Georgics Book 1, lines 204 - 230

The farmer’s starry calendar

by Virgil

When should a farmer do what? In the twenty-first century, there is no lack of information, but the stars are not much consulted. They are now impossible to see in detail anyway because of light pollution if you live in or near a built-up area, so that very few non-specialists can tell more than one or two stars from one another. Things were different around 30 BCE. Like sailors, farmers needed to know how to be guided by the stars. The night sky may not be much use if you want to time an egg or keep an appointment, but it shows accurately and consistently what point the world has reached in its unchanging yearly cycle. Here, Virgil explains how to time autumn tasks by the stars, then moves on to spring ones before, slightly confusingly, jogging back to the autumn and winter again.

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Praeterea tam sunt Arcturi sidera nobis
Haedorumque dies servandi et lucidus Anguis,
quam quibus in patriam ventosa per aequora vectis
Pontus et ostriferi fauces temptantur Abydi.
Libra die somnique pares ubi fecerit horas
et medium luci atque umbris iam dividit orbem,
exercete, viri, tauros, serite hordea campis
usque sub extremum brumae intractabilis imbrem;
nec non et lini segetem et Cereale papaver
tempus humo tegere et iamdudum incumbere aratris,
dum sicca tellure licet, dum nubila pendent.
vere fabis satio; tum te quoque, medica, putres
accipiunt sulci et milio venit annua cura,
candidus auratis aperit cum cornibus annum
Taurus et averso cedens Canis occidit astro.
at si triticeam in messem robustaque farra
exercebis humum solisque instabis aristis,
ante tibi Eoae Atlantides abscondantur
Cnosiaque ardentis decedat stella Coronae,
debita quam sulcis committas semina quamque
invitae properes anni spem credere terrae.
multi ante occasum Maiae coepere; sed illos
exspectata seges vanis elusit avenis.
si vero viciamque seres vilemque phaselum
nec Pelusiacae curam aspernabere lentis,
haud obscura cadens mittet tibi signa Bootes:
incipe et ad medias sementem extende pruinas.

We also need to observe the stars of Arcturus, and the days of the Kids and bright Draco, as much as seamen do, sailing home over the windy seas, who take their chances with the ocean and the oyster-rich gulf of Abydos. When Libra has made the hours of the day and of sleep equal , and divided the world between light and darkness, then use your oxen, men, and sow barley until the rains of winter begin to make the ground unworkable; this is the time, too, to get flax and Ceres’ poppies into the ground, and bend over your plough as soon as you can, while the dry ground allows you and the rain hangs fire. But spring is the time to sow kidney beans: then the crumbling tilth is also ready for alfalfa; it is the season to get on with the millet, as Taurus, the snow-white Bull with gilded horns, brings the opening of the year and the dog-star, turning, has set to make way for him. But if you are working the ground for wheat and hardy spelt, and are after only grain, first let the Atlantides be no longer visible in the dawn sky, and the Cretan star of the fiery Crown have set before you commit the seed to the furrow and trust the prospects for the following year to ground which is not yet ready. Many have made a start before the Pleiades have set, to find that the crop they hoped for disappointed them with empty stalks. If you sow vetch and the humble bean, and are not too grand to grow Egyptian lentils, Boötes will send a sign that you can’t miss as it sets: press on, and sow up to the middle of the winter frosts.

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More Poems by Virgil

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