The Tormented Master of Vergil’s Georgics

The absence of explicit references to enslaved persons in the Georgics can be explained by its position as a “middle” poem between the Bucolics and the Aeneid: while the former highlights characters of servile status and the latter royalty, the Georgics centers persons who fall in between, excluding representations of figures from both extremes. Even so, the institutions of Roman slavery make their presence felt in the poem through its obsessive focus on themes of masterliness and control. The narrator sees the world as a dominus would and exhorts the reader to exercise dominion over subordinate beings. The one thing ranked higher than control over others is self-control. The Aristaeus epyllion recapitulates in narrative form the lesson of what comes before it.