SOURCE: Richard T. Bruere, "Pliny The Elder and Virgil," in Classical Philology, Vol. 51, No. 4, October, 1956, pp. 228-46.

[In the essay that follows, Bruere attempts to define Pliny's attitude toward the Roman poet Virgil by examining his references to Virgil's writings.]

In the Introduction to his edition of the Georgics (Paris, 1914), P. Lejay incidentally remarks "Pline a, dans plusieurs endroits de son Histoire naturelle, une attitude de sourde hostilite a l'egard de Virgile" (p. xxxvii). The suggestion that a covert malignancy accompanies the high esteem for the Roman national poet that Pliny, patriot and imperial functionary, more than once expresses in his encyclopedia is a paradoxical one, and warrants investigation. This paper will assemble and discuss the passages of the Natural History in which Pliny makes explicit or implicit reference to Virgil, with the purpose of defining and explaining his attitude toward the poet.

The Natural History contains many Virgilian references and allusions. Most of these are technical, and have to do with matters treated in the Georgics, although some concern statements found in the Bucolics and the Aeneid, but a number are literary echoes and reminiscences which attest much familiarity with the poet's works.¹ In addition, Virgil's name occurs in three passages of a nontechnical character; we shall begin our survey by examining these.

In his Praefatio Pliny berates writers who appropriate the work of their predecessors without acknowledgment:

scito enim conferentem auctores me deprehondisse a iuratissimis ex proximis veteres transcriptos ad verbum neque nominatos, non illa Vergiliana virtute ut certarent, non Tulliana simplicitate … [22].

Pliny's intention is clearly laudatory: to challenge Homer is a courageous act,² and Virgil's failure to equal him, which may be implied by certarent,³ is no disgrace; the intimation that Virgil copied Homer ad verbum is not, to be sure, wholly flattering to the Roman poet, but there is no voluntary depreciation, and it is significant that he is coupled with Cicero, for whom Pliny has the greatest admiration.⁴ Before Donatus, Pliny tells the anecdote of Augustus' veto of Virgil's dying wish that the Aeneid be destroyed:

Divus Augustus carmina Vergili cremari contra testamenti eius verecundiam vetuit, maiusque ita vati testimonium contigit quam si ipse sua probavisset [7. 114].

Apart from variations pointing to carelessness rather than to bias, what distinguishes Pliny's version from that of Donatus⁵ is the somewhat vulgar observation that the poet's gesture resulted in his gaining renown that otherwise would have been lacking. This tends to sour the eulogy, but no harm is meant; the story is included in a series of national exempla recounted ad maiorem Romae gloriam. The third nontechnical mention is relatively colorless. Pliny recalls having seen specimens of the handwriting of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, written nearly two hundred years before, at the house of a friend, and continues iam vero Ciceronis ac Divi Augusti Vergilique saepenumero videmus (13. 83); of the three names the poet's is given the least important position, appearing as a mere appendage to that of Augustus,⁶ but here too there is no deliberate malice. From these passages it is evident that Pliny regarded Virgil generally, on the conscious level at least, with the respect usual among literary Romans of his day. His approval of Virgilian virtus is accompanied by endorsement of Virgil's belief concerning the imperial mission. The expression populi gentium victoris, employed by Pliny in the Praefatio (16) and, with small alteration, in Book 3. 5, is a fusion of the poet's populum late regem (Aen. 1. 21) with victae longo or dine gentes (ibid. 8. 722), and there is much more in Virgil's poems which surely gratified Pliny's robust national pride.

The mystical sense of the Roman destiny, with which the Aeneid is instinct, and the love of Italy which finds its deepest expression in the famous lines of the second Georgic aroused the emotional sympathy of the naturalist; upon at least one occasion they excited his emulation. This reaction is vividly illustrated in a passage which, although not the first instance of preoccupation with Virgil in the Natural History, is a notably enlightening one, and may serve as introduction to our review.

Early in the third book (38), in the course of a clockwise survey of the Mediterranean coastline, Pliny comes to Italy. The next five sections are devoted to a passionate laudatio Italiae, which has much in common with Virgil's encomium in the second Georgic (136 ff.) and with the verses in the sixth Aeneid (851 ff.) proclaiming the mission of Rome. The lyrical enthusiasm which characterizes this passage is in marked contrast with the gloomy effervescence permeating most of Pliny's bravura pieces and asides; if one or two incongruities are overlooked, such as the observation Grai, genus in gloriam sui effusissimum (42), its intensity and evocatory power challenge comparison with Virgil, and that this was Pliny's intention is evident from his opening sentence:

… terra omnium terrarum alumna eadem et parens, numine deum electa quae caelum ipsum clarius faceret, sparsa congregaret imperia ritusque molliret et tot populorum discordes ferasque linguas sermonis commercio contraheret ad conloquia et humanitatem homini daret breviterque una cunctarum gentium in toto orbe patria fieret [39].

Echoes of Georg. 2. 173f.: salve magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus / magna virum and of Aen. 6. 851 ff.: tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento … / pacisque imponere morem, I parcere subiectis et debellare superbos are immediately obvious to readers of Virgil. The topics of the Plinian eulogy, moreover, often correspond with those of the Virgilian laudes: Pliny's perennis salubritas (41) is Virgil's ver adsiduum (Georg. 2. 149); both writers stress the fertility of the Italian countryside, and the abundant measure in which it produces grain, fruits, and cattle (NH 3. 41, Georg. 2. 149f.), the absence of dangerous animals (NH ibid., Georg. 2. 151), and the quantity of lakes, and these parallels by no means exhaust the list. There is, to be sure, much in Pliny that is without Virgilian precedent (for instance, Pliny's high praise of the capital is understandably without counterpart in the agricultural poem). The naturalist has adapted, reworked, and amplified his Virgilian material, but has been careful not to disguise it, thereby making plain that he is inviting comparison with the poet. The motivation of this rivalry with Virgil becomes apparent when we remember that the Natural History is not what in modern jargon would be called a work of "pure science," but one designed to illustrate the pre-eminence of Italy and of the Roman people. Italy for Pliny is the central and most favored part of the world, and the Romans beyond all question its most meritorious inhabitants: gentium in toto orbe praestantissima una omnium virtute hand dubie Romana extitit (NH 7. 130). Pliny's is a nationalistic encyclopedia, just as the Aeneid and the Georgics are national poems. By its nature, the Aeneid only in rare instances touches upon matters within the scope of the Natural History; with the Georgics the situation is different. Here the poet's subject is Italian agriculture and related arts, and with this large sections of the Natural History are concerned. It is not a priori unlikely that although Pliny sympathized with the general sentiment of the didactic poem, he would consider it a technically inadequate attempt to accomplish what he proposed to do much better in his encyclopedia, and that, as a result of a sort of odium scientificum, he would be zealous to expose and correct any weakness or error in Virgil's much praised work. In the following paragraphs we shall observe many examples of such zealousness.

It is not until Pliny comes to his discussion of bees and apiculture in NH 11 that he encounters a topic which Virgil had treated in detail, and which consequently offers him opportunity for extended criticism of the poet's doctrine. The preceding books, however, contain a number of Virgilian allusions, in addition to the laudatio Italiae just discussed, which in varying degree give indications of Pliny's feeling toward Virgil, together with several technical references. In 2. 55 Pliny remonstrates mildly against the use of labores to signify "eclipses"; Virgil appears to have introduced this term into literary Latin.⁷ In the following book Nar amnis exhaurit illos [Velinos lacus] sulpureis aquis Tiberim ex his petens (3. 109) is a gloss upon Aen. 7. 516f.: amnis I sulpurea Nar albus aqua fontesque Velini, as the verbal similarities, which cannot very well be fortuitous, make plain. Pliny undertakes to remedy the poet's geographical vagueness by specifying the relation between the Nar, the Veline lakes, and the Tiber, information every reader of this celebrated passage could not be expected to possess. North Italian local patriotism is behind Pliny's spirited defense of the Po in 3. 117: Padus … nullo amnium claritate inferior, which is in rebuttal of Aen. 8. 64: Thybris, caelo gratissimus amnis and ibid. 77: [Thybris] corniger Hesperidum fluvius regnator aquarum. In his comments on the Tiber shortly before, Pliny is notably restrained and prosy, remarking merely that its most extraordinary feature is the quantity of country houses lining its banks; these are more numerous than all the houses along all the other rivers of the world added together (54). Pliny's vindication of the Po is the more pointed since Virgil too had been born in its neighborhood. A curious instance of how thoroughly Virgilian reminiscence saturated Pliny's memory is furnished by NH 4. 31: ac labitur Penius viridis calculo, amoenus circa ripas gramine, canorus avium concentu, which is patterned upon the poet's magical description of the primeval Tiber at dawn: fluvio Tiberinus amoeno … / … variae … I adsuetae ripis volucres … / aethera mulcebant cantu (Aen. 7. 30 ff.).⁸ In NH 7. 21 Pliny echoes Virgil's statement that certain trees in India are so tall that arrows cannot be shot above them, and in section 202 of this book he follows Virgil's wording in naming Erichthonius as the inventor of the four-horse chariot, and slightly corrects him apropos of the invention of bridles.⁹ Although Pliny's lore in the next book concerning the use of dittany by deer in expelling arrows at first appears to be another correction of Virgil, the naturalist's memory has here played a trick upon him. The passages involved are these:

