The Eclogues , Georgics , and Aeneid abound with plants, yet much Vergilian criticism underestimates their significance beyond attractive background detail or the occasional symbolic set-piece. This volume joins the growing field of nature-centred studies of literature, looking head-on at Vergil's plants and trees to reveal how fundamental they are to an understanding of the poet's outlook on religion, culture, and mankind's place within the world.
Divided into two parts, the first explores the religious and more diffusely numinous aspects of Vergil's plants, from awe-inspiring sacred groves to divinely promoted fields of corn, and shows how both cultivated and uncultivated plants fit within and help to shape the complex landscape of Vergilian (and, more broadly, Roman) religious thought. In the second half of the book, the focus shifts towards human interactions with plants from the perspectives of both cultivation and relaxation, exploring the love-hate relationship with vegetation which sometimes supports and sometimes contests the human self-image as the world's dominant species. Combining a series of close readings of a wide range of passages with the identification of broader patterns of association, Vergil's Green Thoughts appositely reveals and celebrates the complexity and variety of Vergilian flora.

motw/Vergil's Green Thoughts_ Plants - Rebecca Armstrong.pdf

Armstrong, Rebecca

IRL Press at Oxford University Press

Oxford Institute for Energy Studies

German Historical Institute London

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

First edition, Oxford, 2019

1st edition, Oxford, 2019

producers:
Acrobat Distiller 10.0.0 (Windows)

Memory of the World Librarian: outernationale

Cover 1
Vergil’s Green Thoughts: Plants, Humans, and the Divine 4
Copyright 5
Preface 6
Contents 8
Introduction 12
0.1. ANCIENT BOTANY AND WAYS OF SEEING PLANTS 13
0.1.1. Definitions of Nature 17
0.2. HUMANS AND PLANTS: FROM ANTHROPOCENTRISM TO ECOCRITICISM 19
0.2.1. Plants and an Anthropocentric Worldview 19
0.2.2. Ancient Environmentalism? 24
0.2.3. Ecocriticism and Ancient Literature 26
0.3. GODS AND PLANTS 29
0.3.1. Approaches to numen 29
0.3.2. Plants and Everyday Religion 32
0.3.3. Forms of Association: Nymphs and Trees 36
0.4. PLANTS AS SYMBOL AND METAPHOR 41
0.4.1. Plants, People, and Analogy 42
0.4.2. Plants and Politics 46
0.5. POETIC PLANTS 49
0.5.1. Poetic Plants Before and Beside Vergil 49
0.5.2. Plants and Poetics in Vergil (a glimpse of a road not much taken) 52
Part I: Numen 62
1: Numinous Habitats 64
1.1. FORESTS AND WOODLAND AREAS (SILVA, SALTUS, NEMUS, LUCUS) 64
1.1.1. Backgrounds 64
1.1.2. Habitarunt di quoque siluas: Gods and Woods in the Eclogues 70
1.1.3. Present and Absent numen in the Woods of the Georgics 73
1.1.4. Religio dira loci: the Aeneid’s Woodland numen 81
1.1.4.1. Underworld Woods: numen and Confusion 81
1.1.4.2. Echoes of the Underworld: Aeaea, Tiber, Albunea, Amsanctus 90
1.1.4.3. Woodland numen and the City 96
1.2. NUMEN AND PLANTS IN CULTIVATED LAND: FIELDS, MEADOWS, PLANTATIONS, AND GARDENS (AGER, ARVUS, CAMPUS, NOVALE/-IS, PRATUM, RUS, SEGES, ARBUSTA, HORTUS) 103
1.2.1. Expected and Unexpected Agricultural Divinity in the Eclogues and Aeneid 106
1.2.2. Ceres, Bacchus, Corn, and Vines in the Georgics 109
1.2.3. Plants and Divine Metonymy 118
2: Gods’ Special Species 126
2.1. OAK (AESCULUS, QUERCUS, ROBUR, AND ILEX) 126
2.1.1. The Oak Transformed: Votive Tree and Trophy 139
2.2. POPLAR (POPULUS) 142
2.3. PINE (PINUS, PICEA) 145
2.4. OLIVE AND WILD OLIVE (OLIVA, OLEASTER) 152
2.5. LAUREL/BAY (LAURUS) 157
2.6. MYRTLE (MYRTUS) 163
2.7. CYPRESS (CUPRESSUS, CYPARISSUS) 166
2.8. IVY (HEDERA) 168
2.9. THE BORDERLINE DIVINE: MAGICAL AND MEDICINAL PLANTS 170
Part II: Homo 182
3: Tame Plants 184
3.1. SYMBIOSIS 185
3.1.1. Harmonious Work in the Eclogues 188
3.1.2. The locus amoenus and Other Harmonious Habitats 192
3.1.3. Grain and Other Field Crops: Shared Endeavour and Shared Suffering 199
3.1.4. Useful Trees 207
3.1.4.1. Useful Trees and the Exotic 214
3.1.5. Productivity at a Price: the Vine 218
3.2. CONFLICT 221
3.2.1. Too Much of a Good Thing? Farming as Restraint of Nature 221
3.2.2. Farming as Violence 224
3.2.2.1. Vines and Violence 227
3.2.2.2. Grafting: Art or Abuse? 231
3.2.2.3. Cultivation and Violence: Metaphor in Reverse 240
4: Wild Plants 244
4.1. DEFINING THE WILD 244
4.1.1. Flowers: Wild yet Tame, Tame yet Wild 251
4.1.1.1. Flowers and Bees 253
4.1.1.2. Flowers and People: Beauty, Sex, and Death 258
4.1.2. Wildness and Spontaneous Production in Trees 263
4.1.3. Degeneration and Degeneracy 271
4.2. WEEDS 274
4.2.1. Weeds and Further Questions of Definition 274
4.2.2. Characterizing Weeds 276
4.2.3. Intermediate Weeds 286
4.2.4. Crossing (and Making) Boundaries with Brambles 289
4.2.5. Grass: From Harmony to Danger 296
4.3. FIGHTING AND FELLING: A CODA 299
Conclusions 304
Works Cited 310
Index of Plants Discussed 330
Index of Passages Discussed 333
General Index 338

The Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid abound with plants, yet much Vergilian criticism underestimates their significance beyond attractive background detail or the occasional symbolic set-piece. This volume joins the growing field of nature-centred studies of literature, looking head-on at Vergil's plants and trees to reveal how fundamental they are to an understanding of the poet's outlook on religion, culture, and mankind's place within the world. 0Divided into two parts, the first explores the religious and more diffusely numinous aspects of Vergil's plants, from awe-inspiring sacred groves to divinely promoted fields of corn, and shows how both cultivated and uncultivated plants fit within and help to shape the complex landscape of Vergilian (and, more broadly, Roman) religious thought. In the second half of the book, the focus shifts towards human interactions with plants from the perspectives of both cultivation and relaxation, exploring the love-hate relationship with vegetation which sometimes supports and sometimes contests the human self-image as the world's dominant species. Combining a series of close readings of a wide range of passages with the identification of broader patterns of association, Vergil's Green Thoughts appositely reveals and celebrates the complexity and variety of Vergilian flora

Vergil's poetry abounds with plant-life, yet much criticism underestimates its significance beyond attractive background detail or the occasional symbolic set-piece. This in-depth study reveals how Vergil used plants to reflect both on ancient religious attitudes to the natural world and on ideas of the human role as cultivator and controller.

2025-10-27