The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• P. Vergili Maronis Georgicon Liber Primus.
• The Georgics of Virgil. Book I.
• P. Vergili Maronis Georgicon Liber Secundus.
• The Georgics of Virgil. Book II.
• P. Vergili Maronis Georgicon Liber Tertius.
• The Georgics of Virgil. Book III.
• P. Vergili Maronis Georgicon Liber Quartus.
• The Georgics of Virgil. Book IV.

THE GEORGICS OF VIRGIL.

BOOK III.

• Thee too, great Pales, and Shepherd Amphrysian, worthy our praise,
• You, forests and rivers Lycaean, of you our song will we raise.
• Other themes that had held mere vacant minds with the spell of the bard
• Are by this outworn. Who knows not Eurystheus the taskmaster hard?
• Who knows not Busiris’ altars damned to eternal shame?5
• Who hath heard not of Hylas the Boy?—of Latonian Delos’ fame?—
• Of Hippodame?—Pelops in splendour of ivory shoulder who drove
• Furiously? A path will I try that shall lift me above
• This earth, and from lip to lip of men my triumphant flight
• Will I wing. I first to my fatherland—if I behold life’s light10
• So long—from the Mount Aonian returning, the Muses with me
• Will I lead; I will bring to thee, Mantua, palms of Araby;
• And a temple of solid marble on that green plain will I raise
• By the water, where Mincius broad with lazy winding strays,
• And hath fringed with the softly-bending reed his rippling lane.15
• In the midst thereof shall be Caesar; his presence shall fill thy fane.
• In his honour arrayed in the conqueror’s Tyrian purple-gleam
• Will I lead a procession of five-score four-horsed cars to thy stream.
• All Greece shall forsake Alpheius’ lists and Molorchus’ grove
• At my summons, shall strive in the race, and with raw-hide fighting-glove.20
• Even I, my brows enwreathed with the olive, the conqueror’s meed,
• Will bring him my gifts. Even now with exultation I lead
• To his shrine the solemn procession, at altars will see steers bleed,
• See the stage dispart as the scenes swing round, and inwoven there
• See painted Britons the purple tapestry-folds upbear.25
• At the portals in gold and in solid ivory carved shall be found
• The fight with the sons of the Ganges, and Rome’s arms victory-crowned.
• And here, upsurging to war, and with vast flood battleward roaring,
• Nile, and the columns of triumph with prows of bronze upsoaring,
• And cities of Asia subdued, and Niphates, from fight as he fled,30

• And the Parthian who trusteth in flight and the arrows backward sped;
• And, wrested from diverse enemies, victory-trophies twain,
• And foes twice led in triumph from either side of the main.
• There Parian marbles, statues that verily breathe, shall shine;
• The sons of Assaracus, names of a Jove-descended line,35
• And our forefather Tros, and the Founder of Troy, the Cynthian King,
• And accursèd Disloyalty’s form at the Furies shuddering,
• At relentless Cocytus, Ixion’s wild wheel horribly twined
• With serpents, and Sisyphus’ stone that never the summit shall find.
• Till that day comes, will we track the Dryad-haunted glade40
• And wood, hard task upon me by thee, Maecenas, laid.
• Without thee no high emprise my spirit essays:—fling aside
• All dull delay! With challenging shouts hath Cithaeron cried,
• Taygetus’ hounds, Epidaurus who quelleth steeds with the rein,
• And echo-redoubled the forest’s acclaiming rings again.45
• Yet soon will I gird me of Caesar’s fiery fights to sing,
• And through years no fewer to bear his renown upon fame’s strong wing
• Than divide from Tithonus Caesar, the winter of earth from her spring.

• Whether, ambitious of palms of Olympia, ye fain would rear
• Horses, or oxen strong through tilthland-furrows to shear,50
• The dams with good heed to their points must ye choose. The best brood-cow
• Hath a lowering look, coarse head, and a neck that is massive enow,
• And down below her knees from her throat doth the dewlap fall.
• No limit there is to the length of her side, she is huge-framed all,
• Even her feet. She hath horns incurved, ears shaggy with hair.55
• For her colour—though she be dappled with white flecks—nothing I care,
• Nor care though she spurn the yoke, with her horns push viciously,
• Have a head more like to a bull, and a frame throughout built high,
• While her tail as she paces is sweeping the dust behind her feet.
• The season for service to wedlock, the age for the Travail-queen meet,60
• Before the tenth year endeth, and entereth in at the fourth.
• Younger or older for calving or ploughing be nothing-worth.
• In the mid-space, while unspent is the lusty youth of the herd,
• Restrain not the males, nay, to Venus’s sport be thy cattle upstirred.
• So by breeding replace thou ever the first by a second and third.65
• Ah me, life’s fairest days be ever the first to fly
• From hapless mortals! Diseases and dreary eld draw nigh;
• Toil wastes them, and stern death’s ruthlessness hurries them hence in a day!
• There will ever be some in thine herd with whose form thou canst not away:
• Then still be recruiting thy stock, lest losses too late thou rue:70

• Prevent all such; young lives for thine herd choose yearly anew.