dictamnum herbam extrahendis sagittis cervi monstravere percussi eo telo pastuque herbae eius eiecto; iidem percussi a phalangio … aut aliquo simili cancros edendo sibi medentur [NH 8. 97].

and dictamnum genetrix Cretaea carpit ab Ida / … /… non illa feris incognita capris / gramina, cum tergo volucres haesere sagittae (Aen. 12. 412ff.). This marvelous property of dittany is mentioned by Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, and others, invariably in connection with wild goats.¹⁰ Since, as Pliny himself subsequently declares, dittany is peculiar to Crete and there is found only in craggy localities (25. 92-93), it is intrinsically improbable that deer, which lack the mountaineering abilities of goats, should seek it out. In Book 8 Pliny is commenting upon the intelligence of animals as instanced by their knowledge of natural remedies, and cites this use of dittany as an example. Dittany made Pliny think of Crete, and this, combined with the notion of a wounded animal which was also in his mind at this point, suggested the famous comparison in the fourth Aeneid of the lovesick Dido to a deer smitten by an arrow in the Cretan woodland:

qualis coniecta cerva sagitta, quam procul incautam nemora inter Cresia fixit

pastor agens telis liquitque volatile ferrum nescius: illa fuga silvas saltusque peragrat Dictaeos; haeret lateri letalis harundo

[69 ff.].

The similarity of these verses to the passage from the twelfth Aeneid caused Pliny inadvertently to combine the dittany of the latter with the wounded deer of Virgil's fourth book; once the substitution of deer for goats has taken place in his mind, he proceeds to cite the use of crabs as an antidote against spider bite, a practice which both Aristotle and Aelian attribute to deer.¹¹ This confusion persisted in Pliny's memory; it is repeated, with reference to the earlier passage, in 25. 92, with the feminine cervae (cf. Aen. 4. 69) instead of the masculine; on this occasion the traditional goats are also included.

There are acid undertones in Pliny's references to Virgil in a discussion of the selection and training of horses later in this book:

forma equorum, quales maxime legi oporteat, pulcherrime quidem Vergilio vate absoluta est; sed et nos diximus in libro de inculatione equestri condito, et fere inter omnes constare video. diversa autem circo ratio quaeritur. itaque cum bimi in alio subiungantur imperio, non ante quinquennes ibi certamen accipit [8. 162].

The initial praise of Virgil's account of the selection of horses in the third Georgic (72-78), with its patronizing emphasis on its aesthetic merits (pulcherrime quidem, vate), is cut short by complacent reference to Pliny's own treatise, significantly introduced by sed ut, which is followed by the depreciatory observation that the good points of horses are pretty much a matter of common consent. The next statement: diversa autem circo ratio quaeritur (we may note the adversative particle) contradicts Virgil's aequus uterque labor (Georg. 3. 118), where the poet states that horses destined for the race track and those to be used as mounts require the same period of training, going on to specify that the race horse is all but ready upon completing his third year (ibid. 190 ff.) to which Pliny counters that race horses are not ready for competition before they are five years old, although two years of training suffice for other purposes. A further rectification of Virgil's equine lore occurs in Pliny's disquisition upon the parts of animals in Book 11; it may conveniently be cited here: in equis [aures] … indicia animi praeferunt, marcidae fessis, micantes pavidis (137). This gives the lie to a graphic detail of Virgil's picture of the war horse's excitement upon hearing the clash of arms: stare loco nescit, micat auribus et tremit artus (Georg. 3. 84). Pliny's chapters on the horse contain two more Virgilian echoes, both of which are neutral.¹²

Virgil has little to say about fish and mollusks; Pliny's ninth book, which deals with these creatures, is quite independent of the poet. Book 10, the subject of which is birds, also is almost without Virgilian allusion. In 10. 17, however, apropos of the battle between eagle and serpent, which Virgil, following Homer and Cicero,¹³ had made the subject of an elaborate comparison,

utque volans alte raptum cum fulva draconem
fert aquila implicuitque pedes atque
  unguibus
  haesit,
saucius at serpens sinuosa volumina versat
arrectisque horret squamis et sibilat ore
arduus insurgens, illa haud minus urget
  obunco
luctantem rostro, simul aethera verberat alis
[Aen. 11. 751-56],

the naturalist observes:

nec unus hostis illi [aquilae] satis: est acrior cum dracone pugna multoque magis anceps, etiamsi in aere … aquila … rapit ubicumque visum, ille multiplici nexu alas ligat, ita se inplicans, ut simul decidat ipse.¹⁴

In the Aeneid as in the Iliad the eagle has by far the better of the struggle. Virgil uses the comparison to illustrate the victory of Tarchon, an Etruscan warrior who seizes his opponent Tiburtus and carries him off in triumph (ibid. 757f.). Verbal correspondences establish that Pliny has the Virgilian simile in mind, and that he is taking issue with the poet. Like Virgil in line 751, Pliny employs draco for the snake,¹⁵ and his multiplici nexu paraphrases sinuosa volumina. The poet's implicuit has been transferred from the eagle to the serpent (ita se inplicans), which in Pliny's account progressively dominates the scene. The wings which as they beat the air unhindered mark the superiority of the eagle in the Aeneid are in Pliny's purportedly more scientific version so constricted by the snake that the latter brings his kidnaper triumphantly to earth. Pliny's concern is less with scouting the myth of the eagle's superiority than with tearing down this epic version of the duel. He has preserved the Virgilian mise en scene, but corrected the action point by point, with the unmistakable intention of rebuking the poet.

A large portion of NH 11 is devoted to bees and beekeeping. Here Pliny takes sharp exception to a number of statements made in the fourth Georgic, and generally manifests a polemical attitude toward Virgil's apiary lore. Virgil declares that bees come forth from their hives at the beginning of spring (Georg. 4. 51-53). To this Pliny rejoins:

conduntur [apes] a vergiliarum occasu et latent ultra exortum—adeo non ad veris initium, ut dixere, nec quisquam in Italia de alvis existimat ante fabas florentes [11. 13].

