Among the many elements that contribute to the elusive art of the Georgics is its finely tuned balance between labor and religio. When scholarly attention has turned to religion in this poem, however, it has tended to focus on the religion of the state1 rather than on the more intimate, personal religion of individuals, families, and other affiliations — religions represented by the mystery cults, which are much more difficult to substantiate. A complicating factor in trying to sort out these elements is the widespread religious syncretism, particularly common from the Hellenistic period and later. Yet a considerable element in the religious aura that pervades this poem is also due to subtle allusions to a wide range of symbols, figures, and myths having to do with these cults, whose wide influence during this period has become increasingly evident. The mystery cults discussed in this chapter will be limited to those of Eleusis, Isis, Dionysus, and, briefly, Cybele.2
A theme common to the myths associated with certain mystery cults is the death of the spouse or child of a deity who oversees the growth of plant life, the means of mortal sustenance. This theme corresponds to the annual cycle of nature: the growth and harvest of crops, and the subsequent winter or dry season when nothing grows, a season devoid of life and joy. The return of spring and the growth of new plant life corresponds to the restoration, in some degree, of the deceased figure, be it Persephone or Attis or Dionysus or Osiris, embodying the tension inherent in the ongoing, cyclic process as the new year’s harvest replaces the old year’s loss. The surprising discovery in 1992 of a Temple of Isis in Cumae—surprising because none of our sources make any reference to it—has prompted reconsideration of the role of the mysteries, and particularly those of Eleusis, Isis, and Dionysus, in Vergil’s poem on agriculture.
Cybele (Mētēr, or Magna Mater), or allusions to her, occur only twice in Vergil’s poem, and she seems to have had the least impact on the Georgics. This is surprising, in view of Vergil’s topic, since she is closely associated with agriculture and the fertility of nature. She is much more prominent in the Aeneid, where her appearance and references to her restate in various ways the Phrygian origins of the Trojans.3 Zanker suggests, however, that Augustus did not cultivate the cult of Cybele as magnanimously as he indicates in his Res Gestae, since he “did not rebuild the temple, which lay near his house, in marble, but only tufa … and relegated the exotic cult, with its ecstatic dances and long-haired priests … to freedmen.” The restored temple, moreover, was not rededicated until 17 CE, under Tiberius.4 On the other hand, he may have intentionally used tufa to underline the antiquity of the cult.
Cybele’s limited impact may also have resulted in part from the fact that the worship of her consort, Attis (whose mythical death and restoration makes this cult particularly relevant to a poem on farming), involved ritual emasculation of the Galloi, Cybele’s priests from Pessinus. Consequently, the involvement of Roman citizens in the priesthood of this cult was limited until well after Vergil’s time. The cult of Cybele was brought to Rome during the Second Punic War; and she was worshiped at Rome in her temple on the Palatine. Despite her association with fertility, as the Great Mother of all living things, she appears only twice in the Georgics, both times in the fourth book, and both times in the context of the episode in which her followers masked the cries of the infant Zeus when he was hidden from Kronos on Crete and nourished by honeybees. In Georgics 4.64, Cybele is referred to as the Great Mother:
tinnitusque cie et Matris quate cymbala circum.
Shake the Great Mother’s cymbals, make them ring.
In 4.149-152, there is a specific reference to the episode on Crete:
nunc age, naturas apibus quas Iuppiter ipse
addidit expediam, pro qua mercede canoros
Curetum sonitus crepitantiaque aera secutae
Dictaeo caeli regem pavere sub antro. (G. 4.149-152)
Come now, let me tell of the nature that Jupiter himself gave to bees, as a
reward. For they followed the musical sounds and clashing cymbals of the
Curetes and fed the king of heaven in a cave on Mt. Dicte.
Liber et alma Ceres, vestro si munere tellus
Chaoniam pingui glandem mutavit arista,
poculaque inventis Acheloia miscuit uvis. (G. 1.7-9)
Liber and nourishing Ceres, since through your gift earth exchanged
the Chaonian acorn for thick stalks of grain and mixed the waters of
Achelous with new-found grapes.
Dionysus and his mysteries are perhaps the most elusive, despite the ubiquity of the cult.5 Vergil’s Dionysus, as “Bacchus” or “Liber,” is frequently paired with Ceres in the Georgics, as the god himself, and, by metonymy, as the fruit of the vine, particularly throughout the second book, where cultivation of the vine is a major topic.6 The literary imagery of Vergil’s Bacchus, which Thomas associates with analogies to Vergil’s poetic undertaking and to the god’s association with tragedy,7 is clearly an important element in the poem, but the “tension between the divine and human,” which Henrichs identifies as the essence of this deity,8 is also in evidence in Vergil’s reference to him. While a happy Bacchic festival (2.380-396) represents one aspect of this god’s power, on at least two occasions there are vivid reminders of the destructive force of the god. In the second book Vergil refers to the violent battle between the Lapiths and Centaurs, which he blames on drunkenness due to Baccheia dona (2.454):
quid memorandum aeque Baccheia dona tulerunt?
Bacchus et ad culpam causas dedit: ille furentis
Centauros leto domuit, Rhoecumque Pholumque
et magno Hylaeum Lapithis cratere minantem. (G. 2.454-457)
What equally memorable thing have the gifts of Bacchus produced?
Bacchus even gave cause to criticize: He tamed the raging centaurs with
death—Rhoecus and Pholus and Hylaeus, who was threatening Lapiths
with an enormous bowl.
In the fourth book of the Georgics we are again reminded of the god’s destructive force when Orpheus is dismembered by Bacchic revelers. Here the literary force of Bacchus is again implicit, in that, as Thomas observes (ad 4.520-522), “Orpheus is conflated with [Euripides’] Pentheus.” The relationship between Bacchus and Orpheus is too complex to discuss here, other than to recognize that both cults appear to originate in Phrygia or Thrace or Lydia.9 Diodorus Siculus, who is Vergil’s older contemporary, reports (Bibl. 22.7) that the orgiastic Dionysiac cult was imported from Egypt into Greece.10 The Greco-Egyptian blend of the god can be seen at Rome in Tibullus, where he attributes cultivation of the vine to Osiris, while still referring to wine, by metonymy, as “Bacchus” (Bibl. 1.7.39, 41).
For Vergil, the Eleusinian mysteries and the rites of Ceres are the same, but it is important to realize that initiation into the Eleusinian cult could only take place in Greece, even though the cult was practiced throughout the Greco-Roman world. Among those who went to Eleusis for initiation was Augustus, who was initiated in 31 BCE, shortly after the Battle of Actium, and two years before Vergil read the Georgics to him,11 so it is not surprising that Vergil would want to include some reference to the Eleusinian cult in his poem.
