I have been having some email troubles and have tried to send this note before, but since I have not received a copy I assume it got nowhere. So I'm trying again: forgive any duplication. THOMAS ON HONEY - HAS EGYPT CONQUERED ROME? This is a comment on RF Thomas remarks (in the Hardie/Routledge collection) on the restoration, by the agency of Aristaeus and by means of Bougonia, of the honey supply - the final episode of Geo IV, now known to be a favourite poem in the White House. The honey passage is clearly a major crux for Augustan/anti-Augustan interpretations of V. Thomas remarks that the restoration of honey by Aristaeus, which seems to mirror the restoration of civil peace and prosperity by Aug, creates a world without art or love - indeed (though these are not his words) Stakhanovite and totalitarian. Griffin, in the same volume, remarks on how the customary association between honey and poetic inspiration is suppressed: the bees make a noise (mussant 281) rather than music. The joint impact of these two suggestions seems to be the idea that Egypt has conquered Rome - putting together 201 and 210 we find that the bees are Quirites, Romans, yet 'more monarchist than the Egyptians'. Aug's endless claims to have saved Rome from Egypt would then by mocked as the reverse of the truth. The Romans are so defeated inwardly that they have lost their humanity - the great human city has become a hive of insects. I seek a more moderate interpretation than this. I also seek a way of giving credence to Servius' report that Geo originally ended with praises of Gallus. These were allegedly withdrawn when Gallus, sent to rule Egypt after the fall of Cleopatra, came to a sticky end after losing Aug's confidence. TONE OF THE PASSAGE. The tone of the Bougonia story is neither unreservedly credulous nor incredulous to the extent of suggesting mere sarcasm. Bougonia is presented as an Egyptian technique and the word 'famam' (285) conveys some scepticism. BOUGONIA AS SCIENCE FICTION - FICTION WITH SCIENTIFIC CREDENTIALS. The sci-fi genre has few examples from ancient times, but I think that the Bougonia is one of them, in the sense that we have an idea which a) has scientific credentials b) is both interesting and disturbing in its application to the world. I suggest that the scientific credentials come ultimately from Epicureanism, the scientific or would-be scientific philosophy whose presence in both Bucolics and Geo is so strong. Epi teaches us that all changes are transpositions of atoms and that our moral salvation comes from science. This implies that the change from death or inanimation to life, perhaps the most important change of all, is also a matter of atomic transposition and that if we had enough scientific knowledge we could control how that change occurred. This control would give us material comforts, as with Aristaeus, but would also work a great spiritual change in us. Orpheus, the greatest of poets, moved by love and personal loss (for which Aristaeus was responsible), had tried to work this very change but had failed after his supreme effort. Eventually, Orpeheus plays his part in commissioning Aristaeus, of all people - Aristaeus has courage,but his concern is only with material loss; he has little conscience but is prone to self-pity - to succeed where O himself has failed. (Is Aristaeus' personality rather like Aug's? - One can imagine V's having to listen to a lot Aug's complaints, including complaints against Gallus.) MIXTURE OF INTERESTING AND DISTURBING FEATURES. The appearance of maggots in putrefying flesh is an interesting thing - if only we could control this process to produce bees instead of flies. If the Egyptians (interestingly described as a fortunate or favoured race, 287) are even beginning to acquire the knowledge of bringing life from death then they cannot be defeated for ever by mere force of arms and will have to be conciliated. On the other hand, the Egyptian Bougonia as described, with the animal beaten to a pulp, is rather disgusting, particularly if you share the moral doubts about killing friendly animals expressed at the end of Geo II. THE ROLE OF GALLUS. The conciliation of Egypt must have been the mission of Gallus, presumably on Aug's instructions and with V's approval. We hear much about Aug's anti-Egyptian propaganda in Rome, but what was his propaganda in Egypt? Presumably some version of the Chamberlainesque 'Our quarrel was not with you, the Egyptian people, but with the tyrannous and forsworn Ptolemaic regime, which only pretended to be Egyptian. We are sending you Gallus, one of our best men, renowned for wide cultural sympathies. We want to learn from you.' Presumably G eventually did this job a bit too well for Aug's liking. But we could easily suppose that his original role in the fiction of Geo was to listen to an Egyptian account of the story of Aristaeus and of his flight into the scientific world of Egypt after disgrace in the pastoral, poetic world of Greece: a world were one directly responsible for Eurydice's and indirectly responsible for Orpheus' death would not be popular G, poet and man of the world, would bring both some corrective scepticism and some corrective humanity to the scientific spirit, with its tendency to ruthlessness and to exaggeration of its powers. At this rate, the Aristaeus story would not be a substitute for Praise of Gallus: the two would have been interlocking elements. The distinct 'praise passage' might then have been quite short, maybe no more than a planned structural element which V did not get round to writing before the quarrel between G and Aug enforced a change of plan. That would explain why there is no trace of it and why the absence of any trace need not discredit Servius' report. THE NO-GALLUS VERSION: DOUBT AND UNCERTAINTY. The with-Gallus version would have strengthened the hopeful elements in the poem: Aug is presiding over a reconciliation of Rome and Egypt, poetry and science. The no-Gallus version, removing any mediating figure who stands near Aug, puts everything back into doubt. Perhaps Egyptian science is no better than sinister charlatanism, perhaps Roman poetry must share the fate of Orpheus and the Romans share the characteristics of the buzzing, inarticulate bees. DOUBT RATHER THAN DESPAIR. But even without Gallus, V seems able to make the comment on Epicurus which I think he intends - that one cannot understand science without looking beyond science into the world of religion and poetry: there is something self-defeating about Epi. The people may have misunderstood, rejected and killed Orpheus and may also have bitterly disapproved of Aristaeus: but they still needed the honey, even if they only thought of its material benefits. But those material benefits only come if other cultural benefits are also found, as one would expect if materialist, atomist science ends up by pointing beyond itself. Aristaeus needs the favour and forgiveness of Orpheus. So we can read the Bougonia/honey passage in a moderate, rather than fully anti-Augustan, way: Aug is both a danger to Roman culture - he is responsible for Gallus' death and for the silence which covers his memory - and someone whom Roman culture has no alternative but to support and (in a sense) reconstruct, as Orpheus reconstructed Aristaeus. I suppose that the death of G, V's closest friend, gave us a better, more tense poem than we would otherwise have had. Which shows that President Bush has good taste. - Martin Hughes
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