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REBECCA ARMSTRONG

VERGIL'S GREEN
THOUGHTS
Plants, Humans,
&the Divine
VERGIL'S GREEN THOUGHTS
Vergil's Green
Thoughts
Plants, Humans, and the Divine

REBECCA ARMSTRONG

OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
 OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS

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First Edition published in 2019

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 Preface

The production of an academic tome is often beset by trials- foreseeable and

unforeseeable-and prone to delay. This book has been particularly long in the
germination; its first impulse lay in my faint undergraduate intuition back in
the mid-1990s that there was more to Vergilian flora than most critics seemed
to acknowledge. Since then, as other projects of varied natures have inter-
vened, I have seen a garden of 'green' criticism- both Vergilian and more
broadly Classical-grow up around me, which I have viewed with the inevit-
able mixture of relief that I am not alone, and despair at finding that my niche
is less, well, niche. I can only hope that what I have produced, while fitting into
a fairly recently established trend, nevertheless still has something new
to offer.
I have incurred many debts in the writing of this book. The oldest, which
pre-dates the actual writing but is nevertheless the greatest, is to the late Oliver
Lyne, my undergraduate tutor, mentor, and friend. He was a brilliant and
sensitive reader of Vergil, yet when it came to the pa1ticular plants and trees
named by the poet he often seemed strangely silent, not to say shifty when
pressed. I took it upon myself, although no botanical expert then, and still far
from one now, to educate him a little, presenting him with some badly drawn
pictures of tamarisks and goose-grass. He took characteristic delight in the
implied rebuke from one so green (in various senses), and encouraged me then
to start thinking more deeply about the subject.
I would also like to offer thanks for academic or pastoral support, and in
some cases both, to Judith Armstrong, Bob Cowan, Stephen Harrison, Greg-
ory Hutchinson, Matthew Robinson, and Paul Tracey. St Hilda's College and
the Classics Department at Oxford have both offered me a supportive envir-
onment, and enduring thanks are owed to my colleagues and good friends
Katherine Clarke and Emily Kearns, without whom both the job and life in
general would be much harder and far less fun. I would also like to thank
Teresa Morgan and Sarah Norman for helping me find a practical solution
which made the final completion of this book possible. My thanks too for
helpful suggestions and encouragement at the later stages to OUP's anonym-
ous reviewer, to the publisher's Georgie Leighton and Charlotte Loveridge for
their cheerful responses and clear advice, and to Christine Ranft and Elakkia
I
Bharathi for invaluable assistance in the final polishing.
This book is dedicated to my children, fellow lovers of the countryside.
 Contents

Introduction 1
0.1 Ancient Botany and Ways of Seeing Plants 2
0.1.l Definitions of Nature 6
0.2 Humans and Plants: From Anthropocentrism to Ecocriticism 8
0.2.1 Plants and an Anthropocentric Worldview 8
0.2.2 Ancient Environmentalism? 13
0.2.3 Ecocriticism and Ancient Literature 15
0.3 Gods and Plants 18
0.3.1 Approaches to numen 18
0.3.2 Plants and Everyday Religion 21
0.3.3 Forms of Association: Nymphs and Trees 25
0.4 Plants as Symbol and Metaphor 30
0.4.1 Plants, People, and Analogy 31
0.4.2 Plants and Politics 35
0.5 Poetic Plants 38
0.5 .1 Poetic Plants Before and Beside Vergil 38
0.5.2 Plants and Poetics in Vergil (a glimpse of a road not
much taken) 41

PART I. NUMEN
1. Numinous Habitats 53
1.1 Forests and Woodland Areas (silua, saltus, nemus, lucus) 53
1.1.1 Backgrounds 53
1.1 .2 Habitarunt di quoque siluas: Gods and Woods in the Eclogues 59
1.1.3 Present and Absent numen in the Woods of the Georgics 62
1.1.4 Religio dira loci: the Aeneias Woodland nurnen 70
1.1.4.1 Underworld Woods: numen and Confusion 70
1.1 .4.2 Echoes of the Underworld: Aeaea, Tiber, Albunea,
Amsanctus 79
1.1.4.3 Woodland numen and the City 85
l.2 Numen and Plants in Cultivated Land: Fields, Meadows,
Plantations, and Gardens (ager, aruus, campus, nouale/-is,
pratum, rus, seges, arbusta, hortus) 92
1.2.1 Expected and Unexpected Agricultural Divinity in the
Eclogues and Aeneid 95
1.2.2 Ceres, Bacchus, Corn, and Vines in the Georgics 98
1.2.3 Plants and Divine Metonymy 107
viii Contents

2. Gods' Special Species ll5

2.1 Oak (aesculus, quercus, robur, and ilex) 115
2.1.l The Oak Transformed: Votive Tree and Trophy 128
2.2 Poplar (populus) 131
2.3 Pine (pinus, picea) 134
2.4 Olive and Wild Olive (oliua, oleaster) 141
2.5 Laurel/Bay (laurus) 146
2.6 Myrtle (myrtus) 152
2.7 Cypress (cupressus, cyparissus) 155
2.8 Ivy (hedera) 157
2.9 The Borderline Divine: Magical and Medicinal Plants 159

PART II. HOMO

3. Tame Plants 173
3.1 Symbiosis 174
3.1.1 Harmonious Work in the Eclogues 177
3.1.2 The locus amoenus and Other Harmonious Habitats 181
3.l .3 Grain and Other Field Crops: Shared Endeavour and
Shared Suffering 188
3.1.4 Useful Trees 196
3.1.4.1 Useful Trees and the Exotic 203
3.1.5 Productivity at a Price: the Vine 207
3.2 Conflict 210
3.2.1 Too Much of a Good Thing? Farming as Restraint of Nature 210
3.2.2 Farming as Violence 213
3.2.2.1 Vines and Violence 216
3.2.2.2 Grafting: Art or Abuse? 220
3.2.2.3 Cultivation and Violence: Metaphor in Reverse 229
4. Wild Plants 233
4.1 Defining the Wild 233
4.1.1 Flowers: Wild yet Tame, Tame yet Wild 240
4.1.1.1 Flowers and Bees 242
4.1.1.2 Flowers and People: Beauty, Sex, and Death 247
4.1.2 Wildness and Spontaneous Production in Trees 252
4.1.3 Degeneration and Degeneracy 260
 Contents ix

4.2 Weeds 263

4.2.1 Weeds and Further Questions of Definition 263
4.2.2 Characterizing Weeds 265
4.2.3 Intermediate Weeds 275
4.2.4 Crossing (and Making) Boundaries with Brambles 278
4.2.5 Grass: From Harmony to Danger 285
4.3 Fighting and Felling: a Coda 288
Conclusions 293

Works Cited 299

Index of Plants Discussed 319
Index of Passages Discussed 322
General Index 327
 Introduction

In recent years, interest in the intersection of literature and the natural world
has grown exponentially. The flush of new nature writing frequently weaves
literary histories together with natural history and autobiography, 1 and eco-
criticism has spread from literary criticism of English into a range of other
disciplines including Classics,2 alongside a burgeoning interest in environ-
mental historical approaches to the ancient world.3 So if I may still cause my
students' eyes to glaze over when expatiating on that willow tree in line 56,
there feels far less need than there once might have been to justify the inherent
interest of Vergil's plants. 4
Although plants may at a casual glance seem mere background details, or to
achieve only fleeting prominence, in fact they frequently evoke, illustrate, and
intersect with many of the great themes of Vergilian poet1y and of literature
more widely: religion, science, politics, ethics, geography, ethnography, as well
as aesthetics and poetics. A vegetative thread-or tendril-once followed can
lead to a myriad different thoughts, associations, and interpretations. Thus,
what may at first seem a specialized and circumscribed field of study opens out
into a vast acreage. In order to attempt some clarity-and retain some degree of
sanity-therefore, I have limited the scope of this particular book. My primary
interest lies in the contrast and intersection of rational and non-rational

1
E.g. Macfarlane (2003); (2007); Stafford (2016).
2
For the emergence of ecocriticism, Buell (2005) 1-28. For ecocriticism and the ancient
world, Schliephake (ed.) (2016). See Introd. 0.2.3.
3
Concerted interest in the ancient Mediterranean environment was perhaps kick-started by
Glacken (1967); to this can be added (e.g.) Hughes (1994); Horden and Purcell (2000); Grove and
Rackham (2001); Harris (ed.) (2005); Thommen (2012); Mdnemey and Sluiter (eds) (2016). The
study oflandscape is related to this movement: e.g. Osborne (1987); Spencer (2011); Gilhuly and
Worman (2014), and has a long tradition of cross-fertilization with literary studies: e.g. Segal
(1969); Leach (1974), (1988) .
4
They have received handbook treatment several times: e.g. Paulet (1824), Bubani (1869-70),
Paglia (1877-8), Sargeatu1t (1920), Abbe (1965) (the Georgics alone) and also Maggiulli (1995),
combining the handbook aspect with interpretative material. Numerous articles attempt iden-
tification of particular species in Vergil. Others move beyond taxonomy to consider the broader
cultural or poetic significance of particular plants, trees, or groups of species, but (to my
knowledge) the only other discursive treatment of a full range of Vergilian plants from the
past few decades is that of Maggiulli.
 Vergil's Green Thoughts

reactions to plants: the emotional and superstitious associations they evoke,

together with scientific and pragmatic understandings of their properties. 5 This
has led to the bipartite division of this book into the first chapters (under the
general heading of Numen) on the religious and supernatural connotations and
complications of Vergil's plants, and the concluding chapters (under the
general heading of Homo) which turn to the human desire to categorize and
interact with plants on the basis of their real or perceived usefulness for
mankind. Within these broader divisions, each chapter is further sub-divided
to allow scope for close readings of particular sections and related passages, as
well as the tracing of these broader thematic connections, contrasts, and
contradictions. There is, in a sense, no overarching agenda to this study beyond
the acknowledgement and celebration of the multiple facets and possibilities of
V ergilian plants. There are fascinating patterns to be traced and parallels to be
drawn, manifestations of one particular attitude to be set against intimations of
another, but there is no grand 'Key to all Vergilian Flora'. A poet so famously
complex and hard to pin down in other aspects of his work remains true to type
in this arena too.
For all my attempts to embrace multiple nuance and suggest a range of
interpretations, some important aspects of Vergil's plants-perhaps in particu-
lar the political and metapoetical-will be given less attention than they might
have been, lest an already tangled briar patch become altogether impenetrable.
This Introduction aims to mediate a little between what will be said and what
will have to remain unsaid: it will offer some background to the scientific and
religious approaches with which the rest of the book is concerned; and it will
also outline further symbolic, metaphorical, and metapoetical ways of seeing
plants which are of great importance to an understanding of attitudes to plants
in Vergil's poetry and in ancient culture more broadly, but which are more
often adumbrated than expanded in this particular book.

0.1. ANCIENT BOT ANY AND WAYS

OF SEEING PLANTS

To trace the origins of ancient botany involves relaxing the modern categor-
ization of the subject among the life sciences, which does not reflect ancient

5
I repeatedly use words such as 'scientific' or 'rational' to connote certain systematized ways
of thinking about plants and, often, to offer a contrast with more ritually or emotionally
motivated religious or superstitious outlooks. A straightforward equation is neitl1er intended
nor possible between what is meant by 'science' and 'rationality' in ancient and modern contexts,
so I trust the reader will accept these terms as useful approximations and forms of short-hand,
rather than any strong claim to the direct comparability of ancient and modern scientific
outlooks and metl1ods.
 Introduction 3

ways of thinking-even systematic thinking-about plants and trees. 6 Greek

and Roman views of both the wild and cultivated plant world blurred what we
now see as boundaries between science, herbal lore, folklore, myth, and
religion. 7 Evidence of Greek and Roman understanding of plants is often
found in texts which deal directly or indirectly with agriculture, medicine,
and the various uses of timber. They focus on how different plants may help or
harm mankind, rather than attempting to catalogue and categorize in a neutral
way: 'lists of beneficial and harmful plants and extracts are as old as civiliza-
tion'.8 Much of this knowledge was both derived from and echoed in unwrit-
ten sources: 9 the lore and experience of herbalists, root-cutters, 10 and, later, the
plant collectors of empire. 11 The influence of the poets, often regarded uncrit-
ically as sources of botanical fact, was also strong from Homer through to
Vergil himself. 12 Indeed, in the case of the learned Hellenistic works, there
appears to have been particular cross-fertilization between scientific and
poetic sources. 13
With the development of rational thinking about the world spear-headed by
the pre-Socratic philosophers, the way was paved both for theorizing about the
place of plants within a universal system and for placing close observation of
plants within such overarching theories. For example, Anaxagoras, Empedo-
cles, and Democritus all appear to have reflected on plants within their wider
philosophies. 14 Menestor of Sybaris, a fifth-century Pythagorean, was held to

6
Hardy and Totelin (2016) offer an accessible and enjoyable introduction to ancient botany.
See also (e.g.) Pease (1952); Morton (1981) 19-81 ; Stannard (1999); Amigues (2002).
7
Scarborough's OCD entry on botany is sanguine: '(m]oderns need not untangle this medley
of beliefs about botany: the ancient mind did not wall magic away from pure philosophy, any
more than there were strict divisions between botany and herbal lore'.
8
Scarborough (1978) 357.
9
Even in the first century AD, following several centuries of botanically engaged literature,
Dioscorides underlines the need to draw information from sources beyond written treatises
(Materia Medica Pref. 1).
10
Root-cutters are mentioned as sources by Theophrastus, who includes elements of the
superstition and ritual in their collection and use of plants, both with and without overt
scepticism: he may bracket such information as reported, 'they say that .. .' (e.g. HP 9.8.4-8),
but is also ready to mine facts even from apparently unbelievable sources: 'fabulous tales are not
made up without reason', HP 9.18.2. On Theophrastus and the rhizotomoi, Lloyd (1983) 119-49;
Irwin (2006); for his relationship with folklore more broadly, Scarborough (1991), esp. 146-51.

