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SUMMARY: This paper explores the implications of parallels between three episodes in Virgil's Georgics and Aeneid, each of which involves the motif of the hero's backward glance. Orpheus in Georgics 4 loses his wife because he looks back too soon; conversely, Aeneas in Aeneid 2 and Nisus in Aeneid 9 look back too late. An examination of parallels and contrasts between the three episodes sheds light on Virgil's exploration of dichotomies between poetry and politics, individual and community, past and future.
A FREQUENTLY RECURRING THEME OF ROMAN POETRY is the nature and function of poetry itself. From at least the time of Ennius, passages of self-conscious reflection on the relationship between literature and public life, poet and statesman, are common, and Virgil is no exception. In what follows, I will argue that light is shed on Virgil's handling of these themes by tracing parallels and contrasts between three episodes in the Georgics and Aeneid. Only the first-the Orpheus story at the end of Georgics 4-is obviously concerned with the theme of poetry (Orpheus being, of course, the archetypal singer, as well as the lover of Eurydice). I will suggest, however, that the striking parallels between the stories of Orpheus and Eurydice in Georgics 4, Aeneas and Creusa in Aeneid 2, and Nisus and Euryalus in Aeneid 9 form part of a nexus of related concerns common to the two poems: the role of the poet in relation to the statesman is linked to dichotomies between passion and reason, individual and community, past and future.
My point of departure is not the Orpheus story itself but the immediately following lines in which the poet signs off at the end of his work. Here the relationship between poet and statesman is most explicitly at issue.
THE SPHRAGIS OF THE GEORGICS (4.559-66)
haec super arvorum cultu pecorumque canebam
et super arboribus, Caesar dum magnus ad altum
fulminat Euphraten bello victorque volentis
per populos dat iura viamque adfectat Olympo.
illo Vergilium me tempore dulcis alebat
Parthenope studiis florentem ignobilis oti,
carmina qui lusi pastorum audaxque iuventa,
Tityre, te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi.
This song of the cultivation of fields and flocks and of trees I sang while great Caesar thundered in war by the deep Euphrates and,...