| Date: 15 April 2011, 15:41
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Virgil, a Roman poet who lived over 2000 years ago, writes with the same passion and vigor as Shakespeare. However, Virgil's language is Latin and his subject is country life. Peter Fallon presents this new translation of Virgil's Georgics. He calls the work, "a hymn to peace and people."
The Georgics contains four small books. This entire edition - complete with introduction, translator's notes and line notes to help modern readers through the many references to Greek and Roman mythology - runs a mere hundred pages. Book I covers farming topics that range from crop rotation and when to fallow fields, to seed saving and developing a weather eye. Virgil suggests that "if the goddess of the dawn rises wanly from her consort's saffron couch, beware ..." This ancient advice sounds similar to weather guidance I learned as a teen on the New England Coast. "Red sun at dawning, sailors take warning." Book I ends with an eternal description of war and its effects on agriculture "For right and wrong are mixed up here, there's so much warring everywhere, evil has so many faces, and there is no regard for the labors of the plough....scythes and sickles have been hammered into weapons of war."
Virgil devotes Book II to the cultivation of grapes and olives while Book III discusses the breeding and care of domesticated animals. Virgil devotes Book IV to the keeping of bees. He encourages his reader to consider bees "a small society comprising systems worthy of our high esteem." He then describes the perfect site for a hive. It must be protected from winds, close to a tree-lined stream that provides shade and water. Near the hive "let all around be gay with ... spreads of fragrant thyme and masses of aromatic savory. Let there be gardens to amuse them with the scent of brightly colored flowers." Closely observing the habits of the hive, the author states that bees "mindful that winter follows ... set to work in summer and store what they acquire for the common good. Come night, the youngsters haul themselves back home, exhausted, leg-baskets loaded down with thyme."
Some would say that Virgil's verses, dense with out-of-date politics and mythology, is irrelevant to our modern lives. But I take a gardener's point of view here. In the garden, the presence of weeds does not mean the absence of flowers.
Georgics is a book to savor after a hard day's work in garden or field. When the air becomes still and the hammock beckons, open to find how your life matches that of an ancient peer. And heed his sage advice. "The farmer's chores come round in seasons and cycles, as the earth each year retraces its own tracks.... So cast no hungry eye on a big estate if you're inclined, but tend a small one."
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