226 The tactful method of Vergil 



That this long oration attributed by Dion to Maecenas is in great 

 part made up from details of the policy actually followed by the 

 Emperor, is I believe generally admitted. But I am not aware that 

 the universal income-tax suggested was imposed. The policy of en- 

 couraging agriculture certainly formed part of the imperial scheme, 

 and the function of the Georgics was to bring the power of literature 

 to bear in support of the movement. The poet could hardly help re- 

 ferring in some way to the crying need of a great agricultural revival. 

 He did it with consummate skill. He did not begin by enlarging on the 

 calamities of the recent past, and then proceed to offerhis remedies. Such 

 a method would at once have aroused suspicion and ill-feeling. No, he 

 waited till he was able to glide easily into a noble passage in which he 

 speaks of the civil wars as a sort of doom sanctioned by the heavenly 

 powers. No party could take offence at this way of putting it. Then he 

 cries aloud to the Roman gods, not to prevent the man of the hour (hunc 

 iuvenem) from coming to the relief of a ruined generation. The needs 

 of the moment are such that we cannot do without him. The world is 

 full of wickedness and wars : ' the plough is not respected as it should 

 be ; the tillers of the soil have been drafted away, and the land is 

 gone to weeds; the crooked sickles are being forged into straight 

 swords.' The passage comes at the end of the first book, following a 

 series of precepts delivered coolly and calmly as though in a social 

 atmosphere of perfect peace. The tone in which the words recall the 

 reader to present realities, and subtly hint at the obvious duty of 

 supporting the one possible restorer of Roman greatness, is an unsur- 

 passed feat of literary art. It is followed up at the end of the second 

 book in another famous passage, in which he preaches with equal 

 delicacy the doctrine that agricultural revival is the one sure road not 

 only to personal happiness but to the true greatness of the Roman 

 people. 



That this revival was bound up with the return to a system of 

 farming on a smaller scale, implying more direct personal attention 

 on the landlord's part, is obvious. But the poet goes further. His 

 model farmer is to be convinced of the necessity and benefit of personal 

 labour, and so to put his own hand to the plough. The glorification 

 of unyielding toil 1 as the true secret of success was (and is) a congenial 

 topic to preachers of the gospel of ' back to the land.' It may well be 

 that the thoughtful Vergil had misgivings as to the fruitfulness of his 

 doctrine. A cynical critic might hint that it was easy enough for one 

 man to urge others to work. But a man like Maecenas would smile 

 at such remarks. To set other people to do what he would never 

 dream of doing himself was to him the most natural thing in the world. 



1 This is admirably dealt with in Sellar's Virgil, -and need not be reproduced here. 





