Virgil · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1| What makes the crops glad; under what star, Maecenas, it is right to turn the soil and to wed vines to elms; what care cattle need, what tending the keeping of flocks requires, how much experience the thrifty bees: from here I will begin my song. You, brightest lights of the universe, who lead the year as it glides across the sky; Liber and kindly Ceres, if by your gift the earth exchanged the Chaonian acorn for the rich ear of grain and mixed draughts of Achelous' water with the newly found grape; and you, Fauns, divine powers present to country people — come, Fauns and Dryad girls, come dancing together: it is your gifts I sing; and you, Neptune, for whom the earth, struck by your great trident, first poured out the snorting horse; and you, dweller in the groves, to whom three hundred snow-white bullocks crop the rich thickets of Cea; you yourself, Pan, guardian of sheep, leaving your native grove and the glades of Lycaeus, if your own Maenalus is dear to you, be with me and be kind, god of Tegea; and Minerva, discoverer of the olive; and the boy who showed the curved plough; and Silvanus, carrying a young cypress torn up by the root:
21| and all you gods and goddesses whose care it is to watch over the fields, you who nourish new crops that spring up without seed, and you who send down plentiful rain from the sky upon what has been sown. And you above all, Caesar, though it is uncertain which councils of the gods will soon hold you: whether you will choose to watch over cities and care for lands, and the great world will receive you as author of its harvests and lord of the seasons, wreathing your temples with your mother's myrtle; or whether you will come as god of the boundless sea, and sailors will worship your divine power alone, furthest Thule will serve you, and Tethys will buy you as her son-in-law with all her waves; or whether you will add yourself as a new star to the slow months, where a space opens between Erigone and the Claws that follow her — the blazing Scorpion is already drawing in his arms for you and has left you more than your fair share of the sky; whatever you will be — for Tartarus does not hope for you as its king, and may so dreadful a lust for rule never come upon you, though Greece admires the Elysian fields and Proserpina, called back, does not care to follow her mother — grant me an easy course, nod your assent to my bold beginnings, and, pitying with me the country people who do not know the way, set out, and grow used even now to being called on in prayer.
43| In early spring, when the cold water melts on the white mountains and the crumbling clod loosens under the west wind, then let my bull begin to groan over the deep-driven plough and the ploughshare to shine, rubbed bright by the furrow. That field at last answers the prayers of the greedy farmer which has felt the sun twice and the cold twice; its immense harvests have burst the barns. But before we cut into an unknown expanse with iron, let us take care first to learn the winds and the changing ways of the sky, the traditional cultivation and character of the place, what each region bears and what each refuses. Here crops come up more happily, there grapes; elsewhere young trees and grasses turn green unbidden. Do you not see how Tmolus sends us saffron scents, India ivory, the soft Sabaeans their incense, while the naked Chalybes send iron, Pontus pungent beaver musk, and Epirus the palms won by the mares of Elis? Nature laid these laws and everlasting covenants on particular places from the first, from the time when Deucalion first threw stones into the empty world, from which men were born, a hard race. So come: let strong bulls turn over the rich soil right from the first months of the year, and let dusty summer bake the clods as they lie, with its ripening suns;
67| but if the land is not fertile, it will be enough to turn it up with a shallow furrow just before Arcturus rises: in the one case, so that weeds do not choke the glad crops; in the other, so that the scanty moisture does not leave the barren sand. You will also let your fields lie fallow in alternate years after reaping, and let the idle plain harden with neglect; or, under a changed star, you will sow golden spelt where before you took up the glad pulse with its rattling pod, or the slender crop of vetch, or the brittle stalks and rustling forest of bitter lupine. For a crop of flax burns up a field, oats burn it, poppies steeped in the sleep of Lethe burn it; yet with alternation the work is easy — only do not be ashamed to soak the dry soil with rich dung, or to scatter grimy ashes over exhausted fields. So too the fields rest when the crops are changed, and meanwhile there is some gain from the unploughed land. It has often helped, too, to set fire to barren fields and burn the light stubble in crackling flames: whether the earth thereby gains hidden strength and rich nourishment, or whether every fault is cooked out of it by the fire and the useless moisture sweats out, or whether that heat opens more passages and hidden pores through which the sap may reach the new grass, or whether it hardens the soil more and binds its gaping veins, so that fine rains, or the fiercer power of the scorching sun, or the piercing cold of the north wind cannot blight it.
