BMCR 2009.01.24, Vasiles A. Fyntikoglou, Virgiliou

Vasiles A. Fyntikoglou (ed.), Virgiliou. Vougonia: To epullio tou
Aristaiou (Georgikon IV 281-558). Vivliotheke Archaion Sungrapheon, 42.
Athens:  Stigme, 2007.  Pp. 388.  ISBN 9789602691946.

Reviewed by Sophia Papaioannou, The National and Kapodistrian
University of Athens ([email protected])
Word count:  3207 words
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The closural section of Georgics 4, famously referred to by the Greek
technical term bugonia, 'the birth (of bees) from an ox', has proven an
attractive challenge for the critics of Vergil's didactic epic in
recent decades, especially since the late 1980s and early 1990s, when
the Vergilian community witnessed the publication in close succession
of Mynors' and Thomas' editions,[[1]] and Farrell's fundamental
interpretive study of the deeply allusive, decisively
literary-historical texture of the entire poem, which devotes a large
chapter to its recapitulating final episode.[[2]] The Aristaeus'
epyllion is probably one of the most puzzling parts of the Vergilian
corpus, even of all Augustan literary production--an episode both
inextricably tied to the rest of the Georgics and loosely attached to
it structurally; a texture of threads tightly entwined and
interdependent, but overall a narrative often leaving the impression
that it lacks continuity; a text that prior to the studies of Boyle,
Thomas, and Perkell in the 1980s, and Farrell, Biotti, and Gale in the
1990s,[[3]] which emphasized allegory as the leading interpretive
parameter of the entire poem, made a unique mark in Vergilian studies
by effortlessly resisting crucial consensus.[[4]] Here, two stories of
diametrically opposite conclusions, Aristaeus' labor and ultimate
success to restore to life his bees, and Orpheus' quest to the
Underworld in order to bring back his dead wife, Eurydice, that ends
tragically for both of them, intertwine, in fact are read as parallel.
Not least, positioned at the end of the Georgics, the bugonia operates
also as an epilogue to Vergil's early literary production, a turning
point in his career, and a harbinger of the fascinating complexity of
politics and poetics that emerge later in the Aeneid.

Fyntikoglou takes full advantage of these strides in Georgics research.
He is deeply influenced, further, by Hardie's theory of reading
Vergil's works as a mosaic celebrating 'cosmological allegory' that is
regularly manifested in different generic contexts, and Conte's views
about the presence of epyllion theory in the subtext of all grand poems
of the Augustans.[[5]] Thus well-versed in modern theory on
intertextuality, Fyntikoglou argues that through close study of the
bugonia, the conclusion of the Georgics, and as such, a miniature of
the entire poem, one can discern Vergil's intention to interpret the
structure and texture of the Georgics as the process rather than the
outcome of neoteric poetic synthesis; and that Vergil's principal
intention was to advertize, through poeticizing the composition of a
didactic poem, the anatomy of the model didactic epic according to the
code of neoteric poetics His readings, especially those advanced in the
chapters three and four, are largely convincing, and they offer many
original insights, through persuasive and lucidly conducted
argumentation. Notably, Fyntikoglou unwittingly interprets the Georgics
along the lines of another important book that came out almost at the
same time, Gyburg Radke's recent reading of Hellenistic poetry as
theoretical textswhich use aesthetics as a structural tool, in order to
produce a composition that celebrates it.[[6]] Furthermore,
Fyntikoglou's effort should be praised for the fact that he has
composed the first high-quality close study on the Georgics in Greek in
recent decades, an accomplishment that will be particularly appreciated
by the many advanced undergraduate and graduate Classics students in
the universities of Greece, who, their fluency in English aside, crave
first-rate scholarship publications in their native tongue.