• For thine horse-stud too must thy choice be made with no less heed.
• Yea, such as thou shalt determine to rear as the hope of the breed,
• Upon these from their tenderest youth shalt thou lavish especial pains.
• From the first doth the foal of a high-bred stock, as he paceth the plains,75
• Lift high his feet, and he planteth on earth a springy limb.
• Ever he leadeth the way for the rest: no terrors for him
• Hath the threatening torrent; he trusteth himself to the untried bridge:
• He is scared not at meaningless noises. His neck is a high-arched ridge:
• Clean-cut is his head, full-fleshed is his back, and his barrel short;80
• His high-mettled chest is billowy with muscle. The comelier sort
• Be the bay and the grey: of all coats worst be the dun and the white.
• Once more, if from far away arms clash as in grapple of fight,
• He cannot be still, pricks ears, his limbs are quivering,
• From his nostrils the volumed breath like smoke from a fire doth he fling.85
• He tosseth a dense mane back o’er his rightward shoulder to sweep.
• His spine is a valley between two ridges: his hoofs dint deep
• The earth, and the solid horn wakes thunder at every leap.
• Such Cyllarus was, who was tamed by the curb of Amyclae’s king
• Pollux, and they of whom the Grecian poets sing,90
• The chariot-pair of Mars, and mighty Achilles’ team.
• So likewise seemed fleet Saturn, when over his neck to stream
• He tossed his mane as his queen drew near, and, fleeing away,
• Filled sky-encountering Pelion’s glens with his clarion neigh.

• Him also, when bowed by disease, or by years made sluggish now,95
• He fails, pen up; his inglorious eld indulge not thou.
• Age chills him for Venus’s service; o’er labour vainly wrought
• And thankless, he lingers: if e’er he essay the encounter, for naught
• He rages, as sometimes rushes through stubble a wide-spread fire
• That is strengthless. Note thou therefore the spirit and age of a sire100
• First, other qualities then, and the strain of his sires, the shame
• Each showed in the hour of defeat, the pride in victory’s fame.
• Hast marked not, in headlong-reckless contention tearing o’er
• The plain, the torrent of chariots that forth of the barriers pour,
• With the hopes of their drivers at highest, with throbbing eagerness draining105
• The hearts exultant? Onward with circling lash are they straining:
• Forward they lean loose-reined: hot axles stormily fly,
• And now low-skimming they glide, now seem they, bounding high,
• To shoot through the empty air, to soar mid the winds on-rolled.
• No stint, no stay!—uptossed is a cloud as of dust of gold.110

• They are wet with the foam and the breath of pursuers following near;
• So hot is the passion for victory, fame to their hearts so dear.

• Erichthonius first o’er a fourfold team dared cast the band
• Of the yoke, and in speed triumphant above the wheels to stand.
• The Lapiths of Pelethron mounted the back of the charger, and swayed115
• His course to and fro with the reins, taught riders armour-arrayed
• To bound o’er the earth, curvetting with proudly arching knees.
• Over car-steed and saddle-horse pains alike must be taken; for these
• The trainers alike seek youth, high mettle, and speed in the race,
• Though the veteran oft may have held a flying foe in chase,120
• For his birth-land Epirus may boast, or Mycenae strong under shield,
• Though his lineage he trace to the charger that Neptune’s trident revealed.

• These things men note, and when near is the time, they bestir them: the steed
• With their utmost endeavour they seek into firm-fleshed fatness to feed,
• The stallion chosen for chieftain, and named for the mate of the stud.125
• They mow for him flowering grass, give him drink from the fresh-flowing flood,
• And corn, that he fail not of aught that his labour of love requires,
• And that weakling sons prove not starved copies of starveling sires.
• But the brood-mares of purpose by stinting their food unto leanness they bring,
• And so soon as of union’s delightsome instinct they feel the sting,130
• They deny to them foliage fresh, they drive them back from the spring,
• Oft shake their frames in the gallop, and tire them in midnoon heat
• When the threshing-floor groans as the flails are heavily lashing the wheat,
• And the chaff is tossed to the west-wind’s freshening blast therethrough.
• This do they for fear high living should dull the service due135
• Of the field of generation, should smother its furrows asleep
• Which should thirstily swallow the procreant rain, and should hide it deep.