94| Much, then, he helps his fields who breaks the sluggish clods with hoes and drags wicker hurdles over them, and golden Ceres does not look down on him in vain from high Olympus; and so does the man who, turning his plow crosswise, breaks again through the ridges he raised when he first cut the plain, and who works the earth constantly and gives orders to his fields. Pray for wet midsummers and clear winters, farmers; grain thrives in winter dust, and the field thrives: Mysia boasts of no cultivation so much, and Gargara itself marvels at its own harvests. What shall I say of the man who, once he has sown his seed, goes after the field at close quarters and levels the mounds of poor sand, and then leads a stream and its following rivulets onto the crops, and, when the scorched field is seething with dying grass, look, draws water out of the brow of a sloping channel? Falling, it makes a hoarse murmur over the smooth stones and cools the parched fields with its spurts. What of the man who, so that the stalk does not bow under its heavy ears, grazes down the luxuriance of the crops while they are still tender grass, as soon as the sown fields rise level with the furrows, and the man who drains off the moisture collected from a marsh into thirsty sand?
115| Especially if in uncertain months a river overflows, spills out, and covers everything far and wide with a layer of silt, so that the hollow ditches sweat warm moisture. Yet although all this has been tried by the labors of people and oxen turning the earth, still the greedy goose and the Strymonian cranes and the chicory with its bitter fibers do harm, or shade does. The father of farming himself did not want the way of cultivation to be easy, and he was the first to stir the fields by skill, sharpening mortal hearts with cares and not allowing his realm to grow numb in heavy sloth. Before Jupiter no farmers brought the fields under the plow; it was not even right to mark out or divide the land with a boundary; people sought for the common store, and the earth itself bore everything more freely, with no one asking. He put baneful poison into the black snakes, ordered the wolves to prey and the sea to heave, shook the honey from the leaves, took fire away, and stopped the wine that ran everywhere in streams, so that practice, by thinking, might hammer out the various arts little by little, and look for the blade of grain in the furrows, and strike out the fire hidden in the veins of flint.
136| Then rivers first felt the hollowed alder boats; then the sailor gave numbers and names to the stars, the Pleiades, the Hyades, and the bright Bear of Lycaon's daughter. Then it was discovered how to catch wild beasts in snares and deceive them with birdlime, and to surround great glades with hounds; and one man already lashes a broad river with his sling-net, seeking the depths, and another drags his dripping lines through the sea. Then came the hardness of iron and the blade of the shrill saw (for the first men split wood along the grain with wedges), then the various arts came. Toil conquered everything, relentless toil, and need pressing in hard times. Ceres was the first to teach mortals to turn the earth with iron, when the acorns and arbutus berries of the sacred wood were already failing and Dodona was denying food. Soon toil was added to the grain as well, so that wicked rust ate the stalks and the lazy thistle bristled in the fields; the crops perish, a rough forest of burrs and caltrops springs up, and among the gleaming cultivated fields unlucky darnel and barren oats take over. So unless you attack the weeds with constant hoeing, scare off the birds with noise, check the shade of the dark field with the pruning hook, and call down rain with your prayers, alas, you will look in vain at another man's great heap of grain, and console your hunger by shaking oaks in the woods.
