In the ancient world it was not universally accepted that spring was an independent season, nor even that there were four such annual divisions. Although ancient public opinion- especially that of farmers- on the seasons is irretrievable, contemporary literature indicates that there were several concurrent theories on the issue of their number, which endured from early Greek literature up to and far beyond Vergil’s late Republican and early Augustan age.6 By Vergil’s time, it was generally accepted that there were four seasons, but it is apparent that this theory certainly held no monopoly, nor was it as straightforward as modern conceptions of four equal seasons.7
i) Two Seasons
Especially common in the Greek world, but similarly widespread in the
Roman world, was the view that the year was split into two seasons, usually identified with summer and winter. This was an understandable method of division, since it followed the extremes of hot and cold, and held the intervening periods as simply forming the transition between these outer limits. The two-seasonal year appeared commonly in Greek poetry and drama, having first been adopted by Homer in his description of Alcinous’ garden in Odyssey 7 (117-19):
5 Even if Elizabethan Britain did not distinguish between winter and spring, it certainly did between
winter and summer.
6 For a good survey of this variety, see Pease (1957), 660-1.
7 ‘We tend to take it for granted that the year is divided into four seasons, each of approximately equal
τάων οὔ ποτε καρπὸς ἀπόλλυται οὐδ᾽ ἀπολείπει χείματος οὐδὲ θέρευς, ἐπετήσιος: ἀλλὰ μάλ᾽ αἰεὶ Ζεφυρίη πνείουσα τὰ μὲν φύει, ἄλλα δὲ πέσσει.
‘The fruit...neither perishes nor fails in winter or in summer, but lasts throughout the year; and continually the West Wind, as it blows, quickens to life some fruits, and ripens others’.8
The reach of this view extended into Greek drama, as in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (4-
5):
ἄστρων κάτοιδα νυκτέρων ὁμήγυριν, καὶ τοὺς φέροντας χεῖμα καὶ θέρος βροτοῖς
‘I have learned to know aright the conclave of the stars of night...bringers of winter and summer unto mankind.’9
In each case, the two seasons of the year are named as winter and summer- χεῖμα καὶ θέρος. This view, here seen in verse, was equally common in the prose of science, or natural philosophy. Aristotle, in his Meteorologica, refers similarly to summer and
winter as the year’s seasons (2.4.361a 12-13):
διὰ μὲν οὖν τὴν ἐπὶ τροπὰς καὶ ἀπὸ τροπῶν θέρος γίγνεται καὶ χειμών ‘so summer and winter are due to the sun’s motion to and from the solstices’.
In 2.5, Aristotle has much to say about summer and winter, but reserves no mention for any other seasons.
ii) Three Seasons
Thriving concurrently with theories that there were either two or four seasons in the year was the idea that there were, in fact, three. While the two-seasonal year is traceable back at least as far as Homer, there is evidence of a three-seasonal year not much later, in Hesiod’s Theogony. In lines 901-2, Hesiod refers to the three Horai,
daughters of Zeus and Themis: Lawfulness, Justice, and Peace (Εὐνουμίη, ∆ίκη, and Εἰρήνη). The Horai are usually identified with the seasons of the year, as their
8 Translation: A.T. Murray. 9 Translation: H.W. Smyth.
personifications, although it was apparently unusual to name them individually.10 As to their being three Horai, according to Pease, ‘this number continues [to be] frequent
until later Greek and Roman art, when four seasons are regularly recognised’.11 This ‘frequency’ is suggested by the appearance of the three-seasonal year in drama. In Aristophanes’ Birds, the avian Chorus says (709):
πρῶτα μὲν ὥρας φαίνομεν ἡμεῖς ἦρος χειμῶνος ὀπώρας:
‘’tis from us the signs of the Seasons in turn, Spring, Winter, and Autumn are known’.12
While there is, oddly, no place for summer in Aristophanes’ trio, it was more common for autumn to be the absent season, as is found in Prometheus Vinctus (454-6),
tentatively attributed to Aeschylus, which refers to winter, spring, and summer (χείματος...ἦρος...θέρους ).13
ἦν δ᾽ οὐδὲν αὐτοῖς οὔτε χείματος τέκμαρ οὔτ᾽ ἀνθεμώδους ἦρος οὔτε καρπίμου θέρους βέβαιον
In a note on this section of the play, Griffith suggests that ‘the Greeks tended to think in terms of three, rather than four, seasons’;14 this may have been the case, but since Griffith appears confident that Prometheus Vinctus can be attributed securely to
Aeschylus, who, in his Agamemnon, made use of a year with two seasons, it is
difficult to see how this disparity might suggest such a ‘tendency’. If both plays are Aeschylean, but even if not, the implication should be that the way Greek literature15 approached the seasons was fairly fluid; the variety of ways of dividing up the year were not mutually exclusive, but could be employed alternately depending on context.