• Now waneth our care for the sires, our care for the dams hath begun.
• When at last they wander in foal, when the tale of the months hath run,
• These let none suffer to pull at the yoke of the ponderous wain,140
• Nor to clear at a bound the highway, in fiery race to strain
• Far over the meadow-land, nor in rushing floods to be swimming.
• Upon treeless lawns let them graze, and beside slow brooks full-brimming,
• Where the moss billows softly, the bank is in deepest greenness arrayed.
• By caves be they sheltered, and overscreened by the rocks’ cool shade.145

• By Silarus’ groves and Alburnus green with his holm-oaks tall
• A winged thing swarms, which the sons of Rome the “asilus” call,
• But the Greeks to the selfsame pest a new name, “oestrus,” have given,
• It is fierce, harsh-buzzing; before it whole herds panic-driven
• Flee wide through the forests; with bellowings maddened and stunned is the air,150

• And the woods, and the banks of waterless Tanager everywhere.
• With this horror did Juno wreak her hideous vengeance of yore,
• When for Inachus’ daughter, the Heifer-maid, she had ruin in store.
• From this, which attacks most fiercely when noonday heat is at height,
• Thou wilt shield the teeming herd, wilt let them graze when the light
• Of the sun is but newly risen, or stars usher in the night.

• When the calves have come to the birth, all care is to them transferred.
• Men brand them with ownership’s mark, with the name of their strain, from the herd
• Choose which they will rear for breeding the hope of a coming day,
• Or for sacrifice consecrate, or set to cleave the clay160
• Till the furrowed field shows like to a roughly ridging sea:
• The rest in great herds pasture along the grassy lea.
• Such as for work thou wilt fashion, to bring forth labour’s fruit,
• While yet they are calves, do thou school, and on discipline’s path set foot,
• While docile their young minds are in the first year’s pliant days.165
• At the first with loose light rings of the osier’s slender sprays
• Do thou loop their necks; thereafter, when shoulders aforetime free
• Are to thraldom used, let well-matched couples be yoked of thee
• With those same collars, and trained to step on side by side.
• In drawing of wains unladen now let them oft be tried,170
• When but lightly marked is the track o’er the surface-dust of the plain.
• Ere long ’neath a mighty load may the beechen axle strain
• And shriek, and the brass-bound shaft shall drag the twinned wheels on.
• Ere then, for their untamed youth thou shalt mow not grass alone,
• Nor starveling sprays of willow, nor bladed sedge of the fen,175
• But green corn plucked with thine hand. Nor the mothers shalt thou cause then
• In olden fashion to brim the milk-pails white as snow:
• But all their udders’ wealth on their dear babes let them bestow.

• But if thy desire be to fiery squadrons and grapple of war,
• Or to glide by Alpheius’ Pisan streams on the wheels of the car,180
• And the flying chariot in Jupiter’s hallowed grove to speed,
• In beholding the fury of fight the training begins of the steed,
• In enduring the clarion’s peal, and in bearing the rushing din
• Of wheels, and in hearing the jingling of harness his stall within;
• Then, more and more to delight in kindly tones and praise185
• Of his lord, and to love the caressing hand on his neck that plays.
• Thus far let him venture when first he is weaned from the mother’s teat:
• In due course then with his mouth the halter soft shall he meet,
• While short of his full strength, starting with all youth’s ignorant fear.
• But when summers three shall be past, when now the fourth is here,190

• In the ring let him learn to curvet, beat time with measured pace,
• And one after other to curve his limbs in arches of grace,
• And to show like a worker indeed. Then, then let him challenge the blast
• Of the wind to the race; as uncurbed by the rein, o’er the plain flying fast,
• Scarce let him print with his footfalls the face of the level sand;195
• As when Aquilo dark with the cloud-pack comes from the far north-land
• Down-swooping, and Scythia’s storms and rainless clouds are hurled
• Before him; the tall corn-crops, the billowy water-world
• Are with light gusts rippled and ruffled, the crests of the forest sigh,
• And shoreward the long sea-rollers are crowding tumultuously;200
• Over field, over flood wide-sweeping his pinions onward strain.
• Hereafter to goals of Olympia, o’er limitless reaches of plain,
• Sweat-bathed shall the steed race, fling from his mouth the foam blood-flecked,
• Or the Belgian chariot the better shall speed on docile-necked.
• Then at the last with fattening mash do thou suffer his frame205
• To wax great, now he is broken in; for, ere one tame
• Their spirit, their mettle is high, they will scorn, when the task ye essay,
• To submit to the pliant lash, and the merciless curb to obey.

