Virgil's
Book of Bucolics
Translated into Verse
WITH
Cues for Reading Out-loud &
Clues for Threading Texts & Themes
John B. Van Sickle
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Copyright 2008 – all rights reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A User Guide to ‘pastoral’, ‘eclogue’, ‘bucolic’ & The Bucolics
page 1
Clues from Troubled Times at Rome
2
Cues for Drama – Bucolic Epos-mime Remakes Roman Mythic Frame
I. Rift in Vatic Vision: Melibœ́us {Old Roman Epos Lost} /
Títyrus {Old Bucolic Epos remade for Rome}
II. Song as Vatic Charm {Boasts boost bucolic/georgic range: Menalcas spurned}
III. Vatic Buildup: Menalcas {Phœbus} & Damœ́tas {‘all full of Jove’} –
Palæmon {full bucolic & georgic frame}
IIII. New Vatic Song {Fullest bucolic, georgic, heroic mythic reach}
V. Vatic Hymns: Menalcas & Mopsus: Daphnis {new bucolic-georgic myth}
VI. Títyrus redrawn {epos minus Rome: elegiac Gallus raised to vatic epos}
VII. Melibœ́us redrawn {Arcadians sifted: vatic ambition downed}
VIII. Framer to sift strains & close book {Arcadian verse / final vatic chant}
VIIII. Menalcas Gone {vatic frame dismantled}
X. Arcadia as Frame (Menalcas home: epic-elegiac Gallus to bucolic-tragic hero)
3
6
11
13
15
17
20
22
24
26
The Eclogues to Perform & Read
I. MELIBŒUS & TITYRUS {NEW GOD AT ROME}
II. FRAMER {CORYDON}
III. MENALCAS & DAMŒTAS {PALÆMON
IIII. FRAMING SEER-BARD {FATES}
V. MENALCAS & MOPSUS {DAPHNIS NEW GOD FOR ROME}
VI. TITYRUS {SILENUS ≈ PHŒBUS}
VII. MELIBŒUS {CORYDON & THYRSIS ARCADIANS}
VIII. MAKER OF BOOK {DAMON & ALPHESIBŒUS}
VIIII. LYCIDAS & MŒRIS {MENALCAS}
X. MAKER OF BOOK {MENALCAS ARCADIAN}
28
33
38
44
48
52
59
65
71
78
Clues in Social Memory – Threads from Tragedy & Epos
89
Oldest Epic Frame – Generic Threads (Homer, Hesiod)
9
90
Hesiod, Theogony & Works & Days (Origins of Gods & Georgic Work)
Homer, Iliad & Odyssey (Fate of Ilion = Troy & Journey Home))
Bucolic Threads in Heroic Frame – Achilles’ Shield
Old Threads, New Twists – Euripides’ Cyclops & Plato’s Phaedrus
92
New Frames from Old Threads: Hellenistic / Alexandrian
94
A Georgic Weave – Time beyond Hesiod & Homer (Aratus)
New Weaves for Egypt – (Alexandrian Court Poets)
Epos for Rome’s Empire – Heroic-Myth to Frame New Power
99
Old Threads Woven into New Myth of Heroic Origin
Roman Annals vs Timeless philosophic Heroism (Lucretius)
Rome minus Annals or Heroic Origin (Catullus)
The Warp & Weft of Varying Motifs – a Chart
102
Bibliography
109
Index
111
vii
PREFACE
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PREFACE
For years I would alert students to forms of order in the Bucolics only to find our efforts thwarted by the available
translations whether meant for schools or aimed at wider trade. Translators showed but slight concern for Virgil’s
meaningful designs. At worst, translation puffed itself with added verses – smothering expressive points, ignoring above
all the concert of motifs – poetic music – that vary through the book conveying pleasure & peculiar recollective sense.
Virgil himself reflects on this concerted work & conveys something of its nature as a tissue of motifs. In closing
he looks back & likens making the book to sitting & weaving a wicker form. His metaphor of poetry as quiet & persistent
weaving sets a standard of craft – connective & integrative – that beckons translators also to respect not just the fabric of
theme & variation but the metrical system organized as one.
In the course of translating, the disciplines of meter & respect for recurring threads began to yield positive results.
Poems found voices. They authorized & prompted unexpected breakthroughs. Stubborn patches shaped up through
analogues from elsewhere in the book. Progress by crossing back & forth corroborated my long held critical intuition that
no one part could have been completed until all were done.
Translating with a unitary program required that commentary alter habitual ways. CUES would coach for theatrical
effect in reading out-loud. After all the ten short, snappy skits scored instant stage success by blending prophecy with
protest, comic riffs with whiffs of erotic scandal. On stage, the Bucolics framed political myth & formulated visionary
hope at a confused & dangerous time. They made their poet a celebrity in the streets even as copies of the slender scroll
insinuated themselves into other poets’ studies. CLUES then would help to thread motifs from poem to poem & back to
Greek & Latin texts remembered & rethought.
Not least, the integrative scheme dictated change in format: lines numbered no longer arbitrarily every tenth but
selectively by sets to articulate the arguments as they unfold in parcels of sense.
Emboldened & restrained by meter & motif exchange, translation proved its worth as an interpretative tool –
nurtured by philological & literary study, not least by Virgil’s penchant for etymological play, yet reaching beyond to
find new presence in every part of the book. Each poem took on enhanced integrity & force, became more compelling –
both in itself & for its part in texture that with new concreteness at new levels of awareness at last came into its own.
Many readers have sensed that herdsmen in such poetry stand for poets & that their reported care for herds may
represent the work of making the poetry itself. Greeks had long described poetic arts & song in metaphors of weaving,
threading, stitching – associated with ‘hymn’ & ‘rhapsody’ – represented in Latin by the root ord- that means ‘vertical
thread of a loom’, its warp, but then stretches by way of metaphor to domains that help to constitute civilization itself: the
lines of grapevines or ranks of soldiers, ranks in society at Rome, the first rib of ship or first atomic line-ups in the
creation of the natural world.
Metonymies & metaphors for poetry connect in a continuum that runs from the work of herding through its
product wool, which must get spun to thread or yarn, which can in turn get woven, sewn, stitched, used to embroider – a
skein of metaphors for poetic work conceived as weave of words in imitation of the universe conceived itself as
primordial craft.
The present project caps engagement with the Bucolics sketched in a new preamble for my basic study, The
Design of Virgil’s Bucolics (London: Duckworth 2004). Then & still it shares with Susan Stephens “the ultimate goal ...
to remove ... poetry from the ivory tower and locate it more centrally in the social and political life of the city.” Nominal
aid derived from PSC-CUNY grants. The Roosevelt Study Center & Zeeland Provincial Government provided an office,
computer & cordial logistical support during four months in Middleburg, Walcheren, Zeeland, The Netherlands. The
Zeeland Provincial Library provided unlooked for but welcome bibliographical gems. In Italy, colleagues in Milan’s
Universitá degli Studi received us in their libraries, their scholarly inquiries, & their affections. The project drew great
benefit from opportunities to share ideas with colleagues in Padua, Pavia, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart
(Milan), & Rome (La Sapienza, where I had served as Fulbright Professor for the Virgil Bimillennium in 1982). Blaise &
Aniko Pasztory gave us a home base in Milan; & many doors were opened for us by Margherita Azzi-Visentini &
Francesca Orestano. Thomas Cole with his usual perspicacity read an earlier draft.
To David Kuhn, who first gave me the idea that eclogue books encompass epic designs, I offer these results & to
Gail Levin, who with characteristic devotion & unwavering resolve helped shepherd them to fruition, despite times in the
world that threaten to prove if anything even more parlous for pursuits like these than Virgil’s own.
1
CHOSING BUCOLICS TO ADDRESS CRISIS AT ROME
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A USER GUIDE TO ‘PASTORAL’, ‘ECLOGUE’, ‘BUCOLIC’ & THE BUCOLICS
Two paths that long ago diverged convey us back by separate routes to the ten short poems called variously
‘pastorals’, ‘eclogues’, & ‘bucolics’, sometimes ‘The Eclogues’ but here Book of Bucolics. The path less traveled will
take us to their immediate yet neglected impact on Roman theater audiences – torn between fear & hope – in times that
proved decisive for history – Rome’s, Europe’s, ours. The path more often traveled leads through scribbled tablets in
poets’ studies, recitations, schools & libraries, hints of scratchy pens & midnight oil, to lyrics, operas, elegies & ordered
landscapes, artful books – remembered as the tradition of pastoral.
PASTORAL – from Latin pastor, which means ‘one who herds, grazes, feeds a flock,” so that often it gets transferred by
metaphor to religious leaders, who are thus supposed to resemble keepers of herds or flocks.
This metaphor often gets extended to describe a religious group as a congregation (from Latin, ‘flocking together’, cf.1
gregarious; segregate; aggregate) or ‘flock’ with a ‘pastor’ who may be a bad or a good ‘shepherd.’ In fact, the
metaphoric transfer to religion is still so common that an internet search on ‘pastoral’ gets more than eighteen million hits
– up by three million in half a year.
Besides the vast metaphoric range projected by religion, pastoral enjoys currency & clout as a cultural mode. A
search on the non-religious ‘pastoral poetry’ gets 1,410,000 replies, with links to such special branches of European
culture as drama, comedy, masque, lyric, landscape, Arcady, & idyll.
All owe something to the idea found in Virgil of featuring herdsmen as literary subjects. Some evoke the dramatic
dimension of his stage success. A search on ‘pastorals’, used as a noun specifically for poems like Virgil’s still gets
106,000 replies. The great variety of pastorals down through time brings to mind a remark by a teacher of mine (was it
Reuben Brower? Northrup Frye?), that one could get a liberal education by studying pastoral tradition. Domesticating
animals & controlling them in herds may be among the earliest forms of civilization. Pastoral work becomes a model for
political relations between ruler & ruled.2 It may be no accident that Rome’s rulers came to occupy a hill that had been
linked since time immemorial with herding & herds – Palatine.3
– from Greek eklogé, meaning ‘a pick from’ some implicit larger whole, as ‘harvest’ from a farm or ‘pick’ of
fruit, but also metaphorically applied to ‘choice’ of leaders, ‘draft’ of soldiers, ‘collection’ of tax, ‘reckoning’ of
accounts, & ‘quotation’ – extracts, excerpts, readings & thus lessons – from literary work.
Eclogue was extended via metaphor to Virgil’s ten pastoral poems, perhaps interpreting each of them as both a
lesson in itself & part of a whole book, or fruit of literary labor, or crafted by calculated design – a kind of reckoning of
poetical accounts. The whole associative array corresponds to observable characteristics of the poetry, above all to the
thematic network that yields sense to careful reading.
Via the influence of Virgil’s commentators, ‘eclogue’ became frequent in later literature & literary studies as a
name for pastoral poetry modeled on his: internet search on the singular ‘eclogue’, for a separate poem, gets 187,000
replies; the plural ‘eclogues’, for several poems, gets 218,000 hits.