160| I must also tell what weapons hard-working farmers have, without which the crops could neither be sown nor spring up: first the plowshare and the heavy wood of the curved plow, and the slow-rolling wagons of the Eleusinian mother, and threshing sledges and drags and hoes of awkward weight; then the wickerwork of Celeus and humble furnishings, arbutus hurdles and the mystic winnowing fan of Iacchus; all of which you should remember to provide long beforehand and store away, if the glory of divine country life awaits you. At once, in the woods, an elm is bent with great force and tamed into a plow-beam, and takes the shape of the curved plow. To this, from the base, a pole is extended eight feet, with two earboards, and share-beams are fitted onto a double back. A light linden is also cut beforehand for the yoke, and a tall beech, and the handle to steer the chariot from behind at its lowest point, and smoke over the hearth tests the seasoning of the timber. I can recall many precepts of the ancients for you, if you do not shrink from it and are not put off by learning small matters of care. The threshing floor must first be leveled with a huge roller, turned by hand, and made solid with tenacious clay, so that weeds do not come up and it does not crack and give way when overcome by dust; then all sorts of pests make a mockery of it: often a tiny mouse has set up house under the ground and made its granaries, or moles, blind, have dug their burrows, and the toad is found in holes, and all the many monsters the earth produces; and the weevil plunders a great heap of grain, and the ant, fearing a needy old age.
187| Observe also when the walnut tree puts on a great mass of blossom in the woods and bends its fragrant branches: if the fruit prevails, the grain will follow in equal measure, and a great threshing will come with great heat; but if the tree overflows with a luxuriance of leafy shade, the threshing floor, rich in chaff, will vainly grind stalks. I have myself seen many people treat their seed as they sow, steeping it first in soda and black olive-lees, so that the yield in the deceptive pods would be larger and the seed would swell quickly even over a small fire. I have seen seed chosen long before and examined with great labor degenerate nonetheless, unless human effort picked out the biggest by hand every year: so everything is fated to rush toward the worse and, slipping back, to be carried backward, just as a man who with his oars barely forces a boat upstream against the current, if his arms chance to slacken, is swept headlong down the river by the current. Besides, we must watch the stars of Arcturus, the days of the Kids, and the shining Snake, just as much as those who are carried home over windy seas and test the Pontus and the straits of oyster-bearing Abydos.
208| When the Balance has made the hours of day and sleep equal and now divides the circle of the world half into light and half into darkness, work your bulls, men, and sow barley in the fields, right up to the last rain of harsh midwinter; and it is also time to cover the flax crop and the poppy sacred to Ceres with earth, and to bend to the plows without delay, while the ground is dry and the clouds hang up. In spring is the sowing of beans; then you too, alfalfa, are welcomed by the crumbling furrows, and the yearly care of millet comes, when the shining white Bull opens the year with golden horns and the Dog sets, yielding to the opposing star. But if you are working the soil for a crop of wheat and sturdy spelt and bearing down only on the grain, let the Pleiades of the dawn be hidden from you, and let the Cnossian star of the burning Crown withdraw, before you entrust the due seed to the furrows and before you hurry to trust the year's hope to an unwilling earth. Many began before the setting of Maia; but the harvest they waited for cheated them with empty oats. But if you will sow vetch and the humble kidney bean, and will not scorn the care of Egyptian lentils, Bootes as he sets will send you clear signs:
230| begin, and extend your sowing to the middle of the frosts. For this reason the golden sun rules the circle of the world, divided into fixed parts, through the twelve constellations. Five zones hold the sky: one is always glowing red with the blazing sun and always scorched by its fire; around it, to right and left, are drawn the outermost two, dark blue, stiff with ice and black rains; between these and the middle zone two have been granted to wretched mortals by the gift of the gods, and a road is cut through both, along which the slanting order of the signs might turn. The world rises steeply toward Scythia and the Riphaean heights, and slopes down toward the south winds of Libya. This pole is always high above us; but black Styx sees the other beneath its feet, and the deep Shades. Here the huge Snake glides out in a winding curve around and between the two Bears, like a river, the Bears that fear to be dipped in the waters of the Ocean. There, as they say, either deep night is always silent and darkness thickens as night spreads over it; or Dawn returns from us and brings back the day, and when the rising sun first breathes on us with its panting horses, there glowing Vesper kindles his late lights.