Hyginus, from whom Virgil in all probability derived most of his technical information about bees, is quoted by Columella (9. 14. 17) with approbation as having said that bees are dormant until the rising of Arcturus (about 13 February), after which they start to venture forth, and by the time of the vernal equinox they leave the hives regularly and without hesitation. Columella cites the same authority for his recommendation that between the vernal equinox and the rising of the Pleiades some forty-eight days later the hives should be cleaned out and fumigated (9. 14. 1). Pliny affirms that bees do not go out from the hives until after the rising of these stars, adding that in Italy no one gives thought to the hives before bean-blossom time, that is, before the rising of the Pleiades (in 18. 253 he states that the Pleiades rise and beans blossom and bees come forth all at about the same time). Pliny's impatient adeo non ad veris initium is directed at Virgil, for Hyginus and Columella put the date of the first sorties about a month earlier. The rectification concerning the hives which immediately follows is applicable to Mago, Hyginus, and Columella as well. The first two authorities were not concerned with Italian conditions, and Columella's early experience with bees may well have been in Spain, so it is understandable that he was not familiar with the chronology of Italian beekeeping, but that a native-born Italian in a poem dedicated to Italian country pursuits should thus show ignorance of Italian usage excites Pliny's indignation, which he makes plain by the scornful nec quisquam in Italia.¹⁶

Somewhat farther on in this book Pliny argues that the appearance of the insect called oestrus in the honeycombs is inconsistent with the view that bees shape their offspring from flowers, since the bees would hardly trouble to produce such a pest (11. 47); Virgil had stated that this was how bees reproduced their kind: ipsae e foliis natos, et suavibus herbis / ore legunt (Georg. 4. 200f.). This theory was by no means peculiar to Virgil, but as Columella indicates (9. 2. 4) the poet had given it authority among Romans, and it is this authority Pliny wishes to demolish. Similarly in 11. 60 Pliny cites the Virgilian doctrine that bees die when they sting (Georg. 4. 238), but adds, with implicit approval, the more precise statement that only when the sting has been inserted so deeply that part of the insect's intestines follow it is the act fatal: hoc infixo quidam eas statim emori putant aliqui non nisi in tantum adacto, ut intestini quippiam sequatur (ibid.).

With respect to the replenishment of depleted hives Pliny remarks:

sunt qui [apes] mortuas, si intra tectum hieme serventur, dein sole verno torreantur … putent revivescere; in totum vero amissas reparari ventribus bubulis recentibus cum fimo obrutis, Vergilius iuvencorum corpore exanimato, sicut equorum vespas atque crabrones, sicut asinorum scarabaeos, mutante natura ex aliis quaedam in alia. sed horum omnium coitus cernuntur, et tamen in fetu eadem prope natura quae apibus [11.69-70].

The naturalist is not speaking for himself until the final sentence (sed horum, etc.),¹⁷ and in this he raises objection to all or to part of the sentence which has preceded it. Certain persons believe, he avers, that dead bees may be brought back to life if kept indoors through the winter and then warmed by the spring sunshine, and that extinet hives can be restocked by filling buffalo bellies with dung and burying them, or according to Virgilian precept (Georg. 4. 284), by exposing the corpse of a bullock; just as wasps and hornets appear in the cadavers of horses, and scarabaei in those of asses, so this procedure will produce bees. At this point Pliny objects that hornets, scarabaei, and wasps may be observed to practice intercourse,¹⁸ and nevertheless (et tamen) their offspring closely resembles that of bees. Does Pliny, as the tone of the passage suggests, reject the theory of spontaneous generation of insects from the corpses of animals?¹⁹ If this is so, a compulsion to disagree with Virgil has caused him to deny what elsewhere he accepts without demur, for later in the same book he declares that certain insects are generated spontaneously in dead flesh (114); if on the other hand he does not question the belief, to what is he objecting? His point in this case must be that the spontaneous appearance of bees in dead animals does not prove them to be nonsexual; hornets, wasps, and scarabaei occur in the corpses of animals, and their sexuality is a matter of common knowledge. According to this alternative, Pliny will at least have done his best to refute Virgil's pale comment on the sexlessness of bees: neque concubitu indulgent, nec corpora segnes / in Venerem solvunt (Georg. 4. 198f.), which can hardly have appealed to the naturalist's vigorous humanism.²⁰

The latter half of Book 11 discusses the anatomy of man and of other animals. After citing Trogus' observation that large ears indicate obtuseness and garrulity in human beings, Pliny goes on to a consideration of fetid breath. This, he says, is a regular concomitant of old age; the Parthians, however, are thus afflicted from early life, owing to their unwise diet and their fondness for wine:

Parthorum populis haec [poena gravis animae] praecipue et a iuventa propter indiscretos cibos, namque et vino faetent ora nimio; sed sibi proceres medentur grano Assyrii mali, cuius et suavitas praecipua, in esculenta addito (11. 278].

The target here is Virgil's animas et olentia Medi / ora fovent illo [malo], et senibus medicantur anhelis (Georg. 2. 134f.). Pliny specifies that only the aristocracy of the eastern people used this remedy, which was the seeds of the citron, not the fruit itself, as would appear from Virgil, and with hostile reference to senibus anhelis, which he rightly²¹ understands as defining animas et olentia ora in the previous clause, asserts that the breath of Parthians is bad et a iuventa.

Virgil's statement that the ebony tree is peculiar to India is corrected early in Book 12 upon the authority of Herodotus:

unam e peculiaribus Indiae Vergilius celebravit hebenum, nusquam alibi nasci professus. Herodotus [3. 97] eam Aethiopiae intellegi maluit in tributi vicem regibus Persidis e materia eius centenas phalangas tertio quoque anno pensitasse Aethiopas cum auro et ebore prodendo [12. 17].

Münzer, following J. G. Sprengel (Rh. Mus., XLIV [1891], 54ff.), comments: "Bis hierher durfte [Sprengel had guessed that Pliny at this point was using Juba as his source] das Eigentum Jubas reichen, der sich auf Theophrast hist. plant. IV, 4, 6 stuitzte und eine falsche Angabe Herodots über die Heimat des Ebenholzbaumes zuruickwies. Plinius wollte aus ihm zunachst die Theophrastischen Worte uiber Indien: ι̂διον δὲ καὶ ή έβένη τη̂ς χώρᾷς τᾷν́τηςentnehmen, erinnerte sich dabei aber eines gleichlautenden Vergilverses (georg. II 116: sola India nigrum fert ebenum) und brachte mit Vergnuigen diese Reminiscenz an."²² Mulnzer continues that Pliny then copied "Herodotus … prodendo" from Juba, but that the further statement that the Aethiopians included twenty elephant tusks in this tribute (18) must have been taken directly from the Ionic historian. A simpler hypothesis would be that the entire Herodotean quotation was taken from that historian. As for the citation of the Georgics, whatever pleasure Pliny felt in including it must have been in the nature of Schadenfreude. In reading Herodotus, we suggest, Pliny had come upon the statement about the tribute of Aethiopian ebony. Recollecting that Virgil had declared that ebony grew nowhere except in India, he excerpted the Herodotean passage with a view to refuting Virgil when the occasion arose (it is significant that Virgil is chosen for refutation, rather than Theophrastus, who doubtless was the poet's authority). In excerpting the passage Pliny included Herodotus' information about the tusks, which immediately follows mention of the ebony, a circumstance which accounts for its presence here. The irony of maluit may be noted, as well as the invidious connotation of professus.²³

Pliny animadverts to Virgil repeatedly in the chapters of the Natural History which describe vines, grapes, and wines, and often disagrees with him. He opens the botanical portion of his encyclopedia with the accusation that Virgil, owing to a sort of snobbishness, gave gardens and their produce scant attention:

sed nos oblitterata quoque scrutabimur, nec deterrebit quarundam rerum humilitas, sicuti nec in animalibus fecit, quamquam videmus Vergilium praecellentissimum vatem ea de causa hortorum dotes fugisse et in his quae rettulit flores modo rerum decerpsisse, beatum felicemque gratiae quindecim omnino generibus uvarum nominatis, tribus oleae, totidem pirorum, malo vero tantum Assyrio, ceteris omnibus neglectis [14. 7].

The praise of Virgil (praecellentissimum vatem, beatum felicemque gratiae) is almost Pecksniffian; it is included principally to enable Pliny to upbraid the poet more effectively. The naturalist's allegations are quite without foundation. Virgil did not eschew hortorum dotes because of their humilitas; upon this point he is explicit:

atque equidem, extremo ni iam sub fine laborum
vela traham et terris festinem advertere
 proram
forsitan et pingues hortos quae cura colendi
  ornaret canerem
[Georg. 4. 116ff.].

After describing the garden of the old Corycian, Virgil explains that the limits of his poem prevent him from treating the subject of gardens, although if he were not spatiis exclusus iniquis (147), he would, he implies, do so gladly. As it is, he must leave the task to others. It was accomplished somewhat prosily by Columella in his tenth book, and with greater poetic talent by Rapin in his Hortorum Libri IV. It is indicative of Pliny's eagerness to believe the worst of the poet that he overlooked these clear Virgilian statements, which nullify his charge completely. Subconscious malevolence has here paralyzed his memory.