The book consists of three major parts and a fourth section with
appended material complementary to the previous three. In part one (pp.
15-47), Fyntikoglou offers a brief narrative of the content of the
Aristaeus episode and then sets out his premises for reading the poem
in relation to preceding scholarship: he embraces the methodology of
reading Aristaeus as a deeply allusive, 'alexandrian' in conception
text, as introduced by Richard Thomas (most of Thomas' influential
publications on the Georgics are listed in Fyntikoglou's bibliography),
but, wisely, refuses to follow Thomas' pessimistic perspective.
Specifically, Fyntikoglou's own interpretation, to be unfolded in the
six essays following the commentary, develops around two principal
lines of argument: (1) The bugonia episode recapitulates the basic
themes of the entire Georgics, with Aristaeus being the archetypal
farmer / epic hero, the archetypal Roman and an incarnation of the
Roman labor, and also the ideal reader of the particular poem. The
reading public of the Aristaeus epyllion includes a) Vergil's
contemporaries more broadly; b) Maecenas, Vergil's patron, whose
sponsorship of poets like Vergil has allowed a rebirth of free thinking
at Rome; and c) Octavian the final winner of the civil wars, who is
invited to become a new Aristaeus, likewise destined to restore life to
the dead body of the respublica. (2) The interfusion of the Aristaeus
and Orpheus stories, on the one hand, and of the deep intertextuality
with earlier epic, alike Homeric and Callimachean, that permeates the
bugonia episode. For Fyntikoglou this interdependence of
intra-textuality and inter-textuality, or more precisely, the reception
of intratextuality as another expression of intertextuality, in the
closure of the Georgics, calls for a revision of the dialogue between
literary genres in the episode, and by extension, for the redefinition
of the didactic element it conveys. Inevitably, the reader is prompted
to wonder whether the same applies to the rest of the Georgics as well.

The second part of the book is devoted to the text of the epyllion
itself (pp. 49-103). First, Latin text (essentially that of Mynors in
the OCT with minor changes) and Greek translation are printed on facing
pages, and then follows a commentary that does not aspire to be
exhaustive, but rather to supplement those of Mynors, Thomas and
Biotti, and emphasize those ideas which Fyntikoglou proposes to develop
further in his essays in the third part of the book. A notable addition
to those commentaries is Fyntikoglou's integration into his study of
relevant ancient material, specifically, the treatise on apiculture
recorded in the fifteenth book of the Byzantine (10th c. AD) Geoponica
and the Egyptian version of the bugonia.[[7]] On the other hand, an
important omission is the unawareness of the most recent annotated
edition of the Georgics, by M. Erren; spread over two volumes separated
from each other by 18 years, Erren's 1000-page long commentary, is
worth consulting, especially on matters of language and style, and
Quellenforschung.[[8]]

In the third and most extensive part of his study (pp. 104-317),
Fyntikoglou in six essays addresses important questions about the
smooth integration of the bugonia inside the Georgics overall. The
first essay is devoted to the didactic mission of the episode.
Fyntikoglou reads the opening statement of the unit at 281-286 as
programmatic, endorsed by an emphatic reference to fama, typically
viewed today in Augustan poetics as a reference to earlier literary
tradition. Fama features again a few lines later (318) in an equally
programmatic position, the opening of the Aristaeus story. For
Fyntikoglou, this literary tradition identifies primarily with
Callimachus' Aetia which inspired Vergil's understanding of an aetion
(a narrative, often fictional, that explains the origins of various
things) and the theory on the didactic mission of aetiology advanced
therein. His mother Cyrene and the sea-god Proteus feature invariably
and in different contexts in the role of Aristaeus' instructor , an
embodiment of transformation, and as such, an allegory of the model
neoteric poem.

Proteus, like Aristaeus, is a creator-- a creator of poetry no less,
because his dissertation very soon after its opening is transformed
from a piece of instruction to an aetiological poem, which in stylistic
sublimity and subtlety of wit vies with the Callimachean Aetia,, its
true model. Cyrene is also a poet in her own right: Fyntikoglou rightly
observes that Aristaeus' mother and Proteus share common vocabulary
that includes mainly poetically marked terminology. Thus, the
praeceptrix role of Cyrene and the aetiological elegy of the diviner
Proteus fuse into a lesson that does not particularly enlighten
Aristaeus but presents an outright challenge to the erudite Vergilian
reader and tempts Augustus to embrace the perspective of both narratees
in order to decode the serious messages in the subtext. Fyntikoglou's
study of Cyrene would have benefited from Christopher Nappa's recent
reading of the Aristaeus episode, an insightful lengthy analysis that
rounds up an equally stimulating and rich book on the whole poem, which
among other things, suggests a closer attention to the poetics in the
complex character and role of Cyrene. Fyntikoglou could have drawn
additional insights from Nappa's discussion of the Georgics, wherein
the indirect conversation between Vergil and Augustus is one of the
main preoccupations throughout, to advance Vergil's narrative as a
message to Maecenas and Octavian.[[9]]