252| From this we can predict storms when the sky is uncertain, from this the day of harvest and the time for sowing, and when it is suitable to drive the faithless sea with oars, when to launch armed fleets, or when to fell a pine in the woods at the right season; nor is it in vain that we watch the settings and risings of the constellations and the year, equal in its four different seasons. If ever cold rain keeps the farmer indoors, he can get ready ahead of time many things that would soon have to be hurried under a clear sky: the plowman hammers out the blunted tooth of his plowshare, hollows out boats from a tree trunk, or stamps a mark on his cattle or numbers on his heaps of grain. Others sharpen stakes and two-pronged forks and prepare Amerian ties for the pliant vine. Now let a light basket be woven from bramble twigs, now parch the grain by fire, now crush it with a stone. For even on feast days certain tasks are permitted by divine and human law: no religious scruple has forbidden channeling streams, fencing in a crop, setting snares for birds, burning thorn thickets, and dipping the bleating flock in a healthy river.
273| Often the driver of a slow donkey loads its flanks with oil or cheap apples, and on his return brings back from the town a cut millstone or a lump of black pitch. The moon herself has given different days in different order as lucky for work. Avoid the fifth: pale Orcus and the Furies were born then; then Earth, in monstrous birth, brought forth Coeus and Iapetus and fierce Typhoeus and the brothers sworn to tear down the sky. Three times they tried to pile Ossa on Pelion, and to roll leafy Olympus onto Ossa; three times the father scattered the heaped-up mountains with his thunderbolt. The seventeenth is lucky for planting a vine, for breaking in captured oxen, and for adding the threads to the loom. The ninth is better for flight and bad for thefts. Many things go better in the cold night, or when, at the new sun's rising, the Morning Star sprinkles the earth with dew. At night light stubble, at night dry meadows are mown better; at night the supple moisture does not fail. And some stay awake late into the night by the firelight of winter, and shape torches to a point with a sharp iron.
293| Meanwhile his wife, easing the long labor with song, runs her shuttle through the web, or boils down the sweetness of the new wine over the fire and skims the foam from the cauldron's trembling water with leaves. But red-gold Ceres is cut down in the midday heat, and in the midday heat the threshing floor grinds the parched grain. Plow naked, sow naked. Winter is a time of idleness for the farmer: in the cold, farmers mostly enjoy what they have gathered and gladly arrange feasts for one another. Genial winter invites and releases cares, as when loaded ships have at last reached harbor and the glad sailors have put garlands on the sterns. Yet even then it is the time to gather oak acorns and laurel berries and olives and bloody myrtle, then to set snares for cranes and nets for deer and to chase long-eared hares, then to pierce does as you whirl the hempen thongs of the Balearic sling, when deep snow lies and rivers push along the ice. Why should I speak of the storms of autumn and its stars, and of what men must watch for when the day is already shorter and the summer milder? Or when rain-bearing spring comes rushing, when the crop is already bristling with ears in the fields, and when the grain swells with milk in the green stalk?
316| Often, when the farmer was bringing the reaper into the golden fields and was already cutting the barley on its brittle stalk, I have seen all the battles of the winds clash together, tearing the heavy crop up from its lowest roots and flinging it into the air: so the storm in a black whirlwind carried away the light stalk and the flying straw. Often too a huge column of waters comes up the sky, and clouds gathered from the deep roll up a foul storm with black rains; the high heaven comes crashing down and with a mighty downpour washes away the happy crops and the labors of the oxen; ditches fill and hollow rivers swell with a roar, and the sea seethes in its panting straits. The Father himself, in the middle of the night of storm clouds, hurls his flashing thunderbolts with his right hand, and at his stroke the great earth trembles, wild beasts flee, and fear lays low mortal hearts throughout the nations; with his blazing weapon he strikes down Athos or Rhodope or the high Ceraunian peaks; the south winds redouble, and the densest rain; now the woods, now the shores are beaten by the huge wind. Fearing this, observe the months and the stars of the sky, where the cold star of Saturn withdraws, and through what circles of the sky the Cyllenian fire wanders.