The earliest allusion to Demeter’s Roman counterpart occurs in 1.7-9 (Liber et alma Ceres). As in the case of Bacchus (Liber), the name of the goddess in the Georgics refers sometimes to the deity and sometimes by metonymy to the product associated with her. Ceres, in Vergil’s account, made it possible to live on cultivated crops rather than having to rely on the bounty of nature, as represented, for example, by acorns dropped by oak trees, as mortals once did during a more primitive stage of civilization. Ceres’ gift, in this account, was that she taught mortals how to cultivate the soil and grow grain. She is said to have instructed mortals in the art of cultivation through Triptolemus (uncique puer monstrator aratri, 1.19).12 In 1.94ff., we see that she continues to reward the hard-working farmer:
multum adeo, rastris glaebas qui frangit inertis
vimineasque trahit cratis, iuvat arva, neque illum
flava Ceres alto nequiquam spectat Olympo. (G. 1.94-96)
He who breaks up lazy clods of dirt with a hoe and drags wicker-work
hurdles over them greatly assists the fields; golden Ceres will not look down
upon him from lofty Olympus to no avail.
Vergil makes specific reference to the Eleusinian ritual in 1.160-166, a passage that Conington dismissed as an attempt to give religious dignity to what might otherwise seem trivial. There Vergil lists the weaponry13 of the “Eleusinian mother.”
dicendum et quae sint duris agrestibus arma,
quis sine nec potuere seri nec surgere messes:
vomis et inflexi primum grave robur aratri,
tardaque Eleusinae matris volventia plaustra,
tribulaque traheaeque et iniquo pondere rastri;
virgea praeterea Celei vilisque supellex,
arbuteae crates et mystica vannus Iacchi. (G. 1.160-166)
Now I must name the weapons that gird the toughened man of the soil;
without them no seeds would be sown, no grain would grow to harvest:
the plowshare (vomis), the heavy weight of the bent plow (aratri ),
the Eleusinian mother’s slowly turning wagon,
the threshing sleds and drags and hoes, Celeus’ simple osier basket,
hurdles of arbute-twigs, and the
mystic winnowing fan of Iacchus.
As I have shown elsewhere,14 Vergil here frames this procession with a series of episodes (G. 1.118-203) highlighting the farmer’s struggle against decline. The first picture of decline is the end of the golden age (118-135), which leads to the development of skills (136ff.), particularly the art of plowing, taught by Ceres (147-159); this development culminates in a central panel, an epiphany of an Eleusinian procession (160-166). This is followed by further instructions on making a plow (167-175), then generalized to skills and their application (176-196), and finally by a second picture of decline, where a farmer who fails to persist in selecting the best seed of his crop is compared to a rower relaxing his oars and being swept back downstream after he has laboriously rowed upstream (197-203).
Later in this book (1.338-350), Vergil’s farmer is advised to offer sacrifices to Ceres. Bayet15 demonstrated that in this passage, Vergil had synthesized three separate festivals in honor of Ceres. The first, the Cerealia (12-19 April), celebrates the young shoots of grain that begin to grow in early or mid-April. The second (1.345) is the Ambarvalia (late May), in which the lustration of the fields is performed; this festival is dedicated to a number of other deities as well, but in this section Vergil is concerned only with Ceres’ role in the festival. The third (1.347-350) is the festival that celebrates the beginning of the harvest, held in late summer.
The central myth of Eleusis, as depicted in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter,16 was the theft of Persephone by Plouton, the god of the underworld, and her mother’s search and eventual recovery of her daughter. Persephone’s return from the underworld is temporary, however, and consequently her mother is in mourning for her during that part of the year which Persephone must spend in the underworld. Grain fails to grow until she is again reunited with her sorrowing mother.
While she is in mourning for Persephone, according to the Homeric Hymn, Demeter goes to Eleusis, to the house of Celeus, disguised as an old woman, and becomes the nursemaid to the king’s infant son. Every night she places the child in a fire, attempting to make the child immortal, but the queen happens to witness this act and cries out in alarm, whereupon Demeter reveals her true self, orders that a temple be built there in her honor, and retreats to the company of the gods, where she resumes mourning until her daughter is restored to her.
In the proem to the first book of the Georgics (1.39), Vergil modifies the version of the myth in the Homeric Hymn, wherein it is indicated that Persephone longed to return (literally, “she longed for her mother,” Hymn Dem. 344; cf. 370-371), by saying that Proserpina refused to return when summoned: nec repetita sequi curet Proserpina matrem (G. 1.39). At the close of the fourth book, he similarly modifies the tale of Eurydice, who, although she apparently was allowed to return from the dead in pre-Vergilian versions, in Vergil fails to come back. Both Persephone and Eurydice are dona Ditis, literally, gifts from Dis or Pluto; the term also refers to the new growth of crops, which was seen as a return on the seed invested in the soil.17 Persephone and Eurydice thus become doublets and thereby constitute a frame of sorts for the entire poem.18 Direct reference to the Eleusinian mysteries, however, appears to be limited to the first book, and to these episodes.
More subtle allusions emerge, however, if we also take into consideration suggestions of the Egyptian equivalent of the myth of Demeter, namely the story of Isis and Osiris. Despite Herodotus’ recognition of parallels between these two goddesses and his readiness to apply the term “Mysteries” to the rites of Osiris (2.171), it appears that the Mysteries in the full sense of the Greek term (implying secret initiation and prohibition of revealing any of the ceremonies to the uninitiated) were not attached to the cult of Isis and Osiris until the Ptolemaic era. As the cult spread outside of Egypt, it was marked by the ascendancy of Isis, both at home and abroad. To the Hellenistic Greeks, she was seen as a “queen-mother, identified with most of the forces of nature.”19
For Vergil’s contemporaries, the Isiac cult offered a set of deities who competed with Demeter/Ceres in laying claim to the discovery of the art of agriculture. Diodorus Siculus, a contemporary of Cicero and Vergil, devoted the first book of his Library of History to Egypt and its customs; he records that Isis—like Ceres—is said to have discovered the fruit of wheat and barley, and that Osiris devised a means of cultivating these fruits (1.14). He also records that Osiris — like Dionysus — discovered the art of viticulture (1.15).20 Like Diodorus Siculus, Tibullus (1.7.29-42) credits Osiris with discovering the cultivation of the soil to produce grain, the art of cultivating trees and vines, and the art of producing wine, which in turn inspired the making of music. And wine and music combined to give mortals respite from toil and sadness:
primus aratra manu sollerti fecit Osiris
et teneram ferro sollicitabit humum,
primus inexpertae commisit semina terrae
pomaque non notis legit ab arboribus. (Tib. i.7.29-32)
First to make a plow with a clever hand and to turn
the delicate soil with its iron blade was Osiris.
