Theme Of Farming In Virgil's Georgics

Upon the first reading of Virgil’s Georgics, it may seem that the poem has more to do with farming and agriculture than it does with gardening. Virgil’s writing of different topics such as the plague that kills off the animals or the planting of trees may seem like they don’t relate to gardening, but they do. The Georgics should be included in a class on gardens because it could be used to make connections to many concepts that have been discussed thus far in the class, such as the constant gardener (constant human intervention and care), and the life and death of gardens.
In Book Two, Virgil begins by talking about the trees and vines and how they are grown either naturally or by human intervention. The first point that Virgil makes is that …show more content…
Just as with the tree planting, the cultivation of gardens is all about discovering the best ways of planting, which might require repeated attempts until the gardener gets it right. The repeated attempts to find the best gardening methods could suggests that the gardener is a ‘constant gardener’. To relate this to another text read in this class, in An Essay on the Human Condition, Robert Harrison explains that while the gardener waits for his seeds to yield fruit, he comes across new challenges and cares each day, so the gardens “intrigues keep the caretaker under more or less constant pressure” (Harrison 7). The trial and error of finding the best method to grow the trees suggest that the Greeks were constantly working to discover these methods. Virgil states that “all trees cry out for work, you’ll have to train them in trenches, however trying that may be” (Virgil 29, lines 62-63). Gardens, too, require the constant care of the gardener, and it may take some time for the gardener to see a return or yield for their constant work and