The Roman poet Virgil is considered one of the great classics of ancient literature and poetry. Archaeologists in Spain have now discovered a fragment of a poem by Virgil on the shard of a Roman oil amphora. It is the first time that a text by the famous poet has been found in such a context. The lines come from Virgil's work "Georgica", in which the poet addresses life in the countryside - which could explain why the poem fragment was found in the Guadalquivir plain, once important as the center of ancient olive oil production.
The poet Virgil, born around 70 BC, was already famous during his lifetime. His epic Aeneid was read and taught in the schools of antiquity, and his verses were required reading for generations of students. He is still regarded today as one of the most important authors of classical Roman antiquity and as a formative influence on the heyday of Latin. Because of the widespread distribution of Virgil's verses during his lifetime, archaeologists still frequently find texts or text fragments by Virgil on ancient school boards or as epitaphs on Roman tombs.
Chance find in ancient olive growing area
But now a research team led by Iván González Tobar from the University of Córdoba has discovered a fragment of a poem by Virgil in an unusual place. The find consists of the shard of a Roman amphora, once used to transport olive oil, which a resident of the village of Ochavillo in Andalusia had collected. The place is located in the plain of the Guadalquivir river, which in ancient times as the "Betica" region was one of the centers of Roman olive and wine cultivation. The olive oils and wines produced in this area were exported en masse to Rome. It is therefore not uncommon to find the remains of oil amphorae and other ancient evidence of this agricultural production.
The fact that characters had been scratched into the 1,800-year-old amphora shard didn't seem particularly striking at first. Because it was common at that time that information about the content, the quality and the manufacturer of the olive oil or wine was written on the amphorae - comparable to today's labels. Even in Rome, amphorae and sherds with the ancient designation of origin "Betica" have often been found during excavations. But when González Tobar and his team examined and deciphered the writing on the six by eight centimeter piece of pottery, they discovered something surprising: this text was not the usual relevant information on the content, but parts of a poem.
Fragmentary lines from Virgil's work "Georgica"
The inscription deciphered on the potsherd read:
S
vais
avoniam
glandem
arestapoqv
tisaqv
it
These fragmentary lines and words turned out to be part of two verses from the first book of Virgil's "Georgica". According to the researchers, this is the first time a text fragment by Virgil has been found on an oil amphora. However, this context is quite appropriate for the poem, because the title "Georgica" comes from the Greek and in German means something like "agriculture". Written in 29 BC, this work by the poet describes in four books various aspects, myths and reflections on agriculture, fruit growing and viticulture, animal husbandry and beekeeping. In the initial verses, which include the fragments of text discovered on the shard of amphora, Virgil introduces this with prayers to various gods.
However, González Tobar and his colleagues can only speculate as to why someone wrote some verses from the "Georgica" on the bottom of an oil amphora and who did it: They may have been written by a member of one of the aristocratic families that owned the plantations and oil factories. Or a young person wrote them as an exercise in the moist clay of the amphora. The context of this find is still unclear. But the researchers already see this piece of amphora with the Virgil poem as unique. "This find is of exceptional interest to archaeologists, epigraphists and philologists of vernacular Latin," the team writes.
Source: University of Cordoba; Article: Journal of Roman Archeology, doi: 10.1017/S1047759423000156