338| Above all, worship the gods, and offer the yearly rites to great Ceres, working the sacrifice on the glad grass at the end of winter, when spring is already clear. Then the lambs are fat and the wine is mellowest, then sleep is sweet and shade is thick on the mountains. Let all the country folk worship Ceres for your sake: for her mix honeycombs with milk and gentle wine, and let the lucky victim go three times around the new crops, and let the whole chorus and companions follow it rejoicing and call Ceres into their homes with shouting; and let no one put the sickle to the ripe ears before, with brows wreathed in oak, he dances artless steps and sings songs to Ceres. And so that we could learn all this from sure signs, the heat and rain and the winds that bring the cold, the Father himself ordained what the monthly moon should warn, what sign should make the south winds drop, and what farmers should notice that would make them keep their herds closer to the stalls. At once, when the winds are rising, either the straits of the sea begin to swell and toss, and a dry crash is heard from the high mountains, or shores resound from afar in confusion and the murmur of the woods grows louder.
360| Then the waves can scarcely hold back from the curved hulls, when the swift gulls fly back from the open sea and bring their cry to the shore, and when sea coots play on dry land, and the heron leaves its familiar marshes and flies above the high cloud. Often too, when wind is coming, you will see stars shoot headlong down the sky, and through the shadow of night long white trails of flame behind them; often light chaff and falling leaves flutter about, or feathers play together on the water's surface. But when lightning flashes from the quarter of the fierce North Wind and the home of the East and West Winds thunders, all the fields float with brimming ditches and every sailor on the sea furls his wet sails. A storm has never harmed people unwarned: either the high-flying cranes fled it as it rose from the deepest valleys, or the heifer, looking up at the sky, caught the breeze with wide nostrils, or the shrill swallow flitted around the lake, and frogs in the mud sang their old complaint. More often too the ant, wearing down her narrow path, has carried her eggs out of the inner chambers, and the great rainbow has drunk, and a huge army of crows leaving their feeding has clamored with beating wings in a dense mass.
383| Now the various sea birds, and those that search the meadows around Asian Caystrus in its sweet pools, you may see eagerly pouring plentiful drops over their shoulders, now offering their heads to the waves, now running into the water and in their eagerness fruitlessly longing to bathe. Then the crow calls the rain, shameless, with full voice, and walks alone on the dry sand. Even the girls carding their night's wool have not been unaware of winter, when they saw the oil sparking in the burning lamp and mushrooms of soot gathering. And no less after rain you will be able to look out for sun and clear skies and recognize them by sure signs: for then the stars' sharpness does not seem dulled, nor does the Moon rise dependent on her brother's rays, nor do thin fleeces of wool drift across the sky; the kingfishers, dear to Thetis, do not spread their wings on the shore to the warm sun, and filthy swine do not remember to toss loose bundles of straw with their snouts. But the mists settle lower and lie on the plain, and the owl, watching the sun's setting from the top of the roof, practices her late songs in vain.
404| Nisus appears high in the clear air, and Scylla pays the penalty for the purple lock: wherever she, fleeing, cuts the light air with her wings, look, her cruel enemy Nisus pursues her through the air with a great whirr; wherever Nisus is borne to the air, she, fleeing, swiftly cuts the light air with her wings. Then the ravens, with throat compressed, repeat their clear cries three or four times, and often in their high nests, glad with some unusual sweetness I know not what, they chatter among themselves in the leaves; when the rains are over, they love to revisit their small brood and dear nests. I do not at all believe that they have a divinely given intelligence or a greater foresight of events by fate; but when the weather and the changeable moisture of the sky have shifted course, and moist Jupiter thickens with south winds what was just now rare and loosens what was dense, the shapes of their minds change, and their breasts take on different impulses than they felt while the wind was driving the clouds: hence that chorus of birds in the fields, the cheerful cattle, and the ravens rejoicing in their throats.
