ure
Ever molded by the lips of man.

Tennyson, _To Vergil_.

Vergil, as the author of the _Bucolics_ and the _Aeneid_, is already
known to the student. The _Georgics_ were composed after the former and
before the latter, since they were begun in 36 B.C. and finished in 29
B.C. Hesiod's _Works and Days_ supplied a partial model, and the
influence of Lucretius was powerful. The poet shows an intense
enthusiasm for his subject, which Mr. Merivale asserts to be the
Glorification of Labor. The First Book treats of the tillage of the
ground, the Second of the culture of trees and of the vine, the Third of
the care of the animals bred by the farmer, and the Fourth and last of
bee-keeping. Elegant episodes diversify the poem, the longest of which
we extract. The dedication of the _Georgics_ is to Maecenas. Their
extent is about 2200 lines.

For Reference: Conington's _Vergil_, Fifth Edition, revised by
Haverfield, George Bell and Sons, London, 1898, Vol. I, pp. 135-165, and
notes upon _Georgics_, 4. 315-558.

Metre: Dactylic Hexameter, B. 368; A. & G. 615.

_1._ Servius twice tells us (_Eclogues_ 10. 1 and _Georgics_ 4. 1) that
the poet Cornelius Gallus was Vergil's friend, and that the latter half
of the fourth _Georgic_ was originally written in his praise, but that
this was suppressed at the command of Augustus and the tale of Aristaeus
substituted. Gallus, we remember, appears in the sixth and tenth
_Eclogues_. The story of his disgrace by the emperor and his suicide is
a familiar one.

Aristaeus, having lost his bees 'by disease and hunger,' is commanded by
the nymph Cyrene, his mother, to obtain from the sea-god Proteus the
reason for this manifestation of divine displeasure. He learns that it
is because Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus, has perished as a result of
his amorous pursuit; and the story of Orpheus' descent to the lower
world to recover her is narrated to him. Then Cyrene instructs him how
to secure a new swarm. 1. hanc...artem: this method of obtaining new
swarms of bees by slaying cattle and allowing bees to form in their
decaying bodies. 3. Peneia Tempo: Tempe is a beautiful valley in
Thessaly through which the river Peneus flows. 5. extremi: i.e. the
rising river. amnis: the Peneus. 7. gurgitis: flood. 9. Thymbraeus:
Thymbra was a city near Troy where there was a temple of Apollo. 10.
fatis: by the fates, B. 189, 2; A. & G. 375. nostri: objective genitive,
11. caelum sperare: Ar