| Summary: | Beginning can be problematic for writer and destructive for farmer, as Vergil explores throughout the Georgics, in his uncertainty over a new course, in the bugonia, in the creation of new ploughland — and at the start of his didactic. supercilio at 1.108 does not refer to the brow of a hill or a channel, as commentators have thought, but to the eyebrow with which the farmer signals: ‘look, with the slightest effort he coaxes out the water’. However, irrigation is only easy for the farmer who has already prepared in advance. 1.47-8 do not concern numbers of ploughings, as commentators have thought, following Pliny, but leaving ground fallow until the second year. Before the farmer sows, he needs already to have ploughed and waited, just as he needs to have learnt in advance about his land. We too need to clear away false interpretation before we are ready to begin.
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