• Howbeit no tendance will stablish more surely his strength and his fire
• Than to shield him from Venus’s frenzy, from stings of blind desire,210
• Whether one’s heart be set on the training of cattle or steeds.
• Therefore men banish the bull unto far lone pasture-meads,
• Beyond some mountain-barrier, some broad-flowing river’s sweep,
• Or they pen him within four walls, and his manger abundantly heap.
• By the sight of the female slowly his strength is consumed and decayed,215
• And he cannot endure to think of the grass nor the woodland glade—
• So winsome is her allurement—and oft will jealousy drive
• Those haughty lovers with clashing horns in contention to strive.
• The beauteous heifer is grazing on Sila’s mountain-height;
• But the bulls in alternate onset crash with giant might,220
• And with wound upon wound: their frames are bathed in the dark blood’s flow:
• With levelled horns each thrusteth against his struggling foe
• With thunderous bellowing; echo the woods and the broad-arched sky.
• Nor together the rivals are wont to stall them: the vanquished will fly
• From the field, and will pass into exile afar amid scenes unknown,225
• And for shame and the blows of the haughty victor shall oft-times groan,
• Yea, more for his loss unavenged, and for anguish of thwarted desire.
• Old realms hath he left, oft backward gazing at stall and byre.
• Therefore with ceaseless training he disciplines his powers:
• On a hard rock-couch uncushioned he lies through the long night-hours:230

• Upon prickly leaves he feedeth, he croppeth the sword-like sedge:
• He testeth his strength, he learneth to set his fury’s edge
• On his horns, as he thrusts at a tree, and assails the air with blows,
• And the sand, as in prelude to battle, his spurning hoof up-throws.
• At last, when his powers are upgathered, at last, when his strength is reborn
• He breaks camp; headlong he swoops on the foe that forgat him in scorn.
• Like a billow he comes, that upheaves in the outsea a crest white-flashing,
• Drags broader-swelling a curve from the deep, and on-rolling and crashing
• Shoreward, through reefs it roars terrific, and down on the land
• Topples huge as a mountain, while whirlpool-abysses boil over the strand240
• Up-belching out of the depths of darkness the swart sea-sand.

• Yea, all—all tribes of earth, all men, all cattle-herds,
• Wild beasts of the forest, the brood of the sea, plume-painted birds,
• Into flames of passion rush; all hearts are in one net taken.
• At none other time doth the lioness, even her whelps forsaken,245
• More savagely prowl o’er the plains, nor shag-haired formless bears
• Spread death and destruction more widely around their forest-lairs.
• Most fierce is the boar, most fell is the tigress in those mad days.
• Ah, it is ill for him then who in Libya’s solitudes strays!
• Hast marked not with what wild thrill the steed’s whole frame will shake,250
• At the first gust wafted to him of the odour he cannot mistake?
• Then him no curbs of men nor merciless whips may delay,
• Neither rocks nor cliffs overarching, nor rivers that bar his way
• Though they tear up mountains and whirl them adown in their waves’ wild play.
• On charges the Sabine boar, and he whets his tusks for the fray,255
• Ploughs up with his feet the ground, and chafes against a tree
• His sides, and either shoulder against wounds hardeneth he.
• What of the youth, when Love the relentless fans in his breast
• A great flame? He, though the tempest burst, though in wild unrest
• Waves toss, through the starless night belated he swims, while crash260
• Thunders from heaven’s huge gate: great seas, on the rocks as they dash,
• Shout, warning him thence: yea, his wretched parents in vain to him cry
• “Return!” and the maiden doomed on his woeful pyre to die.
• What of the Wine-god’s dappled lynx?—of the scourge of the wold,
• The wolf?—of the hound?—of the battles of stags unwarlike-souled?265
• But pre-eminent surely beyond the rest is the rage of the mare.
• ’Twas the frenzy inspired by a Goddess, when Potniae’s car-team tare
• And devoured the limbs of Glaucus in Venus’s vengeance-day.
• Over Gargara’s steep, over roaring Ascanius hurried are they
• By passion; they scale the mountain, they swim the rushing river.270

• Soon as their eager fibres with thrills of its wildfire quiver,—
• Chiefly in spring, when their inward flame is to new life fanned,—
• On the brow of a towering cliff all westward-facing stand,
• And they snuff the unsubstantial breeze, and it oft doth betide
• That unmated—a marvel to tell!—by the wind are they fructified.275
• Then over crag, over scaur, over deep-dipping valleys they fly
• Scattering, not to the east-wind’s birth, nor the dayspring-sky,
• But to north or to north-west bound, or thither where utter-black
• Uprises the south overglooming the sky with his chill cloud-rack.
• Then, then that viscid slime trickles down from the groins of these280
• Which only is rightly named of the shepherds hippomanes—
• Hippomanes, gathered oft by stepdames on mischief bent,
• And with baleful herbs and with muttered spells most deadly blent.

