The Georgics, the Mysteries and the Muses at Rome

Abstract

In a paper published nearly fifty years ago, Piero Scazzoso traced what he took to be a pattern of mystery allusions in the Georgics. Reflections of telestic initiation and allied concepts of resurrection and salvation were then identified in the Orpheus and Aristaeus episodes in Book 4. Later studies in this area focused variously on the first proem, on Eleusinian references in the ‘farmer's arma’ (1.162–8), on the role of Proserpina, and on the ‘mystic’ beatitudes at the end of the second book. Most recently, Llewelyn Morgan has offered an analysis of the relevance of mystery cult to understanding Vergil's conception of the physical universe and its underlying principles, again with particular reference to the fourth book. With the benefit of this considerable body of work, we are well placed to ask whether Roman readers' understanding of the poem could have been enriched by acquaintance with telestic concepts and procedures. Christine Perkell detected the ‘primacy of mystery’ in the tension between the poet's didactic praecepta and his aspiration to god given knowledge, a reading which might encourage more extended enquiry into the revelatory character of the Georgics.