Liber et Alma Ceres" in Vergil "Georgics" 1. 7

T was manifestly appropriate for Vergil at start of his agricultural poem to name deities of wine and corn first in an invocation which proceeds to address other divine agents before it closes with Octavian. But why has he called Liber and Ceres most brilliant luminaries of firmament and celestial leaders of gliding year? According to Servius Danielis, lumina was an afterthought, whereby poet ensured that his original numina should not be repeated four lines later;' but this story may be suspected as an ingenuous fabrication and dismissed as a patent failure in its design to explain away novel astronomy. Obviously, substitution of numina for lumina does nothing to relieve Liber and Ceres of unwonted responsibility which Vergil so definitely assigned to them in heavens; for annum connotes zodiac, which is, in Thomas Campbell's phrase, the starry girdle of year,2 and labentem suggests gradual progression through it of sun in his annual course. Most editors have followed Apuleius in interpreting vss. 5 and 6 separately from vs. 7 and in understanding clarissima mundi lumina to be sun and moon.3 Consequently, they place a semicolon after vs. 6; but this punctuation, in denying Liber and Ceres their astral promotion, also deprives them of primacy which is rightfully theirs in exordium to Georgics.4 Worse still, uncouth asyndeton abruptly checks initial flow of one of most melodious passages in Vergil. On other hand, a few editions have maintained natural and euphonious apposition of lumina to Liber et alma Ceres by means of a comma after annum;6 but hitherto this interpretation has also involved traditional belief that clarissima mundi lumina are sun and moon. In order to find some justification for thus equating Liber and Ceres with two major luminaries of heaven, it is customary for modern to appeal to ancient commentators. Servius took refuge in Stoic pantheism, whereby, as he supposed, sun could be Liber as well as Apollo and moon Ceres as well as Diana, Juno, or Proserpina.6 Macrobius wrote a chapter full of far-fetched learning from Orphic and other sources to show that

Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Philosophy

• Augustus and Capricorn

  Open Access•Tamsyn Barton•The Journal of Roman Studies•1995

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