10 West (1966), 406. 11 Pease (1957), 660. 12 Translation: B.B. Rogers.
13 On the authorship of Prometheus Vinctus, see Griffith (1983), 31-2: ‘for Prom[etheus Vinctus].... we
have no didascalic information or fifth century testimony, but it has certainly been regarded as Aeschylean at least since the third century BCE, and no doubts as to its authenticity are recorded by ancient authors or in the scholia to the play’; ‘a number of scholars, however, have concluded, from the structure and style...of the play, that it is not the work of Aeschylus at all, or that it was left unfinished by him, and completed by a member of his family’.
14 Griffith (1983),
ad 454-6.
iii) Four Seasons
Although it faced greater competition from other views, the modern orthodoxy that the year consists of four seasons was similarly prominent in the ancient world. The earliest mention of the four-seasonal year in literature appears to be in
Hippocrates’ Regimen, which dates to the latter part of the fifth century BCE (3.68). τὸν μὲν οὖν ἐνιαυτὸν ἐς τέσσαρα μέρεα διαιρέω, ἅπερ μάλιστα γινώσκουσιν ὁι πολλοί, χειμῶνα, ἦρ, θέρος, φθινόπωρον χειμῶνα μὲν ἀπὸ πλειάδων δύσιος ἂχρι ἰσημερίης‧ ἠαρινῆς, ἦρ δὲ ἀπὸ ἰσημερίης μέχρι πλειάδων ἐπιτολῆς, θέρος δὲ ἀπὸ πλειάδων μέχρι ἀρκτούροθ ἐπιτολῆς, φθινόπωρον δὲ ἀπὸ ἀρκτούρου μέχρι πλειάδων δύσιος.
Here Hippocrates states: ‘I divide the year into the four parts most generally recognised- winter, spring, summer, autumn’. Before giving advice on diet and exercise for each of the seasons, he defines them individually by astral signals: ‘winter lasts from the setting of the Pleiads to the spring equinox, spring from the equinox to the rising of the Pleiads, summer from the Pleiads to the rising of Arcturus, autumn from Arcturus to the setting of the Pleiads’. The evidence of Hippocrates could potentially provide access to popular views of the seasons in the ancient world. Although it can be difficult to gain a reliable impression of popular thought on a particular subject from a literary text, Hippocrates’ direct statement that ‘the majority’ (ὁι πολλοί) of his contemporaries thought of the seasons as being four in number is difficult to reject summarily. The context of this statement, the Regimen, is not strictly
‘literary’, in the way that Homer, Hesiod, or the plays of Aristophanes and Aeschylus are; as such, there is little reason to doubt the reliability of Hippocrates’ testimony.
The tradition of the four seasonal year, apparently well-established in
Hippocrates’ day, was transmitted via many other Greek and Latin sources, and was the dominant theory in late Republican Rome.16 In his Tusculans, Cicero refers to ‘the
fourfold division of the seasons’- ‘commutationesque temporum quadrupertitas’
(1.68). In the imperial period, Tacitus suggests the dominance of the four-seasonal year in the Roman mindset. In his Germania (26.3), he remarks upon the Germans’
16 Pease (1957), 661: ‘the four-seasonal year, with autumn as the fourth season...is so constantly
conception of a three seasonal year, with autumn absent, as an oddity, since it differs from the Romans’ understanding of the seasons:
‘unde annum quoque ipsum non in totidem digerunt species: hiems et ver et aestas intellectum ac vocabula habent, autumni perinde nomen ac bona ignorantur’.
As was Hippocrates for the Greeks, Tacitus can be of service as an indication of the way in which the Roman populace viewed the seasons. The Germania is a work of
social anthropology, whose subject, Germany and its people, is often described by direct comparison with their Roman counterparts, in order to appeal to the
predominantly Roman sensibilities of Tacitus’ audience. The phrase, ‘annum...ipsum non in totidem digerunt species’ invites one such comparison. The word totidem
specifically forms this connection by suggesting that the Germans do not divide the year into ‘so many seasons [as we, Romans do]’. Tacitus’ generalisation about the German view of the seasons suggests that it is a majority opinion; the Roman view with which it is implicitly compared can be regarded likewise as conventional. Once again, the validity of Tacitus’ implication that the four-seasonal year predominated in the Roman world need not be unduly questioned; if it were a falsehood, it would destroy the credibility of his statement about the Germans for his Roman audience; this would surely be a needless risk.
iv) Subordination
Although the four-seasonal year predominated, it was not necessarily as
straightforward a concept as it might appear. The relationship between the quartet of seasons was often regarded as being unequal: ‘spring and fall are sometimes
conceived...as subordinate, either compounded of or appended to the two primary seasons of summer and winter’.17 Indeed, this is apparent in Cicero’s De Natura Deorum (2.49):
‘aestates et hiemes efficit et ea duo tempora, quorum alterum hiemi senescenti adiunctum est, alterum aestati’.