I
11
Hardy and Totelin (2016) 33-62.
12
Hardy and Totelin (2016) 10-11. Musaeus and Hesiod are cited by Theophrastus at HP
9.19.2, e.g. Homer's moly (Od. 10.302-6) was one of the ancient world's most famous plants,
without even having with certainty existed. Theophrastus compares a plant called All-heal
(1rav6.,mr,) with moly (HP 9.15.7), which cannot be identical with it since it is not, as Homer
says of moly, difficult to dig up. Stannard (1962); Amigues (2002) 429-52.
13
For Theocritus and Theophrastus, Lindsell (1937); on Nicander's sources, Knoefel and
Covi (1991); Overduin (2014) 7-8. We might place Sophocles' lost Rhizotomoi in a related
category, given its apparent use of lore on noxious plants possibly drawn from root-cutters:
Scarborough (I 991) 144.
14
E.g. Anaxagoras argued that the origins of plant life-as of animal life-were in the 'seeds of
all things' contained in the air (Theophr. HP 3.1.4); Empedocles' views on egg-laying trees are
4 Vergil's Green Thoughts

be the author of the first Greek works on inductive botany, 15 and is

cited occasionally by Theophrastus, from whom we glean that Menestor
apparently considered factors such as plants' habitat and climate. 16 Aristotle
may have written a treatise specifically on plants, 17 and in any case frequently
mentioned them in his biological works. 18 Meanwhile, advances in medical
thinking- themselves influenced by philosophical theories-also entailed fur-
ther development in the understanding of plant life, as seen in the Hippocratic
writings.19 Diodes of Carystus, a physician, and perhaps a contemporary of
Aristotle, wrote on many subjects including botany, and his work may
have been a major source for the ninth book of Theophrastus' Historia
Plantarum. 20
The importance of these (and doubtless many other) thinkers and practi-
tioners notwithstanding, Theophrastus' appears to have been the most com-
prehensive treatment of plants in Greece. 21 A counterpart to Aristotle's work
on animals, Theophrastus' botanical studies offered a similarly systematic
focus on the identification of the parts and properties of plants (Historia
Plantarum), as well as their physiology, propagation, and cultivation (De
Causis Plantarum). Theophrastus' own observations appear to have contrib-
uted to his studies, and he may perhaps have used his garden in the Lyceum
for research purposes.22 At any rate, he insists that the study of such a varied
subject as plants necessarily rests on attention to the particular and he gives
sense-perception priority over the application of pure reason (e.g. HP 1.1.1;
1.2.3- 4; CP 2.4.8). His combination of a range of different aspects of plants-
their appearance, their favoured habitats, variations within related types, their
uses and properties, the methods of their cultivation by man, and their own
natural propagation--marries a thorough, scientific approach with disarming
flashes of wonder, and even bafflement, as when he admits the incompleteness
of his understanding of the pharmacological properties of plants, which he
vaguely terms their 'power', ovvaµ,ic.; (HP 9.19.4). His attempts to delineate and

related by Aristotle (Gen an. 73la5); Democritus' ideas are discussed by Theophrastus at (e.g.)
CP 1.8.2, 2.11.7-9, 6.6.1.
15 16
Iambi. VP 267. E.g. HP 1.2.3; CP 1.21.6; 1.22.1-7. See Viano (1992).
17 18
Senn (1929); Regenbogen (1937); Drossaart Lulofs (1957). Wi:ihrle (1997).
19 20
Stannard (1961); Lloyd (1983) 119-49. Scarborough (1978) .
21
Some do not like to see Aristotle relinquish the crown: 'the fact that Theophrastus' two
great works ... have survived has led to the popular idea that Theophrastus was the father of
scientific botany-a title which should in all justice be attributed rather to his master Aristotle',
Forster (1936) 97.
22
Evidence of his ownership of a garden appears in Diogenes Laertius' account of Theo-
phrastus' will (5.2.52), although it is there referred to as a place for the study of literature and
philosophy rather than as a source of scientific knowledge in its own right. The claim that
Theophrastus' was the first botanical garden may originate from a creative reading of this
passage put together with the emphasis on observation in his written work. For a sceptical
assessment, see McDiarmid (1976).
 Introduction 5

categorize are always qualified by his acknowledgement that plants are so

varied that it is hard to generalize even about broad categories, let alone about
more intricate details (HP 1.3.4). Subsequent generations regarded Theo-
phrastus as the great botanical authority, 23 but his combination of attempts
to systematize understanding with an acknowledgement of the partial nature
of that understanding, and even a desire to preserve much of the wonder and
mystery of the plant world, seems to have been subtly influential too.
After Theophrastus, the field of botany became more restricted again to the
practical, with plants generally assessed from the perspectives of pharmacol-
ogy, agriculture, astrology, and magic. Nevertheless, the range of species under
study was increased both in Theophrastus' own time and beyond by the
discovery of new plants in the wake of Alexander's expeditions to the East,
and we have evidence in particular of the influx of various Indian spices used
in both cooking and medicine. 24 Herbals began to emerge, the first probably to
be attributed to Crateuas around the end of the second century BC, although
these are criticized by Pliny as of limited use (HN 25.8) not least because
copyists often brought inaccuracies into the illustrations. 25
Most of the developments in botany mentioned so far are from Greek
sources, but for the Romans of Vergil's time study of these (or at least many
of these) could be combined with Roman sources, in pa1ticular the agricultural
texts. The treatises of Cato and Varro offered a recent, practical, and more
Italian-focused approach regarding cultivated plant species in particular.
Botanical interest in its purest form is naturally only tangential to these
works, but they rehearse the acts or attempts of categorization which both
shape and reflect man's relationship with the vegetative environment. Their
impetus may be more practical than Theophrastus', 26 but these texts, like his,
underline the importance of environmental factors such as climate, soil types,
or the orientation of the land to the flourishing of plants, and also display an

23
Pavord (2005) 21 -43 outlines Theophrastus' importance in the development of botanical
taxonomies.
24
Recorders of such finds include Iollas of Bithynia, Andreas, Heraclides of Tarentum,
Crateuas, and Asclepiades ofBithynia. Their texts are preserved only in quotations by Dioscor-
ides, Pliny, and Galen.
25
On ancient herbals, Singer (1927) .
26
Varro's Stolo offers barbed judgement on Theophrastus' use to the farmer: isti .. . libri non
tam idonei iis qui agrum co/ere uolunt, quam qui scholas philosophorum ('those books are not so
well-suited to those who want to tend the field as to those who want to attend the philosophers'
schools', RR 1.5.2). He softens this immediately, however, with the concession that there are
nevertheless many useful things to be learned from Theophrastus. Varro's characterization of
agriculture as both an art (ars) and a science (scientia) (RR 1.3) may primarily be prompted by
the emphasis of other agricultural writers on experience (on which, White (1970) 18), but the
idea bears faint echoes of Theophrastus' combination of the practical (for him, observation as
much as cultivation) and the theoretical. Varro does, further, advocate a combination of
inherited practices with systematic experiment: RR 1.18.7-8.
6 Vergil's Green Thoughts

interest in differing characteristics of varieties of the same plant which, if only

partially, share some taxonomical impulse.2 7
After Vergil's time, there was continued interest in botany, often within
the encyclopaedic tradition (as with Celsus and Pliny) 2 8 as well as the agricul-
tural: Columella names over 400 plants, 'mostly from his own observation'.29
Pliny also mentions what seems to have been the first botanical garden
(assuming we disregard the possibility of Theophrastus'), established in the
first century AD by the centenarian Antonius Castor (HN 25.9). Moreover, in
an interesting twist-and another illustration of the permeable boundaries
between scientific and other modes of thought-Vergil's own works had
influence on some later technical writers, even in cases where the poet has
made self-consciously unscientific use of his own scientific sources.3 0

0.1.l. Definitions of Nature

In Greek and Latin, as in English, 'nature' has a range of meanings: cpvaLc; may
be a person or thing's natural qualities, both outward appearance and inner
character, the order of nature, and even animals collectively; natura similarly
connotes natural qualities, appearance, and character, as well as the natural
power determining the qualities of living things, the power governing the
physical universe, and both the created world and the creator of the world.
Context thus plays a great role in determining which shade of meaning
'nature' is meant to evoke in any given case; slippage between different shades
of meaning is also often exploited to offer nuance and complexity. 31 The
familiar Greek dichotomy between cpvaLc; and voµ,o c; broadly delineates the
difference between the 'natural', that which occurs without the intervention of
man, and the 'cultural', that which is brought about by humans. Yet even so,
the recognition that humans are part of nature as well as set apart from it
makes drawing a clear, consistent distinction both impossible and undesirable.
A Roman discussion of the meaning of natura and its relation to Greek
philosophical conceptions of cpvaLc; is voiced by Cicero's Balbus, in a passage

27
E.g. Cato Agr. 6, Varro RR 1.24.1- 2 on varieties of olive best planted in different soils.
28
These authors perhaps had less of a claim to be botanists th an compilers of existing
knowledge: Pease {1952) 49 calls Pliny's work 'that of an industrious compiler ... rather than
of a first hand observer'. In defence of Pliny, Stannard (I 965).
29
Pease (1952) 49.
30
Thomas (1987) 246. Vergil and Varro are the only Latin authorities cited in the Geoponica:
Rodgers (1978). On Pliny and Vergil, Bruere (1956); for influence on Celsus and Columella as
well as Pliny, Thibodeau (2011) 21 8-24; on Vergil, Columella and Pliny, Doody (2007).
31
A much fuller list of the nuances of cpua,, can be found in Lovejoy and Boas (I 935) 447-56;
see also Glacken (1967); Beagan (1992); French (1994); Hughes (1994) 45- 72.
 Introduction 7

which incidentally conveys how, even when talking about 'Nature' as some
kind of governing force, other meanings of the word also come to mind:

namque alii naturam esse censent uim quandam sine ratione cientem motus in
corporibus necessarios, alii autem uim participem rationis atque ordinis tam-
quam uia progredientem declarantemque quid cuiusque rei causa efficiat quid
sequatur, cuius sollertiam nulla ars nulla manus nemo opifex consequi possit
imitando; seminis enim uim esse tantam ut id, quamquam sit perexiguum, tamen
si inciderit in concipientem conprendentemque naturam nanctumque sit mate-
riam qua ali augerique possit, ita fingat et efficiat in suo quidque genere, partim ut
tantum modo per stirpes alantur suas, partim ut moueri etiam et sentire et
appetere possint et ex sese similia sui gignere. sunt autem qui omnia naturae
nomine appelle~t. ut Epicurus, qui ita diuidit: omnium quae sint naturam esse
corpora et inane quaeque his accidant. sed nos cum dicimus natura constare
administrarique mundum, non ita dicimus ut glaebam aut fragmentum lapidis
aut a.liquid eius modi sola cohaerendi natura, sed ut arborem ut animal, in quibus
nulla temeritas sed ordo apparet et artis quaedam similitudo.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum 2.81-2
For some hold that nature is a certain force without reason which stirs necessary
movements in bodies, and others that it is a force which has reason and order,
proceeding as it were along a route and making clear what is the cause of each thing
and what follows, whose skill no art, no hand, no craftsman could rival and
reproduce. For, they say, there is such great power in a seed that, however tiny it
is, if it falls into a substance [naturam] that conceives and holds it, and obtains
I
material by which it can be nurtured and increased, it shapes and finishes each
thing according to its own type, some so that they are nourished only through their
roots, others so that they can even move and perceive and desire and reproduce
offspring similar to themselves. There are those, again, who call the entirety of
existence by the name 'nature', like Epicurus, who divides it in this way: that the
natme of all things that are is bodies [atoms], void and the accidents of these. But
when we say that nature sustains and directs the world, we do not mean that it is
like a lump of soil or fragment of stone or something of that type with only the
natural property [natural of cohesion, but like a tree or an animal, in which no
randomness but rather order is displayed and a certain resemblance to art.
The first definition of nature as a non-rational force causing movement may
correspond to an Aristotelian conception of the nature-of-the-thing, 32 while
the second, rational, and designing force is like the Platonic demiurge; Epi-
curus is overtly identified as the proponent of the third, atomist view; the
fourth, Balbus' own, is the Stoic idea of nature as the world itself, a living,
designed, and rational thing. 33 The distinctions between different types of
nature as a force of some kind often rest on broader conceptions of the
universe as either mechanistic or in some way designed or even self-designing;

32
French (1994) 15-18, and 81-2 on the unmoved mover. 33
French ( 1994) 163-6.
8 Vergil's Green Thoughts

they also respond to differing characterizations of the earth as either an inert

host of living things, or herself a living, mother-like being.
For Vergil, the various forms of nature come to prominence in different
ways at different times. He uses the actual word natura most in the Georgics
(indeed, only once in the Aeneid and never in the Eclogues), there encompass-
ing much of the range outlined above: nature as a natural law or force (G. 1.61,
2.20), natura as the physical universe (G. 2.483), the nature of a place
(A. 10.366), natural characters and qualities (G. 2.9, 2.178, 4.149), and natural
force within a particular living thing (G. 2.49). These various approaches to
nature are also implied more broadly throughout Vergil's works: he interacts
with Epicurean formulations of the physical universe, the rerum natura; he
reflects Stoic ideas of nature as the world's rational, guiding principle; he
preserves mythical and religious ideas of a 'mother nature' who brings forth
bounty on the ea1th; he echoes Theophrastus' technical narrowing of the term
to investigate the essential characteristics of particular living things; he col-
ludes in the old dichotomy of nature opposed to culture.
In this book, I engage with many of these shades of meaning, and, indeed,
the 'nature/culture' divide underpins the entirety of the second half, even
though I have chosen to frame the distinction, rather, in terms of the 'wild'
and the 'tame'. The discussion of numinous aspects in the first half looks to
connections between plants and particular (very often Olympian) deities, but
also encompasses vaguer ideas of immanent divinity in the natural world,
whether through consideration of animism, or still more nebulous intuitions
of something more than meets the eye.

