Georgics 3.349-383
This Good Works Translation presents Virgil's northern winter passage from Georgics 3.349-383.
Virgil imagines the Scythian peoples, Maeotic water, the Hister, Rhodope, underground winter life, frozen rivers, and the Rhipaean wind as a single hard northern climate.
The English below is a new Good Works Translation from the Latin source text preserved in the local Sacred Texts mirror.
Text
Not so where the Scythian peoples live, and the Maeotic water, and the troubled Hister twisting its yellow sands, and where Rhodope stretches back beneath the middle pole. There they keep their herds shut in stalls; no grass appears on the plain and no leaves on the tree. The earth lies shapeless under heaps of snow and deep ice, rising everywhere seven cubits high. Always winter, always north-west winds breathing cold.
Then the sun never breaks apart the pale shadows, neither when he rides his horses up toward the high ether nor when he washes his plunging chariot in Ocean's red water. Sudden crusts harden on the running river, and the water now carries iron-bound wheels on its back: once a host to ships, now to broad wagons. Bronze vessels split everywhere, clothes stiffen while being worn, and they cut liquid wine with axes. Whole pools turn into solid ice, and the rough icicle hardens on tangled beards.
Meanwhile snow falls no less through all the air. The flocks perish; the great bodies of oxen stand wrapped around with frost; deer, packed in a crowded herd, grow numb beneath the new weight and barely show above it with the tips of their horns. Men do not harry them with unleashed dogs, or with any nets, or with the terror of crimson feathers; instead, as they push their breasts in vain against the opposing mound, they cut them down hand to hand with iron, slaughter them as they bellow heavily, and carry them home with loud joyful shouting.
The people themselves pass untroubled leisure in caves dug deep under the earth, rolling heaped oak trunks and whole elms to their hearths and giving them to the fire. Here they draw out the night in play, and with ferment and sour service-berries they gladly imitate cups of wine. Such is the unbridled race of men lying beneath the seven-starred Bear of the far North, battered by the Rhipaean east wind and covering their bodies with the tawny hides of beasts.
Colophon
This Good Works Translation was made from the Latin text of Virgil, Georgics 3.349-383, as preserved in the local Internet Sacred Text Archive mirror at Tulku/Tools/sacred-texts/Sacred Texts 7/cla/virgil/geo/geol03.htm.
The English translation is independently derived from the Latin. No modern English translation was used as the base text.
Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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Source Text: Scythiae gentes
Latin source text from Virgil, Georgics 3.349-383, as preserved in the local Internet Sacred Text Archive mirror. Presented here for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above.
At non, qua Scythiae gentes Maeotiaque unda,
turbidus et torquens flaventis Hister harenas,
quaque redit medium Rhodope porrecta sub axem.
Illic clausa tenent stabulis armenta, neque ullae
aut herbae campo apparent aut arbore frondes;
sed iacet aggeribus niveis informis et alto
terra gelu late septemque adsurgit in ulnas.
Semper hiemps, semper spirantes frigora cauri.
Tum Sol pallentis haud umquam discutit umbras,
nec cum invectus equis altum petit aethera, nec cum
praecipitem Oceani rubro lavit aequore currum.
Concrescunt subitae currenti in flumine crustae
undaque iam tergo ferratos sustinet orbis,
puppibus illa prius, patulis nunc hospita plaustris;
aeraque dissiliunt vulgo vestesque rigescunt
indutae caeduntque securibus umida vina
et totae solidam in glaciem vertere lacunae
stiriaque impexis induruit horrida barbis.
Interea toto non setius aere ninguit:
intereunt pecudes, stant circumfusa pruinis
corpora magna boum, confertoque agmine cervi
torpent mole nova et summis vix cornibus extant.
Hos non immissis canibus, non cassibus ullis
puniceaeve agitant pavidos formidine pennae,
sed frustra oppositum trudentis pectore montem
comminus obtruncant ferro graviterque rudentis
caedunt et magno laeti clamore reportant.
Ipsi in defossis specubus secura sub alta
otia agunt terra congestaque robora totasque
advolvere focis ulmos ignique dedere.
Hic noctem ludo ducunt et pocula laeti
fermento atque acidis imitantur vitea sorbis.
Talis Hyperboreo septem subiecta trioni
gens effrena virum Rhiphaeo tunditur euro
et pecudum fulvis velatur corpora saetis.
Source Colophon
The Latin source text is taken from the local Internet Sacred Text Archive mirror of Virgil's Georgics, Book 3, Latin page. The line numeration follows the source page's embedded Latin text.
The local mirror also contains J. W. MacKail's 1934 English translation; that English was not used as the archival text or as the base of the Good Works Translation above.
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