literary · Roman

Prayer to Ceres

Liber and gentle Ceres, if by your gifts the earth once changed, exchanging Chaonian acorns for rich heads of grain, and receiving your invention of wine from Acheloian cups, and you Fauns, your divine presence an aid for rustics, bring dancing feet, as when Dryad girls frolic with Fauns, of your gifts I sing.

Commentarius · Commentary

The opening of the Georgics: Virgil lists the gods he is addressing, and Liber and Ceres head the list.

The address is built on a condition: "if by your gift the earth exchanged the Chaonian acorn for the rich ear of corn". The Chaonian acorn is the Dodonan one, from the sacred oak grove; what is meant, therefore, is humanity's passage from acorns to bread, from gathering to agriculture. The gods are thanked not for this year's harvest but for the existence of farming as such.

After them will come the Fauns and dryads, then Neptune, Aristaeus, Pan, Minerva, Triptolemus, Silvanus — and at the end Octavian, who is promised a place among the gods.

The list opens with the one who gave bread and closes with the one who governs. The Georgics are so arranged that a single enumeration reaches from the acorn to the princeps.

Fons · Source

AuthorVirgil

WorkGeorgics

Section1.7-12

PeriodAugustan

Classificatio · Taxonomy

CultureRoman

Formliterary

DeitiesCeres, Bacchus, the Fauns

FunctionsInvocation · Praise

SphereAgricultural · Arts & Poetry