Durando saecula uincit: Time of Plants and Time of Men in Virgil's Oeuvre

Virgil shows a particular fondness for ancient trees and forests throughout his entire oeuvre. In this paper, I would like to highlight some philosophical implications of the relationship between ‘arboreal time’ and ‘human time’ as represented in his poetry, a topic that deserves further investigation in the context of more recent ecocritical approaches.

I will take as my starting point a passage from the Georgics (2.291-7) that offers a description of the aesculus, a type of oak tree. Virgil depicts a tree of immense size, strength and endurance, stretching immensely in space and – what interests us most – in time. Through a thick web of allusions to Homer, Hesiod and Lucretius, the tree is presented as a prodigious entity, at once titanic and divine, capable of overcoming many generations of men (multosque nepotes, / multa uirum uoluens durando saecula uincit) in a relentless struggle against time and the elements. The sharp contrast drawn between arboreal and human time appears to be calling into question the anthropocentric paradigm. This description is reworked in the simile between Aeneas and an ancient oak tree at Aen. 4.441-9. As recent scholarship has made clear, ancient trees in the Aeneid play very important roles, both in terms of cultu(r)al memory (ARMSTRONG 2019, MAGGIULLI 2015), metapoetics (HINDS 1998: 11-14 about the antiqua silua at Aen. 6.179-82) and genealogy (GOWERS 2o11). In this specific case, I would suggest, the reprise of the georgic aesculus in the Aeneid’s quercus acts as a symbol of both poetic filiation and temporal continuity between the two poems.

The epic connotations of the aesculus should not obscure, however, its practical, agricultural function, that of supporting vines, which in turn points to a further crucial theme, that of the forward-looking old farmer planting trees for future generations. This is a widespread motif in Latin literature, first attested in a fragment by Caecilius Statius (fr. 210 R.³ serit arbores, quae saeclo prosint alteri) and icastically epitomised by the Virgilian ‘carpent tua poma nepotes’ (ecl. 9.50), which enjoyed a long-lasting fortune in Western literature (e.g. GIONO 1954). Often dismissed as a mere topos (TOSI 2017: n° 1067), this theme deserves to be more thoroughly analysed in its ethical and philosophical dimension, taking into consideration the antiphrastic treatment given by Cicero (Tusc. 1.14.31 and Cato 24-25; cf. also Sen. ep. 86.14-15) and the epicurean Philodemus (De morte 4.117.36 Del.). Trees here represent a bridge between different human generations, thus symbolising their testament (BODEI 2014: 79-97), while arboreal time becomes a parameter against which to measure the commitment of one human generation to the following one. Introduced at the very beginning of Virgil’s oeuvre by a sarcastic Meliboeus (ecl. 1.73), then central to the model of provident farmer proposed by the Georgics, this theme resonates up to the Aeneid, when Aeneas- as-oak decides to commit himself to the future of Rome.