0.2. HUMANS AND PLANTS: FROM

ANTHROPOCENTRISM TO ECOCRITICISM

0.2.1. Plants and an Anthropocentric Worldview

There is much in ancient botany and botanically interested works which betrays
an anthropocentric approach to the study of the natural world. Medical and
agricultural writers may be expected to focus on plants' uses for mankind, but
other texts also offer explicit reflection on this way of viewing nature and man's
place within it.34 Broadly speaking, the still familiar assumption that humans are
superior beings with the right to use nature's bounty as they see fit was common
in the ancient world, if with less devastating effects than in the modern. 35

34
Carone (2003); Moore (2017) 47-62. Coccia (2016) rejects modern anthropocentric and
zoocentric views, reinstating plants as fundamental to a metaphysical conception of the world,
just as they are essential to its physical flourishing.
35
Cliches of human superiority and right to rule are elegantly evoked in Ovid's creation: sanctius
his animal mentisque capacius altae I deerat adhuc et quod dominari in cetern posset: I natus homo est
 Introduction 9

This finds strongly implicit expression in the various mythological accounts of

the gods' 'gifts' of cultivated plants to mankind-grain from Ceres, grapes from
Bacchus, olives from Minerva, and so on-and achieves explicit articulation in
some philosophical thought. Aristotle maintains it is the final cause of all living
things to se1ve higher, rational nature, with plants placed down the pecking
order from animals, and animals below humans.36 The Stoics held a similar
view, arguing that plants existed for their usefulness to animals and animals for
theirs in turn to rational beings, especially mankind, 37 fitting with ideas such as
Posidonius' doctrine of cosmic sympathy, the broad principle that nature
provides all for mankind within an interrelated universe. 38 Aristotle's conten-
tion that plants have only the most basic type of soul, 39 and his decision not to
categorize them as (ipa ('living creatures') along with animals, humans, and
gods but rather as <pvTa ('growing things', but the word more generally corres-
ponds to our 'plants' too) 40 seems to separate them further from us. 41 Plato
grants plants sense-perceptions 42 and sometimes classes them as (ij'ia, but again

('there was still lacking an animal more sacred than these [birds, fish, beasts, and gods(!)], one which
could reign over everythfng else: mankind was born', Met. 1.76-8).
36
Pol. 1256b 15-26. Cf. Sedley (1991). The earliest explicit philosophical articulation of an
anthropocentric view of creation is attributed to Socrates (Xen. Mem . 4.3.8-12).
37
E.g. Epict., Diatr. 1.16; Cic., ND 2.156; Plin. HN 21.2; 22.1. Cf. Beagon (1992) 55-7.
38
In the Stoic conception, although mankind enjoys a privileged status in the hierarchy of
species, the overall view of nature may not always be strictly antl1ropocentric, since (e.g. for
Cleanthes) man is still only part of the ordered universe; c£ Sen. De Ira 2.27.2, where it is
explicitly denied that natural occurrences which help or harm us are directed at us personally.
Chrysippus, however, argues that for man to live in accordance with nature is to live in
accordance with man's nature (Diog. Lae1t. 7.89). For Seneca's similar placing of humans at
the top of the hierarchy by virtue of their unique rational capacity, Epist. Mor. 124.20. Cf. Steiner
(2005) 85- 6. For ways to reconcile Stoicism with social ecology, Stephens (1994). The idea of the
universe as an ordered whole has some overlap with modern Gaia theory, although Donahue
(2010) holds that Gaia theory entails rejection of anthropocentrism.
39
The nutritive or vegetative soul, which means just that they are alive, eat, and reproduce; in
Aristotle's view, plants have no perceptions and thus no desires, and certainly no reason: e.g. De
an. 413a-b. Such a view may draw criticism: e.g. Hall (2011) 24, 'Aristotle's strict divisions
remove the sense of a kin-based relationship between humans and plants. The voices of plants
are completely silenced in Aristotle's work-reducing their lives to nothing more than feeding
and reproduction.'
40
De an. 41 lb29; On Youth and Old Age 467b24; Gen. an. 74lal0-13.
41
This implication of unbridgeable difference between plants and animals is modified in
Aristotle's natural historical work, where he places living things on a comparative scale from the
wholly lifeless through to animal life, with plants seeming lifeless in comparison with animals,
but endowed with life in comparison with other bodies: e.g. Part. an. 4.5 681a 10-15. The
division between each step on the scale can be hazy too, as in the case of some sea-animals which
are rooted to the spot and cannot survive movement, much like plants: Hist. an 8.1 528b27.
Aristotle may yet be guilty of 'zoocentrism' in these works, however, especially in his implication
of deficiency on the part of plants which do not eat, move, and excrete as animals do (Part. an.
655b; cf. Hall (20ll) 26-7). In implicit correction of his mentor, Theophrastus establishes early
on that comparison between animal and plant physiology may not always be helpful (HP
1.1.2-3) and that analogies drawn between plants and animals are an aid for those more familiar
with animals, not claiming any strict equivalence (HP 1.2.3-4).
42
Although this marks a difference from Aristotle's views, admitting tlrnt if plants can feel
pleasure and pain they will therefore desire the pleasurable and dislike the painful, Skemp ( 1947)
10 Vergil's Green Thoughts

underlines their 'purpose' as food for mankind in his account of the creation of
the world (Tim. 77a). 43 In the Timaeus, there is a curious and strikingly close
connection made between plants and men, 44 who are even described as a
'heavenly plant' ((f)VTov . .. ovpavwv) whose head is a 'root' which tends upwards
(Tim. 90a). Yet Plato's argument may mark plants as a mirror opposite of men
rather than imply a meaningful affinity between them: created at a similar time
from the same elements, they nonetheless have ve1y different shapes, different
perceptions, and different capacities. Man has at least the potential to reach up
to the divine region through reason, while plants are emphatically rooted and
downward-focused.45 Plotinus later goes further than Plato, maintaining that
plants have some share in reason and soul as well as life (Enn . 3.2.7.36-7) 16 and
defending an idea of eudaimonia ('flourishing', 'the highest good') for plants
(1.4.1, 15-30).47 What might seem a more generous view of plants does not
amount to their exaltation relative to other beings, however: a vegetative state is
still for Plotinus a low one within his formulation of the scala naturae ('chain of
being'). Centuries earlier, Empedocles contends that plants have souls, and in
the course of their transmigration a human could have been reincarnated from
or be reincarnated as a plant. This offers a more compliqted and potentially
challenging picture, yet he too seems to have believed that there were differences
in superiority between plants and animals, a view which has much in common
with a standard scala naturae, where plant, animal, and divine souls were
formed from the same elements but 'on a scale of increasingly harmonious
blends'. 48
Although well aware of the uses to which plants can be put by mankind,49
Theophrastus, unlike Aristotle and others, does not hold that plants' overarching

55 argues Plato is still not granting much: '[a]ll our [man's] sensations penetrate to the higher
"kinds" of soul in us. Those of the plants cannot do so, and therefore must be "other'".
Conversely, Carpenter (2010) maintains that by granting plants perceiving souls, Plato also
grants them some kind of intelligence.
43
For inclusion of plants among {q,a as exception rather than rule in both Plato and wider
Greek thought, Renehan (1981) 242- 3.
44
In this case apparently not meaning mankind, but men, as opposed to women, who emerge
later along witl1 animals by a form of degeneration. Got to love Plato.
45
Philosophers must know as well as poets and politicians, however, that analogies are
slippery things: it is perhaps just as possible to put plants at the normative centre, whereby
Plato classifies humans as upside-down plants: Marder (2014) 26.
46
This contrasts with Plato's contention in the Timaeus that they do not have reason, but may
be compatible with hints in the Philebus (22b 3-9) that they might: Yount (2017) 185, 187.
47
For Plotinus' interest in plants as metaphor as well as on their own account, Marder (2014)
43-56.
48
Trepanier (2004) 93. Indeed, Empedocles even saw a hierarchy among plants, with the
laurel being the superlative form of plant incarnation: Bl 27.
49
A plant's use is sometimes a distinguishing feature in Theophrastus' establishment of
categories: e.g. HP 6.6.1-2: garland plants straddle his general distinction between under-shrubs
and herbs and these he categorizes instead as those with useful flowers, and those with pleasant-
smelling foliage .
 Introduction 11

urpose is to benefit the human race. 5° For Theophrastus, the causal chain
ops a little earlier: all living things aim for their own goal, and for a plant that
oal is to produce seed and fruit in order to propagate its own species: µixpi
r 'p Twv Kapnw1, TJ cpvr:nc; ('a plant's nature is for the production of fruit',
HP 1.2.2). 51 His observations on the formation of fruit, with the fleshy
ricarpion-the part which humans often like to eat-surrounding the
·rruit proper' (avTWV TWV Kapnwv), meaning the seeds-which are of use to
e plant for reproduction, but generally not eaten by humans-also reveal his
derstanding that a plant's natural development is geared far more towards
own propagation than towards the nourishment of mankind. After all, it is
roadly true that in wild plants the seeds are larger and the pericarpion smaller
and not as tasty (CP 1.16.1). 52 Moreover, on Theophrastus' reckoning, plants'
r ponses to environmental conditions-especially warmth, light, and
moisture-could imply a capacity for perception and awareness, which leads
o the idea that they are capable of acting out their likes and dislikes, or to put
i in a common ancient philosophical frame, they are aiming for their own
<rood: 7/ 8' [cpvais] aEi npoc; TE TO ~Ei\TWTOV opµ~ {'and nature 53 always aims to
hieve the best', CP 1.16.11). Nevertheless, Theophrastus cannot be viewed as
a proto-plant liberationist, since he is also clear in his view that human
cultivation of plants can be equally in keeping with nature: immediately
after his assertion that plants aim for their own good, he adds, TavT'[} 8J Ta
l - T7)S 0EpanE{ac; · aµa yap Kat TEAE{wais ylvETaL T7)S <:pvaEw<; OTaV 6!v EAAm~<;
.1r;x avEL, ravTa npoa>..a~n 8ia TEXV'YJS {'but what results from cultivation does
· ·ewise, for there is also fulfilment of the plant's nature when it is lacking in
:hings which it can gain through [human] craft', CP 1.16.11). 54 What emerges
in Theophrastus' works, then, is a spectrum of engagement between plants and
humans, from the wholly independent through to the interdependent, which
fights shy of full anthropocentrism while acknowledging the prominence of
human influence and interests in a large part of the plant world.
However, for some ancient philosophers, anthropocentric models are mere-
ly evidence of the human capacity for a delusional sense of self-importance.

50
Hughes (1988) 68; Amigues (2002) 37-42. For a broader summary of Theophrastus'
agreements and disagreements with Aristotle, French (1994) 92-103. By contrast, Vallance
(1 988) 39 maintains that Theophrastus' departure from the Aristotelian path has been over-
stated, and he is, rather, attacking the less flexible views of the Academy: 'an anthropocentric
teleologist Theophrastus certainly was'.
51
Cf. CP l.16.3. Hughes (1988) 68: 'Aristotle would not have denied this, of course, but would
ve made it a subsidiary cause in his hierarchical organization of nature. For Theophrastus it is
e whole point.'
52
Hall (2011) 30-2 sees here implicit recognition of plants as autonomous beings.
53
Theophrastus has just made clear that what he means by a plant's nature is that which has a
ting point in itself, not that forced by external influences such as human cultivation
echniques.
" I discuss Theophrastus' theories on wild and tame plants at 4.1.
12 Vergil's Green Thoughts

The ato mists reject any ordained hierarchy of living things with humans at the
top. As Lucretius puts it, nequaquam nobis diuinitus esse paratam I naturam
rerum ('in no way is the nature of things divinely arranged for us', DRN
5.198- 9); more stridently still, dicere porro hominum causa uoluisse parare I
praeclaram mundi naturam, proptereaque I adlaudabile opus diuom laudare
decere . . . desiperest ('moreover, to say that the gods wished to set up the fine
nature of the world for the sake of mankind and for that reason it is fitting to
praise the praiseworthy work of the gods . . . is to be a fool', DRN 5.156-8, 165).
It is the chance emergence of different species and humans' chance engage-
ments with them, together with acquired knowledge, skills, and experience
passed on through the generations, which shape the relationship of mankind
with the plant world. Indeed, it can sometimes seem that, far from being
created with humans in mind, the earth is particularly poorly suited to
manldnd, while, by contrast, generous and giving to the animals (e.g. DRN
5.233- 4). 55 Lucretius' account of the decline in the earth's productivity (DRN
2.1150-7 4) also argues against a vision of a natural environment set up for the
benefit of mankind, yet allows an element of the providential to slip into the
enthusiastic description of the world in earlier times: praeterea nitidas fruges
uinetaque laeta I sponte sua primum mortalibus ipsa creauit, I ipsa dedit dulcis
fetus et pabula laeta ('besides at first, of her own accord, the earth herself
created shining crops and fertile vineyards for mortals, and herself gave forth
sweet produce and fe1tile fodder', DRN 2.1157-9). 56 So, at least from time to
time, the relationship between the planet, its plants, and its human inhabitants
need not be cold and impersonal even as it is neither designed nor divinely
ordained.
The place of plants within religious modes of thought also falls within a
spectrum which ranges from fairly hard-line anthropocentrism, to a recogni-
tion that the furthering of human interests need not ride rough-shod over
those of plants, and a conception of (some) plants as independent and even
associated with higher orders of being. As mentioned above, myths relating to
the development of agriculture, viticulture, and arboriculture present human
taming and exploitation of plants as divinely sanctioned, and the frequent
presence of plants in sacrificial and other ritual contexts also implies man-
ldnd's right to make use of grain, foliage, and flowers as part of maintaining

55
Holmes (2013).
56
For hints of the Hesiodic Golden Age, later to be satirized, Gale (2013) 30-1. Compare also
Lucretius' use of the hieros gamos ('holy marriage') motif of a 'father' sky and 'mother' earth
whose union results in the production of living things (DRN 1.250-64; 2.994-8): Gale (1994)
40- 1; 183-4. Positive accounts of 'Mother Earth' dwindle in the course of the poem, however: 'by
the end of Book 2 she is a worn-out old crone, ripe for the topics of Vetulaskoptik which are so
frequently applied to her in the final two books as her leaky, smelly, and wasted form is made to
embody the ultimate refutation of divine providential care for the world': Fowler (1996) 816.
 Introduction 13

good relations between the human and the divine. 57 The prominence of
agricultural concerns within the annual cycle of festivals and sacrifice in
both Greece and Rome reveals again gods assisting men in their project of
taming the earth and harvesting its fruits. Yet stories of sacred, inviolable
groves and their related Nymphs or more powerful divine sponsors, which
find echo and manifestation in the range of sacred precincts, woodlands, and
particular specimens routinely encountered in real life, speak to a different
configuration of the hierarchy of humans, gods, and plants. Furthermore, tales
of humans transformed into plants reveal an alternative set of relations, where
the boundaries between plants, humans, and semi-divine beings like Nymphs
appear relatively fluid and the assumption of a clear-cut distinction between
'superior' humans and 'lower' forms of life is challenged once again. Such
myths and folklore share elements familiar from animist religious thought, in
which plants most fully achieve a kind of personhood58 and their life force and
well-being are set on a level with-or even above-that of humans.

