Conclusions

This section first offers a brief digest of some vegetative continuities and contrasts within Vergil’s oeuvre, offering links back to fuller discussions in the main body of the study in a way which helps to knit together the different themes of the earlier chapters. The section—and the book—then concludes with a close reading of the famous tree-felling vignette of Aeneid 6. This passage offers in microcosm a fine illustration of Vergil’s ability to combine self-conscious comment on his own status as a poet and his place within poetic traditions with reflections on both religion and cultivation, the two major themes of this book.

Numinous Habitats

This chapter addresses the gods’ influence—whether as recognizable named divinities or vaguer numinous presences—on woodlands and on plants in cultivated settings. The first part moves through accounts of divinely connected trees and forests in the Eclogues to the evolution and variation of such ideas in the Georgics, with the most extended discussion reserved for the many numinous woods and groves of the Aeneid, both in the underworld and the world above. In the second part, the element of divine connection to agricultural plants in the Eclogues and Aeneid serves as preface to a longer examination of the gods of cultivated plants in the Georgics, especially Ceres and Bacchus. The section ends with discussion of the uses of divine metonymy as another mode of Vergilian illustration of the connections between gods and plants.

Gods’ Special Species

Following the exploration of the divine in wooded, arable, and other cultivated habitats in the first chapter, in this chapter the focus turns to the connections between individual gods and certain species: oak, poplar, pine, olive, laurel, myrtle, cypress, ivy, and a range of medicinal and magical plants. The wider difficulty of maintaining for long any stereotypical association between one particular plant and one god is made clear, and Vergil’s replications and variations of traditionally made connections are examined in detail, with links made to the themes of prophecy, tree-felling, poetic and political symbolism, as well as the blurred edges between ritual, superstition, and rational enquiry.

Introduction

The Introduction provides cultural, theoretical, and literary backgrounds for approaches to plants in the ancient world in general, as well as setting out the framework for this particular study of Vergil’s plants. Both scientific, philosophical, and religious outlooks are outlined, as are some persistent trends in ancient literary representations of plants, which often treat them as symbols and metapoetic markers as much as entities in their own right. The twin themes of this book—plants as part of the religious, or more broadly supernatural, landscape, and plants as both representatives of and participants in the relationship between humans and the natural world—are thus given wider context, while brief sketches are also made of further aspects relevant to Vergilian flora that are approached more tangentially in this work.

Tame Plants

With this chapter, the focus of the book moves from the the numinous and divine connections enjoyed by Vergil’s plants to explore the more pragmatic aspects of human relationships with cultivated and semi-cultivated plants. After an opening definition (and acknowledgement of the difficulty of definition) of ‘tame plants’, the chapter then falls into two parts. The first addresses ways in which Vergil suggests that it is possible for humans and plants to exist in a state of harmony and even mutual benefit. In the second part, by contrast, the poet’s consciousness of the opposite state is highlighted, where humans and plants are shown to be at odds, at times even at war.

Wild Plants

The final chapter assesses Vergil’s portraits of wild plants, and his engagement with the problems of defining the wild. His flowers are revealed as more than pretty ornaments; rather, they offer complex reflections on the space between wildness and cultivation, and on the human tendency to assign moral worth to some plants rather than others. On similar lines, Vergil’s weeds emerge as particularly fascinating types of plant that can represent the harshest kinds of opposition between man and nature yet also stand for a nostalgic vision of lost innocence. The importance of Theophrastus’ influence on Vergil is felt throughout the chapter, even while other (often poetic) associations come to prominence in a variety of ways.