ECLOGUE
& BUCOLICS – from Greek boukolikon (‘concerning care for cattle’).4 Used as an adjective ‘bucolic’ gets
generalized & idealized by metonymy to mean ‘rural’, ‘peaceful’, which you can document in the real estate & travel
supplements of Sunday papers & which produces 1,080,000 hits. However, the plural form ‘bucolics’, used as a noun to
BUCOLIC
1
Cf. is short for Latin confer, ‘bring together, compare’, which suggests a pastoral chore of bringing a flock together so.as to
discern [1.9, ‘sift out’] values, similarities & differences: a practice used metaphorically to describe the work of collecting & sorting
out many other domains of life & work, among them literary genres or traditions such as pastoral itself.
2
Thus the Dutch Declaration of Independence (1581): ‘As it is known to all that a prince of a land is placed by God over his
subjects, to protect & defend them from all evil, oppression & violence as the shepherd for watching over his sheep; and whereas
God did not create the people slaves to their prince, to obey his commands, whether right or wrong, but rather the prince for the sake of
the subjects (without which he could be no prince), to govern them according to equity, to love and support them as a father his children or a shepherd his flock, and even at the hazard of life to defend and preserve them.’ [http://www.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/ 1501-1600/
plakkaat/ plakkaaten.htm]
3
Palatium ‘place for pasture’ that became the seat of emperors & thus in later European cultures house of power – ‘palais,
palaz, palazzo, palace’.
4
In the domain of rural life & work, ‘bucolic’ contrasts with ‘georgic’(Greek ‘earth working’, ge- & *worg-, cf. ‘erg’ &
‘work’), which refers to agriculture – farm lands, products, crafts & gods. The bucolic & georgic ranges together – both being rural &
countrified – contrast with the domain & thematic ranges of civic ideology & heroic myth. The three domains – bucolic, georgic, civicheroic – are often viewed as steps in epos from low through middle to high in style & theme – as in Virgil’s works: Bucolics (one
scroll), Georgics (four scrolls), Aeneid (twelve scrolls) – the first two named by thematic range, the third for its hero, Aeneas – exiled
from Troy & legendary forebear of Rome. For the hierarchy of thematic ranges & domains, see also Homer’s ‘Shield of Achilles’ (p.
91).
2
POETRY & POWER STAGE FRAMING MYTH
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mean pastoral poems, produces only 49,400 hits. This relative rarity with respect to ‘pastorals’ & ‘eclogues’ stems from
the particular history of Virgil’s capture of a prestigious Greek literary tradition.
Virgil found that a Greek Theocritus had already used the name Bukolika for his own artful mingling of two
literary types – mimes from his native Sicily (short theater pieces with ordinary characters) & the vast tradition of
classical epic (epos), with its cast of legendary kings & heroes & their outrageous passions & plots.5 To recreate epos for
Rome, Virgil took up where Theocritus left off, producing Latin mimes stocked with herdsmen conversing & singing in
the meter of epos in a work called after Theocritus Bucolics.
Mime means drama with a common touch, often comical, so you need not fear to to try reading eclogues out loud
– to yourself if no one else will listen, or taking turns, as a shared project – indoors or out, if you can get a quiet spot. Try
on the various voices & their outlooks. Perform them if you will. Experiment with putting on one character, then another.
Figure out which voicings fit. Confer. Retune.
Keep at it till you start to get a sense of feelings & ideas – dramatic flair & flow – evolving voice by voice
throughout the book. Note how the voicings rise from conflict & grow to form a new world-view both positive &
prophetic, but then retreat, regroup & grow again, though toward a different climax: operatic, tragic – fatal passion’s
dream of deathless art.
Take courage from the old report – too often ignored – about the work’s debut: ‘the poet gave it out with such
success that also on the stage by singers it got frequently declaimed’.6
But first success? Staging? Frequent? Claims that want to get unpacked & placed in context of the times & life.
You scrutinize for hints & stretch imagination. You try to figure out what might have taken place. Infer. Relate.7 You get
yourself involved in the age-old game of commentary.8
CLUES FROM TROUBLED TIMES AT ROME
Writers at Rome in the first century BCE often issued work by reading to acquaintances & friends.9 So infer a
career path for this poet, commonly known as Virgil.10 Born in northern Italy near Mantua, migrant to the capital, in
Rome he would have garnered contacts among others similar in their backgrounds, interests, & ambitions, among them
poets whom he cites in the Bucolics:11 one of whom, Helvius Cinna, owned a cultivated Greek slave, Parthenius, who is
credited with importing to Rome innovative poetry produced in Greek during the previous two centuries.12 Some, like
Virgil himself, came from Italian towns: he echoes & implictly corrects work by C. Valerius Catullus;13 he praises as a
literary friend & political leader C. Asinius Pollio;14 he features in two eclogues works in different genres by C. Cornelius
5
Cf. p. 96.
Bucolica eo successu edidit ut in scena quoque per cantores crebro pronuntiarentur: from the Life of Virgil by Donatus (c4
[4th century] CE [common era]) who surely got it from Suetonius’ Biographies of Poets (cc [centuries] 1-2 CE), § 26.
7
Join the ranks of the ideal readers who feel "somehow personally touched": Skutsch, Ennius-Annals, 235.
8
A word made up of threads from Latin with the idea of getting minds together: com- ‘together, with’ + ment- ‘mind.’ Getting
minds together can be tricky, requiring one to be clever, resourceful, even inventive: a nuance lost in English ‘commentary’ & ‘comment’, not to mention the run of ‘commentators’. The nuance lived in Latin commentum, which meant ‘fabrication, fiction’, which
implies that meaning has to be worked out & made up, is subject to debate in a community about its truth.
9
For poetry as a lively part of upper-class life-style in late republican Rome see ‘The Poet & his Audience’ in Wiseman,
Catullus’ World, 124–29; Habinek, Politics of Latin Literature, 107. On the rise of recitation; & fundamental now on role played by
every form of song in Roman ritual from the earliest times, Habinek, Roman Song.
10
70-19 BCE: named in classical Latin Publius Vergilius Maro,, which slipped to Virgilius in the middle ages, whence
vernacular Virgil, Virgilio, Virgile. Also called sometimes in modern technical writing Vergil.
11
[9.35-36]= eclogue nine, verses 35 & 36, citing. Varius whom Horace praised for making ‘strong epos’, (forte epos, sc. on
the death of Julius Caesar) by contrast with the ‘soft & artfully crafted epos’ (molle atque facetum) that the Camenae granted Virgil
(Serm. 1.10.43); Cinna whom Catullus (c. 95) praised for learned & laborious short epos.
12
Survey in Gutzwiller, Guide, 216-18.
13
Flourished 50s BCE, p. 101 & notes to eclogue four. Catullus came from Sirmio on Lake Garda – the source from which the
river Mincius flowed down to Virgil’s Mantua. On Catullus as a source for Virgil, see my The Design of Virgil’s Bucolics (London:
Duckworth, 2004a [Second Edition]), 248, s(ub). v(oce). [under the voice = under the indexed word] ‘Catullus’. Virgil, however, will
contribute to a Romanocentric cultural frame, against the Italocentric frame of Catullus as documented by Habinek, Politics of Latin
Literature, 94–96. Another outsider was C. Cilnius Maecenas – wealthy Etruscan, confident of Octavian & patron-friend of Virgil &
other poets.
14
76 BCE-CE 4, cited as a reader of the Bucolics & (tragic) poet himself [3.84-86]: short for ‘eclogue 3, verses 84-86’; then
further cited as chief magistrate (consul) & political leader [4.11-14], with particular reference to his role in seeking to reduce tension
between the two main claimants to the political legacy of the murdered Julius Caesar: Caesar’s military collaborator Marc Antony &
Caesar’s adopted son & great nephew, G. Octavius (cf. n.23 ). Pollio starting as a friend of Antony retired into neutrality.
6
CHOSING BUCOLICS TO ADDRESS CRISIS AT ROME
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Gallus.15 All had been reared on traditional Latin poetry & rose to the challenge of innovative Greek. They formed a
lively, well-connected, highly literate coterie (compare in modern cities – Paris, Rome, New York – the cliques
surrounding little magazines or galleries, wealthy patrons – sharing ideas & artistic ambitions, gossip, often lovers).
Virgil must have listened to others & himself recited, you can even dare to guess, in various libraries or great halls
(atria) of houses in the privileged neighborhood atop the Palatine hill16 – not only linked in myth with Rome’s origins but
also site of an ancient shrine to Pan, the pastoral god native to Greek Arcadia. New work would divert the coterie. They
might be intrigued by layered, even contradictory, implications of the Greek title Bucolics. It could suggest poetic booty
captured if not stolen – as if rustled – to parade at Rome for the first time, yet also hint at return to the hill’s legendary
past & Arcadian god – traces of original Greek presence before the place was Rome. Search for authorizing origins had
motivated the first creation of Roman literature two centuries before to legitimize newly won imperial power (pp. 98-99).
Now a young poet with literary ambitions made his way to Rome only to find that that political & social order broken,
Rome in need of new instruments of power & new authorizing myths.17
CUES FOR DRAMA – BUCOLIC EPOS-MIME REMAKES ROMAN MYTHIC
FRAME
Long before the Bucolics scored with frequent performances, theater had served Roman elites to enchance their
own prestige & power – a means to “propagate aristocratic values by shaping the direction of popular culture.”18Theater
was considered so potent politically that the ruling class had required that seating for spectacles be temporary – scaffolds
quick to build & to take down – assuring control over a popular medium & limiting each producer’s prestige.19 It was not
until the 50s of the first century BCE, just as Virgil would be coming on the scene, that Pompey – styled ‘The Great’ for
his military victories in the East in emulation of Alexander the Great – broke the long-standing rule & built a permanent
theater (55 BCE). Sparing no expense, he garnished it with a portico faced in marble & adorned with gardens & works of
art, where Catullus as a young poet tracked illicit lovers.20
The expense scarely paid off, since Pompey soon (48 BCE) suffered defeat in civil war by Julius Caesar, who
promptly exploited the new theater for spectacles of his own,21 until in a chamber off the portico he was killed (March 15,
‘Ides of March’, 44 BCE) by aristocratic conspirators – among them Cassius & Brutus – acting in the name of traditional
Roman republican freedom – ‘Liberty’.22
Against the self-styled ‘Liberators’, Caesar’s lieutenant Marc Antony made common if uneasy cause with the son
adopted in Caesar’s will – Gaius Octavius,23 often called by later historians Octavian. He & Antony fought the
‘Liberators’ for two years, finally defeating Brutus & Cassius at Philippi in Greece (42 BCE).24 They rewarded their
veteran soldiers by seizing lands in northern Italy from citizens of Cremona & its neighbor, Virgil’s Mantua – driving
established citizens into exile if they survived.25 Victory soon gave rise to tension beween the veteran lieutenant & the
15
V makes of Gallus’ poetry in two kinds: (1) his translation of a short epos by Euphorion about a competition between
legendary seers just after the Trojan war in a grove sacred to Apollo [6.64-73], a model also behind V’s own imaginary competition
[ecl. 3] & rise to prophetic voice [ecl. 4, n. 84]; (2) his exercises in elegiac meter, called ‘Loves’, which V translated into bucolic guise
[ecl, 10].
16
Library of Lucullus from 73 BCE as place for ‘cultural conversations as well as private reading”: Habinek, Politics of Latin
Literature, 107; further on the first reception of these poems, Design, xxi-xxxiv, 9–10, 51–52; also on traces of recitation at roots of
Latin literariness, Sciarrino, “Epic Thefts,” 454–56.
17
On the search for causes, etiology, cf. p. 98; Roman literature created as tool of power, Habinek, Politics of Latin Literature, 35, 45–46.
18
Gruen, Culture & Identity, 222; other means were harangues to the mob from the platform lined with beaks of captured ships
(rostra) at the lower end of the central market (forum) – hard work for the speaker: Horsfall, Plebs, 87–88; also staged fights of
gladiators & wild beasts (ludi), or coins displaying propagandistic images & slogans (nummi).
19
Gruen, Culture & Identity, 221–22.
20
Gn. Pompeius Magnus (106-48 BCE): cf., e.g., http://www.theaterofpompey.com/ auditorium/theatrum.shtml.
21
Beacham, Roman Theater, 160–62.
22
Also a real ambition of slaves, levied to fight in the civil war (Julius Caesar, The Civil War,I.34,3; 56.3; 57.4): Design, 4448.
23
63 BCE-14 CE: a C. Octavius, ‘Gaius of the Octavian clan’, would normally become C. Julius Caesar Octavianus, ‘Gaius of
the Julian clan, Caesar, from the Octavian clan’, when adopted as son & heir in the will of C. Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE), who as
brother to the young man’s grandmother, his mother’s mother, was his great uncle. Modern historians use the adjective Octavian as a
name, though he never used it, as lacking political weight. Only later, after defeating Antony & Cleopatra (31 BCE), did ‘Octavian’ get
from the Senate the title Augustus, ‘Augmented or Enhanced One’ (28 BCE)
24
Mankin, Horace Epodes, 3–6: excellent, succinct account of turbulent events.
25
Detailed & well-told accounts in Syme, Revolution, 194, cited by Design, xxiv-xxvi, 41–44 in critiques of careless readers.
POETRY & POWER STAGE FRAMING MYTH
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youthful heir to Caesar’s name – strains momentarily eased through mediation by Virgil’s friend Pollio (40 BCE). Further
conflict would multiply suffering & fear, victory by no means fated, the prize – sole rule.
Lacking historical precedent, the crisis called for tough imagination both political & poetic. The theater public
was volatile, primed to spot allegory and gossip, the opinion makers alert and wary, as we know from Cicero, who
anxiously monitored the spectators’ mercurial moods before himself falling victim to Antony’s rage.26 Audiences
included some of the several hundred thousand persons who had suffered loss of lands to veterans of the civil wars:27
The uncertainties of the present and the capriciousness of politics in Rome, along with the absence of any
concrete or realistic expectations of what the future might bring, provided fertile soil for seers and soothsayers,
irrational longing for a saviour, and predictions of a new and blessed age.28
Efforts to envision new authority & order must draw on social memory. Not only seers (vates) but a rational & seasoned
political leader might think in mythic terms: Cicero was said to have told young Caesar of dreaming that a miraculous
youth was sent down from heaven on a golden rope and honored by the gift of a whip from Capitoline Jove:29 mythemes
not lacking precedents, prompting echoes.
Quick to adapt the ruling arts of the old elite, Octavian exploited the inherited name of ‘Caesar’, with its popular
& military prestige. As if capitalizing on Cicero’s vision he also claimed identity with Jupiter & his sons, the Dioscuri,
playing on social memory of their interventions at Rome in the guise of ‘present’ or helping, savior gods.30 Yet he
dropped his late adoptive father’s most provocative departures from old ways;31 & he embraced (usurped?) the
Liberators’ watchword & advertised himself as ‘Defender of Liberty’. After a victory over the Liberators in northern Italy
(43 BCE), he reinforced the aura of Caesar’s name with an honorific title reflecting military success – Imperator
(‘Commander’). Once Julius was declared a god by a coerced Senate (42 BCE), his heir became also ‘Son of Divine
Julius’,32 a motif used especially in his coinage, to further ingratiate and define himself with the public.33
Shifting power & its shifting emblems had provoked that first literature in Latin (p. 99) & the Alexandrians, who
became “the image makers for the Ptolemaic court,”34 not as formal legislators but as imaginative contributors to the
political process of “finding appropriate models.”35 Responding to a like challenge – seizing opportunity if you will –
Virgil helped to formulate new framing myth, like the Alexandrian Greeks not “constructing a literal equivalent so much
as a vehicle for expressing the emerging ideologies ... imaginatively viable myth not simply for what are the new realities
but for ... desires and potential.”36 The resulting myth would play on popular fears & hopes, digest & frame – adroitly
force – conflicted & confused experience. It would influence a public stocked with jingles & hoary myths, alert to
rumor,37 so as to insinuate a new mythic blend into “real Roman social memory.”38
To capture popular enthusiasm in the venue of Pompey’s theater, Virgil chose to adapt the familiar medium of
mime with its style of popular wisdom – proverbial, oracular, sententious;39 its use of threads from tragedy & heroic epic;
& its characters with lower class Greek names – Títyrus, Córydon, Damœ́tas – suiting slaves, although V can imagine
them meeting or invoking divinities – allegories for the Caesars, which would be spotted easily by that canny audience.
Indeed a complex allegory opens V’s book: protest at land-seizures destroying the old order, but also visionary promise
of old order preserved & growth encouraged by new divine power at Rome, sc. Octavian.40 Virgil further complements
Octavian’s propaganda in his book’s first half with references to Jove’s ordering power,41 the reforming force of Jove’s
new progeny; & the allegory of divine Julius as a shepherd-god eternally guarding pastures & farms. To construct this
new mythology, Virgil developed voices that recalled Rome’s traditional seers & bards (vates, p. 99), as he hints in the
book’s second half, where he pointedly withdraws from the earlier ambitious public voicing & moves toward the final
goal of a new myth of poetic origin in Arcadia.
Virgil’s emergence as the vatic voice of a new order seems to have moved that volatile public in that fluid, hot
medium. As his favored faction consolidated power, its prophet acquired almost legendary status, pursued by admirers in
4
26
Beacham, Spectacle, 92–108.
Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves, 67.
28
Zanker, Image Power, 44.
29
Suetonius, Life of the Divine Augustus 94.9.
30
Zanker, Image Power, 38, 54–56.
31
North, “Praesens Divus,” 171–73, reviewing S. Weinstock, Divus Julius (Oxford, 1971).
32
Beacham, Spectacle, 92–108.
33
Zanker, Image Power, 35–39 Claims to divinity had plenty of precedent in Alexandria in the propaganda of the Ptolemies.
34
Stephens, 12.
35
Stephens, 17.
36
Stephens,190.
37
Thus Cicero’s anxious attention to the theater public’s moods: Van Sickle, Design, xxv.
38
Horsfall, Plebs, 61.
39
Horsfall, Plebs, 54–55, 60; oracles as “lessons, trivial and concise” to the crowd, Skutsch, Ennius-Annals, 236.
40
sc. is short for Latin scilicet, ‘you may know’. By hinting at some hidden meaning, it prompts readers to look & dig beneath
surface meaning, here to recognize the political figure behind the bucolic god. It will serve frequently to prompt interpretive enterprise.
41
A mythic frame suited to monarchical ideology, as in Aratus, p. 94.
27
5
CHOSING BUCOLICS TO ADDRESS CRISIS AT ROME
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
the streets. His verses infiltrated social memory.42 Once, when actors interpolated lines of his to signal his presence in the
theater, the crowd rose & applauded as if the poet were the emperor himself.43
Few of those who thrilled at Virgil’s vatic mimes would have related them to one of those Alexandrian literary
experiments freshly absorbed on the Palatine hill.44 Theocritus & his deflationary brand of epos were not widely known
at Rome in Virgil’s day, nor did they ever loom large in Roman social memory.45 Nor indeed did Virgil’s rendering of
bucolic epos ever match his heroic Æneid as a cause for literary gossip – measured endlessly with peerless & famous
Homer.46 To be sure the Bucolics did continue to get performed until the age of Servius (c4-5 CE). But their relatedness
to Theocritus, though remarked by commentators, never dominated interest. They got received, instead, at different levels
in different ways – along literary, political, & erotic lines.47
By picking Theocritus, of all the books from Alexandria that circulated on the Palatine, Virgil chose the one that
interlaced the immediacy of mime & its political potential with prestigious threads that led to the heroic & mythic epos of
Homer & Hesiod. From them, to be sure, Theocritus had pointedly distanced himself, defining the origin & authority – a
poetic etiology – for his peculiar blend of epos in his seventh idyll (p. 96).48 Thus when Virgil opens his book by revising
that idyll, you can infer that he too means to define the origin & authority – etiology – for his revision of bucolic epos. He
challenges us as readers to observe his similarities with the idyll – shared generic features – in order the more accurately
to note the specific differences that reveal Virgil’s new & expressly Roman literary designs.49
Theocritus gave the seventh idyll a mythic frame when he made its narrator, a city poet, claim that his songs’
fame had reached the throne of Zeus.50. Within the frame, then, Theocritus endowed the narrator with two authorizing
moments: one a memory of mountaintop instruction by the Nymphs while he grazed cows,51 the other embedded in the
idyll’s actual plot, where the narrator tells of going from city to country & meeting the Muses’ familiar – goatherd
Lycidas, who approves the narrator’s poetic practice as modest with respect to Homer (id. 7.47-48).
We can glean some first hints of Virgil’s plans by remarking a few ways in which he remakes the seventh idyll in
his first eclogue. He replaces Theocritus’ remote mythic frame (the hint of King Ptolemy) with the present god at Rome
(the thinly disguised Caesar Octavian). He imagines, instead of a youthful oxherd hustling from the city to a country
feast, an aged oxherd trudging to Rome for ‘Liberty’; where Theocritus described meeting a smelly goatherd & getting
praise for poetic restraint, V makes his oldster meet the new political god & get an oracular order to work ‘as before’ but
produce more. To this positive if onerous etiology, Virgil adds a negative unlike anything in Theocritus: a godless,
barbarian soldier that expropriates property & drives old owners off their land. Together the positive & negative
etiologies define a dual poetic stance: reluctant retreat from epos within the traditional Roman republican frame, but
embrace of a mission to recast the old bucolic epos of Theocritus for an ambitiously vatic role in Rome.
The opening speaker’s wonder at signs of new order & his protest at loss might well captivate audiences. With
vatic voicing, it articulates a pervasive anxiety & its reasons, yet offers hope through new divine power. That would play
in the theater, while for the Palatine audience, Virgil’s figure of the new god active in Rome reverses Catullus’ vision of a
Rome cut off from the divine & the heroic (p. 101). It also revises the vision by Catullus’ older contemporary Lucretius
divine philosopher as a triumphal saving power (p. 100). The very use of bucolic characters to formulate new mythology
counters too Lucretius’ critique of bucolic myth as self-deceptive fiction. In short Virgil’s differences not only from
Theocritus but from his near contemporaries suggest that he is well on his way to renewing Roman epos within a mythic
frame that could support all of its traditional thematic ranges – not only adding the bucolic but recapturing the georgic &
heroic-civic, hence mounting challenges on the horizon to Hesiod & Homer.
42
Cf. n. 38 : verses scratched on walls (graffiti) come more from the Bucolics than the Æneid , Design, xxiii.
From Tacitus, Dialogue on Orators 12, discussed at Design, xxxiv.