He was the first to entrust the seeds to the untested soil
and gather from unfamiliar trees the fruit.
In line 29, Tibullus’ Osiris appears to merge with Bacchus, suggesting that, for Tibullus, the two gods are the same:
Bacchus et agricolae magno confecta labore
pectora tristiae dissolvenda dedit;
Bacchus et adflictis requiem mortalibus adfert. (Tib. 1.7.39-41)
Bacchus also allowed the farmer to be freed from
sadness, his heart exhausted by toil;
Bacchus also to troubled mortals brings rest.
In Egyptian myth, Osiris taught his people the art of cultivating the soil and established justice on both banks of the Nile, but was murdered by his cousin Seth, who persuaded him to climb into a coffin, which Seth then sealed and threw into the Nile. His wife and sister, Isis, like Demeter, went into mourning but diligently searched for his remains. She learned that the coffin enclosing his corpse had lodged itself in the branches of an erica tree, which had then quickly grown up around it and enclosed it. The tree had been felled and fashioned into a pillar of the king of Byblos’s palace. Isis therefore went to the king disguised as an old woman and, like Demeter, became a nursemaid for the king’s infant son. Isis, like Demeter, was a very unusual nursemaid. She, too, would attempt to burn away the mortal parts of the infant’s body (νύκτωρ δὲ περικαίεν τὰ θνητὰ τοῦ σώματος)) and then, transformed into a swallow, would fly around the pillar containing Osiris’ coffin, with a mournful lament (αὐτὴν δὲ γενομένην χελιδόνα τῇκίονι περιπέτεσθαι καὶ θρηνεῖν, Plut. Mor. 357c).21 When the queen of Byblos discovered her child on fire, she screamed, and thereby deprived him of immortality. Isis then revealed herself and demanded that the pillar that held up the palace roof, which contained Osiris’ corpse, be given to her.
After recovering Osiris’ coffin, she hid it in the marshes and went away to care for their infant son. While she was gone, the wicked Seth found the coffin and dismembered the corpse of Osiris, scattering the body up and down the country.
Isis therefore once again set out in search of her husband, “sailing through the swamps in a boat of papyrus” (Plut. Mor. 358a), collecting the individual pieces of the body and burying them. In some versions she reassembled them as a mummy and then fanned the dead body with her wings, reviving Osiris to be the ruler of the underworld, where he now judges the souls of the dead, balancing them against the feather of truth.
The story, like that of Demeter and Persephone, corresponds to the annual cycle of Nature. When the Nile rises, Osiris returns to life, and when it falls, Osiris dies. Osiris, in some accountings, actually is the Nile, who brings the grain to life, and then dies away. In other accountings, the Nile consists of the tears of Isis, for when she is in mourning for the lost Osiris, her tears swell its waters.
Although Vergil does not name Isis, he does, in the third Georgic, refer to her Greek counterpart, Io (Inachiae, 3.153). In Greek myth, Io tends to merge with Isis,22 although our earliest written evidence for the connection is Callimachus, who refers to “Isis, the daughter of Inachus” ( Ἰναχίης. . . Ἴσιδος, Epigram 58).23 Inachus is of course the father of Io. Thomas cites several references in the Georgics to the Io of C. Licinius Calvus, Catullus’ friend and fellow neoteric. In book 3 (3.146-153), Vergil alludes to Io’s bovine wanderings in southern Italy, around Silarus (146), Alburnus (147), and Tanager (151):
est lucos Silari circa ilicibusque virentem
plurimus Alburnum volitans, cui nomen asilo
Romanum est, oestrum Grai vertere vocantes
… furit mugitibus aether
concussus silvaeque et sicci ripa Tanagri.
hoc quondam monstro horribilis exercuit iras
Inachiae Iuno pestem meditata iuvencae. (G. 3.146-153)
Around the groves of Silarus and verdant Alburnus flits many a creature that the Romans call asilus [gadfly] and the Greeks call oestrus. … The air and forests and bank of dry Tanager echo its buzzing noise. Once upon a time, Juno, through this creature, planned this torture and unleashed her dreadful anger on Inachus’ daughter, now a heifer.
Thomas suggests that the references to these “obscure Lucanian and Bruttian placenames” may indicate that Calvus presented a “geographically expansive” account of her wanderings, including “a stop in southern Italy.”24 To this I would add that if Calvus’ Io wandered in Lucania, it would not be unreasonable to suppose that her wanderings may have extended a little farther north, to Campania, where Isis’ temple, reported at Puteoli as early as the second century BCE, would be known to Vergil and presumably also to Calvus.
An intriguing question, which perhaps may be resolved in the not-too-distant future, is whether there was any connection between the newly discovered temple of Isis at Cumae (see Caputo’s chapter in this book) and the reported Isaeum at Puteoli. The newly discovered temple may also have some bearing on Vergil’s repeated references in the Aeneid to Cumae and Baiae as “Euboean” (Aen. 6.2, 6.42, 9.710), for in Hesiod’s account, Io goes not to Egypt but to Euboea, which was in fact named after her.25 The equivalence between Io and Isis would certainly have been known to Vergil. And, of course, we know that Vergil composed some considerable portion of the Georgics in Campania, perhaps in the vicinity of the recently discovered Isaeum at Cumae. For now, however, we can only surmise its relevance for Vergil’s poem.
Thomas notes another apparent echo of Calvus’ Io in the Orpheus-Eurydice episode in Vergil’s book 4, where he compares Orpheus’ cry— a miseram Eurydicen! (G. 4.526)—to the exclamation in Calvus’ poem, a virgo infelix! (Ecl. 6.47, 52). Additionally, because Servius says these lines were taken over from Gallus, Thomas suggests that Orpheus’ final words “are also the final element of the laudes Galli,–26 which, according to Servius, once appeared in this part of the poem. Io is also the ancestress of Dionysus,27 who in turn is linked with Orpheus, and in some accounts is equated with him.