Here, Cicero is speaking through Balbus, who is expounding Stoic doctrine, and explaining its differences from competing, Epicurean, theory. Balbus is in the process of explaining the form of the divine; having suggested that it is spherical, like the Earth, he describes how divine activity is manifest in rotary motion, as in the heavenly bodies, and how the sun’s course causes the seasons, by turning to the North and then the South. Although the context is one of Stoic theory, Balbus’ testimony on the seasons is reliable, since he invokes them as something accepted, which he intends to use as evidence for something more controversial. He refers to summer and winter by name (‘aestates et hiemes’), but renders the other two seasons as simply adjuncts to
these two seasons- spring being connected with ‘late winter’ (‘hiemi senescenti’), and
autumn with ‘late summer’ (‘aestati [senescenti]’). This conception of the four-
seasonal year is, therefore, rather more like the basic two-seasonal one, with spring and autumn denied independent status.
Cicero’s treatment of the seasons owes something to Aratus, whose
Phaenomena also exerted a great influence over Vergil in his composition of the Georgics, especially in Book 1’s section on weather signs.18 Aratus’ year consists of
three main seasons: spring, summer, and winter, with a fourth, autumnal season, ‘harvest time’, only loosely defined as ‘waning summer’- φθίνοντος θέρεος (514). Spring too is largely overlooked, as Aratus focuses upon summer and winter. At lines 265-7, he explains how the Pleiades ‘mark the beginnings of summer and winter and the onset of ploughing time’:
ὃ σφισι καὶ θέρεος καὶ χείματος ἀρχομένοιο σημαίνειν ἐπένευσεν ἐπερχομένου τ’ἀρότοιο.
Although this statement does no violence to the notion of a four-seasonal year, the commentator, Kidd, at this point notes that summer and winter (here θέρεος καὶ χείματος) ‘are sometimes used in such a way as to cover the whole year, the warm, good weather season, and the cold, bad weather season’.19 There is evidence of this in Thucydides, whose account of the Peloponnesian War divides the year into two parts: summer, the time for campaigning, and winter, the “off-season”, when conditions prevent active warfare (2.1). Kidd revisits this subject in his note on line 514 of the
18 Cicero’s familiarity with Aratus’ work is attested by his composition of a translation of the Phaenomena.
Phaenomena (φθίνοντος θέρεος, τοτὲ δ’εἴαρος ἱσταμένοιο- ‘[day is equal to night] at the waning of summer and again at the beginning of spring’), in which he elaborates upon the status of the other seasons: ‘spring and autumn are...subdivisions of θέρος’.20 Accordingly, Aratus’ tends to neglect spring and autumn in favour of the two ‘main’ seasons. This is especially apparent in his discussion of weather signs related to individual seasons in the latter part of the poem (1046-1103). Here he first provides signs indicating the quality of specific summers (1046), then winters (1047-52), and details ploughing times (1053-9), before turning his attention to signs portending the onset of winter (1064-71), and the coming of summer (1094-1103). Spring is given no treatment, and autumn, or harvest time, is referred to only in relation to the crop yield after summer, or as an indicator of winter’s arrival.
v) Flexibility
This brief survey of literary perceptions of the seasons highlights the fact that there were numerous ways of thinking about their cycle in the ancient world. In literature, the notion that the seasons were four in number was certainly most
frequent, but not pervasive. Where the four-seasonal year appeared, spring, along with autumn, was usually afforded only subordinate status to summer and winter- the climatic extremes- and was often not even regarded as an independent season at all. The evidence of Hippocrates and Tacitus offers the potential to access the views of the Greek and Roman majority on the subject of the seasons; in each case, they appear to share the tendency to think about the year as being divided into four seasons. However, the consensus view of Hippocrates’ and Tacitus’ literate audience may not be a reflection of the opinions of their illiterate, or rather non-literate counterparts. In general literary evidence on the seasons cannot be relied upon as an indication of popular thought. The variety of ways of thinking about the seasons in literature militates against generalisation, and suggests fluidity in the manner in which the seasons could be used in a literary context. Poets and dramatists in particular were free to exploit the potential of the two, three, or four-seasonal year interchangeably, depending on their context. This is a symptom of the value of the seasons as literary symbols, witnessed in Shakespeare’s Richard III.