There is a suggestion that the wine lore of the Georgics is no longer up-to-date in Pliny's remark that Virgil died ninety years before, which is made apropos of a wine that had become favorably known for its natural resinous tang in the interval (14. 18). Pliny moreover notes that Virgil (Georg. 2. 95f.) held Rhaetic wine inferior only to Falernian (14. 67). According to Suetonius (Aug. 77), Rhaetic was Augustus' favorite, which may explain Virgil's praise. The naturalist allows this wine much less merit. He also states that it was the wine of Setia in Latium that Augustus (and most of his successors) preferred to all others (14. 61), and adds that Falernian (in Virgil's opinion the best of wines) has less repute in his day than in the past, when it had once held second place.²⁴

Pliny echoes Virgil's:

sunt et Aminnaeae vites, firmissima vina
Tmolius assurgit quibus et rex ipse
 Phanaeus
[Georg. 2. 97f.].

in 14. 21: principatus datur Aminneis firmitatem propter and ibid. 25: Chio Thasiove Graecula non inferior Aminneis bonitate, but does not draw attention to his agreement by naming the poet. When Virgil's name next appears, a few paragraphs later, a reproach evidently is intended:

dixit Vergilius Thasias et Mareotidas et Lageas compluresque externas, quae non reperiuntur in Italia [14. 39].

By the relative clause the naturalist implies that a national poem such as the Georgics should not include exotic varieties. He has forgotten that Mareotic and Thasian vines, at least, had been introduced into Italy. The wine they produced in their new habitat, according to Columella (3. 2. 24), possessed a commendable bouquet, but was sparse in quantity.

Virgil's statements concerning the species of vine properly called arceraca are corrected by the naturalist in a precise, circumstantial manner:

arceraca, Vergilio argitis dicta, ultro solum laetius facit, ipsa contra imbres et senectam fortissima, vino quidem vix annua ac vilitatis cibariae, sed ubertate praecipua [14, 35].

This has reference to:

Argitisque minor, cui non certaverit ulla
aut tantum fluere aut totidem durare per
  annos
[Georg. 2. 99 f.].

Pliny tacitly rebukes Virgil for the misnomer argitis; Columella (3. 2. 27) noted the incorrectness of so designating the vine arceraca (which he spells arcelaca), but made no mention of Virgil; the mistake, he says, is a common one. Virgil's totidem durare per annos is taken by modern Virgilians²⁵ to refer to the durability of the wine of the arceraca grape rather than to the longevity of the vine itself, and the context favors this interpretation, for in the verses immediately preceding the names of half a dozen vines are used to designate their wines. It would seem that the poet misread his source. Pliny states unambiguously that it is the plant itself which lives a long time, whereas the wine it yields lasts barely a year. He zealously discredits this vintage, which Virgil so exalted (he included it in the august company of Rhaetic, Falernian, and other distinguished varieties); the wine, the naturalist asserts, not only spoils quickly, but is a cheap vin ordinaire (vilitatis cibariae) to begin with. Since both vino quidem vix annua and vilitatis cibariae have been misapprehended by commentators and translators (the Loeb version "though it will hardly produce wine every year and its grapes are only valued for eating" represents the communis opinio),²⁶ a word of explanation is in order. Pliny characterizes the vine in the clause which begins ipsa contra imbres, then passes on to the wine, marking the transition by vino quidem. [Arceraca] vino vix annua,²⁷ rendered literally, is "the arceraca, barely of a year's duration with respect to its wine"; ac vilitatis cibariae also depends on vino, and has nothing to do with the comestibility of the grape. Vinum cibarium is vino da pasto, everyday table wine. Pliny himself uses the expression in 28. 207: in cyathis vini cibarii III., and its meaning is equally clear in Varro's potus vinum meum cibarium (Men. 309).²⁸

The encyclopedist misunderstands Georg. 2. 438: Naryciaeque picis lucos with remarkable thoroughness. He dourly comments: Asia picem Idaeam maxime probat, Graecia Piericam, Vergilius Naryciam (14. 128). Pliny conveniently forgets that "Narycian" is an epithet of Locri in Bruttium, which was originally a colony of Naryx in Ozolian Locris. Had he recalled Aen. 3. 399: hic et Narycii posuerunt moenia Locri his astonishment would have evaporated, for he has just asserted: pix in Italia … maxime probatur Bruttia (127). As it is, Pliny is so eager to find fault with Virgil that he does not notice that in Georg. 2. 438 pix is employed figuratively for the pitchpine copses near Loeri, and that the verse makes no reference to the quality of their pitch.

Throughout Books 15, 16, and 17, which pursue the subject of arboriculture, Virgil is never long absent from Pliny's mind, and whenever opportunity arises he takes exception to the poet:

genera earum [olearum] tria dixit Vergilius … nec desiderare rastros aut falces ullamve curam. sine dubio et in iis solum maxime caelumque refert. verum tamen et tondentur… atque etiam interradi gaudent [15. 4].

This is a rectification of:

contra non ulla est oleis cultura; neque illae
procurvam expectant falcem rastrosque
  tenaces
[Georg. 2. 420 f.].

The remark that the only plums with fragrance are [pruna] ab externa gente Armeniaca, as against red and waxen (cerina) varieties (15. 41), may be aimed at a passage in the second Eclogue where cerea pruna are coupled with bay and myrtle leaves and represented as wafting suaves odores (53 ff.), and the comment that wool-apples paene peregrina sunt in uno Italiae agro Veroniensi nascentia (15. 48) hints objection to the poet's mention of this fruit in the same Eclogue (51).

Virgil is criticized for having included an obsolete type of pear among the scant²⁹ three varieties he lists: praeterea dixit volema Vergilius [Georg. 2. 88] a Catone [Agr. 7. 4] sumpta, qui et sementiva et mustea nominat (15. 56). Pliny's innuendo is that the poet was guilty of bookishness in copying Cato's volema; his citation of two more Catonian varieties, of which the second had acquuired the new name melimela by Varro's time,³⁰ seems designed to illustrate how obsolete this portion of Cato's treatise had become.

Virgil is revealingly misquoted in connection with bizarre examples of grafting:

pars haec vitae iam pridem pervenit ad columen, expertis cuncta hominibus, quippe eum Vergilius insitam nucibus arbutum, malis platanum, cerasis ulmum dicat. nec quiequam amplius excogitari potest [15. 57].

The naturalist has conflated,

pullulat ab radice aliis densissima silva ut cerasis ulmisque [Georg. 2. 17 f.],

which has nothing to do with grafting, with

inseritur vero et fetu nucis arbutus horrida
et steriles platani malos gessere valentes
castaneas fagus; ornusque incanuit albo
flore piri, glandemque sues fregore sub
  ulmis
[Georg. 2. 69-72].

Munzer, who detected this confusion,³¹ acutely suggested that the recollection of ut cerasis ulmisque in Georg. 2. 18 caused the mix-up. The circumstance that the locale of both passages is at the foot of trees doubtless reinforced the association (cf. sub in 72 and ab radice in 17). Pliny goes on to warn that there are religious objections to indiscriminate grafting: neque omnia insita misceri fas est (57). His readiness to impute to Virgil the example which he presents as the ultimate in prodigiousness, the grafting of the exotic cherry upon the elm, throws a curious light on the persistent malignancy of the naturalist toward the poet.

Skepticism is patent in NH 16. 127: si Vergilio quidem credimus, aesculus quantum corpore eminet, tantum radice descendit, which refers to Georg. 2.291 f.; early in the next book Pliny goes out of his way to impugn Virgil in a somewhat disingenuous manner. His topic is weather favorable to trees and vines:

ergo qui dixit hiemes serenas optandas, non pro arboribus vota fecit; nec per soistitia imbres vitibus conducunt; hiberno quidem pulvere laetiores fieri messes luxuriantis ingenii fertilitate dictum est. alioqui vota arborum frugumque communia sunt nives diutinas sedere [17. 13-14].