Isis was also frequently equated with Demeter or Ceres, and indeed, their myths are so similar that Herodotus indicated that the Eleusinian ritual was modeled on the Isiac ritual, a theory that enjoyed “great popularity” in the early part of this century, until, according to Mylonas, Picard “proved … the theory … untenable,” since no Egyptian artifact or evidence of Egyptian influence “dating from the second millennium was found in the sanctuary of Eleusis,” and subsequent excavations have confirmed the rejection of Egyptian influence.28 Though Greek influence can be found in much of the tale as we have it from Plutarch, Griffith concludes that, although Isis’ journey to Byblos and her adventures there have “affinities with the story of Demeter, Metaneira and Demophoön in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, its origin must lie in the Byblite cults of the New Kingdom and afterwards [where] the cult of Isis is attested … from the seventh century B.C.”29
Unlike membership in the Eleusinian cult, initiation into the Isiac cult was not restricted geographically; the cult’s presence in Rome was unambiguous during the first century, even if frequently circumscribed, and was finally endorsed by a decree of the Second Triumvirate in 43 BCE, which called for the construction of a temple of Isis and Serapis in the Campus Martius. After Actium, however, there was a consistent policy under Augustus of elevating the Attic cults, and of disparaging, or at least neglecting, the eastern cults, a policy that is reflected to some extent in the Georgics, and is stated even more unambiguously in the Aeneid. The last two books of the Georgics contain a surprising number of Egyptian elements, in view of Servius’ statement that some portion of the fourth book was modified to remove the laudes for the Egyptian prefect and poet Cornelius Gallus. Book 3 begins with Herakles’ Egyptian labor and contains the Io/Isis passage. In book 4, the method of regenerating bees is clearly placed in Egypt (4.287-294), and Aristaeus wrestles with the traditionally Egyptian sea-deity, Proteus. Wherever possible, however, Vergil always chooses the Greek or non-Egyptian version of the myth. His Proteus is from Pallene in Chalcidice, even though Vergil’s sources, from Homer to Lycophron, retain Egypt as Proteus’ place of origin. Here Vergil clearly wanted to retain Proteus, but chose to modify his Egyptian associations.30 It is not unusual for Vergil to modify extensively the details concerning mythological figures and their stories, as the examples of Proserpina and Eurydice illustrate, but in the case of Proserpina and Eurydice, he appears to intend to make the one a doublet of the other. It is not yet clear to me what, if any, effect he intended his modification of Proteus’ provenance to have upon his reader.
Proserpina’s appearance at the end of the first book, and Eurydice’s parallel role at the end of the fourth, may lead one to wonder whether Vergil intended a similar analogy between Demeter and Orpheus, who mourn their losses. We have seen the strong similarities between Demeter and Isis, as one mourns the loss of a daughter and the other of a husband. When Orpheus loses Eurydice for a second time, he is compared to the nightingale mourning the loss of her child, Itys:
qualis populea maerens philomela sub umbra
amissos queritur fetus, quos durus arator
observans nido implumis detraxit; at illa
flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen
integrat, et maestis late loca questibus implet. (G. 4.511-515)
Just as a nightingale mourns from beneath the shade of a poplar tree,
as she protests the loss of her brood, which a toughened (durus) plowman
has
found and dragged, unplumed, from their nest; all night long she
weeps, perched on a branch, ever renewing her unhappy
song, filling the fields around with sad reproach.
Orpheus mourns not for a lost child, as the nightingale does, but for a lost spouse. Through this simile, an analogy between his sorrow at the end of the poem and the implicit sorrow of Demeter at its beginning can be drawn, particularly if the sorrow of Demeter’s Egyptian equivalent is also taken into consideration. Like Isis, Orpheus mourns his lost spouse, but through the simile, his sorrow is also like that of Demeter’s sorrow for her lost child.
The nightingale simile operates on a number of levels. On the most pragmatic, it recalls a passage in Georgics 2 (207-211) “where the successful farmer … uproots and destroys the birds’ home as he converts the woods to plough-lands.”31 Vergil first refers to the myth itself at the beginning of the fourth book, where he names the swallow (Procne) as one of the birds that are dangerous for honeybees:
absint et picti squalentia terga lacerti
pinguibus a stabulis, meropesque aliae volucres
et manibus Procne pectus signata cruentis;
omnia nam late vastant ipsasque volantis
ore ferunt dulcem nidis immitibus escam. (G. 4.13-17)32
Near the rich hives let there be no lizards with scaly backs and winged creatures that consume bees: Meropidae and most of all Procne, her breast marked with bloody hands; for everything far and wide they consume and carry in their mouths to their cruel nests even the busy bees, sweet morsels for their young.
Procne’s plumage, bearing the mark of blood-stained hands, is a potent reminder of the two sisters’ cruel murder and dismemberment of young Itys, and indeed, any reference to their tale would recall their crime. Through these two allusions, the myth thus encircles the fourth and last book of the Georgics, occurring at its beginning and at its end. The second allusion to this tale, the comparison of Orpheus to a nightingale, is quickly followed by Orpheus’ violent dismemberment. Philomela and Procne, who appear in the Georgics in winged form, one as a swallow, the other as a nightingale, share the sometime-winged nature of Isis, who is represented on tombs with wings, and who, in her search for Osiris’ corpse, while serving as a nursemaid in Byblos, becomes a swallow.
The dismemberment of Orpheus during the nocturni orgia Bacchi (G. 4.521) recalls Pentheus’ dismemberment in Euripides’ Bacchae, 33 but the final detail of Orpheus’ dismembered head floating downstream can also suggest the dismembered limbs of Osiris pursued by Isis in her papyrus boat. Isis mourns as she searches for her dismembered spouse; here it is not only Orpheus who mourns for his lost spouse, but it is also Orpheus, like Osiris, who has been dismembered.34
The entire fourth book thus acquires added dimension when viewed from the perspective of the mysteries. The third book also contains elements suggestive of the mysteries. It begins with a brief invocation of Pales and Apollo as deities of flocks and herds. In the third line, Vergil declares that he will dismiss hackneyed themes:
cetera, quae vacuas tenuissent carmine mentes, omnia iam vulgata. (G. 3.3-4)
Other things that have preoccupied empty minds are now all commonplace.
He then lists some of those themes, which include the labors (Eurysthea) and loves (Hylas) of Herakles, as well as the birth of Apollo and Artemis, and Pelops’ courtship of Hippodame.35
quis aut Eurysthea durum
aut inlaudati nescit Busiridis aras?
cui non dictus Hylas puer et Latonia Delos
Hippodameque umeroque Pelops insignis eburno,
acer equis? (G. 3.4-8)
Who does not know about harsh Eurystheus or the unsung altars of Busiris? Who has not been told of the young Hylas and Leto’s Delos and Hippodame and Pelops, conspicuous with his ivory shoulder, a skillful charioteer?
