymettus;’ and in another Ode, in which he contrasts his own moderate estate with the resources of richer men, he mentions Calabrian honey along with the wine of Formiae and the fleeces of Gallic pastures among the chief sources of wealth:—
Quanquam nec Calabrae mella ferunt apes
Nec Laestrygonia Bacchus in amphora
Languescit mihi, nec pinguia Gallicis
Crescunt vellera pascuis[287].