This has been provoked by:

umida solstitia atque hiemes orate serenas,
agrieolae: hiberno laetissima pulvere farra.
laetus ager nullo tantum se Mysia cultu
iactat, et ipsa suas mirantur Gargara messes
[Georg. 1. 100-3].

Just before the extract quoted Pliny has adduced arguments to show that trees need rain during the winter. With evident allusion to Virgil, he charges that the person who recommended that the farmer pray for dry winters did not have regard for the welfare of trees; Virgil, however, is here concerned with grain, and declares that rainy summers are good for this crop, to which Pliny objects that wet summers are harmful to the vine. Thus far his criticism is somewhat at cross-purposes, but nevertheless damaging unless readers remember Virgil's statements precisely. From this tangential carping he shifts to the attack direct, sarcastically pointing out that even with respect to grain the notion that dry winters produce an abundant crop is the fruit of a lush and fertile poetic fancy.³² He then proceeds to mark his disagreement with the poet in a more solemn manner: what is beneficial for both grain and trees in winter is for the snow to remain on the ground for a long time; thus the land will be gently irrigated but not swamped. This is quite different from Virgil's hiberno pulvere, which suggests a soil that remains bonedry throughout the winter.

Virgil had condemned a western exposure for vines and the orchards supporting them: neve tibi ad solem vergant vineta cadentem (Georg. 2. 298); against this precept the naturalist remonstrates copiously:

Vergilius ad occasus [vineas] seri damnavit, aliqui sic maluere quam in exortus. a pluribus meridiem probari adverto, nec arbitror perpetuum quicquam in hoc praecipi posse … cum Vergilius occasus improbet, nec de septentrione relinqui dubitatio videtur. atqui in cisalpin" Italia magna ex parte vineis ita positis compertum est nullas esse fertiliores[17. 19-20].

Pliny first reprimands Virgil by stating that certain authorities actually prefer a western exposure to an eastern one, and that in any event dogmatic generalization is here otiose. He then extrapolates, with dubious justification, Virgil's disapproval of a western exposure to include a northern one as well, which enables him to make the point that in the poet's native Cisalpine Italy vineyards with this last exposure are the most productive of all.³³

Littre³⁴ noted that Pliny's disquisition on soils is largely a critique of Virgilian precepts. No portion of the Natural History contains a greater concentration of explicit dissent. Pliny opens with the statement that the same soil is not fit for both grapevines and trees (17. 25); this is in rebuttal of Georg. 2. 215-25, where soil such as that found near Capua and Vesuvius is said to be sovereign for vines, olives, wheat, and cattle. The naturalist continues, making his objection more specific: nec pulla [terra], qualem habet Campania, ubique optima vitibus, aut quae tenues exhalat nebulas (ibid); the Virgilian flosculus (Georg. 2. 217: quae tenuem exhalat nebulam) makes his target obvious. The next sentence: cretam in Albensium Pompeianorum agro et argillam cunctis ad vineas generibus anteponunt obliquely differs with Georg. 2. 215, where chalky soil (creta) is dismissed as a breeding ground for snakes,³⁵ and with Georg 2. 180-81, which recommend meager clayey terrain for olive trees (but not for vines, which, according to the poet, need rich land producing abundant grass [ibid. 184-91]). Virgil describes pinguis humus as dulcique uligine laeta (2. 184) and asfrequens herbis (185); Pliny remonstrates

nec luxuriosa pabula pinguis soli semper indicium habent … nec semper aquosa est terra, cui proceritas herbarum, non, Hercules, magis quam pinguis, adhaerens digitis, quod in argillis arguitur [17. 26-27].

In Georg. 2. 251 Virgil had stated: umida [terra] maiores herbas alit, and just before:

pinguis item quae sit tellus, hoc denique
  pacto
discimus: haud umquam manibus iactata
  fatiscit
sed picis in morem ad digitos lentescit
  habendo
[Georg. 2. 248-50].

To both these declarations Pliny has unceremoniously given the lie. He proceeds: scrobes quidem regesta in eos nulla conplet, ut densa atque rara ad hunc modum deprehendi possit, which contradicts thoroughly and with verbal correspondence³⁶ the method of distinguishing thick soil from thin put forward in Georg. 2. 227 ff. The naturalist's next observation: ferroque omnis [terra] rubiginem obducit is a rejoinder to Georg. 2. 220: [terra quae] nec scabie et salsa laedit robigine ferrum, and the ensuing nec gravis aut levior isuto deprehenditur pondere, to Georg. 2. 254f.: quae gravis est ipso tacitam se pondere prodit, / quaeque levis. Pliny includes iusto in his refutation, as if Virgil had here used the term; he had not, but the word occurs three lines before, in connection with damp soil: ipsaque iusto I laetior, and it has been interpolated from this verse. Pliny next carps at the poet's felicemque … limum (Georg. 2. 188) with the assertion that alluvial earth is not always to be commended, quando senescant sata quaedam aqua (27). Shortly hereafter he notes with shocked surprise that Virgil recommends terrain which bears ferns for vineyards: Vergilius et quae felicem" ferat non inprobat vitibus, apropos of Georg. 2. 189, continuing: salsaeque terrae multa melius creduntur, tutiora a vitiis innascentium animalium (29), which disposes of Virgil's dictum that salty terrain is unsuitable for vines and orchards since it corrupts the individuality of wines and fruits: salsa autem tellus … /. / nec Baccho genus aut pomis sua nomina servat (Georg. 2. 238-40). With glareosum oleis solum aptissimum in Venafrano (31) the naturalist rejects Virgil's statement that gravelly soil (ieiuna … glarea) only produces the lowly cassia plant, and no great abundance of that (Georg. 2. 212-13). The final verses of Virgil's essay on soils lament the difficulty of ascertaining whether a soil is a "cold" one, citing the presence of yews, pitch pine, or ivy as indications of frigidity. Pliny has no more patience with this than he presumably had with the poet's gustatory method of testing soil for acidity (Georg. 2. 241-47); in both instances he ignores his counsels, and substitutes matter-of-fact recommendations of his own, in this case stating that the sign of frigid earth is wizened vegetation: frigidam autem [terram demonstrant] retorride nata (33). Pliny's demolition of Virgil on soils is systematic and pitiless; the naturalist takes grim relish in deflating the prestige of a poem which, as Columella's reverential citations attest, was regarded as the gospel of Italian agriculture, by exposing the poet's imperfect knowledge of this fundamental part of his subject.

Close parallelism identifies the verbose,

non omisisset idem [the elder Cato], si attineret, meridianam caeli partem signare in cortice, ut translatae isdem et adsuetis statuerentur horis, ne aquiloniae meridianis oppositae solibus finderentur et algerent meridianae aquilonibus [17. 83],

as a fling at Georg. 2 269-72:

quin etiam caeli regionem in cortice signant,
ut, quo quaeque modo steterit, qua parte
  calores
austrinos tulerit, quae terga obverterit axi,
restituant …

The practice of retaining the original exposure of transplanted trees is recommended by Theophrastus (HP 2. 5. 8) and by Columella (5. 6. 20, 9. 8, and 10. 7), and it is not likely that Cato's failure to mention it signifies disapproval; more probably Pliny has exploited this fortuitous omission to vent his rancor against Virgil. If, as Pliny claims, the procedure is valueless, it is superfluous to reproduce at length the reasons Virgil gives to justify it, unless the naturalist's purpose is to contrast the poet's frivolity with the hardheaded utilitarianism of his austere predecessor.

In NH 17. 100 Pliny cites what he calls the "Virgilian" technique of inoculation³⁸ together with inoculatio antiqua, but expresses no opinion as to the relative value of the procedures. Five sections later he announces: Vergilius e cacumine inseri vetat, certum est ab umeris arborum orientem aestivum spectantibus surculos petendos (105). Pliny is skeptical with regard to Virgil's alleged warning against taking slips from the tops of trees, asserting that on the other hand it is beyond question that slips should be from the shoulders, on the northeast side. Virgil, however, nowhere makes the supposed statement; he merely affirms that the slips should be feraces, that is, from a fruit-bearing tree (Georg. 2. 79 and Serv. auct. ad loc.); Pliny misunderstood the adjective, taking it to mean cuttings actually with fruit, and consequently not from the uppermost part of the tree. It may be noted that just before Pliny has specified that in the case of figs and grapevines slips should be taken from the top (103), thus disagreeing in advance with the general precept he imputes to the poet.³⁹

The ancient Roman belief that it was wise to cultivate only a small plot of land but to cultivate it well, satius esse minus serere et melius arare, is cited in NH 18. 35; and with reference to Georg. 2. 412-13: laudato ingentia rura, exiguum colito Pliny comments: qua in sententia et Vergilium fuisse video. This is meant to be approving, but there are indications of imperfect sympathy; the et is patronizing, and video not without an unflattering hint of surprise.