Fyntikoglou's second essay discusses the genre of the bugonia and
concludes that it is not technically an epyllion but, rather, a
narrative that concentrates all the major generic characteristics of an
epyllion. Here Fyntikoglou engages in dialogue with the major theories
on the literary character of the epyllion and its definition as a genre
of its own. A full survey of the most important bibliography on the
issue (with full discussion of the main works on literary genre in the
notes throughout the chapter--a boon to graduate students and novices
in literary theory) backs up the argument against limiting the term
'epyllion' to independent-standing compositions, and extends it to
include segments of poems that belong primarily to a different genre;
according to this premise, one should not talk about epyllia but about
thematically independent clusters that are marked by certain poetic
characteristics one finds always in the typically defined epyllia.
According to the above definition, the term 'epyllion' includes both
longer and multi-thematic narratives and shorter tales. Callimachus'
little epic of Hekale , or the bugonia episode in its entirety belong
to the former category; indeed, Aristaeus' effort to revive his bees,
like Theseus' expedition at Marathon, operates as an all encompassing
frame of smaller, at once interrelated and independently standing
stories. On the other hand, Orpheus' tale inside the adventure of
Aristaeus and other self-standing embedded narrative units such as the
desertion of Ariadne as depicted on the famous bedspread of Thetis'
couch in Catullus 64 or the several tales inside the Hekale, like the
conversation between the crow and the raven, belong to the second
category.

The discussion that develops in the third and fourth chapters of
Fyntikoglou's study, the core of the book in my view, takes on the
character of Aristaeus and his story (chapter 3, pp. 165-227), and the
interaction of Aristaeus' quest with the embedded tale of Orpheus and
Eurydice (chapter 4, pp. 229-262). Fyntikoglou's reading of Aristaeus
accounts for many stimulating and sensible observations. There are
lengthy discussions, among other topics, a) on the manifestation of
labor, a key theme of the entire Georgics (but carefully absent from
Aristaeus' speech), which ultimately proves to be a game in
intratextuality that involves several other marked terms of laboring,
such as ars and extundere so that the toil applies to the construction
of this elaborate text as much as to the agricultural labor and the
revival of the bees; to the concluding aspect of the bugonia and the
intimate relationship between the final and the opening section of the
whole epic (the Theodicy episode in Book 1.125-135); b) on the
association between the plague that destroyed Aristaeus' bees and the
plague at Noricum, which is likewise set at the conclusion of Georgics
3 and so, plainly another closural narrative of utter loss meant to be
read next to the bugonia; c) on the inevitable ties to the account of
the most celebrated didactic plague in Latin poetry in Lucretius; and
not least, d) on the Homeric subtext behind Aristaeus' heroic models,
first Achilles in Iliad 1, in his appeal for assistance to his own
Nereid mother, and then the Telemachus of the Telemacheia, alongside
his host Menelaus-- himself no less a model for Aristaeus, having been
the first hero to have extracted a significant secret out of Proteus.

Most of Fyntikoglou's arguments contain original ideas, and
importantly, elicit further debate. For instance, Aristaeus'
Achilles-like profile, rightly read by Fyntikoglou as projecting a
character marked by (the obviously un-epic traits of) immaturity and
confusion, should be interpreted primarily along the lines of Homeric
succession and antagonistic aemulatio, as a consciously lighter
recasting of the Iliadic Achilles, anticipating the transformed epic
hero Aeneas and his relationship to Venus--and becoming, a generation
later, the model for Phaethon's encounter with Clymene at the end of
Ovid's Metamorphoses 1, which is a closer parallel to Aristaeus, also
involving a quest, a transition to a territory that is forbidden to
humans, and divine ancestry on both parents' sides. Fyntikoglou's lucid
reading of the catalogue of the Nereids in 4.334-347 (pp. 190-199) as a
case study of neoteric poetics at work because it represents an
exemplary encapsulation of cross-section of different subtexts and
literary traditions, engaging both content and form (meter, rhythm,
sound, etymological wordplay), is one of the most enjoyable sections of
the volume. Finally, the evocation of Menelaus (an interlocutor to
Aristaeus by proxy, via the latter's obvious resemblance to Telemachus)
and the Homeric Proteus (as Menelaus portrays him in the Odyssey),
offer Vergil, in Fyntikoglou's eyes, two more occasions literally to
put on display the very process of composing according to the rules of
neoteric poetics. Thus, the Homeric Proteus becomes a pastoral hero in
the Georgics, echoing the world of the Eclogues; while Menelaus is seen
now in the shadow of Cyrene, now behind Aristaeus himself.