44
For Alexandria & its politically engaged poets, cf. p. 95.
45
Fantuzzi, Hellenistic Poetry, 464–65 (RH).
46
Symptomatic, that Servius (n. 57) commented first on the Æneid & only later on the Bucolics & Georgics.
47
Political flattery for the emperor surfaced, along with erotic & literary themes, in a book of only seven Bucolics by Calpurnius (c1 CE), who got the nickname Siculus (Sicilian) in reference to the Sicilian tradition of Theocritus. Two centuries later, the
theme of Jove’s new progeny, that first complemented Octavian’s propaganda, got interpreted as a pagan prophecy of Christ in
propaganda for the newly Christian emperor Constantine (early c4 CE). Meanwhile, ordinary readers liked to “sing the sexy passages
and commit Virgil to memory” (Horsfall, Plebs, 15 presumably right up to the fall of Rome in 410 CE, which must have shut the show
down.
48
Poetic etiology: p. 98.
49
On difference, see Design 254, s.v. oppositio in imitando (opposition in imitating), also my “Virgil Vs Cicero, Lucretius,
Theocritus, Callimachus, Plato, & Homer: Two Programmatic Plots in the First Bucolic,” Vergilius 46 (2000): 23, which whole article
documents RELATEDNESS between eclogue one & other texts.
50
“Probably a hint at Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the ultimate patron for poets (cf. Idyll 17]; cf. Hunter Theocritus, “Idylls,” 97,
on id. 7.93.
51
Id. 7.90-91 – varying Hesiod’s initiation while herding sheep on Helicon, p. 90.
43
6
THREADING TEXTS & THEMES
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I. RIFT IN VATIC VISION: MELIBŒ́US {OLD ROMAN EPOS LOST} /
TÍTYRUS {OLD BUCOLIC EPOS REMADE FOR ROME}
Performance in Roman practice could call for three actors here:52 one to recite & two to mime the postures &
attitudes of the herdsmen – to follow the shifting moods, clashes, rise of feelings & falling away to the quiet close. Music
would follow mood, with the fun of finding means to approximate old instruments: bone flute, cymbal, panpipes like
those of the Andes. Ordinary modern circumstances make more likely the involvement of at most two readers.
Stand up, then, take a deep breath, & try to get a feel for the opening voice. Take your cues from the speaker’s
pained surprise. His language directs you to pretend to stop in your tracks, stare at a surprising sight, make emphatic
gestures pointing to the other character – ‘you ... but we ... ’ [1.1-5]. You dramatize a refugee’s discovery of a contrast
between his own plight – homeless, trudging along in the sun, driving a few goats, scarcely able to drag one [1.12-13] –
& what he reports that he sees & hears: an old codger sprawled under a broad beech & making music about love.
Wonderment defines the character through repeated cries [1.11, 36, 46, 51]: amazement to find a spot untouched
by the military force that drove you into flight – soldiers seizing property, ousting citizens, breaking off farm work in all
the fields – like too many places ever in the contemporary news [1.11-12, 70-73].
You model your voicing too on how Virgil makes the fugitive address the oldster as a neighbor – with an
affectionate Greek nickname you might translate ‘Old Goat’ or ‘Billy’: Títyrus (accents mark syllables to get emphasis;
this name in English reads best if read as two, Tit’rus, while the refugee gets the full four syllables, with accent on the
third: Me-li-bee-us).
Try getting deeper into the character by noticing that Virgil depicts Melibœ́us as bereft in three respects –
homesick for his fatherland & status as a citizen [1.4, 72], for his estate farmed well & long [1.3, 70-73], & for his bucolic moments lost: he’ll sing no more & no more watch goats graze while he himself lies stretched in a picturesque green
bower [1.75-78].53
Get yourself, in turn, into the other character: grasp how Virgil fashions Títyrus with signs of a very different plot
& profile – not a citizen-farmer freshly driven from home but an elderly herdsman-slave who went to Rome, came back
& now finds himself secured in his traditional home by political power. This Roman power gets personified as a god &
characterized with a volley of pronouns – ‘he’, ‘his’, ‘he’ – that posit a third person & each prompt you to point to a
youthful figure seated in the front row: [1.6-9]
O Melibœ́us, a god it was that made us this repose,
for that one always god will be to me: his altar
often our own sheepfolds’ tender lamb will stain.
He let my cows range round, as you discern, & me
9
myself, whatever I wanted, play with farmfield reed.
You get a further cue when Virgil imagines the god delivering an oracle to Títyrus at Rome – [1.44-45]
Here to me seeking first he gave prophetic echo:
“Graze your cows, boys, as before. Send up your bulls.”
Again the pronouns cue a gesture towards the patron.
While Virgil imagines the trip to Rome as recent & decisive, he also portrays Títyrus as a veteran lover: long
enslaved by love for a greedy female until freed from that metaphorical bondage by a more generous, caring mistress
[1.30-35]. Only then, adds Virgil, did Títyrus, already old, seek to get free from slavery itself [1.19, 27], setting out for
Rome, making the new mistress worry [1.36-37], & having his decisive encounter with the god [1.44-45].
CONTEXTS [ECL. 1]
The drama draws expressive force from the contemporary political & social context. Loss of land to soldiers &
forced flight would be current themes in the years around 42-40 BCE, marked by fresh violence & impending threats of
more (p. 3). For many civil war meant exile if not death. Many merely had the misfortune to own properties in places
(e.g., Virgil’s Mantua) that Caesar’s avengers took – expropriated – to pay their armies. The victims’ viewpoint figures in
Melibœ́us’ opening cry with its contrast between second & first person pronouns – ‘you ... but we’ [1.1-5].
Commentators have inferred that Virgil himself lost land. Be that as it may, he can also imagine old Títyrus
secured in a traditional spot by a new god. He cues you for the gestures that direct every eye to the best seats – privileged
posts down front reserved for members of the highest class: gestures meant to mark a youthful figure as the power behind
the bucolic masquerade, which the crowd grasped immediately & commentators soon remarked. Young Caesar must have
found that the flattering line of Títyrus overshadowed the outrage – represented by Melibœ́us – at taking land to pay off
52
53
Beacham, Roman Theater, 88.
Losses identified with three domains or ranges of life & work & epic, see above n. 4.)
CHOSING BUCOLICS TO ADDRESS CRISIS AT ROME
7
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soldiers. Indeed, to judge by his other propaganda (p. 4), he might well want to fix in the public mind the oracle’s dual
theme – ‘as before, but more’.
The oracle’s theme, on closer reading, puzzles: ‘boys, get back to grazing cows as you did before”; even build
production – ‘boys, send up your bulls’ [1.45]. Developing the drama, Virgil has just made an old slave claim that he
went to Rome to get a new deal – liberty, emancipation from enslavement. ‘Liberty’ was a political watchword of the
republican cause,54 which Virgil thus reframes as the freedom that would be sought by any slave [1.27, 41]. Yet he makes
the oracle command return to the situation ‘as before’, which would mean not new liberty but old enslavement. He masks
the contradiction by making Melibœ́us respond to the oracle with emphatic praise for Títyrus’ secure state & its continuity
with the past – business as usual in a place portrayed as poor but picturesque [1.46-50, 51-58]. Nobody is supposed to
notice that return to the status quo does not satisfy a slave’s longing to get free.
Admitting that the message of the god – ‘as before, but more’ – ignores the natural hope of a real-life slave for
change, you may suspect that Virgil never meant to make the oracle suit a slave narrative. He must have meant to attract
adherents of the traditional frame – free citizens displaced by new power & homesick for life ‘as before’. They might be
lured by the message & lulled to forget who took their land. The solemnity of the oracle & the bucolic drama just might
play the part of propaganda – pull political wool over eyes.55
The dialogue lets you infer that Virgil’s mind was split between conflicting versions of reality. He formulates in
the figure of Melibœ́us his original frame of mind only to dramatize its clash with values that he begins to formulate in the
figures of Títyrus & his god. At the edges of each frame, Virgil projects a mythic range & causal forces that dominate to
positive or negative effect. Within the frame, then, he treats experience schematically, breaking it down into the three
ranges – civic, georgic, & bucolic:56:
Ranges ⇒
{Frames}⇓
mythic &
heroic
themes
civic
themes
georgic
themes
bucolic
themes
causal
themes
(etiology]
Melibœ́us: old
Roman frame
negated – trek
into exile,
loss of
home
oaks (Jove)
touched by
lightning
(Jove) not
interpreted
rightly
[1.16-7]:
failure as
seer-bard
fatherland
fled [4],
citizens
expropriated [72]
(liberty
lost)
sweet
plowlands
left [2],
arts of
farm
wasted
[70-73]
no more
song
in bower,
surveying
goats
[74-78]
godless
barbarian
soldier
disrupts civic
life & takes
georgic &
bucolic
property
(70-71]
Títyrus: new
Roman frame
invented – trek
to city, return
to home
secured:
‘beech’ linked
to Jove of
Beech Grove
new god
at Rome –
‘as before
but more’
[45]
(will get
linked to
Jove by
seer-bard)
(liberty
for
slave?)
far farms
at peace,
shadows
closing day
[82-93]
slavery [41]
vs liberty?
[27]:
song, pipe,
shade
[1-2, 4-5];
cattle,
sheep
god at Rome
secures
bucolic &
georgic
property
In the old Roman frame, Virgil imagines Melibœ́us as failing to grasp a mythic sign – oaks struck by lightning
[1.16-17]. Oaks were Jove’s trees & lightning his weapon:57 the habit of interpreting omens relates the figure of Melibœ́us
to the lore about old Italic seers (vates), only in this case a seer not able to see, out of touch with divine power. By
contrast, Virgil depicts Títyrus as a successful vates – getting an oracle from his god at Rome, who figures as the positive
54
Van Sickle, Design 252, s. v. Libertas. In the Atrium Libertatis (“Liberty Hall’), which he rebuilt on the slopes of the Capitoline hill above the rostra & forum between 39 & 28 BCE, V’s friend Pollio (n. 14) installed Rome’s first public library & furnished
it with authors’ portraits (Ovid, Tristia 3.1.71-2; Pliny Natural History 7.30.115, 35.2.10; Isidore of Seville, Origins 6.5.1): among
them V’s new Bucolics? What irony might Pollio detect in Virgil’s using ‘liberty’ for a slave’s freedom in a Caesarist frame? Pollio
was close to Julius Caesar but diffident toward his heir & closer to Marc Antony, although Virgil would incorporate Pollio, like his precious Liberty, into the new mythic frame [3.84, 86], [4.12].
55
Design, xxviii ; for the opacity of oracular & tragic language, which leaves meaning up to the recipient, Skutsch, EnniusAnnals, 235 – the very oracular & elusive language of the Bucolics may be a significant part of Virgil’s emulation of tragedy & epic,
discussed below. Mistaking poetic language as impersonally available underlies the pretensions of philologists to impose/extract
original &/or unique meaning.
56
See n. 4.
57
“Marvelously invented augury, for oaks are protected by Jove”: noted by Servius Honoratus called grammaticus
(philologist), 395-410 CE; he harvested four centuries of commentary on the works of Virgil as part of a final effort by the pagan
Roman nobility to resist Christianity, which had already been embraced by the emperor Constantine (323 CE). In 410 CE Rome itself
was sacked by Alaric the Goth.
