Georgics, Book 2, lines 458 - 474

The farmer’s happy lot

by Virgil

Virgil praises the ease and simple privileges of a farmer’s life. The picture is a romantic one: one doubts that farmers themselves would see things this way, and no passage in the Georgics illustrates more clearly that this is definitely a city-dweller’s view of the countryside.

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O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint,
agricolas! quibus ipsa procul discordibus armis
fundit humo facilem victum iustissima tellus.
si non ingentem foribus domus alta superbis
mane salutantum totis vomit aedibus undam,
nec varios inhiant pulchra testudine postis
inlusasque auro uestis Ephyreiaque aera,
alba neque Assyrio fucatur lana veneno,
nec casia liquidi corrumpitur usus olivi;
at secura quies et nescia fallere vita,
diues opum uariarum, at latis otia fundis,
speluncae vivique lacus, at frigida tempe
mugitusque boum mollesque sub arbore somni
non absunt; illic saltus ac lustra ferarum
et patiens operum exiguoque adsueta iuventus,
sacra deum sanctique patres; extrema per illos
Iustitia excedens terris vestigia fecit.

Farmers would be too happy, if they understood the good things they have! For whom the just land itself pours forth from the soil an easy living, far from clashing arms! If they have no lofty mansion, disgorging a great wave of clients come to greet them in the morning from all its grand halls through its haughty gates, and if they don’t pant for doors beautifully inlaid with tortoiseshell, Corinthian bronzes and clothes threaded with gold, and if their white wool is not red with Assyrian dye, and their bright oil uncorrupted by aromatics, yet safety, peace, a life free of dishonesty, rich in abundance of all sorts, rest in open country, grottoes, pools of living water, cool vales, the lowing of cattle and gentle sleep under a tree, all these they have; there lie forests and haunts of game, the young are used to hard work and to frugal life, the Gods are reverenced and the old respected; among them Justice left her last traces as she left the Earth.

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More Poems by Virgil

  1. Aeneas’s oath
  2. Aeneas tours the site of Rome
  3. Aeneas finds Dido among the shades
  4. Into battle
  5. Rites for the allies’ dead
  6. Aeneas prepares for a hopeless fight
  7. The death of Dido.
  8. Virgil predicts a forthcoming birth and a new golden age
  9. Aeneas arrives in Italy
  10. Aeneas comes to the Hell of Tartarus
  11. The death of Priam
  12. Storm at sea!
  13. Virgil’s poetic temple to Caesar
  14. Fire strikes Aeneas’s fleet
  15. Aeneas joins the fray
  16. Laocoon and the snakes
  17. Aeneas prepares to tell Dido his story
  18. More from Virgil’s farming Utopia
  19. Jupiter’s prophecy
  20. Aeneas and Dido meet
  21. The infant Camilla
  22. Aeneas rescues his Father Anchises
  23. The farmer’s starry calendar
  24. The death of Euryalus and Nisus
  25. The Syrian hostess
  26. Hector visits Aeneas in a dream
  27. The Harpy’s prophecy
  28. Dido and Aeneas: royal hunt and royal affair
  29. Signs of bad weather
  30. The natural history of bees
  31. The Trojans reach Carthage
  32. Dido’s release
  33. Juno throws open the gates of war
  34. Dido’s story
  35. Juno is reconciled
  36. King Mezentius meets his match
  37. Dido and Aeneas: Hell hath no fury …
  38. Aeneas’s ships are transformed
  39. Anchises’s ghost invites Aeneas to visit the underworld
  40. In King Latinus’s hall
  41. The Fury Allecto blows the alarm
  42. Aeneas’s vision of Augustus
  43. New allies for Aeneas
  44. Aeneas reaches the Elysian Fields
  45. Vulcan’s forge
  46. Turnus is lured away from battle
  47. Help for Father Aeneas from Father Tiber
  48. Charon, the ferryman
  49. Love is the same for all
  50. Juno’s anger
  51. Omens for Princess Lavinia
  52. The Aeneid begins
  53. Aeneas learns the way to the underworld
  54. The death of Pallas
  55. Virgil begins the Georgics
  56. Mourning for Pallas
  57. The portals of sleep
  58. The Trojan horse opens
  59. Sea-nymphs
  60. The Trojan Horse enters the city
  61. Virgil’s perils on the sea
  62. Catastrophe for Rome?
  63. Palinurus the helmsman is lost
  64. Dido falls in love
  65. The Trojans prepare to set sail from Carthage
  66. Laocoon warns against the Trojan horse
  67. Turnus at bay
  68. A Fury rouses Turnus to war
  69. What is this wooden horse?
  70. The journey to Hades begins
  71. Souls awaiting punishment in Tartarus, and the crimes that brought them there.
  72. Mercury’s journey to Carthage
  73. How Aeneas will know the site of his city
  74. Aeneas saves his son and father, but at a cost
  75. Aeneas sees Marcellus, Augustus’s tragic heir
  76. King Latinus grants the Trojans’ request
  77. Cassandra is taken
  78. Aristaeus’s bees
  79. Aeneas is wounded
  80. Rumour
  81. Turnus the wolf
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