• But the time meanwhile is fleeting, is fleeting past recall,
• While we hover around each flower of the field that holds us in thrall.285
• For the herds let this suffice; remaineth my second care
• To deal with the fleece-laden sheep, with the goats of shaggy hair.
• Here truly is toil; yet hence, stout yeomen, look for renown.
• I mistake not how hard is the task to set triumphantly down
• My precepts in verse, and so lowly a theme with honour to crown.290
• But o’er steeps of Parnassus untrod in a rapture I speed afar:
• It is joy to traverse the heights where no forerunner’s car
• Hath followed the track down the smooth-falling slope unto Castaly’s spring.
• Now, Pales worship-worthy, in stately strain must I sing.

• I ordain at the outset that sheep in sheltered pens should feed295
• Till leafy summer—’twill not be long—come back to the mead.
• With abundance of straw and with handfuls of fern be the hard ground spread
• Beneath, that the icy cold may strike not up through their bed
• To the tender flock, bringing scab and the foot-rot foul to see.
• Now pass I on, and I bid thee cast from the arbute-tree300
• Leaves to thy goats in plenty, and water fresh from the brook.
• Turn from the wind their pens, to the winter sun let them look
• Facing the midnoon sky, when Aquarius cold and drear
• At last is setting, and sprinkles the skirts of the flying year.
• With no less care must we shield these too in the stormy tide;305
• Nor our profit of these shall be less—yea, fleeces Milesian dyed
• In purple of Tyre be exchanged for a princely price, I know;
• Yet from goats more abundant increase, of milk a stintless flow
• Is won; and the fuller the milk-pails foam, when their udders ye drain,
• The richer the flood shall stream when ye press the teats again.310

• Moreover, the shepherds shear the beard and the reverend chin
• Of the goat of Cinyphian breed; of his long coarse hair they spin
• Tents for the camp, and storm-scourged mariners cloak them therein.
• Through forests, o’er heights Arcadian they pasture, and not as the sheep,
• But the thorny bramble they crop, and the thickets that love the steep,315
• And undriven forget not home to return, and their kids they bring,
• And their burdened udders over the threshold scarce can they swing.
• Little of man’s care need they, but this let them fail not to find:
• Thou with all diligence screen them from frost and the snow-laden wind.
• Be bounteous in bringing them fodder, be leaf-laden branches supplied,320
• And bar not against them thy hayloft through all the winter-tide.
• But when at the call of the west-wind jubilant summer shall speed
• Forth to the woodland-glade the goats, the sheep to the mead,
• With the morning-star’s first gleam to the pastures cool let us pass,
• Let us range them, while young is the morning, while overpearled is the grass,325
• When the dew on the tender herb is unto the flock most sweet.
• Thereafter, when heaven’s fourth hour hath gathered thirst from the heat,
• And cicadas are rending the copse as their song’s wild wail they repeat,
• Then will I bid that thy flock by the well or the deep clear pool
• Drink from the hollowed ilex the running water cool.330
• But in midnoon heat seek out some leaf-shadowed dell for them,
• Where Jove’s huge oak from the immemorial strength of his stem
• Outstretcheth giant arms, or where, with the thronging holm
• Darkened, the grove like a sleeper lieth in hallowed gloom.
• Then give them again of the thin-threaded stream, and again let them graze335
• Till set of the sun, when the gloaming-tide’s cool breath allays
• The feverous air, when the dew-dripping moon requickens the glade,
• When the shores with the halcyon ring, with the warbler the copse’s shade.

• What need of the shepherds of Libya, what need of their pastures to tell
• In song?—of the widely-scattered hamlets wherein they dwell?340
• Oft nightlong, daylong, yea, through a whole month, day after day
• Pasture their flocks, far-roaming the waste land’s trackless way
• Never folded; before them lie such limitless plains. His all
• That Afric herdman carries with him—the sheltering wall
• Of his home, his wolf-hound warder of sheep, his quiver and bow.345
• The valiant Roman, arrayed in ancestral arms, even so
• Plods on and on ’neath his tyrannous knapsack-burden; and lo,
• Ere they look for him, pitched is his camp, and his columns face the foe.
• Far other it is, where Scythian hordes by Maeotis shiver,
• Where whirled are the tawny sands down Danube the turbid river,350

