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.

See the illustrated blog post with a star map here.

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