0.2.2. Ancient Environmentalism?

Modern scholars disagree whether there was what we might nowadays term
environmental awareness in the ancient world. 59 The fact that the ancients did
not have a complex scientific understanding of chemistry, climate, biology, and
ecology might suggest that any apparent overlap between ancient thought and
modern ways of environmentalist thinking is coincidence rather than a marker
of even partially shared understanding. Moreover, the absence of large-scale
environmental degradation in ancient times could imply that the concept of a
natural world fundamentally threatened-or even very much altered-by
human activity was simply unthinkable. 60 The modern consciousness of

57
The ethics of sacrifice are frequently examined by ancient thinkers but the focus is far more
often on justifying or attacking animal sacrifice than on considering whether humans have the
right to use plants in this way. Theophrastus argues that one can sacrifice the fruits of plants
since that is not against their will (On Piety 584Al 18): Fortenbaugh (2010) 570 n. 750. Porph)'ly
also seems to advocate a considerate approach to plants when arguing that we can extend justice
in a way that does no harm to any things as when we eat 'dead' fruits and take what plants cast off
(On Abstinence 3.26.12-13). Empedocles' theory that transmigration of souls can involve
reincarnation as a plant just as easily as reincarnation as an animal (Bll 7) may be thought to
present problems for the ethics of plant sacrifice (and even, simply, the consumption of plants)
just as much as in the case of animals, but it is not clear if he found a resolution. Pythagoras'
famous prohibition on eating beans may have been connected with his doctrine of metempsy-
chosis, but it is impossible to be certain: Burkert (l 972) 183.
58
Hall (2011) 99-117.
59
Contrast Hughes (1994); (2011) with Rackham (1996) . In some ways, Thommen (2012)
treads a path between the two.
60
Rackham (1996) 42: '[i]n antiquity it was not easy, in most of Greece, to do permanent
damage to the landscape. The critical step in the degradation of the Greek environment was the
14 Vergil's Green Thoughts

humans' very real potential to damage the natural world may not have been
shared by those who so often felt the power balance emphatically tip in the
opposite direction. Yet humans were frequently regarded as the tamers, farm-
ers, and gardeners of the earth,61 and their ability to change landscapes by
cutting down trees, draining marshes, even altering the shape of coastlines was
acknowledged, and often viewed with pride.62
Nevertheless, it is easy to find examples of a deep uneasiness in the face of
grand human acts and edifices which trespass on or challenge natural bound-
aries,63 and there was some awareness of the fact of-and to a degree, the effects
of-changes to the environment such as deforestation, 6 4 land drainage, 65
localized extinctions,66 or even the dangers oflead pollution.67 Tacitus' famous
characterization (in the mouth of the Caledonian Calgacus, Ag. 30.5) of the
Romans as plunderers of the world who make a desert and call it peace may
point in part to the real and immediate damage done to farmland by invading
armies, 68 but also illustrates the Roman capacity to reflect on the broader
impact of imperialism on the environment. Many philosophical schools advo-
cated more and less extreme forms of simple living which, while by no means
an indicator of an ancient eco-ethical conscience, nevertheless demonstrated a
sense that greed, acquisitiveness, and hyper-consumption69 are neither rational

invention of the bulldozer.' A similar caveat is repeated passim in Westra and Robinson (eds)
(1997), even while the essay collection traces correspondences between ecology, environmental-
ism, and ancient philosophy.
61
E.g. Cicero, ND 2.99.
62
For the symbolic imperialist exercise of power over nature mixed with practical consider-
ations in Roman management of water, Purcell (1996).
63
A locus classicus is Xerxes' attempt to bridge the Hellespont (on which, e.g. Clarke (2018)
200, 263-4), but other examples include Horace's anxiety about Roman villa building (Od.
2.18.17-22; 3.1.33-40), Tibullus' criticism of the effect on the natural landscape of the profit-
motive (2.3.41-6) or Pliny's condemnation of the effects of marble quarrying (HN 36.1). I discuss
a range of examples from the Augustan period in Armstrong (2009).
64
E.g. Meiggs (1982) 371-403; Hughes (1983), (1994) 73-90 and (2011); Fedeli (1990) 72-80;
Harris (2011): see I.I.I.
65
E.g. Theophr. CP 5.14.2-6 on the deleterious effects for trees ofland drainage to improve
the ground for cultivated crops. On the oracle warning against the draining of the marsh near
Camerina, Fedeli (1990) 41.
66
E.g. Arist., Hist. an. 603a21-5 on extermination of clams in the Pyrrhean Strait due to
drought and the dredging machine used to capture them, or Pliny HN 19.1 5 on the loss of
silphium from Cyrenaica as a result of over-grazing. Hardy and Totelin (2016) 176 voice
scepticism on this last.
67
Noxious fumes emitted by lead furnaces: Pliny, HN 34.167; Vitruvius 8.6.10-11; this was
viewed as a problem for human health rather than for the environment more broadly. The
discovery in Greenland ice of traces of atmospheric lead pollution from Roman and Carthagin-
ian mining activities in Spain confirms its extent: Rosman eta!. (1997) .
68
Hughes (2013).
69
To use a modern term for what the Romans would have categorized under luxuria . For
Roman anxiety about this, e.g. Sall., Cat. 11-13; Sen., Ep. 90.19. See Griffin (1985) 1-31; Wallace-
Hadrill (1990); Edwards (1993); Dalby (2000) 10-12.
 Introduction 15

nor desirable qualities for humans to display. 70 Again, the ·emphasis in

religion on propitiatory sacrifice to ensure good harvests, or- offerings in
advance of cutting down woods reveals a consciousness that the relationship
between man and the natural world is not necessarily one of straightforwardly
sanctioned exploitation, but rather a series of negotiations between competing
interests.
Although in a broader sense it seems important to acknowledge the com-
plexity, diversity, and (in some cases) apparent 'modernity' of ancient atti-
tudes to nature, it is fortunately not essential to the arguments of this book to
decide whether or not it makes any sense to regard Vergil himself as a kind of
environmentalist. His poetry displays a clear interest in the natural world and
how humans function both as a part of it and apart from it; yet it would be
facile to claim that an interest in nature necessarily entails a scientifically,
morally, or politically driven desire to understand and preserve it. Moreover,
attitudes towards the natural world vary greatly both within and between each
of his works: Vergil the author veers between the poles of tree-hugger and tree-
cutter. My aim to bring Vergil's cultural context to bear on the discussion is
part of a move to recover his plants from being placed against a purely literary
backdrop, but I do not attempt to claim that either clear Vergilian opinions or
clear environmental realities are reflected in his work. Rackham observes that
' [t] he history of nature is not the same as the history of things that people have
said about nature'. 71 Although on occasion I will stray into 'real life' territory,
hazarding thoughts on the identification of species or on Roman agricultural
practice, for the most part I am precisely interested in that grey area of the
varied, nuanced, and frequently inconsistent things that people-and Vergil in
particular-have said about nature.

0.2.3. Ecocriticism and Ancient Literature

What then is ecocriticism? Simply put, ecocriticism is the study of the relation-
ship between literature and the physical environment. Just as feminist criticism
examines language and literature from a gender-conscious perspective, and
Marxist criticism brings an awareness of modes of production and economic
class to its reading of texts, ecocriticism takes an earth-centred approach to
literary studies.
Glotfelty, in Glotfelty and Fromm (eds) (1996) xix.

70
Exhortations to live in accordance with nature: e.g. Diog. Laert. 7.87--9; Sen. Ep. 122. For
environmentalist implications in various ancient philosophers, Westra and Robinson (eds)
(1997).
71
Rackham (1996) 17, original emphasis. For attempts to reconstruct the realities of the
ancient Mediterranean landscape and flora, e.g. Grove and Rackham (2001); Thommen {2012).
16 Vergil's Green Thoughts
The comparisons with feminism and Marxism in this definition appear to
set ecocriticism on the 'political' end of the literary-critical spectrum, and,
indeed, much ecocriticism would proudly espouse a political stance against
globalized capitalism's effect on the environment. 72 Yet it does not have to be
thoroughly political: as Buell points out, there is a strand of ecocriticism that
directly descends from earlier generations of studies with titles of the order,
'Nature in X'.73 Works of this type can be open to the charge of offering
nostalgic or otherwise idealized accounts of the represented natural world in
literature, and as such may fall foul of more overtly politically engaged
ecocritics, 7 4 yet their focus can still fulfil Glotfelty's 'earth-centred' criterion.
A recent collection of essays7 5 reveals a range of possible ecocritical
approaches to the ancient world which also engage with the question of whether
and how far it is appropriate to apply modern theories and conceptions of
'nature' and the 'environment' to ancient texts. The book offers a strong
defence of the interest (even-dread term-the relevance) oflooking at ancient
culture and texts through an ecocritical lens, while also acknowledging 'the
alterity of ancient concepts' (Schliephake (2016) 15). As Schliephake observes
in his introduction, ideas of the environment in the ancient world have often
been either ignored by ecocritics or misrepresented as part of a homogeneous
premodern outlook. 7 6 Nevertheless, the impulse to apply ecologically engaged
theories to ancient literature is growing, and Vergil himself has been drawn
into the ecocritical gaze, most prominently via the Eclogues' status as repre-
sentative of an early form of pastoral against which later pastoral defines and
distinguishes itself. Pastoral in general occupies a patch of disputed ecocritical
ground, sometimes rejected as too artificial to be considered environmentally
engaged literature, at others rehabilitated and revalued as a central form for
the ecocritic to consider. 77 Alpers' (1996) influential characterization of the
Eclogues as political alleg01y in which the natural world is a mere backdrop is
challenged by Hiltner (2011) 34-42, who takes an ecocritical reading of
Eclogue 1 to illustrate, rather, a greater complexity in the presentation of the
natural world: an all but invisible backdrop for the politically awakened
Tityrus who, ironically, still possesses his land, it is, by contrast, very real for

72
On varieties of political discourse within ecocriticism, Lousley (2014).
73
Buell (2005) 13-16.
74
Lousley (2014) 160: 'Rather than attending more closely to an idealized nature, people
should be paying more attention to the socio-material processes by which the world we live in is
transformed.' This approach in itself can attract a political counter-reaction: e.g. Mahood (2008)
6 rejects ecocriticism as 'alarmingly prescriptive' and adds 'I am appalled at the idea of political
correctness being made the standard of literary judgement.'
75
Schliephake (ed.) (2016).
76
See also Holmes' (2016) foreword to the collection explaining 'nature' as a loaded term
from the ecocritical perspective, and exploring whether ancient texts belong to a time 'before
nature'.
77
Gifford (2016) offers a valuable account of the ebb and flow of these arguments.
 Introduction 17

the politically disenfranchised Meliboeus, who has lost his. 78 Meanwhile,

Sayre's (2016) study of the reception of the Georgics in translation reveals
possibilities for further ecocritical examination of the original poem even
while the main focus lies on the interpretations of later ages.
It would be possible to offer an ecocritical 'resistant' reading of Vergil's
poetry. 79 He-along with many other ancient poets 80 -often presents an
idealized nature not just in the flower-decked meadows of the Eclogues, but
also in the Georgics' farmlands and vineyards, well-tended and gleaming
without the efforts of teams of slaves, 81 and in the implausibly pristine
wildernesses of North Africa and Italy pictured in the Aeneid, before the
spread of the great urban civilizations. 82 It might be argued that to focus on
this without continually resisting and countering fantasy with reality perpetu-
ates an aestheticized, even alienated view of nature. 83 To my mind, however,
too large a dose of cold Hegelian water runs the risk of obscuring some truths
even as it reveals others: human interactions with the natural world and,
particularly, human literary interactions with the natural world are compli-
cated. They may-and more often than not do-contain strong elements of
fantasy, botanical inaccuracy, and either unthinking romanticism or unen-
lightened exploitation, yet this is part of a tangled mixture of love and fear,
expertise and ignorance, wilful misrepresentation and ready acceptance of
realities. It is useful to build bridges between the purely fictional and the
real, and to allow a consciousness of social attitudes and social realities to
inform and sometimes challenge an idyll. Yet the question of which attitudes
and which realities and how much weight should be given to them at any stage
is a delicate (and largely subjective) one that militates against too stern and
finger-wagging an attitude.
Is this book, then, a work of ecocriticism? Yes and no. It does not wish or
attempt to approach the subject with a strict theoretical agenda, but if ecocriti-
cism can be deemed (as suggested above) to stretch over ecologically interested

78
Martindale (1997) also combines politics and ecology in his reading of the Eclogues;
Saunders (2008) is reluctant to embrace ecocriticism too warmly because of his reseivations
about the definitions of pastoral used by many branches of the theory (pp. 4-6), but his work is
certainly-and overtly-environmentally engaged.
79
To borrow a term from feminist criticism: Fetterley (1978).
80
Idealization of the landscape is perhaps most common in poetry, but prose authors often
also depart from realism in their presentation of nature. Moreover, even those writing with a
practical rather than purely descriptive purpose need not be immune to aesthetic considerations
in their view of the natural world: Varro RR 1.4.2-3 makes the aesthetic a partner (albeit junior
partner) to agricultural success. .
"' Gifford (1999) 2 on portrayals of agricultural land which efface the realities of hard labour;
on Vergil's (almost) slave-free set up, Thibodeau (2011) 45-7.
82 On ancient wilderness, Delano Smith (1996). For ecocriticism and the idea of wilderness,

e.g. Buell (1996); Garrard (2004) 59-84. _ .

83 On alienation and ecocriticism, e.g. Bate (2000); Newman (2005) 175-80, and mtegratmg

Marxist theory into ecocriticism, 197-211.

18 Vergil's Green Thoughts

as well as more overtly theorized literary criticism, then this book huddles
under that umbrella. It occupies a fluctuating territory between readings
that are culturally engaged (even, to some degree, politicized) and more
loosely aesthetic and emotional. I expect that my views on modern
environmentalism-I am a tree-lover, a peat-free gardener, a supporter of
Greenpeace and a devout recycler-will be evident either between or full-
centre within the lines from time to time. I have to admit that my favourite
'Vergil' might resemble a New-Age naturalist who mourns the felling of an old
tree and sees heaven in a wild flower, but I hope I also give enough air time
to other very different 'Vergils': the bluff cultivator who embraces the idea
of man's duty to tame the unruly wild, the rationalist who hopes to uncover
the logical workings of plant life, the devout worshipper who approaches
nature with wary reverence, the child still frightened by the nightmarish
woods, and the urbane intellectual whose plants come from books rather
than the soil.

