Laudator Temporis Acti

Edward Kennard Rand (1871-1945), In Quest of Virgil's Birthplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930), pp. 20-22, with notes on p. 157:

Moreover, we find a fruit market. A strange gleam comes into Pietro's eye as he steers towards a certain vender. Watermelons, yes, American watermelons! Not quite American, since they are not oblong, but round as a ball. The taste is identical, and most grateful after the journey of the day. The reader may not make them out in the view of the market here given, but if any doubt their existence, I can obtain a written certificate from Pietro. Watermelon is his favorite fruit. He knows when he wants it, which is always, and when and where he has had it.

As we crunch the cool and crimson liquidity, a sudden revelation occurs to me. Pietro's joy is not exceeded by my own. For I can correct all the commentators in the interpretation of a line of Virgil. In the preface to his description of that marvellous garden kept by an old man of Corycia on the banks of the Galaesus, the poet speaks of the cucumis that

                          Winding through the grass
Grows to a belly —²²

the comfortable τέλος of that vegetable's activity. Following some interpreters, I had always translated cucumis by 'cucumber.' Others call it 'gourd.' Much better is Benoist, who declares, "Ce mot désigne ici toutes plantes du même genre, de melon aussi bien que la courge." But this definition is too inclusive. Who will deny that the word means specifically 'watermelon'?²³ The truth came to me when Pietro gave us the Italian for 'watermelon,' namely cocomero. 'Cucumber' in Italian is cetriolo, quite a different affair. The watermelon is a native of Africa.²³ The learned Naudin remarks that the culture of the melon in Asia is probably as ancient as that of all other alimentary vegetables and that the Greeks and the Romans were doubtless familiar with it, though some forms may have been described as cucumbers.²⁵ Rather, let us say, cucumis in ancient as in modern Italy has never meant anything but watermelon, while in the Dark and Middle Ages, when the luscious fruit, like so many Pagan luxuries, probably disappeared, the barbarians of the North ludicrously misapplied the original name to an ignominious vegetable. The modern Italian for 'cucumber' doubtless comes from a vulgar Latin word, a degrading diminutive, citriolum, to which Classical authors like Cicero and Virgil did not condescend. The truth has been hidden all these years because no Northern editor of Virgil has ever visited the land of the poet's birth in the month when watermelons are ripe. But now a great light shines on an obscurity, a pleasant line of Virgil has acquired the dignity of epic, and American small boys, particularly those of African origin, like the watermelon itself, can now read the Georgics with some sympathy, knowing that their author, when very young, may well have put arms about the best of fruits, abstracted from his father's, or a neighbor's, garden, and have retired for a luscious revel under the shelter of a spreading beech. All this I endeavored to make clear to Pietro, now at work on his third slice, and was gratified to hear him mumble, "Si, Signore, senza dubbio."

22(21). Georgics, IV, 121:

                                           tortusque per herbam
cresceret in ventrem cucumis.

23 (21). If tortus refers to the shape of the melon, it may be the cocomero serpentino as Tenore supposes. See Conington on the passage (after Keightley). I agree, however, with those, like Conington, who understand tortus to describe the vine's meandering through the grass.

24 (21). See L.H. Bailey, Cyclopaedia of American Horticulture, New York, VI, (1906) 1967.

25 (21). Quoted in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition (1911), XVIII, 98. The most recent discussion is that of R. Billiard, in L'Agriculture dans l'Antiquité d'après les Gêorgiques de Virgile (Paris, Boccard, 1928), p. 477. He inclines to believe, on grounds that appear to me inconclusive, that the melon came to Italy somewhat after Virgil's time.

There is no mention of Rand's interpretation in R.A.B. Mynors' commentary on Georgics. I don't see Vergil cited in the Oxford Latin Dictionary s.v. cucumis, a strange omission. See Charles Anthon, Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1850), p. 408:

The melon is meant here, not the cucumber.