• Where right beneath the pole far-stretched bends Rhodope round.
• There pent in the stalls men keep their herds; for nowhere is found
• Any grass in the fields, and nowhere a leaf do the tree-boughs show,
• But far and wide is the landscape blurred with the mounded snow
• And with thick-ribbed ice, a crust whose depth is in seven ells told.355
• ’Tis eternal winter; the blasts evermore blow icy-cold.
• Never the grey cloud-pall by a shaft of the sun is riven,
• Neither when borne on his chariot he climbs to the height of the heaven,
• Nor yet when he plunges it headlong in ocean ruddy-glowing.
• There sudden ice-films curdle on streams in the midst of their flowing,360
• And iron-bound wheels on its frozen face the water sustains;
• Erewhile it gave welcome to ships, but now unto broad-beamed wains.
• Vessels of brass unsmitten are rifted, on wearers’ backs
• Stiffens the raiment; the wines men drink must be cleft with the axe.
• In a solid mass from floor to surface freezes the lake:365
• Bright daggers that hang from the unkempt beard doth the hard ice make.
• Meanwhile without ceasing it snows, that the air is all one cloud:
• The sheep are dying, the huge-framed steers in a cold white shroud
• Stand wrapped: the forest-deer crouch numbed, a huddled rout,
• ’Neath the ’wildering avalanche; scarce do the tips of their horns peep out.370
• Upon these men slip not the hounds from the leash, nor with nets do they snare,
• Nor drive them into the toils with the crimson feather-scare;
• But, as vainly their breasts against that mountain-barrier strain,
• They close on them, hew with the steel, while they bell in their terror and pain,
• And with clamour loud and exultant homeward they bear the slain.375
• That people in caves deep-delved under earth fleet carelessly
• A holiday-time: heaped logs and many a whole elm-tree
• Are rolled to their broad hearth-stones, and high on the flames up-piled.
• Here while they away the night in sport, and in revelry wild
• With ale and with cider sour do they mimic the southland wines.380
• In the land at the North-wind’s back, where the Bear in the zenith shines,
• So liveth a savage race, by the east-wind buffeted aye,
• And in shaggy fells of their dun-hued goats their frames they array.

• But if thy desire be for wool, each thorny brake do thou clear,
• All caltrops and burrs; unto rank-growing pasturage draw not near.385
• From the first let white sheep silky-fleeced be chosen of thee:
• But the ram, how white soever his outward form may be,
• Reject, if but under his mouth’s moist roof a black tongue lie,
• Lest he blur with dark-hued spots each fleece of his progeny:
• Look round in the teeming plain for another hornèd chief.390

• With wool so snowy for gift—if the tale be worthy belief—
• Thee, Moon-goddess, Pan, Arcadia’s God, did beguile and enthrall,
• To the deep woods summoning thee, nor didst thou despise his call.

• But who coveteth milk, lucerne and lotus-bloom let him bear
• With his own hands unto the pens, and salt-strewn grass lay there:395
• Thus more they desire to drink of the flood, and their udders swell
• The more, and a half-veiled savour of salt in the milk shall dwell.
• Some men from the very birth the mother’s teat forbid,
• With iron muzzle arming the yeanling mouth of the kid.
• Of the milk that was drawn when the sunrise wakened the day, that night400
• Are they wringing the curds, that milked in the sunset’s failing light
• At dawn do they press: the shepherd in crates to the town bears this,
• Or lightly besprinkled with salt stored up for the winter it is.

• Nor last in thy thoughts be the care of thy dogs, but alike do thou breed
• Swift wolf-hounds of Sparta and fierce Molossian mastiffs, and feed405
• On the fattening whey. When thou hast such warders of kine and sheep,
• Thou shalt dread not the thief in the night, nor the wolf’s swift stealthy leap,
• Nor the Spanish outlaw who darts unforeseen from his lurking-place.
• Often withal shalt thou hold the shy wild ass in chase,
• And with hounds shalt thou hunt the hare, and with hounds the fallow-deer.410
• Oft too from his forest-wallows with sound of their baying anear
• Shalt thou rouse and drive the boar, and oft through the mountains high
• From their clamour full on thy nets the stately stag shall fly.