The Sarmatian practice of combining millet with mare's milk or horse's blood to form a sort of kasha, still, blood apart, a favorite aliment in the region, is described by the naturalist in meticulous detail (18. 100). It is probable that he here expatiated with the intention of supplementing and correcting Virgil's brief statement that divers Scythians drank a mixture of curdled milk and equine blood (Georg. 3. 463).⁴⁰

Pliny makes mild protest against Virgil's recommendation in Georg. 1.215 that beans should be sowed in the spring, vere fabis satio, animadverting in 18. 120: Vergilius eam ffabam] per ver seri iubet circumpadanae Italiae ritu, sed maior pars malunt fabalia maturae sationis quam trimestrem fructum, which paraphrases Columella's sharper: [faba] seritur pessime vere … veteres itaque rusticos plerumque dicentes audio malle se maturae fabalia quam fructum trimestris (2. 10. 9); the Spanish agronome, however, tactfully supresses the poet's name.

Confusion and ill temper mark NH 18. 153: nam lolium et tribulos et carduos lappasque non magis quam rubos inter frugum morbos potius quam inter ipsius terrae pestes numeraverim. Pliny apparently means to reprove Virgil for classifying these weeds as maladies affecting grain. His recollection of what the poet wrote is at fault:

mox et frumentis labor additus, ut mala
 culmos
esset robigo segnisque horreret in arvis
carduus: intereunt segetes; subit aspera silva
lappaeque tribolique, interque nitentia culta
infelix lolium et steriles dominantur avenae
[Georg. 1. 150-54].

Virgil mentions only one malady, robigo. In his account, the standing grain is afflicted not only with this disease, but by a plague of thistles. The combination ruins the crop, and soon where wheat had been sown goose grass and star thistle, darnel and wild oats run riot. Robigo and weeds both are included by the general term labor; weeds are not described as "maladies." It is conceivable that Pliny is using morbus loosely to mean "pest" or "affliction." If this should be the case, his objection to Virgil must be that the latter calls the weeds a curse to grain, whereas in fact they are universal nuisances. This would, however, have little relevance, for Virgil at this point is exclusively preoccupied with grain and matters thereto pertaining. Furthermore, it would make Pliny inconsistent, for he later chides the poet for not having given lolium its due: in 22. 160, after naming this plant among frugum pestes, he remarks that weeds nevertheless in aliquo sunt usu, infelix dictum est a Vergilio lolium. hoc tamen molitum … sanat inpetigines … medetur et podagrae aliisque doloribus. By infelix Virgil meant that darnel was worthless as a crop; Pliny chooses to understand it as signifying that darnel is worthless in every respect, and thus gains a pretext for his quibble.

Pliny is noncommittal about the value of a method which Virgil, he says, suggests for increasing the size of legumes (soaking the seeds in olive lees and soda before planting [18. 157]); Virgil does mention this expedient, declaring that many persons employ it (Georg. 1. 193), but does not vouch for its efficacy. Columella (2. 10. 11) affirms that this was done by prisci rustici, so Pliny's implication that the practice was put forward by the poet alone is not warranted. Similarly ungenerous is 18. 170: in omni quidem parte culturae, sed in hac maxime valet oraculum illud: quid quaeque regio patiatur. The maxim is Virgil's quid quaeque ferat regio (Georg. 1. 53), and most readers no doubt recognized it as such. Nevertheless it would have been graceful to have given the poet formal credit: a few lines later a comparable dictum of the elder Cato, also qualified as an oraculum, is cited with the name of its author (174).

Frontal attack is soon resumed:

quarto seri sulco Vergilius existimatur voluisse, cum dixit optimam esse segetem, quae bis soles, bis frigora sensisset. spissius solum, sicut plerumque in Italia, quinto sulco seri melius est, in Tuscis vero nono. at fabam et viciam non proscisso serere sine damno conpendium operae est [18. 181].

Existimatur indicates that Virgil, in Pliny's view, did not express himself with complete lucidity; more damaging, however, is the suggestion that the poet was imperfectly familiar with Italian soils and methods of ploughing. The final counsel that labor may be saved without disadvantage by sowing beans and vetch in unploughed land may be a farfetched correction of Georg. 1. 215-16, where putres sulci are mentioned together with the sowing of beans.

Pliny approves the Virgilian advice to let fields lie fallow in alternate years, or, failing this, to rotate crops by sowing lupines, vetch, or beans in place of wheat, but nevertheless contrives to make part of his agreement appear to be criticism:

Vergilius alternis cessare arva suadet—si patiantur ruris spatia utilissimum procul dubio est—; quod si neget condicio, far serendum, unde lupinum aut vicia aut faba sublata sint et quae terram faciant laetiorem [18. 187].

Apart from distinguishing the circumstances under which the two methods should be used and stating his preference, Pliny reproduces the poet's counsel:

alternis idem tonsas cessare novales
et segnem patiere situ durescere campum;
aut ibi flava seres mutato sidere farra
unde prius laetum siliqua quassante legumen
aut tenues fetus viciae
[Georg. 1. 71-75].

His wording, however, makes it unclear whether the second suggestion, crop rotation, is Virgil's or his own. This ambiguity may or may not have been intentional. The explanatory words quod si neget condicio are without Virgilian counterpart (the poet introduces the alternative simply by aut), and this doubtless made for confusion. Littre, and the Bohn and Loeb translators interpret the passage in question as having been added by Pliny, and ancient readers whose recollection of the Georgics was not letter-perfect may have been similarly misled.

Pliny notes in 18. 202 several Virgilian precepts for timing the sowing of various plants by astronomical phenomena. After grumbling that to mark the time for sowing by astronomical signs, as bookish literati have done, is meticulous and impractical, cum res geratur inter rusticos litterarumque expertes, non modo siderum (205), he concedes that to sow at the proper time does call for meteorological knowledge, and therefore, although it is no easy matter to impart this to ignorant rustics,⁴¹spes ardua, inmensa misceri posse caelestem divinitatem inperitiae rusticae (206), he shall make the attempt. Virgil, indeed, went so far as to declare, he says, that before anything else farmers should learn about the winds and observe the motions of the stars, just as sailors. Now if Virgil had prescribed a familiarity with the heavens equal to that required for navigation this would have been a large order, but his injunction was simply:

at prius ignotum ferro quam scindimus
  aequor,
ventos et varium caeli praediscere morem
cura sit.
[Georg. 1. 50-52].

Pliny reports this as follows: quippe Vergilio iubente praedisci ventos ante omnia ac siderum mores neque aliter quam navigantibus servari (206). He remembered Virgil's ignotum … scindimus aequor but not its context, which makes plain that aequor here is the level ploughland rather than the surface of the sea. With this nautical misconception he conflated an equally imprecise memory of verse 335 of the same book: hoc metuens, caeli menses et sidera serva. The context shows this to be a recommendation to keep watch on the changing zodiacal positions of the various planets, since this was believed to affect the weather.⁴² Such astrological preoccupations may have been shared by some navigators, but their main concern with the stars was to direct their course by them. Virgil does not say, as Pliny affirms, that the farmer should have the precise astronomical knowledge required of navigators, but that he should know how to use the stars as a calendar, and be able to profit by whatever long-range indications of the weather they may provide.

The naturalist qualifies and corrects Virgil's advice on ploughing with some acerbity:

terra in futurum proscinditur Vergilio maxime auctore, ut glaebas sol coquat. utilior sententia, quae non nisi temperatum solum medio vere arari iubet, quoniam in pingui statim sulcos occupent herbae, gracili insecuti aestus exsiccent omnemque sucum venturis seminibus auferant. talia autumno melius arari certum est [18. 242].