0 .3. GODS AND PLANTS

0.3.1. Approaches to numen

The ancient natural world was filled with supernatural powers. Even in the
face of the increasing urbanization of both Greece and Italy, there remained a
strong sense of nature's divine connections, whether through 'folk' memory
and beliefs, or through more specific associations of different plants and trees
with particular gods and their festivals. The farmer of the Georgics is urged in
primis uenerare deos ('first and foremost, worship the gods', G. 1.338),84 and
religious significance is routinely attached both to wilder places and to the
cultivated landscapes of cornfield, vineyard, and garden. 85 The imagined
relationships between man, the divine, and the environment were inevitably

•·• For the self-evident yet, as it were, mundane importance of religious observance in
agricultural life, cf. Cato, Agr. 5, where the duties of the uilicus (farm manager) are listed: he
sho uld keep good discipline, observe the festivals, neither steal another's nor neglect his own
property, settle disputes among the slaves, and so on. On religion in Cato, Burriss (1927).
85
Some see the Romans' sense of religious awe as reserved for the cultivated landscape: e.g.
von Stackelberg (2009) 86, noting Pliny's pun on the verb co/ere, meaning both 'to worship' and
'to cultivate' at HN 18.21. It is evident from many sources that cultivation was generally regarded
as in harmony with nature and divine will, but to acknowledge this need not entail a diminution
or obfuscation of the importance to the Romans of numinous elements in uncultivated land-
scapes too. The reaction to the wild may often have been a kind of horror, but that is not to say
that it was thus deemed to be divorced from the divine. Cf. Dion. Hal. 1.38. l on the gods'
adoption of landscapes best suited to them, as mountains and woods to Pan, meadows to the
Nymphs, and so on. Some support for the sanctity of certain wild lands may also be gained from
 Introduction 19

varied and complex: at times the gods were seen as party to, even sponsors of,
man's effo1ts to tame nature; in other cases nature's numina represent
something rather different, a world which works at a tangent to the human,
and which may accordingly baffle and even terrify the mortals who
encounter it. 86
The word numen was traditionally thought to derive from nuere, to nod, in
reference to the nod of assent given by a god. 87 One sense of the word remains
particularly close to those roots and means 'the will of the god'; beyond that,
however, it also comes to mean the god him/herself in the form of a spirit or
nebulous, but awesome, power, rather than in anthropomorphized aspect;
moreover, numen can also imply more generally the power or even presence of
specific, often named gods. 88 I will take advantage of this breadth of meaning
in an attempt to convey the varied religious registers in Vergil's representa-
tions of plant life: 89 thus, at times, I will focus explicitly on how a particular
passage intersects with recognizable cult practices,90 while at others I will
explore the vaguer sense of divine interest or presence, which lies somewhere
between deep-seated intuition (or superstition) 91 and literary convention.
Thus, the distinction between the explicitly divine and the more nebulously
supernatural will be blurred in this study, in line with the intermittent lack of
clarity within Roman culture itselt~ and the word horror will often come into
its own as kind of hinge between a shuddering awe in the presence of the
divine 92 and a visceral fear of the monstrous.

Varro, LL 7.10: loca quaedam agrestia, quae a/icuius dei sunt, dicuntur tesca ('certain country
places which belong to some god are called tesca'); although the precise religious meaning of
tescum is uncertain, the fact that it is used in a non-technical sense to denote wild land (e.g. Hor.,
Ep. 1. l4.19; Luc. BC 6.41) might point to the importance of the absence of cultivation to this
particular kind of sanctity.
86
Opinions differed on the desirability and even respectability of certain forms of religious
fear and superstition. For Vergil's engagement with Lucretian disdain for rustic religious fear,
Hardie (1986) 216-19; for ancient ideas of religious fear fostering social cohesion, Liebeschuetz
(1979) 4-7.
87
Cf. Varro, LL 7.85. On the history of interpretation of the word, Hunt (2016) 177-90.
88
E.g. Lucil.fr. 852 W., Apollost numen.
89
Hunt (2016) 178: 'trying to pin down the meaning of numen-especially when applied to
trees-is a futile task. In fact it was the slippery indefinability of numen which gave the word its
theological value.'
90
Insofar as these can be 'recognizable': on the difficulties for interpreters both ancient and
modern in tracing 'real' cult practice, Feeney (1998) 137-43 and (2004) 1-5.
91
For the idea (favoured by the Stoics, for example) that divine influence can be intuited from
mere observation of the natural world, e.g. Cic., Nat. Deor. 2.4. For such an outlook as, rather,
superstition and the product of primitive thinking, Luer., DRN 5.1183-7.
92
Cf. Luer. DRN 5.1165-7: unde etiam nunc est mortalibus insitus horror I qui delubra deum
noua toto suscitat orbi I te1Tarum et Jestis cogit celebrare diebus ('whence even now fear is sown
within hun1ans, which raises up new shrines of the gods all over the world and forces people to
gather in worship on festival days') .
20 Vergil's Green Thoughts

There are elements of Vergil's approach to the divine which chime with the
theories of animist religion that gained purchase in the late nineteenth and
early ~entieth centuries.93 Bailey's characterization is illustrative:
If magic was to Virgil mainly an object of curiosity, there can be no doubt of his
affectionate devotion to the old animistic religion of the Italians . . . [I]f it is not
possible to say that he believed in the existence of all and every of these ancient
deities, yet it may fairly be claimed that the sense of higher powers behi11d the
outward occurrences oflife, which is the essential of an animistic religion, was to
Virgil a vivid reality. 94

Elements of the now unfashionable 'intentional fallacy' aside, in many respects

Bailey's impression of the Vergilian view of the old Italian gods, especially, and
their links with the natural world still rings true. 95 Much of my discussion of
numinous habitats (Chapter 1) will have the idea of animism hovering in the
background, while the following chapter on gods' special species will further
explore the overlap between impressions of the divine as essentially connected
with their favourite plants, and less integral forms of association. The majority
of scholars no longer accept the theory that 'real' Roman religion grew in a
linear fashion from original animist roots, and it is not my intention to
disagree with them. 96 Nevertheless, animism conceived in the broadest
terms-the idea of something divine (however ill- or loosely-defined) resident
within natural landscapes, gardens, groves, even particular trees- remains
useful to think with from the modern perspective, 97 while far from alien to
many ancient reflections on nature and the gods.
Alongside such broader notions of the divine in nature, there are other
ritual connections with plants where, more often than not, the relationship is
less emotionally freighted: we encounter not awe and horror, but instead a
paradoxically mundane harmony, even affection, between man and gods. The
approach to the relationship between the gods and the natural world can also
be made along a less mysterious and more intellectual path, with exploration

93
E.g. Frazer (1911) 7-96; Fowler (1911); Rose (1926); against these, Dumezil (1970)
18-3 1; 47. For the theorization of numen in particular, Bailey (1935) 60: '[numen] cannot be
assigned historical priority over deus, yet more neatly represents the idea of the animistic deity,
which was the germ of the old religion'; Wagenwoort (1947) 75: '[i]n numen we have . .. an
originally generated word for "mana" [supernatural force], which occasionally, when related to a
n. fontis, aquae, arboris, luci, arae, indicated a "local mana" but later on was specially used
for "mana of tile spirits".' Hunt (2016) 43-71 discusses a range of animist theories regarding
tree-worship in particular.
94
Bailey (1935) 29.
95
For example, there is, mutatis mutandis, overlap with the approach of Bailey in Jenkyns'
(2013) 216 assertion that 'although [Vergil] is unhelpful to the historian of practice, he is
revealing to the historian of emotion, for what he offers is a sense of how Italian religion felt'.
96
Cf. Beard, North and Price (1998) 13-14, 30-1.
97 Indeed, animism is even gaining purchase witl1in the current field of environmental etl1ics:

e.g. Curry (20ll) 142- 9.

 Introduction 21

of the philosophical and poetical alongside the religious. Vergil's famous

splitting of scientific and religious stances in the Georgics- he who can
understand the physical workings of the cosmos is fortunate, but so too is
·he who knows the country gods 98 -offers some insight into the importance of
reason as well as religion in his work; yet the notorious difficulty of deciding
whether Vergil actually implies the necessity of choosing one over the other
also underlines the elusive and partial quality of a reader's understanding on
this matter-and quite probably a poet's, too.

0.3.2. Plants and Everyday Religion

The use of wreaths and garlands in festival and sacrifice offers a useful
opportunity to stand back from numen perceived as mysterious and antique,
and to see instead an everyday working relationship between plants and
religion. 99 For Theophrastus, the idea that religious observance requires a
year-round supply of flowers and foliage is so obvious that it need not even
directly be stated: his section on the flowering times of various species (HP 6.8)
contains a brief nod to the fact that garland-makers (oL aTECpavfJ7T1t.OKot, 6.8.1)
know a range of suitable varieties of flowers. Cato recommends that a garden
near a town be planted with both vegetables and coronamenta omne genus ('all
sorts of plants for making garlands', Agr. 8.2), but, again, this is regarded
without fuss or portentousness. 100 A more complex reflection on the divine
connotations of garlands is of course possible: Nicander's Georgica contain an
extended section setting the myths and divine associations of various flowers
alongside details on the differing appearances of different species and some
horticultural instruction.101 For example, we are plunged into the realm of
relative mythological obscurity in the claim that the Ionaid Nymphs them-
selves offer a aTirpos ayvov ('holy wreath', Fr. 74.4) of gilliflowers as a love-gift
to Ion, and Aphrodite's rivalry with the lily is hinted at (74.28-9; cf. Nie. Alex.
407-9), but we are also allowed to glimpse the everyday religious function of

98
G. 2.490-9. For a range of different interpretations, e.g. Thomas and Mynors ad lac. ; Clay
(1976); Hardie (1986) 39-44; Jenkyns (1998) 374-5; Kronenberg {2009) 140-2.
99
Pliny regards the use of crowns as ancient, with the first wreaths at sacred contests made
from branches of trees, and the inclusion of flowers to add colour a later development: HN21.4.
Cf. Carey {2003) 135. By the 2nd century BC the use of coronae to honour the gods and the spirits
of the dead was well-established: HN 21.11.
100
Pliny's extended discussion of the use of flowers for garland making (amongst other
things) in HN 21 begins with reflections on their place in the world as evidence of Nature at
her most playful (21.1). Cf. Beagon (1992) 79-80. Nevertheless, and especially in days gone by,
the wearing of coronae was a serious matter, limited to the correct places and occasions:
L. Fulvius was punished for looking out into the fonun while wearing a wreath of roses, and
P. Munatius for removing a floral crown from a statue of Marsyas (21.8-9).
101
Fr. 74 Gow/Scholfield.
22 Vergil's Green Thoughts
flowers, as humble offerings of elecampane and aster (JMvEwv, aCJTEpa) are
made at roadside shrines by any passer-by (74.66-8). Other poetic approaches
to flower garlands are common, with a particularly close connection to bucolic
and lyric poetry; 102 here the gods may be explicitly included as part of the floral
picture, even while a human perspective generally feels more dominant than
the divine. Given the generic importance of flowers to bucolic poetry, there is
little surprise that Vergil's clearest gestures towards divine associations with
gathered flowers tend to cluster in the Eclogues, as when Corydon claims the
Nymphs gather a bouquet of viola, poppy, narcissus, dill, daphne, and mari-
golds for his beloved Alexis, while he himself offers a range of fruit and
fragrant foliage. 103
Nevertheless, and by contrast with his frequent reflections on the numinous
qualities of trees or the divine involvement in raising crops and vines, for the
most part Vergil keeps the idea of floral nu men fairly muted, even to the point
of omitting any mention at all of Rome's flower goddess, Flora. 101 Garlands or
floral offerings themselves are mentioned in religious and semi-religious
contexts quite frequently, but often without specifying which flowers or leaves
are used, 105 and in a relatively off-hand, functional manner that smacks more
of Cato than Nicander. Offerings of flowers to the dead sometimes venture
greater specificity, such as the poppies offered to Orpheus' shade (G. 4.545) or
the 'purple flowers' to the dead Anchises (A . 5.79) and Marcellus (together
with lilies, A. 6.883-4). 106 Another interesting departure from the generally
taciturn pattern, the flowers by the shrine of Venus in Idalium, also illustrates
Vergil's fascination with the combination of poetic and philosophical influ-
ence in his vision of nature and the divine. Here, Venus is using her sacred
precinct as a temporary bedroom for the sleeping Ascanius, whose place at
Dido's feast has been taken by Cupid:
at Venus Ascanio placidam per membra quietem
inrigat, et fotum gremio <lea tollit in altos
Idaliae lucos, ubi mollis amaracus ilium
floribus et dulci aspirans complectitur umbra.
A. 1.691-4

102
For flowers and garlands as symbols of poetry in general see 0.5.1.
103
E. 2.45-55 . Further discussion at 4.1.1.
104
Ovid, by contrast, allows her particular prominence in Fasti 5. It is possible that Flora's
connection with 'low' culture and prostitution (cf. Fast. 5.331 - 54) rendered her unsuitable for
Vergil, although in other cases he may airbrush lewd associations from certain gods without
omitting them from his poetry entirely: see 1.2 on Priapus. For Ovid's concentration on Flora as,
at least in part, a response to Vergil's writing her out of the agricultural pantheon, Fantham
(2011) 424-9.
105
Contrast Theocritus' listing of the floral make-up of his garlands (e.g. Id. 7.63-4, roses, dill,
and white stocks; ld. 3.21-3, ivy, roses, and cele1y). There is some contrast with Horace too (e.g.
Od. 1.36.15- 16, rose, celery, and lily).
106
On these last two, Brenk (1990), with Norden (1957) ad A. 6.883f for lilies as Grabes-
spende.
 Introduction 23

But Venus irrigates Ascanius' limbs with peaceful sleep, and the goddess carries him,
cuddled in her bosom, to the high Idalian groves, where soft marjoram embraces him
with its flowers, breathing on him its sweet shade.