• Learn also to burn in thy stalls the cedar’s scented wood,
• And to banish with galbanum-fumes the noisome water-snake’s brood.415
• Oft under sheds long undisturbed close-hidden doth lie
• A viper deadly to touch, shrinking scared from the light of the sky;
• Or an adder,—that pestilent scourge of the kine,—that is wont to creep
• ’Neath the shadowing thatch, and bespatter with venom oxen and sheep,
• Hath his nest in the ground. Snatch stones and staves, O shepherd thou!420
• As he rears a threatening crest, as his hissing throat swells now,
• Down dash him!—he flees!—hidden deep is his head, no longer bold,
• While his back’s mid-wreaths and the train of his tail’s last joints are unrolled,
• And the last of his coils drags out a slowly-trailing fold.
• In Calabrian glens withal is a snake, that most fell pest,425
• Who rolleth and writheth a scale-armed back, who upreareth a breast
• And a belly exceeding long with great spots closely set,
• Who, while yet there are streams overbrimming from full well-heads, while yet
• With the dewy spring and the south-wind’s rains the meadows are wet,
• Haunteth the pools; on their banks he dwelleth; he gorgeth here430

• His ravening maw with fish and with babbling frogs of the mere.
• But, when scorched dry is the fen, and rifted with heat earth lies,
• Forth darts to the waterless land, and, rolling blazing eyes,
• Goes ranging over the fields, thirst-fevered and frenzied with heat.
• Not then be I tempted to woo ’neath the blue sky slumber sweet,435
• Nor to lie outstretched on the grass of the wood’s ridge careless-dreaming,
• When, reborn from his cast-off slough, in youth’s renewal gleaming,
• Coiling he comes, and hath left in his lair his eggs or his young,
• And sunward uprears him, and darts from his mouth a three-forked tongue!

• Diseases, their causes and tokens, will I unto thee make plain.440
• Our sheep by a noisome scab are assailed, when the chilling rain
• And the frost, with its daggers of gleaming ice, have pierced down deep
• To the seat of life, or when the sweat to the late-sheared sheep
• Hath cloven unwashed, and prickly brambles have torn the flesh.
• Therefore do flockmasters bathe in running water fresh445
• The whole flock: plunged is the ram in a swirling river-pool,
• And sent down-stream slow-sailing, freighted with drenchèd wool.
• Or their new-shorn bodies the shepherd anointeth with oil-lees sour
• Mingled with silver-scum and with virgin sulphur-flour,
• And with pitch from Ida’s pines and with wax oil-softened blent,450
• And with squills and bitumen black, and with hellebore heavy of scent.
• Yea, for healing of their affliction there comes no happier chance
• Than this, if one hath the wit and the strength with the steel to lance
• The ulcer’s head: the mischief is fostered and lives by concealing,
• While the shepherd refuses to lay on the sore the hand of healing,455
• And idly sitting prays to the Gods for hopefuller signs.
• Nay more, when the pain with the very bones of the bleater twines,
• When it rages, and parching fever on joint and on limb doth prey,
• Much hath it availed by bleeding that fiery heat to allay,
• And to pierce in the cleft of the hoof the vein hard-throbbing with blood,460
• As use the Bisaltae to do, and Gelonians fierce of mood,
• When to Rhodope’s ridge and the wastes of the Getan folk they have fled,
• And with curdled milk, with the steed’s blood mingled, their cups brim red.

• What sheep soever thou markest that languidly steals to the shade,
• Or that bites not close, but listlessly crops but the tip of the blade,465
• Or that lies down tired in the mead as she pastures, and last of all
• Ever lags, and alone and late comes home at the evenfall,
• Then help there is none, but with steel thou must stamp out the plague, ere the dread,
• The cureless taint through the unsuspecting flock shall have spread.
• For not so thick with disaster a whirlwind sweeps from the seas470

• Bringing storm, as the manifold murrains. Not single victims disease
• Clutcheth: whole summer-pastures are suddenly swept away—
• The flock and the hope of the flock, a whole race gone in a day!
• Let him be my witness, who gazes on Alps that float on the sky,
• On Noric towers crag-built, on meads by Timavus that lie,475
• And sees now, long, long after the ruin, desolate made
• The realms of the shepherds, and leagues on leagues of unpeopled glade.