Whether these lines constitute a recusatio (Wimmel) or an “anti-recusa-tio” (Thomas), and whether they be Pindaric or Callimachean (fr. 44 Pf.), what is of interest for the purposes of this discussion is Vergil’s curious allusion here, at the outset of the book concerned with cattle and horses, to Herakles, an allusion, moreover, set in the context of the only labor that associates Herakles with Egypt, namely the killing of Busiris (inlaudati … Busiridis aras, G. 3.5).36 Busiris is the name of an apparently fictitious Egyptian king who killed strangers, and was killed by Herakles. It is also the name of the site of Osiris’ tomb.37 Extant fragments suggest that “a ritual human sacrifice [was once practiced] at the tomb of Osiris, which in later times, when sacrifice was abandoned, was transformed into a legend of Busiris as a murderous king.”38
Herakles, although he had no cult of his own, was among the more prominent of Eleusinian initiates; it was for his benefit that the Lesser Mysteries were instituted so that he could be initiated from Hades.39 We know from Aeneid 8 that, for Vergil, Herakles’ affiliation with cattle (which he leads back from the land of the dead) is a prominent feature of his myth. We also know from Herodotus about Herakles’ strong ties with Egypt; there is additionally recurring discussion in Cicero’s treatise on the nature of the gods about “Egyptian Herakles.”40 It would appear to be more significant than is generally recognized, therefore, that of all the Herculean labores to which Vergil might here have alluded, he should choose the one set in Egypt. His emphatic denial, moreover, that he will write about Herakles serves to draw his audience’s attention toward the myth, rather than away from it. Herakles, as will be seen, will surface again at the close of this book.
Cattle are prominent in the myth of Herakles at Rome, as depicted in Aeneid 8 and in other Augustan authors,41 and in the myths of Io and in the Isiac cult (the sacred Apis-bull was supposed to be the reincarnation of the Egyptian god Ptah as well as of Osiris). The prominence of cattle in Herakles’ myth should be considered in any analysis of the violent deaths of cattle at the close of books 3 and 4 of the Georgics, not to mention the close of book 2, where Vergil cites Aratus’ version of the myth of the ages, wherein the irreverent race of bronze was the first to consume the plowing ox, the helpmate of Justice.42
The third book ends with the tragic death of the plowing ox, a victim of a violent plague; the plowman frees the surviving ox, and both mourn the death of a “brother” (fraternamorte, G. 3.518). At the close of this episode, Vergil reports the death of an unnamed person who attempted to wear the polluted skin of the animal that had died of the plague, polluted as it was by a sacer ignis. David Ross has suggested that the forces at work in this plague culminate in fire as a basic elemental force,43 but the term sacer ignis and its application in the last line of the third book also suggests the violent death of Herakles after he, like the unnamed victim here, donned the polluted cloak sent to him by his jealous wife.
In Ovid’s description of this episode,44 there are really two kinds of fire involved in Herakles’ death: the pestilential fire of Nessus’ poisonous blood, which had been polluted by Herakles’ own arrow, tainted previously by the Hydra’s blood; and the purifying fire of Herakles’ funeral pyre, which consumed only that part of him which was mortal, allowing the divine portion to assume its rightful place among the gods. The notion that the mortal part could be burned away, with immortality remaining, recalls attempts by both Demeter and Isis, when they served as nursemaids to the kings of Eleusis and Byblos, respectively, to burn away the mortality of the royal infants committed to their care.
Finally, the Bougonia at the end of book 4, which begins with the violent death of cattle and the disfigurement of their corpses, and culminates in the miracle of new life, is strikingly similar to the death of Osiris, his mangled corpse, and his eventual restoration as ruler of the dead and giver of the means of sustaining life. And of course, this method of acquiring a new hive of bees, Vergil tells us, is Egyptian:
nam qua Pellaei gens fortunata Canopi
accolit effuso stagnantem flumine Nilum
et circum pictis vehitur sua rura phaselis,
quaque pharetratae vicinia Persidis urget,
et diversa ruens septem discurrit in ora
usque coloratis amnis devexus ab Indis,
et viridem Aegyptum nigra fecundat harena,
omnis in hac certam regio iacit arte salutem. (G. 4.287-294)
For where the blessed race of Macedonian Canopus dwells beside the overflowing banks of the Nile and sails about the countryside in painted skiffs, and where the nearness of the Persian archer restrains it, and the river
rushes on, dispersed to seven different mouths, as it flows from the colorful Indians and its black sand causes the Egyptian land to flourish— All this region relies on this method [of generating bees].
The Georgics, which were completed very soon after Actium, retain a number of value-free, or even laudatory, Egyptian and possibly Isiac elements, in contrast to the Aeneid, in which all references to things Egyptian are clearly cast in a negative light. The ill repute of Isis and Osiris was of course clearly established by the time Vergil was engaged in composing the epic—Octavian’s negative bias is most clearly represented in Aeneid 8, where the defeat at Actium of Cleopatra and her Egyptian gods is vividly depicted on Aeneas’ shield. There Augustus and Agrippa lead their forces against those of the east, which are led by Antony and his (nefas!) Aegyptia coniunx (Aen. 8.688). Cleopatra waves her sistrum as she rallies her followers and animal-visaged gods (omnigenum … deum monstra et latrator Anubis, Aen. 8.698), who are driven into terrified retreat by the great gods of Greece and Rome:
regina in mediis patrio vocat agmina sistro,
necdum etiam geminos a tergo respicit anguis.
omnigenumque deum monstra et latrator Anubis
contra Neptunum et Venerem contraque Minervam tela tenent. (Aen. 8.696-700)
In their midst, the queen summons back her forces with her native sistrum, and does not yet see the twin serpents behind her. Every kind of monstrous deity and the dog Anubis raise their weapons against Neptune and Venus and Minerva.
In line 704, “Actian” Apollo decisively defeats the forces of the east:
Actius haec cernens arcum intendebat Apollo
desuper; omnis eo terrore Aegyptus et Indi,
omnis Arabs, omnes vertebant terga Sabaei. (Aen. 8.704-706)
Actian Apollo, gazing at these things from above, directs his bow; the whole of Egypt and India, all of Arabia, all the Sabaeans turn away in dread.
Finally, the great river Nile, in mourning (maerentem), summons back his branches in defeat:
contra autem magno maerentem corpore Nilum
pandentemque sinus et tota veste vocantem
caeruleum in gremium latebrosaque flumina victos. (Aen. 8.711-713)
And on the other side, the river Nile with its great girth, in mourning, spreads its billows and summons to its cerulean bosom and shaded streams the defeated [Egyptians].
A final reference to Apolline victory over Egypt occurs in book 12 of the Aeneid, when two otherwise unknown combatants convey, by their very names, Augustus’ elevation of Apollo and rejection of the gods of the Nile: in 12.458, the Trojan warrior Thymbraeus kills a Latin warrior named Osiris:
ferit ense gravem Thymbraeus Osirim.
Thymbraeus strikes Osiris down with his sword.
