cily and the trade routes had now brought on a
series of famines and consequent bread-riots. Year after year Octavian
failed in his attempts to lure away or to defeat this obnoxious rebel.
At best he could buy him off for a while, though he never knew at what
season of scarcity the purchase price might become prohibitive. The
choice of Vergil's subject coincided, therefore, with a need that all men
appreciated.

The _Georgics_, however, are not written in the spirit of a colonial
advertisement. In the youthful _Culex_ Vergil had dwelt somewhat too
emphatically upon the song-birds and the cool shade, and had drawn upon
himself the genial comment of Horace that Alfius did not find conditions
in the country quite as enchanting as pictured. This time the poet paints
no idealized landscape. Enticing though the picture is, Vergil insists on
the need of unceasing, ungrudging toil. He lists the weeds and blights,
the pests and the vermin against which the farmer must contend. Indeed
it is in the contemplation of a life of toil that he finds his honest
philosophy of life: the gospel of salvation through work. Hardships whet
the ingenuity of man; God himself for man's own good brought an end to
the age of golden indolence, shook the honey from the trees, and gave
vipers their venom. Man has been left alone to contend with an obstinate
nature, and in that struggle to discover his own worth. The _Georgics_
are far removed from pastoral allegory; Italy is no longer Arcadia, it is
just Italy in all its glory and all its cruelty.

Vergil's delight in nature is essentially Roman, though somewhat
more self-conscious than that of his fellows. There is little of the
sentimental rapture that the eighteenth century discovered for us. Vergil
is not likely to stand in postures before the awful solemnity of the
sea or the majesty of wide vistas from mountain tops. Italian hill-tops
afford views of numerous charming landscapes but no scenes of entrancing
grandeur or awe-inspiring desolation, and the sea, before the days of the
compass, was too suggestive of death and sorrow to invite consideration
of its lawless beauty. These aspects of nature had to be discovered by
later experiences in other lands. At first glance Vergil seems to care
most for the obvious gifts of Italy's generous amenities, the physical
pleasure in the free out-of-doors, the form and color of landscapes,
the wholesome life. As one reads on, however, one becomes aware of an