8
THREADING TEXTS & THEMES
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
causal force in the new mythic frame. Caesar Octavian’s propaganda linked him with Jove – a linkage that Virgil will
exploit as he expands this mythic frame.58
In the frame of Melibœ́us & acting as its negative causal force, Virgil describes the armies that expropriate &
disrupt traditional privilege – agents of revolutionary change. Calling them ‘barbarian’ & ‘godless’ he distances them as
far as possible from their leadership, which includes the god of Títyrus. Virgil thus deflects attention from the brutal
actions of Octavian’s allies in north Italy & promotes him as the agent for traditional values – return to an improved
status quo, formulating the line (ideology) that Octavian would have the crowd believe.59
At the eclogue’s close Virgil expands the new frame to include a slight hint of georgic properties like those lost
to the traditional frame [1.3, 11-12, 67-74]. With respect to conservative values, Virgil thus has done what the soldiers
did with land: expropriate the old in order to construct the new. He frames the tumultuous experience of civil war –
privileging the positive, overshadowing the negative – to craft political myth. Like the Alexandrian poets before him,
then, Virgil is creating “a myth of emergence” suitable for the Caesars & by means of his poetic voice not only
articulating but actively collaborating “in setting this new world in order.”60
THREADS DRAWN UP/DOWN [ECL. 1]
The bucolic drama would evoke for some the rustic mimes that clumped across the stage & the “dancing choruses
of Sileni in hairy tunics and satyrs wearing goatskin loin cloths” that mocked serious public celebrations.61 Bucolic
scenery might recall memories of a pristine pastoral Palatine, yet pastoral & the Palatine were political in Roman social
memory. Romans cherished the legend of how their monarchy got replaced by republican oligarchy: a herdsman’s dream
presaged change when interpreted correctly by a seer (vates).62
Drawing down threads like those, the Bucolics depart from the heroic & civic epos that the schools enforced –
hoary Saturnians of Livius & Naevius (p. 99) as well as the militant hexameters of Ennius (p.99 ). The Bucolics would
surprise too anyone who had absorbed Lucretius & Catullus; Lucretius debunked pastoral mythology & vatic voices only
to praise a distant philosophic god (p. 100); while Catullus saw the old gods as alienated from a human society beyond
repair (p. 101).
Countering both, Virgil offers the blend of a new god’s oracle interpreted by herdsmen in his own contemporary
Rome. The blend – call it neovatic – looks like deliberate imaginative reach to recover that time before the Republic
when herdsmen & seers articulated power – like the Alexandrians’ use of etiological myth to justify innovation in politics
& poetics. They justified a new monarchy with old features. Virgil envisions return of the dimly remembered vatic culture prior to Rome’s republic. He thus reframes new power in legendary guise.
The god’s oracle to Títyrus would surprise also anyone who remembered Hesiod, how he claimed authority for
his work by imagining an oracle from the daughters of Zeus & Memory. Virgil makes his Títyrus too get an authorizing
oracle, but with a telling difference. Where Hesiod traced authority to Zeus’ daughters on a sacred mountain in Greece,
Virgil changes both the authority & the place – new god located in his own city, thinly masking a powerful political operator. Virgil uses the similarities with Hesiod to establish his own membership in the epic guild & the differences to show
how a new guildsman can use old threads to authorize a new & Roman version of epos, colored however as return to an
older state.63
The story of Títyrus would surprise if anything more the rarer reader who recalled how Theocritus claimed
authority for his peculiar blend of epos by replacing Hesiod’s well-washed Muses with an odoriferous goatherd – met not
on Hesiod’s mountain but along a road from city to country. To this, Virgil replies with a walk from country to city &
authority gained from Roman political power in a newly enlarged mythic frame. The changes imply that this version of
the bucolic range will outmatch Theocritus because empowered through Rome.64
The threads of authorizing myth come second, in response to the opening story of threads broken: Melibœ́us
shown as deprived of georgic property & civic status by revolutionary force – the godless barbarian soldier65 – & as a
failed seer [1. 17-18] & silenced singer [1.74], thus reduced to bucolic status as a goatherd & driven to approach a
Theocritean character, Títyrus. Blending this particular selection of threads in Melibœ́us, Virgil formulates a judgment
58
See p. 4 & n. 80.
Design, 252, s.v. ideology.
60
Adapting an analogy from Stephens, Poetics Ptolemaic, 114: as Alexandrian poets from Hesiod & Homer for Ptolemies, so
V from Alexandrian poets for Caesars.
61
Wiseman, “Fauns, Prophets,” 515–16.
62
The legend figured in a tragedy named for the Republic’s founder, Brutus, & frequently performed (written by Lucius
Accius, 170-ca 86 BCE, quoted by Cicero, 106-43 BCE, On divination I.22.44).
63
His project to Romanize epic led Virgil next to shift thematic range from the single book of Bucolics to write four books
called Georgics, where he amplifies his new mythic frame. Finally he takes on both of Homer’s heroic epics with the twelve books of
his Aeneid, where he makes a defeated & exiled Trojan hero Aeneas into a problematic blend of Odysseus & Achilles as mythic
ancestor for the leader hailed first in the Bucolics as a god.
64
Cf. pp. 96 & 5.
65
Carefully insulated from its real linkage to Títyrus’ new god.
59
LOVE'S POWER FILLS FRAMING MYTH
9
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
about the possibilities for epos at Rome. He suggests that Latin epos as practiced under the Republic has been foreclosed,
its social & mythic frame destroyed. But instead of lapsing into silence, he makes the pathos of destruction motivate the
opening turn to Títyrus With this he reactivates & radically amplifies the old bucolic range by transforming it into an
imaginative return to the supposed vatic & monarchical state of Rome.66
In the figure & plot of Títyrus then, Virgil represents the old Greek medium that he captures & transforms: old,
but abruptly roused from traditional themes, forced to explain a fate that differs from Melibœ́us because based on a novel
& constructive relationship with power – the new god & new Roman mythic frame masked as return to a prior state.
In short, Virgil uses his two bucolic figures & their contrasting plots to dramatize the impact of revolutionary
force on his literary ambition – destroying the older Roman frame,67 yet prompting & energizing a new frame that can
authorize epic ambition. He draws on social memory & literary study, adapting themes from Roman tragedy & tradition,
from ideals of primitive society & ethical retreat, from types of poetic hero in Theocritus, & from vignettes of the bucolic,
georgic, & civic ranges displayed by Homer in the Iliad on the great shield fashioned by the god of craft for the poem’s
main hero Achilles. His product can be described as “imaginatively viable myth not simply for what are the new realities
but for its desires and potential.”68
[1] MAINLY IN PLAY: Soc[ial ]Mem[emory] herdsman & vates (n. 62);
LtEpos[Latin epos] Lucretius (p. 100), 4.565–94 (pastoral myth debunked), 5.1392-94 (idyllic original rural
cf. 2.29-31 (idyllic philosophical retreat).
GrBepos [Greek Bucolic epos] Theocritus, id. 1 (goatherd, shepherd, oxherd, Pan, pipe); id. 7 (poet drawn
from city to country, authorizing poetics; Títyros singer of bucolic origin myths); id. 3, 4 (Amaryllis ‘sparkling’ elusive object of love).
GrPhil [Greek philosophy] Plato, Phaedrus §228-230 Scully (p. 94): Socrates drawn to country (shade, water,
grass) to talk of love with sparkling (phaidros) boy.
GrEpos [Greek Epos] Apollonius (p. 97); Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo (Alexandrian, pp. 94, 98); Hesiod (p.
Theog. 1-103 (poet shepherding on hill authorized by Muses to tell gods’ origin in song that echoes in their
dwellings to their delight); Homer, Il[iad]. 18.478-607 (shield for Achilles, p. 91).
GrEleg [Greek elegy] Callimachus, Aitia [‘Causes’] (p. 98).
FORM (dramatic) 83 vv = 5; 5; 29; 5, 1; 28; 5; 5
II. SONG AS CHARM {BOASTS BOOST BUCOLIC/GEORGIC RANGE: MENALCAS SPURNED}
Sit back, raise eyebrows, prick up ears & frown. A framing voice – gossipy, supercilious – tattles on grazer
Córydon represented as another eloquent singer like Melibœ́us, & also moved by power, though not of Rome but love.
If you keep the framer’s attitude in mind throughout, you will recite the lover’s rant with a certain ironical
distance & disdain – a disconnect derived from carefully cultivated urbanity – your sense of superiority & restraint.
But if you feel more empathy with lovers, you might play down the frame & identify with the excited Córydon,
taking your cue from how he is said to pace & shout [2.1-5]. You would try to remember if ever you felt romantic pangs
enough to make you run through groves of close-grown beeches, fill wild hills with echoes, all because cold-shouldered
by a charming, scornful boy.
Performing you would play up shifts in mood: reproaches to the boy [2.6-18]; self-satisfaction for yourself [2.1927]; cajolery to the boy by proffering bribes [2.28-44]; build-up to a fabulous blend of blossoms, tones, & scents [2.4555]; collapse into self-reproach [2.56-59], quickly shift from renewed appeal, to philosophical reflection on insatiable
love, to awareness that farmers’ rest at end of day while you burn [2.60-68]. Seeing the ox go home, sun shrink, &
shadows grow cools passion with the thought of regular work [2.69-70].
Two parts again, so one for each voice (or player) from the first eclogue. But you may want to figure out which
follows from the voicing of Títyrus & which from the voicing of Melibœ́us .
You may look back at each figure as Virgil FLESHED IT OUT,69 then ask how each may be RELATED to the figures
70
here: indeed you may decide that your simplest choice would be to reckon that the last voice of one eclogue must
66
For “return” etiology, Stephens, 256–67.
Destruction necessary for creation: Design, 124, n. 59.
68
Cf. n. 36.
69
The SMALL CAPS mark words used as metaphors in making up commentary: here the metaphor of personification, which suggests that the poet creates characters & that you interpret these dramatis personae (‘action masks’) as persons with flesh & blood.
70
Relate (from the Latin prefix re- ‘back, again’ & verbal stem lat- ‘bear, bring’, which Latin linked with another verbal stem,
fer-. Thus relate & refer both express the same root idea, ‘to bear back, to bring again’, although English gives them differing empha67
10
SECOND ECLOGUE
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
RELATE directly to the first voice of the next.
By this reckoning, you would perform the figure of the Framer (cued as citified, disdainful & detached from bucolic love for a boy) as if RELATED to the closing voice of Títyrus (since Virgil PORTRAYED that character as a lover of
women & representative of a world-view – ideology – that included the city & political power dignified as divine in new
myth).71
The agitated voicing, then, of the singer driven by frustrated love – AMOR – would be RELATED to the likewise
agitated Melibœ́us, also a singer, but driven by political power – ROMA.
CONTEXTS [ECL. 2]
The erotic spectacle would tease the theater crowd – quick to scent a whiff of personal scandal. That audience
would infer that the poet himself panted for some friend’s charming slave. The vulgar inference would get handed down
in biographies made-up by ever prurient commentators.72 In the excitement it would be natural to forget the conflict
between framing ideologies that was dramatized through the figure of Melibœ́us confronting Títyrus.
