“Ye home-born deities, of mortal birth! Thou, father Romulus, and mother Earth, Goddess unmoved! whose guardian arms extend O’er Tuscan Tiber’s course, and Roman towers defend; With youthful Cæsar your joint powers engage, Nor hinder him to save the sinking age. O! let the blood already spilt atone For the past crimes of curst Laomedon! Heaven wants thee there; and long the gods, we know, Have grudged thee, Cæsar, to the world below; Where fraud and rapine right and wrong confound; Where impious arms from every part resound, And monstrous crimes in every shape are crowned. The peaceful peasant to the wars is prest; The fields lie fallow in inglorious rest; The plain no pasture to the flock affords, The crooked scythes are straightened into swords: And there Euphrates her soft offspring arms, And here the Rhine rebellows with alarms; The neighbouring cities range on several sides, Perfidious Mars long-plighted leagues divides, And o’er the wasted world in triumph rides. So four fierce coursers, starting to the race, Scour through the plain, and lengthen every pace: Nor reins, nor curbs, nor threat’ning cries they fear, But force along the trembling charioteer.” The Second Georgic treats of the orchard and the vineyard, but especially of the latter. The apple, the pear, the olive, all receive due notice from the poet; but upon the culture of the vine he dwells with a hearty enthusiasm, and his precepts have a more practical air than those which he gives out upon other branches of cultivation. The soil, the site, the best kinds to choose, the different modes of propagation, are all discussed with considerable minuteness. It would seem that in those earlier times, as now, the vintage had a more poetical aspect than even the harvest-field. The beauty of the crop, the merriment of the gatherers, the genial effects of the grape when it has gone through the usual process of conversion, gave, as is still the case in all wine-producing countries, a holiday character to the whole course of cultivation. All other important crops contribute in some way to supply the actual needs of life: the vine alone represents distinctly its enjoyments. And when, at the beginning of the book, the poet invokes the god of wine to inspire his song, he does it with a thorough heartiness of welcome which assures us that, however temperate his own habits might be, he had not adopted any vow of total abstinence. Some of the ancient critics are said to have detected in Homer a taste for joviality, because in his verse he had always a kindly word for “the dark red wine:” they might have said the same of the writer of the Georgics. It is a cordial invitation which he gives to the jolly god:--