424| But if you watch the swift sun and the moons that follow in order, tomorrow's hour will never deceive you, and you will not be caught by the traps of a clear night. When the moon first gathers her returning fires, if she encloses dark air with a dim horn, a very great rain will be in store for farmers and the sea; but if she suffuses her face with a maidenly blush, there will be wind: for wind always reddens golden Phoebe. But if on the fourth day (for that is the most reliable authority) she goes through the sky pure and with horns undimmed, then that whole day and those born from it until the month is over will be free of rain and winds, and the saved sailors will pay their vows on the shore to Glaucus and Panopea and Ino's son Melicertes. The sun too will give signs, both as he rises and when he hides himself in the waves; the surest signs attend the sun, both those he brings in the morning and those he brings when the stars rise. When he has dappled his rising at birth with spots, hidden in a cloud and withdrawing at the center of his disk, let showers be suspect to you: for the south wind presses from the deep, harmful to trees and crops and herds.
445| or when at daybreak the sun's rays break out scattered among thick clouds, or when Dawn rises pale, leaving the saffron bed of Tithonus, then, alas, the vine leaf will do a poor job of protecting the ripening grapes: so thick is the bristling hail that leaps rattling on the roofs. This too it will help you even more to remember when he is already leaving the sky, his course run: for often we see various colors wandering over his face. Dark blue warns of rain, fiery red of east winds; but if spots begin to mingle with his ruddy fire, then you will see everything seething alike with wind and storm clouds. On such a night no one should urge me to go out on the deep, or to pull my mooring rope from the land. But if, when he brings back the day and when he buries the day he brought, his disk is bright, you will be frightened of storm clouds for nothing and will see the woods swaying under a clear north wind. In short, what late evening brings, from where the wind drives the clear clouds, what the damp south wind is planning, the sun will give you signs. Who would dare call the sun false? He often warns, too, that hidden uprisings are near, that treachery and secret wars are swelling.
466| He too pitied Rome when Caesar died, when he covered his shining head in dark rust and an impious age feared everlasting night. Though at that time the earth too, and the expanses of the sea, ill-omened dogs and birds of evil portent, gave signs. How often we saw Etna boil over onto the fields of the Cyclopes, flooding from its burst furnaces, and roll down balls of flame and molten rocks! Germany heard the clash of arms across the whole sky; the Alps shook with unaccustomed tremors. A huge voice, too, was heard everywhere through the silent groves, and pale phantoms in wondrous forms were seen in the dark of night, and cattle spoke — unspeakable! Rivers stand still, the earth gapes open, ivory statues weep in sorrow in the temples, and bronzes sweat. The Eridanus, king of rivers, swept away forests, whirling them in its mad eddies, and carried off herds with their stalls across all the plains. And at that same time the entrails never ceased to show threatening fibers, or blood to flow from wells, or high cities to echo through the night with howling wolves.
487| At no other time did more lightning fall from a clear sky, or dread comets blaze so often. So Philippi saw Roman battle lines clash with each other a second time, with matching weapons; nor did the gods above think it unfitting that Emathia and the wide plains of Haemus should twice grow fat with our blood. Surely a time will come too when in those lands the farmer, working the earth with his curved plough, will find javelins eaten by rough rust, or strike empty helmets with his heavy hoe, and marvel at the huge bones in the graves he has dug up. Gods of our fathers, native gods, and Romulus, and mother Vesta, who guard the Etruscan Tiber and the Palatine of Rome, at least do not prevent this young man from coming to the rescue of a world turned upside down. Long enough already have we paid with our blood for the perjury of Laomedon's Troy; long already, Caesar, has the palace of heaven begrudged you to us, and complained that you care for the triumphs of men — here, where right and wrong are reversed: so many wars throughout the world, so many shapes of crime, no proper honor for the plough; the fields lie filthy, their farmers taken away, and the curved sickles are forged into unbending swords.
509| On one side the Euphrates stirs up war, on the other Germany; neighboring cities break the laws between them and take up arms; impious Mars rages through the whole world: as when four-horse chariots have burst from the starting gates, they gather speed lap by lap, and the charioteer, pulling vainly at the reins, is carried along by his horses, and the chariot does not heed the reins.
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