The new mythic frame of Títyrus & his god would dominate & contain the erotic drama:
Ranges ⇒
{Frames}⇓
mythic &
heroic
range
civic
range
georgic
range
bucolic
range
outside & beyond
[master’s realm]
Framer
disdains
bucolic
range from
city frame
(ROMA)
Pallas
(goddess),
Paris
(hero),
Pan first
made pipe
(myth of
bucolic
origin)
master of
Córydon &
Aléxis
(slave
boy loved
by both
master &
fellow
slave)
Théstylis &
farmers
doing
regular
day’s
work
Córydon –
singer
moved
by love
(AMOR);
Damœ́tas
bequeathed
pipe
(≈ bucolic
tradition –
Theocr to
Virgil)
sheep,
goats
Aléxis
(beloved
boy)
disdains
bucolic
range
from
master’s
frame
Within his new frame Virgil can imagine the urbane framer looking down on a bucolic range that features singing
once again as in Theocritus motivated by love: love for an object of desire outside the bucolic range – not a willing girl at
hand but the master's distant sweet.
Virgil reaches, also, for myths from higher ranges: Pallas originator of cities; Paris once a herder, but whose love
affair with Helen destroyed Troy & was the origin of epos in the heroic range (p. 90). He also expands the bucolic range
with two accounts of origins: Pan first maker of the bucolic pipe & Damœ́tas imagined source for the present pipe.
Getting up the parts, you could amuse yourself with the irony that Virgil makes his Córydon act as if song – its
gear & lore – could charm some reticent boy. Grin at the very idea of a grazer boasting that reed pipes were first invented
by Pan – the Arcadian grazer god – the better to rub a tender lip [2.34]. What could be more sensual & suffered than the
thought – if only that little lip puckered round this reed?73
Still more ironic, the very name of Pan might remind you of certain stories & make you wonder why Virgil chose
to omit so much of what sticks most in mind – how the god with his curved goat horns, pointy ears, snub nose, hooved
feet & hairy limbs, his ever goatish sexual bent, got material for the pipe in the first place: trying to rape the nymph
Syrinx; who got away by turning into reed, which Pan (to sublimate unsated lust?) turned into a pipe. Ruling out the lurid
details, Virgil prompts you to suspect that he had some new, not simply commonplace, agenda in the back of his mind.
———————————————
ses in ordinary use). The SMALL CAPITALS again mark metaphoric language used to make commentary – marking clues to the poet’s
mind & cues for ours. As a metaphor to suggest intercourse among poetic features, the verb RELATE is meant to be RELATively neutral
(unlike more concrete metaphors from the physics of sound, e.g., ECHO; or from biology, e.g., GROW from or into; or from personal history, e.g., DEVELOP into or from). I restrict myself to RELATE & use it again & again for two reasons: to emphasize that comments
always need metaphoric language to describe literature & our experience of it, but also to leave your options open – let you have the
fun of making up your own commentary, figuring out what metaphors best communicate what you find & enjoy in the INTIMATE TEXTURE of these poems.
71
For ideology, n. 59: the figure of the Framer presupposes & so implicitly reinforces the ideological frame introduced with
Títyrus
72
E.g., the tissue of gossip – attributing pedophilia to the poet – retailed by Servius (for whom, n. 57 above).
73
Design, 127n63
11
LOVE'S POWER FILLS FRAMING MYTH
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Reminded of old myths, you might think, too, that Virgil tweaked the tale in another way. He preferred a version
that made Pan invent the pipe & not Pan’s father – the god Hermes (first cattle-rustler – thus a bucolic prototype).74 Nor
does Virgil yet so much as hint at the old story of migrants from Arcadia settling their native Pan beside the Palatine hill
in the Wolf Shrine (Lupercal).75 That linkage would serve later, not yet here.
You might well furrow your brow more deeply at the spectacle of Córydon trying to woo by proffering a
precious pipe – inherited from dear, old, dead Damœ́tas – as if old stuff could charm a feckless & insouciant, pouting boy
[2.36-38].
THREADS DRAWN UP/DOWN [ECL. 2]
Reckoning on his newly invented, amplified, & consolidated mythic frame, Virgil sets out to recover & expand
ranges of song (that is to say, epos) that he represented as lost in the old frame’s ruin as figured through the exile of
Melibœ́us. He gives voice to the new frame as looking down on a ‘disordered’ burst of singing in the bucolic range,
which he DEPICTS now as controlled by the traditional bucolic force of Love rather than by the power that dominated the
first eclogue – causal shift from ROMA to AMOR.
Virgil expands the new frame by imagining the lover’s song projected from the bucolic range across & up to a
master’s darling (implying the civic range). In between he depicts pointed contrasts between bucolic passion &
surrounding georgic work. In short, he develops the bucolic & georgic ranges, but also reaches for the civic & the heroic
(cf. p. 10 ). Playing to the crowd’s memory of heroic plots, he lards the singer’s pleas with hints of tragedy & heroic epos
– Amphion, Actaeon, Paris. Among the themes of erotic fervor, Virgil imagines the lover trying to win the aloof boy by
flaunting bucolic versions of “authorizing past”: ‘first’ inventor Pan, ‘second’ to a dead master (sc. Theocritus, cf. p. 10).
For any who remember Theocritus, the artful pitch to a boy offers delicious contrasts to his version of Homer’s Cyclops
wooing a nymph (id. 11; p. 96).
[2] MAINLY IN PLAY: ecl. 1; SocMem ≈ Lt tragedies (cited below);
LtEpos Catullus (n. 9 & p. 101];
GrBepos Theocritus (p. 96), idd. 2, 3, 6, 7, 11 (lovers’ pleas); idd. 1 & [8] (pipers);
GrEpigr Meleager’s Wreath of Poetic Flowers;
GrPhil Plato, Phaedrus (p. 94);
GrEpos. Homer, Shield (Il. 18.478-607, p. 91); Cyclops (Od. 9, p. 90).
FORM (narrative) 73 vv = 5; {([29]1, {{5}}, [29]2), 5}
[29]1 = [6, 7, 16] [29]2 = [16, 7, 6]
III.VATIC BUILDUP: MENALCAS {PHŒBUS} & DAMŒ́TAS {‘ALL FULL OF JOVE’} –
PALÆMON {FULL BUCOLIC & GEORGIC FRAME}
Stand back & chuckle at crude insults traded by two singers – lovers both. Menálcas marked as youthful, from a
propertied family though not in charge himself, still controlled by elders, indeed a stepmother [3.32-34], thus he in turn
jealous of others’ powers, whether sexual or poetic [3.3-4, 25-27], himself mainly loving one boy, Amýntas [3.66-83].
Damœ́tas – marked as the older & more confident character, though only a slave or hired hand [3.2] – boastful of
winning with his pipe a billygoat, which he stole when its owner would not pay [3.21-24]. At this Virgil makes Ménalcas
scoff that Damœ́tas never had a proper pipe, just a squeaky straw [3.25-27], triggering a rapid-fire exchange. Its energy
will make you stretch your voice & dramatic imagination to project a whole range of loves, poetic tastes, risks, threats,
bounds in bucolic work, & on to skill with riddles.
Get with the match. Make the cross-fire sizzle with erotics – this girl or that, but just the one boy, Amýntas [3.6483]. Retard & gesture, point as the combatants look beyond bucolic love to the city with praise & blame for poets who
might even have been there in the theater, although no pronouns point [3.84-91].
Resume speed. In your best style of warnings, spells & magical charms, your vatic mode, rattle off perils to cattle,
sheep, & goats – entire range of bucolic animals – from tricky edges, destructive passion, envious stares [3.85-103]. Top
74
75
Hymn to Hermes 511-512.
Cf. the Palatine’s links with pasture, above p. 1 & Alexandrian views of Arcadia as primordial stage in human life, n. 673.
12
THIRD ECLOGUE
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
it off with a mystifying tone (make a good show of understanding what you don’t) the riddles that reach as far as the sky
& flowers inscribed with names of kings [3.104-07].76
Virgil imagines the duo telling a neighbor, Palǽmon, to take this stuff seriously [3.53-54] & Palǽmon then
declaring prize-worthy both, or anyone that loves. [3.108-11].
The three parts call for three voices, yet you might let the two main ones take turns to play the third, which comes
at the middle & end.
Menálcas – imagine this voice RELATED to the second eclogue’s close:77 look back & notice how Virgil portrayed
the emotive singer as cooling passion down by turning from heated bucolic song to needed georgic chores [2.69-73].78
Damœ́tas – more brazen, energetic, & a lover of girls: so can you imagine this voice RELATED to the same voice
(or player) as for Títyrus but portrayed now with more youthful tones?79
With the name Damœ́tas Virgil pricks curiosity by bringing on a second version of one figure. The repetition
makes it natural to infer that the two versions may be RELATED in some way, which again invites you to explain by means
of metaphor. One metaphor would PERSONIFY the two versions as two stages – middle-age & old – in one BIOGRAPHY. In
that line, since Virgil here shows Damœ́tas as alive & energetic but there as dead, you might infer that Virgil envisioned
the third eclogue in imaginary time as prior to the second. You might, then, seek out other time relationships among
eclogues, such as changes in the age of other characters or shifts in time of centuries or years or days.
Palǽmon – frames (in form) & reconciles (in theme) the other voices. They may take turns supplying this part: at
the center this voice (played by Menálcas responding to Damœ́tas) situates song in full spring season, encouraged by
Roman goddesses of poetry (Caménae); at the end, this voice (played by Damœ́tas responding to Menálcas) validates
both happy & bitter loves, declares the round of ambitious singing enough.
CONTEXTS [ECL. 3]
Virgil makes both singers praise gods – Jove & Apollo [3.60-63] – that were used for propaganda: Caesar Octavian
associated himself with Jove on emblematic coins;80 & near his house on the Palatine hill he would build a temple to
Apollo as well as public libraries of Latin & Greek.
Yet Virgil also has both singers praise Pollio [3.84-87] as a friend to this poetry & himself a poet who wrote
tragedies.81 The imagery of spring everywhere – burgeoning fields & woods – consolidates & expands enormously the
ideological field – mythic frame – first promulgated through Títyrus & then enlarged by the orderly countryside surrounding Córydon:82
THREADS DRAWN UP/DOWN [ECL. 3]
So successful has been the effort to furnish the new frame with reclaimed & adapted scraps of tragedy & epos,
that Virgil can push forward by imagining a backward look to time before revolution shattered the old frame. He opens
by suggesting a moment when Melibœ́us could be represented as merely a part of a local scene, which is depicted as
disturbed by nothing graver than envy & love, hence rather more like the ordinary state of bucolic affairs in Theocritus.
As a trigger for drama in such circumstances, Virgil supposes neither revolutionary force nor frustrated love, but sexual
desire satisfied by a proprietor who slights bucolic property & work. Virgil gives the absent proprietor a name that, unlike
Melibœ́us, did play a role in Theocritus – Ægon (‘goatish’?): described in the fourth idyll as leaving his herd to pursue
not sex but victory at the Olympic games.
In turn, this one stretch gives rise to others in the dramatic buildup: What’s new? You’re trouble for the status
quo! What about your bad stuff? Yeah, & your dirt? Yeah, yours too. My songs! Songs, you? My eye!
76
‘Like almost all riddles, these lack obvious solutions’ remarked Servius [3.105-6], where a footnote reports someone hearing
Virgil say that here he had set up a ‘cross’ (tool of torture) for commentators, to try who among them would be found most zealous
(studious).