This refers to the verses:

           ergo age, terrae
pingue solum primis extemplo a mensibus
  anni
fortes invertant tauri, glaebasque iacentes

pulvurulenta coquat maturis solibus aestas;
at si non fuerit tellus fecunda, sub ipsum
Arcturum tenui sat erit suspendere sulco:
illie, officiant laetis ne frugibus herbae:
hie, sterilem exiguus ne deserat umor
  harenam
[Georg. 1. 63-70].

Virgil distinguishes two types of soil, rich (pingue) and unfertile (non fecunda); the rich, he advises, should be ploughed early in the year, so that the sun can dry and break up the clods, and to prevent weeds from choking the crop. Unfertile ground, on the other hand, is best ploughed when Arcturus rises early in September; thus the heat of the summer will not dry it up completely. With this last precept Pliny is in agreement, but objects that only medium soil, a classification overlooked by the poet, should be ploughed early in the year, and in mid-spring, not primis a mensibus anni. The naturalist curtly points out that rich soil should not be ploughed early in the season precisely for the reason Virgil had alleged it should; if this is done, weeds (herbae) will at once spring up and stifle the grain.

Toward the end of this long book Pliny paraphrases the recommendation of Georg. 1. 289-90 that mowing should be done at night because there is more moisture then, but specifies that this is a makeshift, only to be adopted where no supply of water is available. If water can be had, the fields should be wet down on the day before reaping, and the cutting done by daylight (18. 260). This practical suggestion is not given by Virgil. Somewhat later, apropos of the construction of threshing floors, Pliny contrasts Virgil's advice (Georg. 1. 178-79) that chalk be used in preparing the terrain with Cato's precept (Agr. 129) that olive lees be employed for this purpose, to the poet's disadvantage: aream messi praeparare, Catonis sententia amurca temperatam, creta Vergili operosius (295). Following this the naturalist disposes of Virgil's elaborate speculations as to the reason for burning stubble after the harvest:

saepe etiam steriles incendero profuit agros
atque levem stipulam crepitantibus urere
  flammis:
sive inde occultas vires et pabula terrae
pinguia concipiunt, sive illis omne per ignem
excoquitur vitium atque exsudat inutilis
  umor
[Georg. 1. 84-88]

with the pungent comment: sunt qui accendant in arvo et stipulas, magno Vergili praeconio. summa autem eius ratio, ut herbarum semen exurant (300). This matter-of-fact explanation had not occurred to the poet. Similarly ironical is the remark on Virgil's lunar precepts: Vergilius etiam in numeros lunae digerenda quaedam putavit [Georg. 1. 276-80], Democriti secutus ostentationem (321); both Hesiod (Op. 765-828) and Varro (RR 1. 37) had, however, given precepts of this nature.

Pliny's chapters on domestic plants in Book 19 contain reminiscences of Virgil's descriptions of flax, cucumbers, and endive,⁴³ all noncontroversial, a tart correction of the poet's geography, and a reference to a Virgilian statement concerning the difficulty of treating humble matters with the dignity required by his poem. The geographical correction follows a list of Gallic nations which weave sails from flax; included in the list are the Morini. This people had appeared on the shield Vulcan made for Aeneas, described in the eighth Aeneid, where they were called extremique hominum Morini (727). Pliny corrects the poet's error in words which leave no doubt but that he has Virgil's statement in mind: ultimique hominum existimati Morini, immo vero Galliae universae (19. 8): the Morini, he explains, are not the most remote of all mankind, but merely inhabit the most remote part of Gaul. The next reference follows a plea made on behalf of vegetables; there is no reason to look down upon them, the naturalist avers, since so noble a family as that of the Valerii did not disdain the cognomen Lactucini (from lactuca, "lettuce"); readers, moreover, should be grateful to him for having treated a subject which Virgil had found far from easy, since he confessed quam sit difficile verborum honorem tam parvis perhibere (19. 59). Mayhoff and the Loeb editor suppose that Pliny has reference to Georg. 4. 6: in tenui labor, at tenuis non gloria; the allusion, however, is to Georg. 3. 289-90:

nec sum animi dubius verbis ea vincere
  magnum
quam sit, et angustis hune addere rebus
  honorem,

where Virgil affirms his confidence in overcoming the problem of treating the aesthetically unpromising theme of the raising of sheep and goats in a suitably poetic manner. Pliny represents Virgil as stressing the difficulty of the undertaking rather than his assurance in meeting it, thereby suggesting that Virgil found the task too much for him, whereas the poet's emphasis is upon his ability to rise above the handicap imposed by his subject.

The matters discussed in the remaining books of the Natural History, pharmacology, mining and metallurgy, statuary, and gems afford few opportunities of making allusion to Virgil. The poet's name occurs twice in Book 28 in connection with love philters (19 and 261), and in Book 35 Pliny comments that sandyx, which he has described as vermilion or red ruddle, is believed by Virgil to be a plant, as shown by Buc. 4. 45 (40). This is Servius' opinion as well, but it is by no means certain that the scholiast is right. In the intervening sections there has been only one mention of the poet:

neque enim dubitaverim aliquis fastidio futura quae dicentur animalia, at non Vergilio fuit nominare formicas nulla necessitate et curculiones ac "lucifugis congesta cubilia blattis," [Georg. 4. 243], non Homero inter proelia deorum inprobitatem muscae describere [29. 28].

Pliny's "without any cogent reason" (nulla necessitate) is perhaps invidious; in any event it is uninformed, since Virgil has good reason to mention each of these insects. In Georg. 1. 186 the ant and the weevil are appropriately included among pests which destroy grain, against which the farmer must be on his guard; the ant is mentioned a second time (ibid. 380) apropos of the habit ascribed to this creature of moving its "eggs" when stormy weather impended, and quite justifiably, since the poet is giving a list of signs of rain; finally the blattae of Georg. 4. 243 are the beetles which beekeepers must prevent from infesting their hives.

The foregoing conspectus will have shown that despite a professed admiration for Virgil, Pliny is at pains to censure and amend the poet's statements whenever he can find a pretext for so doing. His manner of taking exception is often captious and ill-tempered, and on a number of occasions he misrepresents, seemingly without conscious intent, what the poet had written and then finds fault with the supposed mistakes. The hostility which Lejay sensed is more overt and more pervasive than the French scholar believed.

Why did Pliny adopt this attitude toward Virgil? It is difficult to imagine two men temperamentally more opposed than the poet and the naturalist, and this contrast no doubt accounts for some of the latter's impatience with his great predecessor. This impatience was augmented by the lack of knowledge of Italian agricultural usages which may be detected from time to time in the Georgics, which Pliny plainly regards as a serious flaw in the didactic poem. We would however suggest that the fundamental reason is deeper than this, that it is emotional and artistic rather than fortuitous or technical. The Natural History is a nationalistic encyclopedia. The purpose of the Georgics and of the Aeneid is similarly patriotic; Virgil's intent in the didactic poem is to render homage to the Italian countryside and to Italian agriculture, and in the epic to explain how the Romans had become Romans, and thereby masters of the world. The underlying purpose of the Natural History is much the same; the moral of this enormous compilation, which despite countless digressions Pliny never forgets, is that no people can stand comparison with the Romans, and that Italy, beyond possible doubt, is the most favored region in the world. This moral is indicated in the laudatio Italiae of the third book, which, as we have seen, directly challenges thematic passages of both the Georgics and the Aeneid, and it is stated with great explicitness toward the close of the encyclopedia:

ergo in toto orbe, quacumque caeli convexitas vergit, pulcherrima omnium est iis rebus quae merito principatum naturae optinent, Italia, rectrix parensque mundi altera, viris feminis, ducibus militibus, servitiis, artium praestantia, ingeniorum claritatibus, iam situ ac salubritate caeli atque temperie, accessu cunctarum gentium facili … quidquid est quo carere vita non debeat nusquam est praestantius: fruges, vinum, oleum, vellera, lina, vestes, iuvenci [37. 201-2].

