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Virgil's metamorphoses: myth and allusion in the Georgics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Monica Gale
Monica Gale
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, London
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Extract

felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas 490

atque metus omnis et inexorabile fatum

subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis auari.

fortunatus et ille deos qui nouit agrestis

Panaque Siluanumque senem Nymphasque sorores. (Geo. 2.490–4)

[Happy is he who has been able to learn the causes of things, and

has trampled underfoot every fear, and unyielding Fate, and the din

of greedy Acheron. Fortunate, too, is he who knows the rustic gods,

Pan and old Silvanus and the sister Nymphs.]

In these famous words, Virgil expresses his ambivalent relationship with his great didactic model, Lucretius. The double makarismos suggests a declaration of allegiance to two incompatible views of the world: the rationalist philosophy of Epicurus and a nostalgic longing for the simple rustic piety which the Romans of the late Republic and early Empire were so fond of attributing to the farmer and the countryman.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 41 , 1996 , pp. 36 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1996

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