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Virgil and the Bees

A Study in Ancient Apicultural Lore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

B. G. Whitfield
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Extract

This article may be open to the charge of deviating unashamedly from its main subject, but any research into the sources of the fourth Georgic, or into Virgil's practical knowledge of apiculture—and it should be stated at once that there is no sure answer to the inquest— must eventually range over the whole of classical bee-literature. And it was curiosity over the sources of this Georgic which led me some years ago to set out on what proved to be a lengthy and meandering tour— starting with a short and disappointing excursion into Varro, and proceeding thence on a long road with numerous by-lanes until finally the course had been covered from Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Aelian, through Pliny and Columella, to the end of the journey in Palladius and the Geoponica.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , October 1956 , pp. 99 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1956

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References

page 100 note 1 It is generally accepted that Aristotle was not the author of the ninth book of the Historia Ammaliimi, nor of De Mirabilibus Auscultationibus, and to avoid constant use of the somewhat distressing term Pseudo-Aristotle, the figure ix in a bracket is used to signify the anonymous writer.

page 101 note 1 There is, however, a comic scene on a Greek black-figure amphora, from Vulci (Brit. Mus. B 177) representing the intruders into the Dictaean cave being much harassed by the infuriated attendants of the infant Zeus.

page 106 note 1 Actually Aristotle (ix) mistakes what we know to be pollen for the wax secretion used for comb-building.

page 106 note 2 This passage had already been written when W. K. Kraak in 1953 scored apparently the first reference in print to the ‘dance’. For a fuller discussion of Aristotle's account see the article of ProfessorHaldane, J. B. S., Journ. of Hellenic Studies, lxxv (1955), 24 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 110 note 1 University of London Press (reprinted 1951).

page 110 note 2 I should like to say here how much I am indebted to Dr. Fraser, and also to Mr. A. N. Bryan-Brown of Worcester College, Oxford, for their learning and assistance.

page 117 note 1 Cf. Gow, A. S. F., Class. Review, lviii (1944), 14 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar