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Virgil

70-19 BCE

[70-19 BCE] Virgil, The Georgics and The Æneids [offsite], in the Works of Virgil (ebook history).

Virgil assures us of the passion of love in all animals in his third Georgic concluding—

And thus all earthly creatures, brutes and men,
Cattle and scaly tribes and painted fowl,
To fiery madness rush; love burns in all.
(Virgil, Georgic III, Lines 284-286 [offsite ebook])

Virgil ascribes other "emotions” as well to animals

not, I believe,
That any genius heaven-born is theirs,
or deeper insight in the fate of things;
But as the season's temper and the course
Of airy fluids change, as Jupiter,
Charged with the humid south, what late was thin
Condenses, and the dense attenuates,
Their breasts to new emotions are alive,
To other images, than when the rack
A breeze was driving. Hence the little birds
In concert warble, cattle frisking play.
(Virgil, Georgic I, Lines 476-486 [offsite ebook])

particularly "cattle and feathered tribes," who at times are "weary," at other times "rejoicing"…

'Twas the night, and o'er the earth in gentle sleep
Lay weary creatures; woods and turbid seas
Were hush'd; it was the hour when stars revolve
Their middle course, and every field is still;
Cattle and feather'd tribes, that wing the lake
Or haunt the bosky dell, in silence all
Were couch'd to rest, forgetting toil and care.
(Virgil, Æneid IV, Lines 596-602 [offsite ebook]

Rejoicing to revisit after rain
Their nests and precious young
(Virgil, Georgic I, Lines 475-476 [offsite ebook])

Then sea-birds and the piscatory fowl
In sweet Cayster's lake by Asian meads
In rival sport are splashing them with dews,
Now dipping heads, now running in the tide,
Laving in unrestraint and wanton joy:
The crow for rain importunately cries
(Virgil, Georgic I, Lines 444-449 [offsite ebook])

Observe the joyful gathering of those birds,
Twelve cygnets, whom but late a swooping eagle
Scatter'd in air, now hovering in a line,
To flight preparing or to choose their ground:
As in a flock they muster or return,
And flap their wings and utter notes of glee.
(Virgil, Æneid I, Lines 452-457 [offsite ebook]

"[Virgil] exalts the character of bees, by ascribing to them the feelings, passions, and impulses of men; and represents them as living in a sort of republic, with laws and political regulations." (Charles Kennedy, Works of Virgil, Georgic IV, "The Argument" [offsite])

A picture wonderful, an insect race,
Their customs, manners, nations I describe.
(Virgil, Georgic IV, Lines 4-5 [offsite ebook])

"Virgil's sympathy for the animals world is evident throughout his [poems]… Liebeschuetz, on Virgil's Georgics suggests that "he seems to be in the habit of imagining himself in the place of event the smallest animals. He seems to have felt for the tiny mouse, establishing its residence and granaries—

oft the field-mouse underground
A homestead hath contrived, a granary built;
(Virgil, Georgic I, Lines 220-221 [offsite ebook])

concerned about a poverty-stricken ant in old age;

Or emmet provident for helpless age.
Virgil, Georgic I, Lines 226 [offsite ebook])

he felt glad with the ravens revisiting their small offspring and sweet nests after the rain,

Rejoicing to revisit after rain
Their nests and precious young
(Virgil, Georgic I, Lines 475-476 [offsite ebook])

and sorry for the birds who lost their nests when the forest was felled,

Or that from whence an angry husbandman
Hath carted off the forest, fell'd the wood
That many a year stood idle, rooted up
An ancient haunt of birds; they to mid air
Their nest forsaking flee; of that rude waste
(Virgil, Georgic II, Lines 230-234 [offsite ebook])

and for the nightingale who had lost her young" (W. Liebeschuetz, Greece & Rome, "Beast and Man in Virgil's Georgics" [offsite-preview only])

As oft when darkling under aspen spray
Sad Philomel her missing young bewails,
Whom spying in the nest some cruel swain
Hath torn unfledg'd away; she all night long
Sit mourning on a bough, and fills the glade
With endless repetition of her woe.
(Virgil, Georgic IV, Lines 583-589)

As Kennedy concludes, in his Life of Virgil [offsite ebook], so shall we here. Virgil "describes the sacrifices and other religious solemnities of his country"with accuracy. His views on "the heathen worship of the day" are evident from the following passage.

A sacrifice; a shining bull to Jove
Th' intended offering stood: it happ'd, in view
A bushy knoll there was, with cornel thick
And myrtle, shooting into spearlike rods;
Up to the grove I went, for leafy shade
To wreath my altars, and the saplings green
Essay'd to pluck, when, monstrous to relate,
From the first plant, whose fibres from the root
I sever, trickles forth a gory stream
Spotting with stain the ground; a chilly horror
Curdled my blood, a trembling shook my frame;
Yet venturing again, a second twig
I pluck'd the latent causes to explore;
Again black drops come issuing from the rind:
Perplext with doubt, the Woodnymps I besought,
And Mars, protector of the Getan fields,
These omens to avert or happier send:
But when with stronger efforts a third shoot
Bending my knees against the sand I pull,
How will it task belief? A piteous groan
And words from earth ascending reach'd mine ear:
Æneas, wherefore rend me? Spare, oh spare
The buried, nor pollute thy pious hands.
To thee no alien, Trojan-born am I;
Not from a senseless tree this blood distils:
Fly from a cruel land, a greed shore!
(Virgil, Æneid III, Lines 29-51 [offsite ebook])

Transcriber's Notes

Virgil, The Georgics and The Æneids, in The Works of Virgil, translated by Charles Kennedy (London, 1891; Digitized by Google, 2006)

W. Liebeschuetz, "Beast and Man in the Third Book of Virgil's 'Georgics'," Greece & Rome, 2nd Ser. 12, no. 1 (Apr. 1965), 64-77.

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