The epithet “Thymbraeus” appears two other times in Vergil, each time clearly referring to Apollo: in Aeneid 3.85, when Anchises prays to Apollo at Delos, the god is addressed as Thymbraee; and in Georgics 4.323, Aristaeus questions whether his father truly is Thymbraeus Apollo. Vergil’s decision to name the Latin warrior “Osiris” is thus particularly significant, for this is the only time in all of Vergil’s works that he employs the name of this powerful Egyptian deity, and thus this combat scene symbolizes the ultimate victory of the forces of Apollo over the Egyptian foe.
The Georgics, by contrast, contain a number of elements suggestive of the mystery religions, and not necessarily in a negative context. Vergil’s reference in 4.287 to Egyptians as a gens fortunata places them on a par with Vergil’s idealized Roman farmer in 2.458-459, whom he addresses as o fortunatos nimium … agricolas! (cf. Aen. 11.252). Fortunatus is frequently used to translate ὄλβιος,, the adjective regularly applied to Eleusinian initiates45 which would include Augustus. By contrast, it would be very surprising to find the adjective being applied to the Egyptian race in the Aeneid.
While Hellenistic syncretism, which is certainly evident in Vergil’s works, can account for some of the blurred lines between the different cult figures, it seems that Vergil is relatively consistent in favoring allusion to the Greek rather than non-Greek versions of the myths and symbols associated with the mysteries. On the other hand, his allusion to Herakles’ Egyptian labor rather than to one of the more “Greek” labors suggests that, if Vergil did attempt to remove other Egyptian allusions after Gallus’ fall, some of them were too integral to his poem’s central topic to be excluded. Servius indicates that Vergil changed the end of the poem to eliminate the laudes Galli in the fourth book. The Egyptian elements that remain suggest that, at this stage of Vergil’s thinking, Egypt and its gods, despite a recent fall from grace, still embodied for Vergil the nurturing qualities that were so important to their long survival.
The Agnone Tablet46 sheds interesting light on the selection of deities in the opening invocation of Vergil’s Georgics. First published in 1848, the Agnone Tablet is a bronze tablet measuring 6½ inches by 11 inches. It is inscribed in Oscan on both sides; the letters are clearly and deeply incised, and the tablet is provided with a carrying handle. The tablet was found between Capracotta and Agnone in the territory of the Caraceni, an area at that time still called Uorte, which appears to be derived from hortus, the Latin word for “garden” or “sacred grove.” (The Oscan word húrz, which appears in the first line of side A and in the last line of side B, is also believed to be the equivalent of hortus.) The generally accepted date of the tablet is 250 BCE. It is dedicated to the Italic goddess Kerrí, who at some point merges with Roman Ceres.
Other deities are named on the tablet, including Veskeí, thought to be the divinity of the revolving year, and Euklus, who appears again in the last line (25) of side A as Euklus Pater. Salmon (1967: 157) identified Euklus as chthonic Mercury (Hermes), the psychopompos or guide of souls. Spaeth identifies him as Liber Pater, which would make a nice parallel to Ceres; in fact, that entire line, evklúí. statíf. kerrí. statíf., would then suggest Liber and Ceres, the same pair we find in Varro and in Vergil (cf. G. 1.7). With the epithet Pater, we are also reminded of Vergil’s Pater Lenaeae (G. 2.7), an address to Bacchus in his overview of the pressing of the wine grapes. Prosdocimi, however, identifies Euklus as Hades, whose presence here would also make sense, especially in the context of Ceres and Proserpina, since Hades abducts Proserpina to be his spouse in the underworld.
futrei.kerríiaí. in the following line is widely accepted as a reference to Proserpina, “the daughter of Ceres,” with the result that Ceres, her son-in-law Hades, and her daughter Proserpina follow in succession. It also raises questions about the relationship between Liber/Dionysus and Hades — is there a connection? Certainly Dionysus is associated with the underworld — like Proserpina and Attis, he is often listed among the “dying gods,” a notion that Frazer applied perhaps too widely, but that, as Burkert (1987: 99) acknowledges, still applies to these figures.
Lines 5 and 6 appear to refer to human fertility: anter. stataí. is thought to mean something like Interstita, “Midwife,” and ammaí. Kerríiaí, sounding vaguely like “mama” (compare mamma in Greek or Latin to signify “breast”), may signify breastfeeding or a wet-nurse. Recall Vergil’s epithet for Ceres, Alma, “nourishing Ceres.” Salmon suggests that Inter-stita (Oscan anter-stataí ) may be “the midwife who stands ‘between’ when delivering the offspring, whereas (in Latin) she stands ‘opposite,’ whence [she is called] obstetrix” (1967: 159 n. 4).
Maatúís kerríiúís (10) refers to the deity ensuring a supply of dew (more of this later) to the crops. In line 15, deívaí. genetaí is understood to mean something like the Latin genetrix, “mother,” here possibly referring to Ceres as the wife of Jupiter. Perna Keriaii may be the goddess of happy childbirth, although Altheim (1931: 92-108) associates her with Anna Perenna, the goddess of the returning year.
Another common epithet for Ceres has been identified in líganakdíkeí. entraí (line 8), interpreted as Chthonic Ceres.47 The word entraí (Latin Intera) is equated with the Greek ἐνέρτερα,, having to do with the underworld. The word líganakdíkeí. has been widely accepted (Vetter 1953: 106; Le Bonniec 1958: 42) as the equivalent of the Latin legifera, or the Greek θεσμοφόρος,, “bringer of law,” a common epithet of this goddess. In book 4 of the Aeneid (cf. Servius ad Aen. 4.58), when Dido is offering a sacrifice to win the love of Aeneas, she makes a particular offering to Cereri legiferae. Servius there explains the epithet as indicating that Ceres favors weddings, since she was the first to marry Jupiter, and she is in charge of the founding of cities, the first step of which was to mark their boundaries with the furrow of the plow.48
The next group, diumpaís. Kerríiaís. (7), anafríss. kerríiúís (9), maatúís. kerríiúís (10), diúveí. verehasiúí (11), and diúveí. regatúreí (12), are associated with moisture for the crops. In Varro, diumpaís. kerríiaís appear as Lympha, “moisture.” But Lympha is also interpreted as Nymphae, in the sense of water nymphs. Prosdocimi (1996: 531) here refers to a “pangreek” or Orphic cult of the Nymphs; mention of the Nymphs again recalls both Proserpina, who is abducted while gathering flowers with the Nymphs, and Eurydice, whom the Nymphs mourn so bitterly at the end of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.