Virgil praises Italy in terms of the products of its land and the virtue of its inhabitants; Pliny reviews the phenomena of nature in their totality, and in conclusion proclaims the incomparable superiority of Italy and its inhabitants with respect to all he has surveyed. The Natural History is Pliny's attempt to achieve, in a hardheaded Roman way, the same end that Virgil had sought to accomplish by his poetry. The captious attitude we have so often observed was motivated by jealous rivalry, and the last words of the Natural History: Salve, parens rerum omnium Natura, teque nobis Quiritium solis celebratam esse numeris omnibus tuis fave, with their provocative echo of Salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus (Georg. 2. 173), show that as the naturalist finished his immense work he was confident that he had vindicated his challenge of the poet.

Notes

¹ Many references to passages in which Virgil touches upon matters included in the NH may be found in the collection of parallels at the bottom of the pages of the Jan-Mayhoff edition (Leipzig, 1892-1906). This collection, which contains references to most although not all of the Virgilian passages discussed in this paper, has been most useful, despite the fact that the majority of its Virgilian references are to passages concerning topics which subsequently are discussed by the naturalist, but which exerted no influence, so far as can be determined, upon the latter. Such fortuitous "parallels" are naturally irrelevant to our inquiry, which deals with passages of the NH where Pliny makes deliberate reference to Virgil, or where he has unconsciously been influenced by him.

² P. describes Homer as princeps litter arum (2. 13), and says that this poet's supremacy is generally recognized (7. 107).

³ Cf. Verg. Buc. 5. 9: quid si idem certet Phoebum super are canendo, and ibid. 8. 55.

⁴ Cf. Praef. 7, where the orator is said to be extra omnem ingenii aleam positus.

⁵ Cf. Donat. Vit. Verg. 149-55 B.

⁶ Cf. Praef 28: Stoicos et dialecticos Epicureosque, where the Epicureans similarly bring up the rear. Pliny, whose activity was ceaseless, had little sympathy for the sect the founder of which he stigmatizes as otii magister (19. 51).

⁷Georg. 2. 478, Aen. 1. 742. Lucretius, in a passage Virgil in both instances echoes, had written solis … defectus / lunaeque latebras (5. 750).

⁸ Cf. also Verg. Aen. 8.31: fluvio Tiberinus amoeno.

⁹ Cf. Verg. Georg. 2. 122-24 and 3. 115.

¹⁰ For references in ancient authors see RE, V, 582f., s.v. diktamnon (2), and the note to 1. 72 peragrat in A. S. Pease's Aeneid IV. The substitution of a deer first occurs in this passage of the NH. In a note to Aen. 12. 412 Servius Danielis asserts: de hac herba in IV [72f.] ait de vulnerata cerva illa silvas saltusque peragrat / Dictaeos; but there is no mention of dittany in the fourth Aeneid, and in the verses Servius is glossing it is associated with the customary goats. The scholiast has made the same associative slip as had Pliny before him. Isidore 17. 9. 29 echoes Servius.

¹¹HA 9. 5, 611 b 20, VH 13. 35.

¹²Praereptum in NH 8. 165 (P. is describing the lump hippomanes) recalls Aen. 4. 516: matripraereptus amor (also with reference to this outgrowth), and the phrasing of NH 8. 166: equas favonio flante obversas echoes Georg. 3. 272f.: illae / … versae in Zephyrum (likewise of Lusitanian mares).

¹³ 11. 12. 200-7; Cic. Div. 1. 106, quoting from C.'s Marius, has the eagle overcome the snake. In Met. 4. 362 ff. Ovid is concerned merely with the reptile's tenacity. The eagle is again the winner in Voltaire's imitation of the Virgilian comparison in the preface to Rome sauvee (1750).

¹⁴Ipse is Mayhoff's correction of the saepe of the MSS.

¹⁵ Cicero here uses serpens; the Marius exhibits no verbal similarity with the NH.

¹⁶ In 11. 43 P. gives the Hyginus-Columella chronology, in a context which marks it as peculiarly Greek; it is here contrasted with Italian usage: in Italia vero hoc idem a vergiliarum exortu faciunt et in eum dormiunt (ibid.).

¹⁷ Servius (ad Georg. 4. 286), and Littre and the Bohn and Loeb translators mistakenly understand Pliny to vouch for the entire passage.

¹⁸ Aristot. (An. gen. 3. 10, 760 a-761 a) concludes that bees reproduce without coition, whereas hornets and wasps óχενᾳμενᾲι δὲ γεννὼ́σιν ν́π άλλήλων (761 a). The source of P.'s statement concerning scarabees is not known.

¹⁹ Columella (9. 14. 6) is politely skeptical: progenerari posse apes iuvenco perempto, Democritus et Mago nec minus Vergilius prodiderunt … quam rationem diligentius prosequi supervacuum puto, consentiens Celso, qui prudentissime ait, non tanto interitu pecus istud amitti, ut sic requirendum sit. Unwillingness to contradict Virgil probably accounts for C.'s tact.

²⁰ In P.'s chapters on bees there are also these neutral echoes of Virgil: quae dimicatio iniectu pulveris … discutitur (11. 58) is reminiscent of Georg. 4. 86f., and tenebrarum alumna blattis vita, lucemque fugiunt (11. 99), of Georg. 4. 243: lucifugis … blattis.

²¹ Forbiger glosses the phrase "anhelitui, spiritui foedo, qualis senum esse solet." The interpretation of Servius and other commentators "asthmatic old men" misses the point. It is not with the shortness of old men's breath that the poet is here concerned, but with the corrupt odor for which the citron is a remedy. P. again mentions this use of citron seed by Parthians in 12. 16, where he refers back to this passage.

²² F. Muinzer, Beiträge zur Quellenkritik der Naturgeschichte des Plinius (Berlin, 1897), pp. 17-18.

²³ Cf. P.'s gibe at Democritus in 14. 20: D. cuncta sibi Graeciae cognita professus.

²⁴ By nec ulli nunc vino maior auctoritas (14. 62) P. cannot mean that Falernian is the highest ranking wine of his day, since in this same section he has declared that in former times F. was included with wines of the second rank, and that the contemporary reputation of this wine is declining owing to the emphasis placed by the growers on quantity rather than quality. Since he goes on to say that F. is the only wine that will ignite when a flame is brought close to it, solo vinorum flamma accenditur (ibid.), the sense of auctoritas would seem to be vis, potestas, i.e., alcoholic content.

²⁵ E.g., La Cerda, Heyne, and Forbiger ad loc.

²⁶ By H. Rackham. The Bohn translator similarly misinterprets. Littre's text was badly mutilated at this point.

²⁷ Cf. NH 29. 85: vis ea annua est. P. refers to a contraceptive charm, the efficacy of which lasts one year.

²⁸ From § 21 P. has been discussing vines from the enological point of view; only in 40 does he pass to varieties insignes uva, non vino.

²⁹ In 14. 7 P. caustically remarks that V. cited only three varieties of pears, ceteris omnibus neglectis.

³⁰RR 1. 59. 1.

³¹Op. cit., p. 83.

³² Note P.'s mocking paronomasia. Lururiantis may have been suggested by luxuriem (Georg. 1. 112).

³³ Columella (3. 12. 5) cites V.'s rejection of a western exposure, but does not infer that he also condemns a northern one; the latter, C. adds, is favored by Mago and Democritus.

³⁴ M. E. Littrd, "Histoire naturelle" de Pline avec la traduction en français (Paris, 1877), 1, 652, n. 4.

³⁵ In similar fashion tofus, here linked with creta by V., is said by P. to be regarded ab auctoribus (17. 29) as a desirable component of soil.

³⁶Scrobes, densa, and rara parallel V.'s wording.

³⁷ Sillig's orthographical correction of the vulgate filicem.

³⁸Georg. 2. 74 ff.

³⁹ There are neutral echoes of the Georgics in 17. 56 (1. 77), 17. 65 (2. 17 and 55), and 17, 188 (2. 371).

⁴⁰ For this practice see H. H. Huxley, Sanguis equinus, CP, LI (1956), 173.

⁴¹ Cf. NH 18. 226: indocilis caeli agricola.

⁴² Cf. Serv. ad Georg. 1. 335, 336, and 337.

⁴³NH 19. 6, 61, 131.