The critical process, aligned with the theoretical premises to see the
Georgics as a versified treatise on neoteric poetics, applies even more
fittingly to Orpheus' experience. The 'Orpheus epyllion' (in
Fyntikoglou's definition) receives a similarly thorough treatment that
advertises Vergil's mastery of literary tradition ideally represented
by the traces of a celebrated legend of Greek antiquity. Orpheus'
simultaneous evocation and reversal of Aristaeus inspires Fyntikoglou
to propose a reading of Orpheus as yet another manifestation of
Achilles in Iliad 1, which complements Aristaeus' own, because Orpheus'
Achilles-like features draw on both the same and different parts of the
great Homeric hero's experience in Book 1 (specifically, the argument
with Agamemnon, but also Achilles' mourning by the sea, which served as
Aristaeus' model, as well) and 23 (the mourning over the dead
Patroclus). Similar methodology directs the examination of Orpheus in
the light of Odysseus, the hero of the first literary nekyia, where
Fyntikoglou's argument leads to the surprising conclusion that at the
end of his journey, Orpheus has been transformed into an Achilles. This
different method of using essentially the same literary tradition
positions the relationship between Orpheus and Aristaeus on a new
level, which considers the two in model-archetype relationship: upon
reaching the end of Orpheus' story the reader comes to realize that the
hero's particular version of his katabasis is in discourse with its
long literary past as much as with the literary anatomy that shapes the
texture of Aristaeus' own experience. At the same time, Fyntikoglou
ingeniously points out, Orpheus, too, is prefigured as a neoteric poet:
his laments for Eurydice follow a specific literary plan and show
awareness of himself as poetic genius. The Orpheus chapter closes with
a justification for the antithetical conclusions of the two parallel
quests: for Fyntikoglouthe principal didactic message of the entire
poem lies here. Orpheus has a tragic end, shown not in his
dismemberment but with his retreat into depression and perpetual
lament-- or poetically speaking, into a self-centered poetic expression
that never evolves. This supposedly instructs Aristaeus (or rather,
Vergil's Roman contemporaries) about the duty to weather and recover
from disaster in order to survive and triumph and instructs the reader
of the Georgics across time to consider the message of the poem on the
basis of the way in which the (social and political) meaning behind the
change theme of neoteric poetics possibly addresses her own experience.

Much of the literary background of the Aristaeus and the Orpheus
stories surveyed in the next (fifth) chapter has been already mentioned
in detail in the discussions of the intertextual models of the two
heroes in chapters three and four. The reader who does not specialize
in Augustan poetry, on the other hand, will appreciate the orderly
presentation of a long and complex Greek tradition, and the
relationship of the bugonia epyllion to the neoteric tradition. And the
illuminating description of the interaction of the episode with
Eclogues 10 which evolves around Gallus--who is distinctly compared to
a Roman Orpheus in Eclogue 6, the poetic core of Vergil's early
collection--is welcome. Equally complementary to and supportive of the
poetic analysis of the bugonia advanced in the earlier chapters, is the
comparison between traditional and neoteric poetic principles surveyed
in the sixth and final chapter under the suggestive title 'ars~vates',
each of the two terms carrying two different but interlinked meanings,
and modifying multiple characters, who in turn interfuse in similar
fashion.

The book concludes with: a) a useful appendix (pp. 319-358), in three
parts that deal respectively with a comparison between Vergil's account
of the bugonia and the technical procedure as recorded in the Egyptian
texts; a lucid summarizing overview of the leading scholarship on the
Georgics in the past three decades (an initiative that will be greatly
appreciated by many graduate students, and classicists who do not
specialize in the study of the Georgics); and a summary of all four
books of the poem; b) a bibliography, general index and index locorum;
and, finally, c) an English summary (pp. 375-388) wherein the non-Greek
speaker can find a good description of the main arguments and thematic
highlights in each section of the book.