In line 9, anafríss. kerríiúís is identified as rain (Imbres), and in line 10, maatúís. kerríiúís, as mentioned earlier, may be dew for the crops. diúveí.verehasiúí and diúveí.regatureí are two aspects of Jupiter, which Salmon (1967: 158) interprets as Jupiter Juventus, bringer of dew to the crops, and as Jupiter Rigator, “Jupiter the irrigator.” Vergil does not refer to water deities in the context of their bringing moisture to the crops, but they are included as Achelous (1.9, the river water that Liber mixed with the grape), Neptune (1.14), and Ocean and Tethys, etc. (1.29-31).
hereklúí. kerríiúí (13) is widely accepted as a reference to Herakles, who is associated with the lesser Eleusinian mysteries, which were said to have been established in his behalf so that he could become initiated from the underworld. Servius has drawn attention to the fact that Vergil’s reference to the river Achelous (G. 1.9) refers to river water in a general sense, but also alludes to the battle between Herakles and the river god Achelous, who lost one of his horns in their wrestling match. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the broken horn becomes the original cornucopia, but in Vergil, the “Acheloan cups” refer to wine-drinking vessels. Thus Vergil’s proem shares yet one more detail with the Agnone Tablet,49
In line 14, patanaí. piístíaí. seems to suggest something like the deity who opens the grain hull, making it easier to separate the grain from its husks. In Vergil’s invocation of Augustus Caesar (25ff.), he suggests the various realms where the future god may choose to rule: over the sea (29ff.), or perhaps (32ff.) he will become a new constellation in the heavens, “where a place is opening (panditur) between the constellation Virgo and the pursuing claws of Scorpio, who even now is drawing in his arms to make room for you.” Vergil incorporates the idea of “opening”—in this case, the sky — to facilitate Augustus’ pending apotheosis, just as the deity Patana on the Agnone Tablet opens the hulls to facilitate access to the grain. The opposite motion of Scorpio, who is closing his claws to make room in the heavens for Augustus, contrasts nicely with the opening of the heavens (or the husks). The reference to the constellation Virgo here not only anticipates Vergil’s later allusion in the Georgics to Aratus’ account of the end of the Golden Age, wherein Virgo, also known as Justice (IustitiajDikejAstraea), holds a grain of wheat in her hand, because, in Aratus’ account of the myth of the Ages, it was Justice/Dike (instead of Chronos, as in Hesiod, or Saturnus, as in Ennius) who ruled over an agriculturally based Golden Age; as the races declined, she retreated from mortal company and finally retreated to the heavens, leaving the last traces (vestigia, “footprints”) of Justice on earth among farmers:
o fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint,
agricolas, quibus ipsa procul discordibus armis
fundit humo facilem victum iustissima tellus!
… extrema per illos
Iustitia excedens terris vestigia fecit. (G. 2.458-460, 473-474)
O blessed farmers, if only they knew their blessings!
For them, far from discordant weapons,
most just Earth (Tellus) herself pours forth an easy living….
When she retreated from the earth, Justice left her last traces among them. Fortunatus, the Latin equivalent of the Greek word ὄλβιος,, describes the blessings of initiates into the mysteries of Eleusis:
Happy (ὄλβιος)) is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries; but he who is uninitiated and who has no part in them, never has lot of like good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom. (Hymn Dem. 480-482)
Lines 16ff. of side A include what appears to be a ritual sequence. It seems to say something about the site being sanctified by an ara ignaria or “altar of fire” (aasaí. purasiaí), with further instructions for the ritual, including rites being offered near the garden for the Floralia (fiuusasiaís az.húrtúm. sákaráter). Sákaráter is in the subjunctive mood, and is equivalent to sanciatur or sacrificetur, “Let it be sanctified.” Flora also appears in Varro’s list, and perhaps should be considered in the Persephone sequence, since she is picking flowers with the Nymphs at the time of her abduction. Side A concludes with Pater Euklus, as I have mentioned, whom Prosdocimi interprets as Hades.
Side B begins with a statement that “these altars are [now] standing” (line 1), followed by the names of the deities for whom the altars now stand, and concluding with a similar reference to the sanctification of the ara ignaria (aasai. purasiai. saahtum, ll. 19-20), which now stand in place, as an annual ritual (alttrei putereipid. akenei, ll. 21-23). Although it is reasonable to assume that a great many rites had to be performed annually, the provision that these rites must be performed annually recalls Herodotus’ account of the episode during the Persian War, in 480 BCE: The Athenians believed their crops would fail if they did not perform the Eleusinian rites annually, but at the time when they had to be performed, the Athenians were on the island Salamis, driven out of Athens by Xerxes and his Persian forces. According to Herodotus (8.65), when the time came for the rites to be performed, the Athenians saw from the island of Salamis that a ghostly procession was making its way from Athens to Eleusis—thus the gods came to their aid and performed the rites for them.
The final line of side B proclaims: húrz. dekmanniúís staít: “The garden stands on account of (per [It.]) the Dekumanii.” The Dekumanii apparently refer to Samnites or Samnite-Roman colonists.
Thus the tablet appears to specify the deities who are to be worshiped on side A, and the establishment of their altars on side B. The pattern of repetition of statif suggests a hymn or prayer, a function similar to that of Vergil’s invocation.
The Agnone Tablet lists not only aspects of Ceres concerning human and agricultural fertility, but also references to death and the underworld, with particular reference to Persephone and Hades. This is also true of Vergil’s proem to the Georgics. The last of the options offered to Caesar is that he may choose to rule over the underworld (136ff.): “Whatever you will be — for Tartarus does not expect you as its king—let not so dire a longing to govern come to you, even though Greece admires Elysian Fields, and Proserpina, when summoned, refused to follow her mother.” Vergil’s statement that Proserpina refused to return to the world above when summoned is contrary to the received tradition, as I have shown elsewhere,50 comparing Vergil’s placement and treatment of both Proserpina here, and Eurydice at the end of the fourth Georgic. Both Proserpina and Eurydice are relegated to the underworld even though, prior to Vergil’s account of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, tradition suggests that Orpheus did succeed in bringing Eurydice back from the dead. Vergil’s version, of course, once written, became the locus classicus, and thus the alternate versions tended to be forgotten. The word dives, “wealth,” was said to come from Dis (Hades), since the wealth that comes from crops is sent up from below the soil, that is, the underworld. When Orpheus laments the death of Eurydice, he complains of raptam Eurydicen atque inrita Ditis j dona — “Stolen Eurydice and the gifts of Dis given in vain” (G. 4.519-520). The crops nourished by Ceres are also dona Ditis, and Proserpina herself was known as dona Ditis. They are all part of the cycle of birth, death, and regeneration.
Thus both side A of the Agnone Tablet and Vergil’s proem open and close with members of the triad consisting of Ceres, Persephone, and Liber or Hades, figures associated with agricultural and human fertility as well as with death and regeneration. The parallel indicates not only Vergil’s familiarity with Hellenistic traditions, as some commentators will maintain, but also his deep awareness of the rituals of the Italic goddess of grain.
