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- Title
BEES, ANTS, AND THE BODY POLITIC: VERGIL'S NORIC PLAGUE AND OVID'S ORIGIN OF THE MYRMIDONS.
- Authors
Gardner, Hunter H.
- Abstract
This paper interprets Vergil's Noric cattle plague in Georgics 3 as a metaphor for civil discord. Although Vergil does not present a remedy for the disease (pestis 3.471; cf. morbus 3.478), critics have nonetheless suggested that the new bees born from the bougonia of Georgics 4 offer a deferred solution to pestilence as civil war. But Vergil describes the bougonia without judging its utility vs. its cost, in particular its threat to individuality. We can confirm and better understand the poet's equivocation by turning to Ovid's account of plague in Metamorphoses 7.490-660, wherein the perished Aegineans are replaced by ant-born men. With its Vergilian allusions, Ovid's plague may be read as critical commentary on the path of disease in the Georgics and its implications for the post-Actian polity of Roman citizens.
- Subjects
VIRGIL, 70 B.C.-19 B.C.; METAMORPHOSES (Book : Ovid); GEORGICS (Poem : Virgil); TOCOCA; PINZGAUER cattle; RINDERPEST; ANCIENT (Literary period)
- Publication
Vergilius, 2014, Vol 60, p3
- ISSN
0506-7294
- Publication type
Article