• Here, dropped from a tainted sky, a season of misery came
• On a land that fainted and drooped under autumn’s fever-flame,
• Dealing death to all manner of cattle, to every beast of the wild.480
• It poisoned the pools, with its venom the very grass was defiled.
• Nor plain was the pathway to death, but when through every vein
• Coursing, the fiery thirst had cramped each limb with pain,
• Once more did a watery humour flood the frame; each bone,
• By disease to a pulp broken down, it absorbed and made its own.485
• In mid-sacrifice oft the victim brought to the altar-side,
• While its brows were wreathed with the woollen fillet with white bands tied,
• Midst the faltering ministers fell to the earth in the last death-throe;
• Or, if haply the priest had dealt with the axe ere then the blow,
• When the entrails were laid on the altar, the fat refused to burn,490
• Nor, when asked of the will of the Gods, could the seer any answer return.
• The pale blood scarce can redden the knife at the throat that gleams,
• And the sand’s mere surface is darkly flushed with the thin life-streams.
• Here mid lush pastures the calves are dying on every hand,
• And render up sweet life by the full-heaped cribs as they stand.495
• Man’s lover, the dog, goeth mad; and racked are the sickening swine
• With a gasping cough; half-strangled with swollen throats they pine.
• In his strivings baffled staggers the once victorious steed,
• Forgetting to graze, from the fountain shrinking, and spurning the mead
• Oft with his hoof: his ears droop, sweat breaks out thereby500
• Fitful and chill, a forerunner of death: his coat is dry;
• Touch it, and tense and unyielding beneath thine hand doth it lie.
• Such death-signs are given in early days of the malady;
• But when, in its onward course, the disease grows virulent,
• Then are his eyes ablaze, and laboured, as though deep-pent,505
• Is his breathing, and laden with moans sometimes: the flanks from below
• Are straining with long-drawn sobs: from the nostrils a dark blood-flow
• Oozes: the rough tongue’s tip to the choked throat seems to grow.
• Relief hath been given by thrusting a horn ’twixt the teeth, wherethrough
• They poured wine—such was the only help for the dying they knew.510

• But this soon proved their destruction: with madness’s energy burning,
• With false strength even in the faintness of imminent death returning,—
• God save from such frenzy the good, and visit it on Rome’s foes!—
• Their bared teeth mangled and tore their limbs in the last death-throes.
• Lo, where the ox, as he reeketh upturning the stubborn loam,515
• Drops in his tracks; from his mouth blood spurteth mingled with foam,
• As he heaveth his dying groans. The hind sore sorroweth,
• And unyokes the steer that stands and grieves for his brother’s death:
• And there in the half-finished furrow buried he leaves the plough.
• No shades of the woodland-towers, no soft-grassed meadows now520
• Shall avail to requicken his heart, nor the hill-stream amber-brown
• That over his rock-shelves combing plainward hurrieth down.
• But unstrung are his flanks, his languid eyes ’neath a stupor droop:
• By its own weight downward borne doth his faint neck earthward stoop.
• What avail him his labours, his services?—what, that he toiled so hard525
• Turning the furrows? Yet never the strength of his frame was marred
• By the Massic gifts of the Wine-god, by course after course at the feast;
• But on leaves and on grass unadulterate feedeth the pure-lived beast:
• The limpid spring and the racing brook his chalices are,
• Nor by cares are his healthful slumbers broken and banished afar.530
• Never before, men say, were oxen sought in vain
• In that country for sacrifice unto Juno; never the wain
• Was by ill-matched buffaloes drawn to her high-built treasury-fane.
• Therefore with mattocks they painfully scratch the earth, with their nails
• Bury the seed in the soil: the yeoman straining hales,535
• The yoke on his own neck, waggons across the mountain’s brow.
• No wolf about the sheepfold lurketh in ambush now,
• Nor stalketh the flock in the darkness: a keener terror daunts
• The spoiler. Shy fallow-deer and timorous stags from their haunts
• Come down, and mid hounds and around men’s homes are they wandering.540
• Yea, the brood of the limitless sea, and every swimming thing
• On the verge of the strand, like corpses from shipwreck, are washed up high
• By the surf: to the rivers strangely the seals for refuge fly.
• Even the viper in vain doth his winding lair protect,
• But he dies, and the water-snake, his scales in terror erect.545
• To the very birds is the air unkind, for headlong they fall
• Down, leaving their life high up beneath the clouds’ dark pall.
• No change of diet availeth: remedies have but recoiled
• In ruin on them that have sought them; the masters of healing are foiled,
• Melampus of Amythaon, and Chiron, Phillyra’s son.550

• Unkennelled from Stygian gloom to the light rusheth raging on
• Ghastly Tisiphone, herding before her Disease and Dread,
• And higher day by day uplifts her insatiate head.
• With bleating of sheep and with multitudinous lowing the rivers
• And parched banks echo; the moaning along the hill-slopes shivers.555
• To whole herds now is she dealing destruction, their corpses are piled
• In the very stalls; they are rotting, with putrid horrors defiled,
• Till in pits men learn to hide them, and veil their corruption with soil;
• For utterly useless the skins were: it was but wasted toil
• With water to wash the flesh, or its purging with fire to essay.560
• Nay, they could shear not the fleeces, so eaten through were they
• By the plague and its foul discharge; nor the rotting web could they wear:
• Yea, if to don that deadly vesture any should dare,
• O’er the limbs spread burning pustules and sweat unclean and sour:
• And short was the respite granted before that awful hour565
• Of the Fire Accurst, of the fangs that the living flesh devour.