To summarize, Fyntikoglou's study of the bugonia is a welcome new take
on the study of one of the most popular, but frustratingly elusive
pieces of Vergil's literary career, and Latin literature overall. All
the major aspects of the poem are reviewed in the light of a new
reading of the neoteric aesthetic, at once inspired by and antagonistic
to Callimacheanism, which is certain to stir up further debate. Some of
the theses advanced, especially Vergil's inspiring teacher-profile,
would have benefited had Fyntikoglou the chance to take into
consideration Nappa's study. The high quality of the publication
deserves praise; I have found only three minor misprints. The perhaps
over-extensive footnotes, often longer than the main text on the same
page, attest Fyntikoglou's intimate familiarity with the major
scholarship on the issue, and his diligent efforts to make his
arguments as comprehensive as possible, and accessible to non-Verigilan
specialists-- an initiative which the Latinist inexperienced in the
studies of intertextuality and narratology will greatly appreciate. The
translation accompanying the text, on the other hand, is worthy of
acclamation: it does an important service to the hellenophone community
of literary readers, who typically find it hard to enjoy the difficult,
technical language of the Georgics in a non-Greek language. To be sure,
this is not a literary translation, and on several occasions the
translator's effort to render the exact meaning of the original
produces a pedantic text, bereft of the easy grace of Vergil's Latin.
But, it serves its purpose quite well: it is easy to follow and, most
importantly, accurate. And I should note that Fyntikoglou's is only the
second translation of the Aristaeus segment ever--and the first one by
a Vergilian specialist--to be composed in Greek.[[10]]


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Notes:


1.   Richard F. Thomas, Virgil: Georgics, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1988);
R.A.B. Mynors, Virgil: Georgics (Oxford, 1990).

2.   J. Farrell, Vergil's Georgics and the Traditions of Ancient Epic:
The Art of Allusion in Literary History (New York and Oxford, 1991).

3.   A. Boyle, The Chaonian Dove: Studies in the Eclogues, the Georgics
and the Aeneid, Leiden 1986; Christine G. Perkell, The Poet's Truth: a
Study of the Poet in Virgil's Georgics (Berkeley, 1989); Farrell (see
note 2); A. Biotti, Georgische: Libro IV (Bologna, 1994); Monica Gale,
Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius, and the
Didactic Tradition (Cambridge, 2000). In addition to the commentaries,
Richard Thomas has written, mostly in the 1980s, several pioneering
articles on the interpretation of the Georgics; several of them have
been reprinted in R. Thomas, Reading Virgil and his Text: Studies in
Intertextuality (Ann Arbor, 1999).

4.   Fyntikoglou duly notes (p. 22) the famous observation in J.
Griffin, Greece and Rome 26 (1979) 61, wherein the latter counts
seventeen different interpretations produced in the years between
1967-79; as many have been added since: see the overview in C. Nappa,
Reading After Actium: Vergil's Georgics, Octavian and Rome (Ann Arbor,
2005), 265 nn. 48-50.

5.   P.R. Hardie, Virgil's Aeneid. Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986);
G.-B. Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation (Ithaca and London, 1986), and
id., Genres and Readers (Baltimore and London, 1994).

6.   G. Radke, Die Kindheit des Mythos-- die Erfindung der
Literaturgeschichte in der Antike (Muenchen, 2007).

7.   The reader wishing for a brief but compact review of the bugonia
archaeology should add to Fyntikoglou's principal references B.G.
Witfield, 'Vergil and the Bees: A Study in Ancient Apicultural Lore',
Greece and Rome 3 (1956) 99-117, , Biotti's commentary and two articles
by E. Peraki-Kyriakidou-- the former in Greek, titled, 'Egypt or
Macedonia', in the 1998 volume of the Annual Scholarly Review of the
Philosophy School of the Aristotle University; the other, 'The bull and
the bees', in LEC 71 [2003] 151-174.

8.   M. Erren, P. Vergilius Maro. Georgica. Band 1. Einleitung.
Praefatio. Text und Uebersetzung (Heidelberg, 1983); M. Erren, P.
Vergilius Maro. Georgica. Band 2. Kommentar (Heidelberg, 2003).

9.   Nappa (note 4 above). Very likely Nappa's book came out too late
for Fyntikoglou to take it into consideration.

10.   A century ago, in the early 1900s, the novelist Konstantinos
Theotokis, a non-classicist, translated all four books of the Georgics
in Greek for the first time, an opus, which so far stands as the only
Greek translation of this great poem (repr. Athens: Keimena, 1970);
regrettably Fyntikoglou cites nowhere that he was aware of or used this
translation, which is actually quite good, as well. For obvious
reasons, I do not take into consideration the late-18th c. translation
of the Georgics by Eugenios Voulgaris in...Homeric Greek).