77
Related – above, n. 70.
78
Such rural tasks, left because of love, also RELATE to the orderly farm work left by Melibœ́us because of Roman power [1.3,
67-73]. Here again (as above, n. 70) I use RELATE as a neutral metaphor allowing you to imagine how one set of farm motifs may
FOLLOW FROM or REFER BACK TO or BUILD UPON another.
79
Cf. multiple girls of Títyrus [1.29-30].Recall that cf. suggests the basic pastoral chore of ‘herding together’ which we use
metaphorically to describe other domains (cf. n. 1). It comes from Latin con- ‘with, together’ + fer- ‘bear, bring’ (for fer- & lat- cf. n.
70). In commentary it commonly serves to tell other readers to ‘COLLATe’ & ‘COMpare’ two or more values, whether within a work, as
here, or in several. ‘Cf.’ supposes that the values are reLATed to one another by some point or points of similarity. But similarity is not
identity. So difFERences emerge. Thus ‘cf.’ really directs you to look for difFERences that you can explain through metaphor (cf. above
n. 70) – some sort of progression or regression in values, such as here, where Virgil has changed the figure of Damœ́tas from dead
master to lively presence.
80
Cf. p. 4 & Design, xxx-xxxi.
81
Also from outside Rome, he had welcomed Virgil to the city (cf. nn. 14 & 54).
82
For expanding ideology, see above nn. 71 & 59; for framing, n. 53.
FOURTH ECLOGUE
13
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
To populate this archaizing & even nostalgic version of the bucolic range, Virgil reclaims & revises two
characters from the background of the second eclogue – Menálcas & Damœ́tas – that also trigger comparisons with
Theocritus. He endows them with conflict over local details but a shared focus on the value of song, which always
surfaces as a basic concern in bucolic drama. He frames their resultant singing match with a third figure, in which he represents his enhanced mythic frame – furnished now to the full & raised to universal reach: ‘now every, now all, now
most’. In the framing voice, then Virgil defines a positive program for his new version of old bucolic exchange: Latin
goddesses of song (Camenae) ‘love’ songs exchanged, i.e. the Theocritean model of bucolic exchange is going to get a
boost & remake from Latin muses.
On these ambitious hints, Virgil makes the speakers sing each in turn two verses (couplets), The form recalls two
literary precedents: both a long & lively bucolic contest in Theocritus (id. 5) & the basic form of epigram, which
comprised two verses – first the hexameter of epos but then a so-called ‘pentameter’ composed two half hexameter lines.
Recalling the traditional responsive form, Virgil also groups responses by themes, a practice found already in an earlier
poetic book – the only one to survive in a form full enough to show how an editor or poet in Alexandria in the third &
second centuries BCE chose & arranged short pieces by thematic selection & progression – a book of the sort unrolled in
libraries & studies on the Palatine hill in Virgil’s time.83
Virgil opens the dialogue with claims of support from complementary gods, Jove & one of his sons Apollo: 4
verses, 2 couplets, one pair [60-63]. From this hymnic opening, he moves to a major topic of bucolic & epigrammatic
tradition, love, which he develops by presenting a panorama of alternatives – happy/unhappy, hetero/homosexual: 12
verses, 6 couplets, 3 complementary pairs [64-75]. Virgil expands the topic by positing erotic competition between the
bucolic & a higher range – Iollas, also a figure of higher range [2.57]; & he caps the entire erotic sequence with
retrospective priamels synthesizing varieties of love – gloomy Amarýllis vs sweet Amyntas: 8 verses, 4 couplets, 2
complementary pairs [76-83].
Next Virgil builds on the hint of tension between the bucolic & a higher range, positing a positive link with a
tragic poet & disdain for other city poets: 8 verses, 4 couplets, 2 complementary pairs [84-91]. Given the fullness thus
achieved for the bucolic range, he steers the singers next to themes of boundaries & threats in language that smacks of
superstition & vatic spells: 12 verses, 6 couplets, 3 pairs [92-103]. From spells Virgil moves to riddles, also linked by
tradition with seers, closing with oracular couplets: 4 verses, 2 couplets, 1 complementary pair [104-107]. The riddles
reach to themes of the middle & highest ranges – sky & names of kings. The spectacle of seers contesting operates in two
ways: it recalls the hints that both Títyrus & Melibœ́us were drawn as vatic figures & it points to a short epic contest of
seers recently translated into Latin by a friend of Virgil’s who will cut a defining figure in the book.84
[3] MAINLY IN PLAY: ecll. 2, 1;
LtEpos Gallus translating Euphorion on vatic contest;
GrBepos Theocritus, idd. 5 & 1, 3, 4, [8];
GrEleg. Callimachus (p. 98);
GrEpig Posidippus for the selection & arrangement of short pieces according to themes;
GrEpos Aratus (p. 94); Apollonius (p. 97); Homer (p. 90); Plato, Phaedrus (p. 94).
FORM (dramatic) 111 vv = (54: 6; 21; 21; 6); <5; [48]; 4>
63 & [48 = 4; 12; 8; 8; 12; 4 = 2x, {6x, 4x}, {4x, 6x}, 2x]
IIII. NEW VATIC SONG {FULLEST BUCOLIC, GEORGIC, HEROIC MYTHIC REACH}
Stand up again & breathe a bit more deeply. Take a cue from the first verse, where a voice more ambitious than
any heard thus far pushes for something a bit more than lowly trees & plants – your cue to reduce the previous three
eclogues in your mind to mere woodsy, bucolic stuff. You’ve got to stretch for something Roman, official, worthy of the
highest magistrate [4.3: consul].85 Get with the big talk – oracles & cosmic cycles, Justice coming back, new line sent
from above [4.4-7]: it all prompts you to work up a prophetic voice. Yet much of the tone might need to be cajoling,
almost avuncular, since you’ve also got to imagine yourself talking to a Boy just born .
The Boy would have to take your advice & recognize his mother with a smile [4.60-63]. Yet can this emotive
83
Kathryn J. Gutzwiller, Hellenistic Epigrams, 25–31 & passim.
Homeric Chalcas lost to Mopsus, son of Manto, daughter of Tireisias – noted seer in epic (Odyssey) & tragedy.
Locations for the contest differed: Klaros, Hesiod (lost Melampodia, frag. 278 Merkelbach-West, cited by Ford, Poetry
Past, 87–88 – epos in mythic range, legends of seer-ruler). But location shifted (so as to upstage Hesiod?) to a grove sacred to Apollo at
Gryneion in Asia Minor not far from Troy by Euphorion (c3 BCD): a short epos translated into Latin by V’s friend Cornelius Gallus
(Dix, “Grynean Riddles,” passim).
85
Consul – chief magistrate of Roman Republic, two elected each year. Office held by Pollio (cf. above, n. 14) in 40 BCE. He
mediated between Octavian & Antony, although closer to the latter.
84
14
FOURTH ECLOGUE
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
singing enchant this new Boy any more than Córydon’s could charm the distant boy Aléxis he tried to get through
pressing song [ecl. 2].
One voice – you would want to RELATE to the close of eclogue three, with all-embracing & all-confirming
Palǽmon (played by the energetic Damœ́tas).
Yet the fourth eclogue opens with such disdain for bucolic woods that you may wonder whether you need to
imagine a powerfully preemptive force welling up from somewhere else in Virgil’s mind – somehow RELATED to the
disdainful Framer of eclogue two? Or even RELATIVE to the viewpoint – powerful & wide-ranging, though negated – represented in Melibœ́us? Could the poet’s original force & frame of mind get CO-OPTED or EXPROPRIATED here?86
CONTEXTS [ECL. 4]
This prophetic voice would broadcast to the restless public the vision of a new agent sent down from Jove &
destined to restore the Roman world from civil war to an original unspoiled state [4.4-7, 49]. Amplified to such a
powerful degree, the framing myth of Títyrus & his new god completely outreaches & replaces the system represented
through Melibœs us. Virgil inflates the new frame into a global vision already hinted in the universal springtime & order of
Jove at the center of eclogue three.
The miracles envisaged reach much farther than the echoing hills & woods, productive fields, of eclogue two &
even the budding woods & fields of eclogue three. They embrace not only nature but all of time renewed. Virgil stretches
to historical & cosmic reach the ideology of Títyrus’ oracle, ‘as before, but more’.87 He imagines the Golden Race
returning as before [4.5-6, 8-10], but adds something more – a new line let down from above [4.7, 49]. Behind the
imagery of Jove’s increase [4.49] & Apollo’s reign [4.10], the theater crowd would not miss the further flattery for Caesar
Octavian [cf. 3.60-63]. Yet making Pollio mark & lead the change also integrtes into the vision Antony’s distant power.
Dazzled by the political display, the crowd might not focus on the moment when the poet puffs himself. Yet
Virgil opens with ambition to outdo his previous efforts [4.1-3]; & he caps his creation of new myth with a hint of its
promise for his own preeminence as a poet.
Anyone practicing to read this part will have to ponder the advantage that Virgil imagined getting from his mythic
project. He tops the whole build-up with his claim that telling of the Boy’s miraculous growth would challenge & defeat
traditional poetic powers.88 The song envisioned would beat out Orpheus, famous for his powerful singing,89 & his
mother, the epic muse Calliope, a daughter of Jove, also Linus, a legendary poetic mentor, with his father, Apollo – god
of prophecy & a son of Jove.90 Nor is that the highest claim. You would want a style more mannered still – resembling a
magical spell or vatic charm – for the finale: the bold notion of besting even Pan, even in his home land of Arcadia.
Stopping to catch your breath, you might guess, too, that this climactic boast explains & expands the poetic
agenda suspected back in eclogue two.91 There Virgil featured Pan, remember, not as thwarted rapist but as first to make
a pipe, with emphasis on priority – Pan made it ‘first’ [2.32-33]. Now Virgil transfers that ‘first’ from the bucolic pipe to
what sounds like the whole, or most prestigious part, of poetic tradition. He promotes Pan as the ultimate authority –
more important than more traditional poetic powers. He promotes Pan’s homeland, too, as the ultimate site for poetic
competition, conferring on Arcadia new prestige as the originating place of song.92
Such emphatic & peculiar focus on a poetic agenda might well make you wonder what to expect next. Can a book
that began with an Italian countryside contested between mutually exclusive framing visions stretch as far as the rocky
region in Greece that Pan patrols – all with no hint of the legend that placed Pan on the Palatine hill – imported by
Arcadians before Rome was even founded? Arcadians on the Palatine might well fit Virgil’s & Caesar’s mythic frame,
but not for now. Stay tuned.
THREADS DRAWN UP/DOWN [ECL. 4]
Taking a turn the old Caménae might well love [cf. 3.59], Virgil makes a bold leap worthy of the adventuresome
Damœ́tas. Where the framing voice of Palǽmon served to consolidate & affirm bucolic-georgic growth, now Virgil
moves to imagine a framing voice, like that of the second eclogue, disdainful of the bucolic range & eager to push
towards reconquest & renewal of the historical & heroic ranges represented as lost with the old (Melibœan) frame – a
voice recognizable as that of an old-time seer (vates) pushing a new political line.
