by Jessica Thorne
Faculty mentor: Dr. Joe Romero
9:00-9:50am HCC 329
One of the main parts of works by Virgil is the contemplation of the four main factors of human life and success, which are conditions surrounding your birth, your work, the work of nature, and divine intervention. The word for your work and skills in Latin is ars, artis, which gives us the word art. In the final book of his Georgics, Virgil compares bees and humans with an interesting twist to demonstrate his views on how the four factors of human life should
balance, as well as how much should be earned and how much should be given. Previous research has primarily focused on the fourth Georgic as a whole or his use of bees in all four of the Georgics. Not as many focus on Virgil, combining the two and adding in his feelings, especially regarding the concept of ars. In this paper, I mainly focused on reading the text of the fourth Georgic carefully, using it in combination with Roman history, values, and mythology to look at how Virgil believes that skills should be earned through hard work and to not take
anything for granted, especially in a time that has just become peaceful again after years of civil wars. This is significant because it shows that to Virgil, human success and ars are interconnected, and cannot function for humans, or bees, without each other.
