The subject is treated in four books, varying in length from to 566 lines. The first treats of the tillage of the fields, of the constellations, the rise and setting of which form the farmer's calendar, and of the signs of the weather, on which the success of his labours largely depends. The second treats of trees, and especially of the vine and olive, two great staples of the national wealth and industry of Italy; the third of the rearing of herds and flocks and the breeding of horses ; the fourth of bees.
Hesiod Virgil regarded as his prototype ; he supplied the out line of the form. The Alexandrian scientific poets provided him with examples for his method of treatment. But a more powerful influence on the form, ideas, sentiment and diction of the Georgics was exercised by the great philosophical poem of Lucretius, of which Virgil had probably been a diligent student since the time of its first appearance, and with which his mind was saturated when he was engaged in the composition of the Georgics. So far as any speculative idea underlying the details of the Georgics can be detected, it is one of which the source can be traced to Lucre tius—the idea of the struggle of human force with the forces of nature. In the general plan of the poem Virgil follows the guid ance of Lucretius rather than that of any Greek model. The distinction between a poem addressed to national and one ad dressed to philosophical sympathies is marked by the prominence assigned in the one poem to Caesar as the supreme persqnality of the age, in the other to Epicurus as the supreme master in the realms of mind. In the systematic treatment of his materials, and
the interspersion of episodes dealing with the deeper poetical and human interest of the subject, Virgil adheres to the practice of the older poet.
The Georgics is not only the most perfect, but the most native of all the works of the ancient Italian genius. Even where he bor rows from Greek originals, Virgil makes the Greek mind tributary to his national design. The Georgics, the poem of the land, is as essentially Italian as the Odyssey, the poem of the sea, is essen tially Greek.
Aeneid.—The work which yet remained for Virgil to accom plish was the addition of a great Roman epic to literature. This had been the earliest effort of the national imagination, when it first departed from the mere imitative reproduction of Greek originals. The work which had given the truest expression to the genius of Rome before the time of Virgil had been the Annales of Ennius. This had been supplemented by various historical poems but had never been superseded. It satisfied the national imagination as an expression of the national life in its vigorous prime, but it could not satisfy the newly developed sense of art; and the expansion of the national life since the days of Ennius, and the changed conditions into which it passed after the battle of Actium, demanded a newer and ampler expression. It had been Virgil's earliest ambition to write an heroic poem on the traditions of Alba Longa; and he had been repeatedly urged by Augustus to celebrate his exploits. The problem before him was to compose a work of art on a large scale, which should represent a great action of the heroic age, and should at the same time embody the most vital ideas and sentiment of the hour—which in substance should glorify Rome and the present ruler of Rome, while in form it should follow closely the great models of epic poetry and repro duce all their sources of interest. It was his ambition to be the Homer, as he had been the Theocritus and Hesiod, of his country. Various objects had thus to be combined in a work of art on the model of the Greek epic : the revival of interest in the heroic f ore time; the satisfaction of national sentiment ; the expression of the deeper currents of emotion of the age ; the personal celebration of Augustus. A new type of epic poetry had to be created. It was desirable to select a single heroic action which should belong to the cycle of legendary events celebrated in the Homeric poems, and which could be associated with Rome. The only subject which in any way satisfied these conditions was that of the wanderings of Aeneas and of his final settlement in Latium. The story, though not of Roman origin but of a composite growth, had long been familiar to the Romans, and had been recognized by official acts of senate and people. The subject enabled Virgil to tell again of the fall of Troy, and to weave a tale of sea-adventure similar to that of the wanderings of Odysseus. It was also recommended by the claim which the Julii, a patrician family of Alban origin, made to descent from lulus, the supposed son of Aeneas.