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Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era

  • Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides

    Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides is Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the School of Humanities, Macquarie University, Sydney. She studied Classics in Greece (BA Honours) and the UK (MA, PhD), and took up further studies in ancient history in Australia (MPhil) during her first appointment there. A National Scholarships Foundation scholar, she has received research funding from the Australian Research Council and the Gerda Henkel Foundation: her research focuses on metaphors about leadership, political and intellectual, from the classical to the Hellenistic period, with often aberrations to later periods, especially early Christianity. She has published three monographs, the latest on the metaphor of inebriation in Plato (SUNY, in press), and numerous articles and chapters.
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Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome
This chapter is in the book Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome

Abstract

The chapter offers a new reading of the Bugonia in Georgics 4 guided by Vergil’s preoccupation with defending poetry over philosophy as the appropriate genre for debating civic virtue under Augustus. Most current interpretations contrast Aristaeus and Augustus as proponents of progress with Orpheus and Vergil as overemotional poets thriving on fruitless sorrow. Nonetheless, Aristaeus and Orpheus have similar profiles as poets and hierophants, especially considering the fusion of traditions regarding Aristaeus and Aristeas of Proconnesus, as documented by Cicero. Such poet-theologians preserved knowledge about the agricultural basis of civic virtue, instituted during the Golden Age, and conveyed it to later poets and philosophers. In negotiating progress in times of crisis, Cicero insists on the philosophical origins of civic virtue, drawing on Plato. Vergil, however, upholds the primacy of poetry and ritual, as evident in his depictions of Orpheus and Aristaeus in the Bugonia episode.

Abstract

The chapter offers a new reading of the Bugonia in Georgics 4 guided by Vergil’s preoccupation with defending poetry over philosophy as the appropriate genre for debating civic virtue under Augustus. Most current interpretations contrast Aristaeus and Augustus as proponents of progress with Orpheus and Vergil as overemotional poets thriving on fruitless sorrow. Nonetheless, Aristaeus and Orpheus have similar profiles as poets and hierophants, especially considering the fusion of traditions regarding Aristaeus and Aristeas of Proconnesus, as documented by Cicero. Such poet-theologians preserved knowledge about the agricultural basis of civic virtue, instituted during the Golden Age, and conveyed it to later poets and philosophers. In negotiating progress in times of crisis, Cicero insists on the philosophical origins of civic virtue, drawing on Plato. Vergil, however, upholds the primacy of poetry and ritual, as evident in his depictions of Orpheus and Aristaeus in the Bugonia episode.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents VII
  4. Abbreviations
  5. List of Figures XIII
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
  8. Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult 17
  9. Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song 35
  10. Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) 47
  11. Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa 71
  12. Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
  13. Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era 97
  14. Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps 119
  15. Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus 139
  16. Part III Performing Identity
  17. Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity 153
  18. Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia 169
  19. Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome 195
  20. Part IV Trauma and Memory
  21. Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid 213
  22. Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus 237
  23. Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia 271
  24. Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
  25. Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry 289
  26. Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy 307
  27. Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 323
  28. Part VI Places
  29. Treasuries, Identity, and Politics 337
  30. Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities 355
  31. Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae 385
  32. Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity 405
  33. List of Contributors 423
  34. Index Rerum
  35. Index Locorum
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111197456-006

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents VII
  4. Abbreviations
  5. List of Figures XIII
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
  8. Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult 17
  9. Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song 35
  10. Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) 47
  11. Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa 71
  12. Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
  13. Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era 97
  14. Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps 119
  15. Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus 139
  16. Part III Performing Identity
  17. Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity 153
  18. Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia 169
  19. Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome 195
  20. Part IV Trauma and Memory
  21. Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid 213
  22. Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus 237
  23. Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia 271
  24. Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
  25. Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry 289
  26. Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy 307
  27. Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 323
  28. Part VI Places
  29. Treasuries, Identity, and Politics 337
  30. Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities 355
  31. Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae 385
  32. Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity 405
  33. List of Contributors 423
  34. Index Rerum
  35. Index Locorum
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