The importance of Idalium on Cyprus as one of that island's cult centres for
the worship of Venus may be real, 107 but this scene is an idyllic fantasy,
reminiscent both of the flowering brought on by the miracle child of
E. 4.18-25 (especially the cradle of flowers at 23) and of the tender care offered
by Demeter to Demophoon in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter 231-8. 108 The
whimsical, luxuriant tone is in keeping with the Hellenistic flavour of this part
of the poem and its broader parallels with Eros' attack on Medea in Apollo-
nius' Argonautica. 109 Self-conscious poetic reference likely also lies behind the
use of marjoram in this vignette: one of the very few earlier references to
amaracus in Latin poetry comes in a Catullan marriage song, 110 giving the
plant poetic-erotic associations appropriate for Venus' sacred precinct. Fur-
ther literary echoes add complication, however: the unusual metaphor of
'irrigating' someone with rest is drawn from Lucretius' discussion of the
physics of sleep: nunc quibus ille modis somnus per membra quietem I inriget
atque animi curas e pectore soluat ('now [I will explain] in what ways sleep
floods the limbs with rest and releases the mind's cares from the breast,' DRN
4.907- 8). Along with Catullus, Lucretius also appears to be the only earlier
Latin poet who mentions marjoram, in his case its oil rather than the plant
itself. 111 The reference from his fourth book is the most obviously relevant
here, describing fragrant oil smeared on the beloved's flower-decked doorway
by the locked-out lover. Yet taken together with the allusion to Lucretius on
the normal processes of sleep, and with the very unusual use of the past
participle of foueo (Jotum), attested in verse only here and at DRN 1.692, we
begin to see an injection of this whimsical fantasy with particularly Lucretian
flavours. The presentation of Venus herself engages, too, with Lucretius'
fractured Venus, who moves from her role as generative force and sublimated
erotic desire at the start of his poem, into a grittier, more mechanical sexual
urge in the fourth book. 112 Thus, hints of philosophical interpretations of love
are added to Venus as both respectable ancestor of the Romans and the
flippant and cruel 'laughter-loving Aphrodite' of Homer and Apollonius.

101
Even so, within Latin literature, references to Venus' Idalian cult overwhelmingly cluster
within poetry, and are first attested in Catullus, who lists it alongside other cult centres at
36.12-15 and 64.96, and on its own at 61.17 (perhaps significantly, from Vergil's perspective, a
poem which also refers to amaracus) . Vergil, too, tends to include it as part of a group of Venus
cults (A. 1.681, 10.51-2, 86), but uses it alone here and at A . 5.760.
10 8
Reck.ford (1995-6) 41 n. 46.
109
Whimsy need not preclude darker undertones: cf. Reck.ford (1995-6) 25-8 on the dis-
turbing parallel and distortion in the image of children (Cupid and Ascanius) cuddled in a
woman's lap.
11
° Cat. 61.6-7. 111
DRN 2.847; 4.1179; 6.973.
112
DRN 1.1-40; 4.1037-1287. Cf. Gale (1994) 208-23.
24 Vergil's Green Thoughts

The marjoram itself adds further contribution to these layers of association: as

an aromatic plant, it is appropriately associated with the goddess of love, but,
unlike the rose or myrlle (for example), is not routinely pictured alongside her.
Its suitability for Venus' sacred precinct is emphasized-it is soft (mollis), and
its perfumed shade is sweet (dulci)-but these words may, further, serve as a
pun on its name: amaracus is close to amarus (bitter), evoking the age-old
cliche of bitter-sweet love and delicately picking out the ominous undertones
in this badinage of the divergent poetic and philosophical elements in Venus'
numen. 113
There need not always be an implied choice between an intuition of old
animism and more contempora1y outlooks on religious ritual, however. For
example, the turf altar appears to offer a clear overlap between these different
approaches. The use of this simple religious apparatus may reflect practicality,
taking advantage of a relatively plentiful and easily assembled resource.
Nevertheless, its significance was generally held to be deeper than this, and
the life-force in still-growing grass offers its own numinous contribution. 114 In
the Aeneid, as the Trojans and Rutulians prepare the ground for the duel
between Turnus and Aeneas, grass altars are set up:
campum ad certamen magnae sub moenibus urbis
dimensi Rutulique uiri Teucrique parabant
in medioque focos et dis communibus aras
gramineas. alii fontemque ignemque ferebant
uelati limo et uerbena tempora uincti.
A. 12.116-20
After measuring out the field of combat beneath the walls of the great city, both
Rutulian men and Trojans made them ready, setting up grass altars and hearths in the
middle for their shared gods. Others brought water and fire, clothed in ritual aprons,
their foreheads garlanded with foliage.

The use of grass altars here is not simply a quaint gesture, an indication of the
early rustic simplicity of Italy, but also reflects real practice, or at least the
memory of real practice. The enjambment of gramineas ('made of grass')
marks the significance of the use of turf, while the mention of ritual uerbena

113
E.g. Sapph. fr. 47 L.-P.; Theogn. 1353; Plaut. Pseud. 63; Cat. 68.18. The pun is also at work
in Cat. 61.7, suaue olentis arnaraci ('sweet-smelling marjoram') . Servius adds a further strand to
the tale of marjoram in the story of Amaracus, son of Cinyras, a perfume-maker favoured by
Venus and transformed into the herb after his death. It is hard to judge whether this myth was
known in Vergil's time.
114
Horace insists on the adjective uiuus ('living') in his self-consciously simple turf altars at
Od. 1.19.13-14 and 3.8.3-4. Calpurnius Siculus 5.25-7 uses a turf altar (once more caespite uiuo)
in sacrifices to Pales, Faun us, the Lares, and the genius loci. For an animist interpretation of grass
in ritual, Wagenvoort (1947) 19-22.
 Introduction 25

seems to point to the use of herbs in the making of other treaties in Roman
histoiy. 115 The implicit acknowledgement of the immanent divine power in
plants complements the overt presentation of familiar ritual.

0.3.3. Forms of Association: Nymphs and Trees

The idea that a certain species of tree or plant may have links with a particular
god is an old and familiar one. 116 After remarking on the worship of trees in
general terms, Pliny states:
arborum genera numinibus suis dicata perpetuo seruantur, ut Ioui aesculus,
Apollini laurus, Mineruae olea, Veneri myrtus, Herculi populus; quin et Siluanos
Faunosque et dearum genera siluis ac sua numina tamquam e caelo attributa
credimus.
Pliny, HN 12.3
Different kinds of tree are kept forever dedicated to their particular divinities, as
the oak to Jupiter, the laurel to Apollo, the olive to Minerva, the myrtle to Venus,
the poplar to Hercules; indeed, we even believe that the Silvani and Fauni and the
different kinds of goddesses were assigned to the woods and their powers by
heaven.

Vergil himself evokes such catalogues at E. 7.61-4 and G. 2.15-19 and 63-7.
The associations are ancient and persistent, but they are not always exclusive:
the picture is complicated by local variations, alternative mythologies, and
even difficulties with the identification of species. Jupiter's claim to the oak is
strong, but the tree also has links with Ceres and Diana; Jupiter and Venus
have affiliations with the vine as much as its most vigorous promoter, Bacchus;
Pan, Neptune, and Cybele all have special connections with pines, and so
on. 117 There is also, as implied by Pliny, the question of how the spheres of
influence of greater and smaller divine powers overlap: Silvanus, Faunus, and
the Dryads are intimately connected with the woods in general, and some-
times with the very same trees to which an Olympian may lay claim. This need

115
Cf. Livy 1.24.4-6; 30.43.9. In the first example, the plant to be used as sagmina (grass tom
up with its roots, which marked the Fetial priest as inviolable) is described first as graminis
herbam puram ('pure growth of grass') and then apparently glossed as uerbena. The latter is
usually interpreted as a generic word for foliage used in a ritual (or medicinal) context, rather
than referring to a particular type of plant. Vergil does not use uerbena ve1y often: only here in
the Aeneid, in a clearly magic-ritual context at E. 8.65, and in a garden at G. 4.131. This last
example may just mean 'herbs', but in context, appearing betw'een lilies and poppies, it is
tempting to see reference to a particular species.
11 6
I use broad language of'association' or 'links with' advisedly: cf. Hunt (2016) 227-37 on
the difficulty of distinguishing whether particular trees are properly consecrated to particular
gods, and how the connection of a given genus with a given deity was imagined.
117
The complexity of such affiliations is the subject of Chapter 2.
26 Vergil's Green Thoughts

not imply any contest between gods and demi-gods: the lesser numina so often
accompany the greater that a strict demarcation of influence may be neither
possible nor necessary most of the time. 118 Moreover, the exact ways in which
a connection or even identity with plants is thought to work are frequently
hard to pin down. I will address here a case which could be termed 'extreme' -
Nymphs and their trees-which operates as a useful backdrop to Vergil's
varied, complex and yet frequently understated presentations of gods in
nature.
In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the goddess herself offers one account
of the connection between Nymphs and trees:
rfj<IL 8' aµ,' ~ .!Mrai ~E 8pvEc; iJl/JLKCLP'YJVOl
yEwoµ,EvT)<ILV l!rpvaav E'1T< x0ov/ {3wnavE ,p'[/, 265
KaAa{, T'Y)i\E0a.ov<JaL, EV ovpwiv vi/,'Y)AOL<JW.
foraa' ~i\{(:Jaroi, TEfl,EV'Y) DEE 1aKi\~<JKOV<JLI'
a0av6.-rwv· rds 8' OU n (:Jporo, KElPOV<Jl <IlD~Pif' "
ail.A' DTE KEV 0~ flOtpa 1Tapw-r~K'[/ 0avarow,
a,CJ.VETal fl,EI' 1rpwrov E'1TL x0ov, Mv8prn Kalla, 270
<pAOLO<; 8' awpmEpirp0wv0Et, '1TL'1TTOV<JL 8' /fo' O'OL,
TWV DE 0' oµ,ov if,vx~ AEl'1TEl rp6.oc; ~EALOW,
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 264-72
At the time of the Nymphs' birth firs or high-topped oaks grow up with them in the
fertile soil, beautiful and luxuriant-growing in the high mountains. They stand tall, and
men call them the sacred places of the gods, and no mortals ever cut them with the axe.
But when the time of death is near, first the beautiful trees wither in the ground, and
the bark shrivels away, and the twigs fall off, and the breath of life of both tree and
Nymph leaves the sun's light as one.

As Olson (2012 ad 267-8) points out, there is potential ambiguity between the
notion that the grove of Nymph-trees is sacred to the Nymphs themselves and
the 'correct' idea that these trees are instead sacred to the immortal gods,
alongside whom the Nymphs also have their intimate association. From the
human perspective, whichever interpretation of the presiding deity of the
grove is adopted, the overriding message is clear: these places are holy, and
the living trees are not to be touched. 119 It is not always the case that the
sanctity of a particular tree is overtly guaranteed by an Olympian sponsor,
however: Nymphs may exercise power on their own account. Apollonius of

11
• There may be fleeting glimpses of exception: for example, at Fasti 4.229-32, Ovid's Erato

tells how Cybele chopped down the tree (an unspecific arbor) with which the Nymph Sagaritis'
life was bound up. The conflict arose from the goddess' outrage when Attis broke his vow of
virginity and slept with the Nymph: it is, thus, not explicitly a matter of conflicting spheres of
influence, but perhaps not simply a matter of sexual jealousy either.
119
Olson (2012) ad 269-72 speculates that the inviolability of the trees may lapse once they
die (and there is thus no chance of harming the Nymphs).
 Introduction 27

Rhodes tells of a curse inherited by Paraebius, whose father had (in that
familiar pattern) ignored the pleas of a Hamadryad not to cut down her oak
tree, which was only lifted when Par~ebius took Phineus' advice and made
expiatory offerings to the Nymph (Arg. 2.474-86).
There is a lack of clarity, however, on the precise question of how the
Nymphs and their trees are connected.12 ° Callimachus professes to be so
confused that he even asks the Muses for the answer:
.;, o' V7TO•tvr,0Eiao. xopov U7TE7T0.1JOO.TO vvµrpr,
0.JJTox0wv ME°A.{r, ,mi vn6x,\oov EOXE no.pEt'Y)V 80
1)AlKOS aa01w{vovao. 7TEpi 8pv6,, l~S LOE x<1tT1JV
OEL0f-',EV1JV 'EAlKWVOS . .!µ,o.i 0rni Et7TUTE Movaai,
ij !>' ETEOV EyEVOVTO TOTE opvES 'Y)VtKa Nvµ,rpat;
'Nvfl(f'CJ.l µ,Ev xa{povaiv, OTE 8pva, oµ{3pos MgEl,
Nvµqiai o' ao KA.at0vaiv, OTE opvaiv ov,dn (f!VAA.a.' 85
Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 79-85
And the earth-born Nymph Melia spun around and stopped dancing and went pale in
her cheek as she gasped for her coeval tree, 121 when she saw the locks of Helicon
shaking. Tell me Muses, my goddesses, is it true that Nymphs are born along with the
trees? 'Nymphs rejoice when the rain makes the trees grow, and Nymphs lament when
there are no longer leaves on the trees.'
The reference to Melia as 'earth-born' points towards Hesiod's account of the
ash-Nymphs springing from the earth (Theog. 107), and distances her from an
alternative ancestry as one of the daughters of Oceanus (e.g. Pind., Pae. 7.4;
9.43); the reference to her 'coeval tree' points in a similar direction. The
narrator's sudden doubts about this formulation imply direct reference to
texts such as the Homeric Hymn; 122 the Muses may indeed be sources of
knowledge in a general way, but the emphasis on their relationship with
the poet ('my goddesses') rather invokes their store of poetic memories.
Their answer appears to be that the Nymphs relationship with trees is looser
than syngenesis, and is, instead, a sympathetic connection.123 In its way, this

12
° Forbes-Irving ( l 990) 130-1 argues against older interpretations keen to see traces of tree-
worship in Nymphs and their trees, claiming that the Greeks did not imagine trees as possessing
'human spirit' and that it is only with Ovid's Lotis and Eiysichthon stories that we see this clearly
emerging. He speculates that it might, thus, either reflect an Italian rather than a Greek belief, or
be an act of literary one-upmanship following Vergil's Polydorns. Presumably it might reflect
both literary and folk traditions.
121
I translate opu, as 'tree' rather than the more specific, and more common, 'oak' to avoid the
problem of why a Nymph called Melia (ash) should have a particular connection to an oak. It
may well be, however, that Callimachus would have relished such a puzzle. Cf. Bing (1981) ad
loc.; Mineur (1984) ad loc. ; Klooster (2012), 30- 3, all of whom see play with the etymology of
hamadryad.
122
Pindar Fr. 146 also says the Hamadryads' lifespan is the same as that of the tree.
12
' Cf. Mineur (1984) ad loc.
28 Vergil's Green Thoughts

formulation has more kinship with the bucolic pathetic fallacy than with tales of
trees-with-spirits.
For all that Callimachus might consider the matter to be cleared up, the
idea of a more fundamental connection between Nymphs and trees persisted
in some Roman texts. Most famously, Ovid's Eiysichthon chops Ceres'
sacred oak, which first grows pale and then begins to gush blood as the
voice of the Nymph inside predicts the king's punishment before she dies
(Met. 8.758-73). 124 His story of Dryope also hints at intimate connection, first
in the bleeding lotus she unwittingly harms while still in human form
(Met. 9.344-9), 125 and then in her own rapid self-identification with the tree
(possibly an oak) 126 which she becomes: uiximus innocuae; si mentior,
arida perdam I quas habeo frondes et caesa securibus urar ('I have lived
without sin; if I lie, may I dry out and lose the leaves I have and be chopped
down by axes and burned' 373-4). Within the rather different context of
mannered praise-poetry, Statius notes with approval that a tree has been left
to grow through the middle of Manilius Vopiscus' villa at Tibur, which
surely any other master would have felled: at nunc ignaro forsan uel lubrica
Nais I uel non abruptos tibi debet Hamadryas annos ('but now perhaps either a
sleek Naiad or Hamadryad owes you, though you do not know it, her
unbroken years of life', Silvae 1.3.63-4). The forsan adds an arch tone, and
I would certainly rest no claims for genuine religious beliefs about tree-
Nymphs on any of these examples, but the idea, at least, clearly remains
attractive.
Vergil's own treatment of the relationship between Nymphs and trees tends
to be oblique. Some traces of the story pattern of Nymphs avenging damage to
their special trees may lurk in the grove-clearing and Aristaeus episodes of the
Georgics; 127 more overt variations on this pattern are found in Polydorus'
cornel and myrtle thicket, Cybele's pines and Faun us' oleaster in the Aeneid. 128
Evander's account of the distant history of the site of Rome also offers a hint of
this story, but, again, shies away from a precise identification of numen
and tree:

124
Its roots are in Callimachus' version, where the tree also cries out (Hymn 6.39), but no
Nymph is said to be within; rather, the trees are Ta 0rn,a,v avE,1.dva Sivl'iprn ('trees given up to the
gods', 46).
125
This motif of unwitting sin and a bleeding plant echoes the Polydorus episode of Aeneid 3,
even down to the detail of taking place in a myrtle grove (335); it is also a marked departure from
Nicander's version (Ant. Lib. 32) where the Hamadryads, far from seeking revenge, allow Dryope
to join them when her son is fully grown.
126
The loton in the transmitted text of Met. 9.365 seems corrupt. Harrison (in Kenney (2001)
549) suggests quercum, offering a neat bilingual pun on her name (Dryope / Spiis) of the kind
Ovid often favours. The choice of tree would also fit an Ovidian pattern: as the oak is substituted
for Callimachus' poplar (Hymn 6.37) in Ovid's Erysichthon story, so here the oak replaces the
poplar ofNicander's version (cf. Ant. Lib. 32).
127 12
See 1.1.3. • See 2.6, 2.3 and 2.4 respectively.
 Introduction 29

haec nemora indigenae Fauni Nymphaeque tenebant

gensque uirum truncis et duro robore nata,
quis neque mos neque cultus erat . ..
A. 8.314-16
The indigenous l~auns and Nymphs used to occupy these groves, and a race of men
born from trunks and hard oak wood, who had neither custom nor civilization ...

Here the focus soon shifts from the Fauns and Nymphs to the primitive
humans, and their gradual taming under the rule of Saturn, but for a moment
the picture of rustic numina living alongside men born from trees hints at a
particular affinity. 129 The idea of these tough aboriginals echoes the accounts
of men born of earth or stone, 130 but it nevertheless seems pointed that here
Vergil chooses to emphasize arboreal rather than stony origin, intimating an
especially close connection between trees, primitive man and woodland
numina. 131
The vaguer sense of Nymphs as, simply, forest-dwellers is apparent in both
the Eclogues and Georgics, 132 and recurs as an occasional motif in the Aeneid,
where several heroes are joined in a loose brotherhood of children raised by
woodland Nymphs in their early years. Hippolytus' son Virbius is brought up
in the grove of Egeria 133 (A. 7.763, echoing the earlier concealment of his
father in the same woods, 774-7); 134 Arcens' son is raised in his Nymph

129
For allusion to Lucretius' satire of rustic superstition at DRN 4.580- 1, Hardie (1986)
218-19.
130
G. 1.61-3; cf. Luer. DRN 5.925-6, Ov. M et. 1.69-75. The idea of early man coming from
either oak or rock can potentially be traced back as far as Homer and Hesiod: II. 22.126; Od.
19.163; Hes. Theog. 35; also, Plato Rep. 544d. Hesiod's bronze race emerges from ash trees (h
µ.EA,iiv, WD 143-6), their violence perhaps connected with the stereotypical use of ash for
making spears. Lucretius implicitly combines the two origins again at DRN 5.1411, siluestre
genus . . . terrigenarum ('the woodland race of the earth-born'). For trees and early men alone, cf.
Plut. Quaest. Rom. 92: the Arcadians see an affinity between themselves and oaks, since oaks
were the first trees and they were the first men.
13 1
For tree-Nymphs at the early stages of creation, cf. Hes., Theog. 187, where the Meliae
(ash-Nymphs) spring up along with Erinyes and Giants from the fertilization ofEarth with blood
from Ouranos' severed genitals. There may be another hint of this affinity between tree-Nymphs
and tree-born men in Vergil's Camilla, whose life as a hnntress in the wilds marks her as Nymph-
like, but who even spent a brief time as a baby wrapped in the bark of a cork tree, in an echo of
those early humans: A.11.554-5. (For a rather different interpretation of the cork as a practical
flotation aid, see Horsfall (2003) ad lac.) Compare Oebalus, son of the Nymph Sebethis,
commander of men from Abella, who throw boomerangs like Teutons and wear cork-bark
helmets on their heads (A. 7.733- 43).
132
See 1.1.2 and 1.1.3.
133
Egeria, associated with sacred groves and springs at Aricia and near the Porta Capena
outside Rome, was possibly a Dryad. The older form of her name, Aegeria (cf. Val. Max. 1.2.1)
related to <LtyE,pos (poplar, or perhaps oak): Cook (1905) 283-4.
134
For Virbius as the Rex Nemorensis, Dyson (2001) 143-6. More on his cult and political
importance in Green (2007) 208-31.
30 Vergil's Green Thoughts

mother's grove in Sicily (A. 9.584-5); 135 the woodland Nymph Iaera brings
up her sons Pandarus and Bitias in a grove of Jupiter (A. 9.672-4); and
Tarquitus is the son of both a wood-dwelling Faun and the Nymph Dryope
(A . 10.551-2). Vestiges of this story-type are perhaps also present in the
reference to Halaesus being concealed in the woods by his father (A 10.417)
and the prediction of Silvius Aeneas' birth in the woods at A. 6.763-5. At this
point, it is tempting to remember that in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the
goddess engages Nymphs on Mt Ida to care for the infant Aeneas himself until
he is around four years old, and instructs Anchises to claim that one of them is
the child's mother (257-8; 273-85). If this poetic memory is activated from
time to time in the Aeneid, especially in the reference to Silvius Aeneas, it adds
another layer to the complicated presentation of Aeneas: a representative of a
new religious-political order with little concern for the smaller numina, he is
himself destined to be intimately linked to those smaller gods, especially the
indigites and their Italian environments. 136

0.4. PLANTS AS SYMBOL AND METAPHOR

Within ancient texts plants can of course function just as plants: parts of the
natural environment used as backdrop, illustration, and even as protagonists
centre-stage. Although Hesiod gives little detail to plants in his Works and
Days, there are clear indications scattered throughout the work that his
audience is expected to be familiar with a range of flora, and Hesiod is
naturally conscious of the usefulness of various plants to mankind, setting
them within their cultural as well as natural context. 137 Plants also play their
part as nature's timekeepers, giving mankind markers throughout the year:
the flowering of the artichoke heralds the hot season (WD 582), and the
spring sailing is marked by the unfurling of the topmost shoot of a fig tree
to the size of a crow's foot (WD 679-80). Even within the rarefied environ-
ment of learned Hellenistic poetry, straightforward presentation of plants
within their own habitats and of their practical relationships with mankind

135
The involvement of a Nymph relies on reading matris in place of Martis in line 584:
Hardie (1994) ad loc.
13 6
For the tradition of Aeneas Indiges, Livy 1.2.6; Tib. 2.5.43-4; Ov., Met. 14.596-608. On
Indigites as (presumed) native gods as opposed to incoming ones (Nouensiles), Livy 8.9.5. Orlin
(2007) sees in Vergil's presentation of Roman religion as stemming from the single source of
Jupiter's revelation at A. 12.836-7 a parallel to Augustus' streamlining of religion via his
programme of temple building and restoration: a far cry from ambiguous and inconclusive
multiplicity.
137
An obvious example combining both can be found in the instruction on building a plough,
using holm oak for the plough tree, laurel or elm for the poles, and oak for the share beam (WD
427-36).
 Introduction 31

is perfectly possible: Theocritus anticipates Vergil in his close engagement

with Theophrastus' botanical works, 138 and his realistic presentation of vege-
tation within his poetry may reveal his own observation of plants in their
natural habitats, even as they are frequently also freighted with metapoetic
associations. Plants in literature, then, need not always be 'literary' plants
first and foremost; nevertheless, naturalistic representations can often slide
into the territory of symbol, metaphor, and poetic technique. Indeed, a
practical, plausibly 'lived' relationship of men with plants was frequently
combined with symbolism from the very earliest poetry, as in Homer's
frequent use of the 'man falls like tree' simile pattern, which often evokes
familiar scenes of wood-cutting, and alludes to the use subsequently to be
made of a felled specimen. 139 In this section I will set out just some of the
ways in which plants are drawn into a range of symbolic and metaphorical
tropes: a rich tradition which Vergil is more than ready to exploit.

0.4.1. Plants, People, and Analogy

Anthropocentric ways of seeing often emphasize differences between humans

and other living things, with the vegetable kingdom placed at the bottom of
the pecking order. Yet the human focus on itself can, conversely, result in the
tracing of parallels and comparisons between people and plants. Even within
scientific traditions, the temptation to draw analogies between plant and
animal bodies is often strong. 140 The potential semantic fluidity between
animal (or more specifically human) body parts and the parts of plants is
also welcomed by many ancient poets. 141 Trees lend themselves particularly
well to this system of imagery, their trunks, branches, and foliage analogized to
human bodies, limbs, and hair. The Homeric similes just mentioned, where
falling warriors are likened to felled trees, already gesture in this direction, and

138
Theocritus and Theophrastus: Lindsell (1937); Amigues (2002) 363-78; and his wider
botanical engagement, Lembach (1971). Vergil and Theophrastus: Mitsdarffer (1938); Thomas
(1987).
139
E.g. at JI. 4.482-7, Simoeisius falls like a black poplar destined to make felloes for a fine
chariot; at 13.389-91, Asius falls like an oak, white poplar, or pine cut down to make a ship (also
Sarpedon at 16.482-4). On the history of this topos, Gagliardi (2007).
1 0
• E.g. Nicolaus Damascenus, On Plants 1.3.63; every part of a plant can be compared to
animal parts; Plin. HN 16.181-4; 17.224, 248: fluid in body of trees is like blood, etc.; Col. RR
3.10.11; 4.21.1: vines have feet, shoulders, arms, etc. Hardy and Totelin (2016) 107-8 note that
Theophrastus, by contrast, does not slip into anthropomorphic mode when cataloguing the parts
of plants.
141
Perutelli (1985); Nisbet (1987) 243-4; Gowers (2005) and (2011). On the Georgics in
particular, Carilli (1993).
32 Vergil's Green Thoughts

in Latin the idea of a tree's 'arms', bracchia, may be unremarkable, but it is not
bound to be a dead metaphor. 142 Indeed, the familiarity of such connections
enables poets to develop them in subtle and sometimes unexpected ways.
Catullus' Minotaur, a murderous bull-headed beast, is humanized via use of
a Homeric-style simile comparing him to a storm-battered oak or pine in
summo quatientem bracchia Tauro ('shaking its branches / arms on the
heights of the Taurus mountains', 64.105). 143 If the power of such imagery
to elide distinctions between plants and people has, perhaps, to wait for the
myriad human to plant transformations of Ovid's Metamorphoses to receive
its most overt expression in Latin literature, there is much already there for
Vergil to respond to. Indeed, Vergil anticipates Ovid with reference to the
transformation of the daughters of the sun into trees: E. 6.62- 3: tum Phaethon-
tiadas musco circumdat amarae I corticis atque solo proceras erigit a/nos ('then
[Silenus] surrounds the sisters of Phaethon with bitter mossy bark and raises
them up from the ground as tall alder trees', E. 6.62-3).
In the Eclogues, direct analogies of human bodies to plant parts are largely
avoided, but the broader comparison of attractive humans to beautiful plants
is common enough. 144 There may be a hint of more specific human-body-as-
plant imagery in Eclogue 10, where Gallus worries how his beloved Lycoris will
cope with a trip through the Alps or Germany: a, te ne frigora laedant! I a tibi
ne teneras glacies secet aspera plantas! ('ah, let the cold not harm you! Ah, let
the harsh ice not cut your tender feet!', E. 10.48-9). A planta can be the young
shoot of a plant as well as the sole of a human foot, and we may recall
Melioboeus' careful protection of his my1iles against frost, dum teneras
defendo a frigore myrtos ('while I was protecting the tender myrtles from the
cold', E. 7.6). Lycoris emerges, thus, as both the high-maintenance elegiac
woman unsuited to harsh camp life, and a tender plant to be cared for by the
would-be plantsman Gallus. 145 Within the Georgics, the plant-human con-
nection tends to flow in the opposite direction, as trees, vines, and crops are
regularly anthropomorphized, before the flow is reversed once more in the
Aeneid, where humans again become like crops, flowers, and trees. 146
Another less specific human-as-plant metaphor can be detected in the
frequent use of vegetative 'flourishing' words to describe (usually) young