1. E.g., Wilkinson 1969: 121ff.; Bailey 1935; Boyancé 1963; Conington and Nettleship [1898] 1963; Farrell 1991; Mynors 1990; Putnam 1979; Thomas 1988.
2. Walter Burkert (1987) also includes the Mithraic cult, which is not significant in Vergil’s time, if indeed the cult did exist at that time, although the later association of Mithras with Apollo, who is of course very important in the early Empire, is interesting to note.
3. Graillot 1912: 115; Bailey 1935: 177; Zanker 1990: 17; Wilhelm 1988: 77ff.
4. Zanker 1990: 109.
5. Cf. Henrichs 1993: 13-43.
6. The early linkage of Liber and Ceres, as well as Proserpina and Herakles, is dramatically illustrated on the Tabula Agnone, a bronze tablet dated to 250 BCE. For details, see Appendix A.
7. Thomas 1988, 1: ad 2.380-383, p. 226.
8. Henrichs 1993: 22.
9. Cf. ibid.: 31 n. 45. Henrichs observes that Detienne associates Dionysus’ “beneficial presence with Athens and his destructive visitations with the Argolid, Boeotia and Thrace,” whereas Henrichs believes “this particular polarity has more to do with the different articulations of Dionysus in myth and cult.”
10. Burton 1972: 98.
11. Dio Cass. 51.4.1; cf. Clinton 1989.
12. Cf. Callim. Hymn 6.21.
13. Cf. Farrell 1991: 76: “[Vergil’s] farmer is not only general, but priest presiding with sacred implements over rites founded by Celeus, Iacchus, and the goddess of Eleusis.”
14. Johnston 1977.
15. Bayet 1951: 9-11; cf. Le Bonniec 1958: 134ff.; Wilkinson 1969: 149.
16. Clinton, (1986: 43-49) argues that the author of the mysteries may have been an initiate, but does not reflect the cult myth; cf. Clinton 1992: 35. (Note that Clinton distinguishes between Plouton and Hades.)
17. Cf. Cic. N.D. 2.66.
18. Johnston 1977: 161-172.
19. Griffiths 1970: 42-43.
20. Cf. Hdt. 2.59, 61; Plut. Is. Os. 356.
21. Griffiths (1970: 54) observes that the swallows seem to be Astarte’s, even though they may also have Egyptian antecedents.
22. “The boucranion was originally the head-dress of Hathor, but with the frequent identification of the two goddesses, it was commonly worn by Isis, too. One result was the identification of Isis and Io, whom Zeus was said to have changed into a cow” (Griffiths 1970: 351 ad 358b19).
23. Cf. Forbes Irving 1990: 211-216; and Seaford 1980: 23-29.
24. Thomas 1988, 2:69.
25. Hesiod frr. 124-126, 294-296; Merkelbach and West 1970; Austin (1977: 31) notes that the epithet, as a reference to Cumae’s Chalcidian founders, is anachronistic.
26. Thomas 1988, 2:235.
27. Forbes Irving 1990: 215.
28. Mylonas 1961: 15-16.
29. Griffiths 1970: 54.
30. Proteus is called A Αἰγύπτιος in Homer, and is said to live on the island of Pharos. In Herodotus (2.112), he is a mortal king living in Memphis. In Euripides’ Helen, he is king of Pharos; cf. Burton 1972: 182-183; Thomas 1988, 2:217-218.
31. Thomas 1988, 2:233.
32. Cf. Ovid Met 6.669-670; Verg. Ecl. 6.78-81.
33. Thomas 1988, 2:235.
34. Plutarch records (Is. Os. 358e) that in some versions, Isis’ child, Horus, is, like Orpheus, dismembered. In some accounts Dionysus is a descendant of Io/Isis. Note that Diodorus Siculus (4.25.1) refers to Orpheus as a hierophant at Eleusis. Cf. Griffiths 1970: 441-442 ad Plut. Is. Os. 37.365B.
35. Thomas (1988, 2:37-39, ad G. 3.3-8) believes these are allusions to Callimachean versions; Mynors observes (1990: 179) that, Hellenistic or not, the connection between these tales and Georgics 3 is Pelops’ expertise with horses, and that Herakles was “an expert cleaner-out of cow-byres.”
36. Burton 1972: 103.
37. Diod. Sic. 1.85.5; Plut. Is. Os. 20. Diodorus Siculus (1.88.5) claims that Busiris is Egyptian for τοῦ Οσίριδος τάφους,, which is in fact correct (Burton 1972: 14-15).
38. Burton 1972: 15; Hdt. 2.59: “Second in importance [to Bubastis] is the assembly at Busiris — a city in the middle of the Delta, containing a vast temple dedicated to Isis, the Egyptian equivalent of Demeter, in whose honor the meeting is held.” Hdt. 2.61: “I have already mentioned the festival of Isis at Busiris.” Diod. Sic. 1.85: “Some explain the origin of the honor accorded this bull in this way, saying that at the death of Osiris his soul passed into this animal, and therefore up to this day has always passed into its successors at the time of the manifestation of Osiris; but some say that when Osiris died at the hands of Typhon, Isis collected the members of his body and put them in an ox (bous), made of wood covered over with fine linen, and because of this the city was called Bousiris.”
39. Mylonas 1961: 240: “The Lesser Mysteries were instituted for the benefit of Herakles when he wanted to be initiated … from the Lesser Hades.”
40. E.g., Cic. N.D. 3.42ff.
41. Cf. Ovid Fasti 1.551; Propertius 4.10; Livy 1.7; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.9.
42. Cf. Aratus Phaen. 2.536-537; Johnston 1980: 25-28.
43. Ross 1987: 177-183.
44. Ovid Met. 9.176-178, 181-185; cf. Sen. De benef. 4.8.
45. Cf. Hymn Dem. 480-482: “Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries; but he who is uninitiated and who has no part in them, never has lot of like good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom”; Soph. fr. 541 (Nauck); Pindar fr. 121 (Bowra); etc.
46. Prosdocimi 1996: 435-630.
47. Note that in Aen. 6.138, Proserpina is referred to as Juno Inferna. Zuntz, in his book Persephone (1971: 399-400, not referring to this tablet), takes strong exception to the notion that “Demeter Chthonios” associates her with the underworld; he maintains that it merely associates the goddess with the soil over which she rules.
48. Cf. Spaeth 1996: 53.
49. Jean Bayet (Les Origines de l’Hercule romain [Paris, 1926], 121; cf. Salmon 1967: 160 n. 6) suggested that at Agnone, Hercules is Héraclès fécondant—a fertilizing force.
50. Johnston 1977.