222 The Georgics 



the right way. When he comes to speak of the peace and plenty, the 

 security and joys, of country life, he grows enthusiastic (II 458-74). 

 But among the advantages he does not omit to reckon the freedom 

 from the extravagance and garish display of city life, the freedom to 

 drowse under trees, the enjoyment of rural sights and sounds, in short 

 the freedom to take your ease with no lack of elbow-room (latis otia 

 fundis). This hardly portrays the life of the working farmer, to whom 

 throughout the poem he is ever preaching the gospel of toil and watch- 

 fulness. True, he adds ' there you find forest-lands (saltus) with coverts 

 for wild beasts, and a population inured to toil and used to scanty 

 diet/ among whom yet linger survivals of the piety and righteousness 

 of old. It is fair to ask, who are these and what place do they fill in 

 the poet's picture? Surely they are not the men who have fled from 

 the vain follies of the city: for they are genuine rustics. Surely not 

 gang-slaves, driven out to labour in the fields and back again to be fed 

 and locked up, like oxen or asses. To the urban slave transference to 

 such a life was a dreaded punishment. Are they free small-scale farmers? 

 No doubt there were still many of that class remaining in the upland 

 parts of Italy. But were they men of leisure, able to take their ease at 

 will on broad estates? I cannot think of them in such a character, 

 unless I assume them to own farms of comfortable size (of course not 

 latifundid) and to employ some labour of slaves or hirelings. And there 

 is nothing in the context to justify such an assumption. Lastly, are 

 they poor peasants, holding small plots of land and eking out a meagre 

 subsistence by occasional wage-earning labour? Such persons seem to 

 have existed, at least in certain parts of the country: but we know that 

 some at least of this labour hired for the job was performed 1 by bands 

 of non-resident labourers roaming in search of such employment. No, 

 peasants of the 'crofter' type do not fit in with this picture of a rural 

 life passed in plenty and peaceful ease. I am therefore driven to con- 

 clude that the poet was merely idealizing country life in general terms 

 without troubling himself to exercise a rigid consistency in the com- 

 bination of details. He has had many followers among poets and 

 painters, naturally : but the claim of the Georgics to rank as a didactic 

 treatise is exceptionally strong, owing to the citations of Columella 

 and Pliny. If then the poem seems in any respect to pass lightly over 

 questions of importance in the consideration of farming conditions, we 

 are tempted rather to seek for a motive than to impute neglect. 



But before proceeding further it is well to inquire in what sense 

 the Georgics can be called didactic. What is the essential teaching of 

 the poem, and to whom is that teaching addressed ? In outward form 

 it professes to instruct the bewildered farmers, suffering at the time 



1 Sueton Vespas i. 