142
Greek is perhaps more sparing than Latin with this particular metaphorical connection,
although it is possible to find a case of K,\a/5os: ('branch') meaning a human arm in Emp. 29.l.
Tree tnmks do not generally seem to be human trunks in Greek. However, in Greek as in Latin
the same words are used for 'hair' and 'foliage' (Ko~•1/, xa[T1/, coma), and the use of Epvos ('sprout',
'shoot of a young plant') and o~os: ('bough', 'branch') to denote human offspring is ubiquitous:
compare Latin stirps (the stock of a tree) which can also be a family lineage, or offspring.
143 144
Armstrong (2006) 86-90; Lowe (2015) 184-5. See 4.1.1.2.
145
Love and flourishing plants combine again as the poet claims his affection for Gallus grows
as vigorously as alder shoots in spring (E. 10.73-4) .
146
On Vergil's anthropomorphic plants, 3.1; 3.2.2.2; 4.2.2; on Vergil's people as plants,
3.2.2.3; 4.1.1.2.
 Introduction 33

people: floren s, uirens, and so on. Lucretius even employs a combination of

•fferent plant-related metaphors to illustrate dissatisfaction with life:
nee tamen explemur uitai fructibus umquam,
hoc, ut opinor, id est, aeuo florente puellas
quod memorant laticem pertusum congerere in uas,
quod tamen expleri nulla ratione potestur. 1010
Luer., DRN 3.1007-10
- -or do we ever have our fill of the fruits of life, this, as I believe, is the story that they
:ell of the girls in the flower of youth who had to gather water in a leaky vase, which
;::owever can never be filled by any method.
Tbe fruits of life are literally the earth's produce (fetus, 1006) as well as
:netaphors of human pleasures and fulfilment, while the fully metaphorical
- owering of the daughters of Danaus-which might even evoke imagery of
' rides as flowers 147 - is bl~hted by the eternal futility of their task. 148 Vergil's
e of metaphors of flowers and burgeoning leaves may often be brief, as in his
·escription of Corydon and Thyrsis as florentes aetatibus ('flowering in their
-,·outh ', E. 7.4), but need not thus be insignificant. The metaphor returns at the
~nd of the Georgics when V ergil describes himself enjoying the writing of
:;x>etry in Naples while Caesar is off fighting: illo Vergilium me tempore dulcis
:.!ebat I Parthenope studiis florentem ignobilis oti ('at that time, sweet Parthe-
-op e nourished me, Vergil, as I flowered in the pursuits of undistinguished
· ure', G. 4.563-4). The poet himself is a plant nourished by the southern
·an soil, allowed to flower in both personal and poetic terms by the leisure
enjoys as a result of (in spite of?) the vigorous military activities of the
litical elite. Vergil even engages in a circular re-appropriation of the meta-
or for plants themselves: he appears to be the first to use the participle
rens in its adjectival sense to apply to plants, at E. 1.78, 2.64, 9.19, and
.25.149 Thus, in this context of invigorated plants, one might view it as more
an a pat and unreflective use of the 'flowering' metaphor when Vergil applies
again to humans: Corydon and Thyrsis, and then Vergil himself share in the
invigorated image1y of flourishing plants.
With metaphors of humanized plants and plant-like humans so well estab-
h ed, the associations can be found in more and less implicit suggestions, and
e connection develops from one of basic physical resemblance or physical
urishing to a deeper kind of interconnection of humans and plants. In

w Catullus 61 develops this elegantly: real flowers are woven into a garland (6-7), the
icular bride is compared to flowering myrtle branches (21-2) and then a (generalized)
· e is given the adjective floridam (57) before her face is given the same (1 86) and compared
harnomile and poppy.
,.. West (1982).
,., Lipka (200 l) 147-8. As Lipka observes, the use of the participle in place of a more static
·ve refl ects Vergil's presentation of plant life in his poetry as dynamic.
34 Vergil's Green Thoughts

Horace's Soracte ode, for example, trees' experiences of severe and mild
weather can serve simultaneously as attractive scene-setting and as a promo-
tion of a more philosophical response to life's vicissitudes: the woods of the
snow-covered mountain first appear to be overwhelmed, nee iam sustineant
onus I siluae laborantes ('no longer can the labouring woods hold up their
load', Od. 1.9.3-4), yet as soon as the thaw has come and the gods have caused
the winds to drop, nee eupressi I nee ueteres agitantur orni ('neither the
cypresses nor the ancient manna-ash are agitated', 11-12). Their homogeneity
(simply 'woods') when under pressure reflects with subtle realism the visually
muffling effect of the snow but may also imply the dulling, de-individualizing
effect of anxiety. Pleasant individuality is later restored as particular species
are named, and the antiquity of the manna-ash reveals them as many-time
survivors of winter's onslaught: they become a stalwart synecdoche of the sage
not brought _!9w by life's vicissitudes. 150 Meanwhile, the human addressee
Thaliarchus is, by contrast, a mere boy, whose youthfulness is briefly reflected
in vegetative terms-uirenti ('growing green', 'flourishing', 17)-even as he is
given a less positive picture of old age from a human perspective (eanities .. .
morosa, 'peevish grey hair', 17-18). Horace thus reflects in a variety of ways the
possibilities of poetic plants for reflections on life, landscape, poetics, symbol-
ism, and the human condition. 151
To offer a final example on this theme, now broadening to a plant-animal
association, we find that even when plants are the overt subject matter,
thoughts about the similarity between animal and vegetable can creep in.
Lucretius' account of the evolution of plants offers a rich reworking of earlier
philosophical theories on the emergence of plant life, 152 but its poetic setting
gives space for a fluid combination of the metaphorical and the (theorized) real:
principio genus herbarum uiridemque nitorem
terra dedit circum collis camposque per omnis,
florida fulserunt uiridanti prata colore, 785
arboribusque datumst uariis exinde per auras
crescendi magnum immissis certamen habenis.
ut pluma atque pili primum saetaeque creantur
quadripedum membris et corpore pennipotentum,
sic noua tum tellus herbas uirgultaque primum 790

° For similarly stoical endurance in a tree, cf. A. 4.441-6. Nisbet and Hubbard (1970) ad loc.
15

argue that Horace introduces the cypress for its elegance; this is doubtless true, but the tree's
association with death adds a further and rather different element (one explicitly played upon at
Od. 2.14.23, where cypress trees are inuisas, hateful, because they act as a memento mori). On this
aspect of the cypress in Vergil, see 2.7.
151
For Horace's trees in Odes I as part of his literary programme, Fenton (2008).
152
Campbell (2003) notes that in assigning grasses priority over trees in the emergence of
plant species, Lucretius appears to diverge from the orders offered by both Empedocles and
Anaxagoras (trees first).
 Introduction 35

sustulit, inde loci mortalia saecla creauit

multa modis multis uaria ratione coorta.
Luer., DRN 5.783-92
Firstly, the earth gave forth the race of grasses and a green sheen around the hills and
over all the plains, and the flowering meadows gleamed with green colour, and then to
the different trees was given the great contest of growing up through the breezes with
free rein. Just as featl1ers and hairs and bristles are made first on the limbs of four-
footed beasts and the body of the powerful-winged, so then the new earth ·first bore
grasses and bushes, and in turn created the mortal generations which rose up in
multitude, in many ways, by varying methods.

The emphasis on colour and vigour offers a vividly imagined 'reality' of green
grasses, then trees, spreading over the new earth, while also drawing on the
broader metaphorical uses and symbolic connections of the words: nitor
('sheen') is often transferred to connote human beauty or elegance, while
floridus ,.(>'flowering') is one of a range of vegetative words commonly used to
describe human flourishing. Indeed, the word genus-here used to mean 'kind'
of grass-more commonly refers to human families or 'races' of beasts. 153 This
intuited analogy between plant and animal life is made increasingly overt as,
first, the tall-growing trees are presented like charioteers vying to win a race, 154
and then the emergence of vegetation on the land is compared with the growth
of fur, feathers, and bristles on individual animals and birds. Lucretius proffers
both an overt account of the evolution of plants and trees, and an implied
account of the evolution of linguistic and metaphorical cross-fertilization
between animal and plant life.

0.4.2. Plants and Politics

Bodily metaphor and politics combine in dramatic style when Sextus Tarqui-
nius sends a messenger to his father asking for advice how to proceed now he
has gained the loyalty of the Gabii:
huic nuntio, quia, credo, dubiae fidei uidebatur, nihil uoce responsum est; rex
uelut deliberabundus in hortum aedium transit sequente nuntio filii; ibi inambu-
lans tacitus summa papauerum capita dicitur baculo decussisse ... Sexto ubi quid
uellet parens quidue praeciperet tacitis ambagibus patuit, primores ciuitatis
criminando alios apud populum, alios sua ipsos inuidia opportunos interemit.
Livy 1.54.6, 8

153
For the 'human race', humanum genus, e.g. Cic. Lael. 5.20; Hor. Epod. 5.2; the race of birds,
e.g. genus altiuolantum, 'race of high-flyers', Enn. Ann. 87 Sk; of wild beasts, genus .. . ferarum,
Luer. DRN 5.1338.
154
The metaphor of giving 'free rein' is common, but not dead: Campbell (2003) ad loc.
36 Vergil's Green Thoughts
To this messenger, because, I believe, he seemed of doubtful trustworthiness, the
king gave no reply in words; as if going to think things over, he went out into the
palace garden with his son's messenger following. As he strolled there, in silence,
he is said to have struck the heads off the top of the poppies with his staff. . . .
When it became clear to Sextus what his father wanted and what he was urging by
means of these silent riddles, he killed the foremost men of the community, some
by bringing charges against them before the people, while others were laid
vulnerable by their own unpopularity.

Decapitated poppies become decapitated people, and the elder Tarquin's

message, if baffling to the messenger woefully unschooled in plant symbolism,
encapsulates in a clear and chilling moment the shared vulnerability of plant
and human life, especially in times of great political upheaval.
The associations of plants with politics are myriad, and range from th~--
literal to the symbolic, and across both visual and literary arts. The Fic;;_s
ruminalis was a wild fig tree said to have offered shade and shelter to the infant
Romulus and Remus when their floating cradle reached the shores of the
Tiber. In it were combined elements of both sacredness and memorial, helping
to define Roman identity, and watching over public life. 155 The whole city was
dotted with trees, or sometimes groups of trees, with particular historical,
religious, and political connections, and the powerful could engage in a spot of
tree-planting to enhance their public image. 156 Particular trees, whether real or
imagined, were often intimately linked with the fortunes of political dynasties
or even of whole communities. Julius Caesar is reported to have decided to
adopt Octavian after a palm tree he spared from the axe grew a shoot which
overshadowed the parent tree (Suet., Div. Aug. 94.11); a further plant-related
omen marked the auspicious betrothal of Octavian and Livia when an eagle
dropped into her lap a hen, unharmed, carrying a sprig of berried laurel in her
beal< (Plin., HN 15.136-7). 157 Connections between the vegetative and political
realms are reflected in the 'statement trees' of the Aeneid, the manna-ash
toppled by the axe which stands for the falling city of Troy (A. 2.626- 31), or
the ancient laurel tree in the palace of Latinus from which the Laurentine
people take their name (A 7.59-70). 158 From the time of Pompey the Great
on, when the Romans led representatives of their conquered nations in
triumph, they sometimes included trees to symbolize their newly exerted
control over natural as well as human assets, 159 and more generally the
successful transplantation of exotic species to Rome could be an expression

155
Hunt (2016) 100-20 on the connection between ancient figs on the Lupercal and by the
comitium, an assembly place in the Roman Forum. Cf. Briquel (1980) 301 - 19 and Flory (1989)
345n.8.
156
On the religious associations of trees in the city, see 1. 1. 1 and 1.4.3.
157
On this omen, Flo1y (1989). Gowers (2011) explores more arboreal signs and metaphors
attached to both Roman and Trojan dynasties.
158 159
See 2.5. Plin., HN 12.111-12. Cf. Ostenberg (2009) 184- 8.
 Introduction 37

of political power as much as horticultural prowess. 160 The Jasces themselves,

the ultimate symbols of political authority, were made from rods of elm or
birch, 161 sometimes combined with a laurel crown.162
Politically significant plants naturally made their way into artistic represen-
tations. 163 The spica (ear of com) and individual grains were common images
on coins, often denoting the aediles' part in the distribution of corn to the
people. Political-and politicized-honours were frequently marked by the
award of crowns of grass, laurel, or oak leaves, together with the right to
represent these in artistic images, whether coins, reliefs, or statuary. 164 The
fluidity of associations evoked by plants could also be exploited in this context;
when Vergil presents Octavian as cingens materna tempora myrto ('wreathing
[his] brows with [his] maternal myrtle', G. 1.28) he simultaneously draws on
associations of the myrtle crown with the ouatio, a form of 'lesser' triumph
granted in contexts where the conflict is relatively easily won, 165 and with
Octavian's family link to Venus (hence 'maternal'), together with the broader
connection between the goddess and this plant.166 Octavian/ Augustus certain-
ly ·~ e to appreciate the political power of vegetative symbolism, and the Ara
Pacis perhaps most consummately reveals his ability to exploit representations
of plant life to enhance his project of political renewal. 167
Even gardens, supposed places of otium ('leisure') and rest from politics,
could become arenas for political one-upmanship. The wealthy and powerful
were able to control the symbolic messages of their gardens in a way not so
serenely achieved by the erection of statues or monuments in public areas
already crowded with other men's marmoreal statements. 168 Although much
of this was achieved via the positioning of the gardens and the creation of
impressive features like porticoes, shrines, and pools, the garden plants them-
selves were inevitably made complicit in their masters' striving for dominance
and popularity. Nevertheless, and in contrast with stereotypes of the green-
fingered English aristocracy, gardening itself was not necessarily an appropri-
ate occupation for the Roman upper classes. While the image of men like
Cincinnatus, a statesman and a farmer, remained powerful, 169 pottering in
the garden might rather be associated with oriental and tyrannical forms of
kingship. 17° For a reader of the Georgics alert to political messages, the
poet's ostentatious skirting around the topic of gardens may reflect this

1 60 161
Totelin (2012) 131-6. Elm: Plaut. Epid. 28, As. 575; birch: Plin. HN 16.75.
162
E.g. Caes. BC 3.71.3, Cic. In Pis. 97.14, Pro Lig. 7.10, Div. 1.59.10; Plin. HN 15.133, 35.201.
163
E.g. Sauron (2000).
164
Laurel crowns, Plin. HN 15.127; oak, HN 16.7; grass, HN 22.6-13.
165 166 167
Beard (2007) 62-3; 113. See 2.6. E.g. Castriota (1995).
1 68
von Stackelberg (2009) 74-86; for political subversion in the gardens ofMaecenas, Pagan
(2006) 37-63.
169 110
Although Thibodeau (2011) 52- 4 offers caution. Totelin (2012).
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Swinburne much in the same way as the German philosopher
Nietzsche. The music of this poet’s verse, the brilliance of his
language, the value and beauty of his diction are revealed logically
and enthusiastically by Hearn.
Our critic finds an optimistic pantheism and an intense
individualism in Browning and paraphrases excellently some of his
poems, but there is, unfortunately, no consideration of Browning’s
paradoxical interpretation of Love. William Morris’s “refuge from life”
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T. A. Z.
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Mr. Benson.
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