Virgil makes this nameless framer project a poetic future with no less than a full heroic epos in praise of new rule
– epos that would outdo traditional poetic powers & even Pan, already emphasized as inventor of the bucolic range.
86
Negated frame of Melibœ́us: plowlands & fatherland [1.3-4], song in a green bower [1.77].
Ideology developing: above, n. 82.
88
Hinting at the ambition to rise from bucolic to heroic epic: cf; Design, 136–37.
89
Orpheus depicted singing with power by Apollonius, cf. p. 97.
90
Cf. also Apollo in Apollonius, p. 97.
91
Here your commentary might well BEEF UP the neutral RELATED with more dynamic metaphors like TAKES UP & BROADENS
or, MAKES EXPLICIT & EXPANDS.
92
Design, 137; Alexandrian privileging of Arcadia as archaic, n. 673.
87
FIFTH ECLOGUE
15
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Virgil thus sets his sights on a new origin to upstage the epic past. He again programs his art by the oracular themes of
the first eclogue, ‘as before but more’.93 In another bold reach, he identifies his poetic design with the utterances (fates) of
the legendary Parcæ, whose songs & spinning determined a very different destiny at Catullus’ heroic wedding.
[4] MAINLY IN PLAY: ecll. 3-1; SocMem prophecies & rumors of a new age were rife in popular culture, none specific to
this poem;94
LtEpos Catullus 64 (p. 101). decline from Heroic Race; Parcæ spinning yarn of Achilles’ life; Apollo & Diana
shun wedding of Peleus & Thetis (but present here); Lucretius debunked heroic myth, denounced natural
decline to worn out present;
GrBepos Theocritus flattered ruler (idd. 7, 17];
GrElegy Callimachus imagined voice of fœtus Apollo (Hymn to Apollo); relocated birth of Zeus to Arcadia
(Hymn to Zeus);
GrEpos Aratus described Maiden Justice leaving earth; Hesiod denounced decline from Golden to Heroic &
Iron Races;Catullus linked Argo, Troy, decline).
FORM (preaching, prophetic) 63 vv = 3, {(4, <3, 4>,3) ([28] 7, 7, 4)}
[28] = [8,(5, 6), 9]
V. VATIC HYMNS: MENALCAS & MOPSUS: DAPHNIS {NEW BUCOLIC-GEORGIC MYTH}
If you thought you could sit back for dialogue as before, you erred. The characters may be two again, & best of
musicians both, but edgy – not agreed on where to sit to sing. You, too, thus start on edge, alert for cues.
Menálcas – take your directions from hints that the opening speaker is imagined as elderly & authoritative:
shown, for instance, as content to sit & sing in shade where, you suppose, such a person would have made the reputation
that allows him also to be addressed as ‘greater’ [5.1-7]. His opening question, ‘Why not settled here’, implies a bemused
frown at a sudden arrival & push by an intruder.
Mopsus – cues SKETCH a new man on the scene – younger than the first speaker, insecure & touchy about status,
boastful of a new song written with careful measure on green beech bark [5.9, 13-14]. You have to act as if flattering the
older fellow, all the while nudging him from his habitual shade to sing instead where you prefer – nearby in a picturesque
bower [5.7, 19].
When it comes to performing the songs themselves, you pull out all the stops. You find yourself stretching to
broadcast themes in some ways grander & more solemn than those of eclogue four. You have to replicate & even go
beyond its prophetic voice to what you know of religious chants or hymns.
Mopsus’ song represents a mother grieving for her dead son, Daphnis [5.22-23], as well as mournful cries by all
of nature – lions groan & weeds spring up where crops were sown [5.27-28, 36-39]: you will think back to the promising
mother & son, with nature’s miracles, proclaimed in eclogue four as you now declaim their reversal in lugubrious tones
[4.18-45].
The tone shifts to the opposite extreme in Menálcas’ song. You muster your most exultant voice to lift a gleaming
Daphnis to the stars [5.56-57] & hail him as a new protective god [5.63-64] – much more than the god at Rome of
Títyrus, though acclaimed in similar language [cf. 1.7]. His power fills peaceful countryside with lively pleasure – calling
the tune for even Pan [5.58-59].
Again two parts, but voicing here for once seems not directly RELATED to the preceding close.
Menálcas – opens wondering why not settled in shade: unlike the ambitious push beyond common trees that
launched eclogue four [4.1-3]. Preference for the familiar & diffidence to change did mark the opening voice of eclogue
three, which Virgil portrayed likewise as named Menálcas & reacting with suspicion to the arrival of a new & somewhat
pushy Damœ́tas.95 Since Virgil made the two Menálcas figures differ in age & portrayed the second as older, it seems
NATURAL to explain the difference by means of a metaphor of GROWTH: thus you suppose that Virgil makes the Menálcas
figure AGE from the third to the fifth eclogue. You might, then, venture a further metaphor & infer that CHANGES in the
figure – Menálcas – can also be RELATED to the PROGRESS of the new mythic frame – eclogue by eclogue – through the
book.96
On the other hand Mopsus – pushing to get from shade to bower & boasting of song newly inscribed on bark –
93
Fuller handling of this eclogue in my dissertation (1966], published as: A Reading of Virgil’s Messianic Eclogue [New York:
Garland, 1992] now also available at http://academic. brooklyn.cuny.edu/classics/jvsickle/bbvates.htm.
94
Cf. Zanker, n. 28 & my Messianic Eclogue, 17, nn. 7, 8.
95
Menálcas: ecl. 3,1-4, 13.
96
To review signs of ideological development, look back (again) to nn. 82 & 71 & 59; for the mythic frame, see also n. .
16
FIFTH ECLOGUE
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does RELATE to eclogue four, which in turn RELATED to Palǽmon <Damœ́tas with Jove> of the third eclogue’s close.97
But the lively Damœ́tas there contrasted with the dead master who bequeathed a pipe in eclogue two: so may you infer
that this thematic line is imagined as getting progressively more energetic indeed expanding the mythic frame?
CONTEXTS [ECL. 5]
The spectacle of mourning recent death then hailing a new god must put the theater in mind of Julius Caesar –
assassinated in 44 BCE, deified by the senate early in 42 BCE. The vote followed pressure the heir promoted by Virgil as
the god of Títyrus [ecl. 1] & by the references to Jove & to Apollo [3.60-63]; [4.7, 49]. The paired hymns would help to
reinforce & fix in minds the mythic frame inaugurated with Títyrus then stretched to universal range in eclogue four. The
allegory of the dead & deified Julius weaves major motifs from Caesaristic propaganda into the fabric of Virgil’s book &
completes its ideological frame.
As for the parallel agenda developed through Arcadian motifs, Pan recurs here with other pastoral figures shown
frolicking in fields under the sway of the new god – described by Virgil as ‘loving repose’ [5.61] as the Camenae ‘love’
reciprocal song [3.59].98 This ‘repose’ may ring a bell, since you have seen it only once before nor will you meet it again
in all the eclogues. Looking back, you discover that Virgil used it to introduce & define the enclave made for Títyrus by
his new god at Rome [1.6] & that it echoes Lucretius image of an original idyll.99
Such a pointed recursion – a virtual hint from the poet to look back, compare, & comment – gives you a chance to
practice & build the skills of inventing commentary that you started to teach yourself when teased by recursive names
like Damœ́tas & Menálcas.100
How are the two uses of ‘repose’ RELATED?
What do the passages share in common? How do they differ?
How extensive in each case is the imagined range of repose? How far is the power of each god supposed to
extend?
What do you make of the fact that Virgil imagines Pan along with other pastoral figures & the entire natural
world gripped by delight in this new mythic frame?
How does this version of delight (uoluptas), differ from the word’s other connotations, as exemplified in the
second eclogue, where it means animal hunger or sexual lust [2.63-65]?
What about the imagined future when farmers sacrifice to the new god for benefit received as they did to Bacchus
& Ceres before [5.79-80]?
What made Virgil place the two versions of repose at the beginning & near the end of the first half book?
What do they contribute to the mythic frame you have watched him building little by little up to now?
THREADS DRAWN UP/DOWN [ECL. 5]
Having woven the highest – civic, historical, heroic, cosmic – ranges into his web & powerfully expanded his
recovery of the vatic voice, Virgil consolidates his achievements in the middle – bucolic-georgic – range. He draws
threads from the fourth & then all four previous eclogues to reclaim & amplify (again ‘as before but more’) the figure of
the bucolic hero Daphnis, which he turns into a new & implicitly Roman god of the bucolic-georgic countryside – nature,
herdsmen, & farmers, even Pan all jump for joy at the new power (cf. p. 16).
With respect to Greek bucolic tradition, this handling of Daphnis innovates in three ways.
(1) It supplies a sequel to idyll one (Daphnis dying) in the form of a lament for the bucolic hero dead. Thus it
relates directly to idyll one unlike the other bucolic laments – the so-called epitaphs (‘poems on the tomb’) – that came
along after Theocritus.
(2) It goes beyond the lament form by also praising the dead as a new god, thus adding a new recruit to the old
tradition of the heroic epic hymn, inviting comparison thus too with hymns by Callimachus (p. 98).
(3) It gives the bucolic hero-god an ideological impact through identification with Julius Caesar, thus confirming
& extending Virgil’s recovery of the old Roman prophetic voice, seer. At the same time, in the contentious Mopsus Virgil
takes for his new vatic voicing the figure of a victorious seer from Hellenistic epos as rendered into Latin by his friend
Cornelius Gallus.101
[5] MAINLY IN PLAY: ecll. 4 & 4-1;
LtEpos Lucretius;
97
The push from shade to bower seems also to the privileged place of song Melibœ́us was said to lose: a green bower [1.75] –
another echo meant to wrinkle brows & tickle minds: cf. n. 86.
98
Cf. nn. 92 & 673.
99
Lucr. 5.1392-94 (idyllic original rural life); cf. 2.29-31 (idyllic philosophical retreat).
100
You might well respond to such recursion in poetry as you do in commentary to CF., cf. n. 1.
101
Cf. n.84.
17
SIXTH ECLOGUE
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GrBepos Th (id. 1); Bion, Lament for Adonis, Moschus, Lament for Bion;
GrEpos. Homer (laments for Achilles, Od. 24).
FORM (dramatic) 90 = (3/4; 1/1); (3/3; 4); [25]1; (8/3); [25]2; (4; 3/3)
[25]1 & 2 = [4, 5, 7, 4, 5]
VI. TÍTYRUS REDRAWN {EPOS MINUS ROME: ELEGIAC GALLUS RAISED TO VATIC EPOS}
No sign whether to sit or stand. But as you read into the speaker’s role, you won’t miss the cue to turn & point
again to the front row: not this time to a God masking Caesar Octavian, but to an another public figure actually named:
‘you, Varus’ [6.6, 12].102 A figure less significant than Caesar, you infer, if one so lightly can demur to make him poetry
like Caesar’s, pleading a chequered autobiography by way of excuse:
(1) first I was satisfied to play in bucolic woods [6.1-2];103
(2a) when pushing to sing of kings & combats [6.3],104
(2b) I got told to back off by Apollo , [6.4-5];
(3) so now I’ll keep to a middle range – more than woods but less than heroics. There’ll be plenty of others eager
to tell of gloomy wars by ‘you, Varus.’
Neat trick, using Varus to vary, veer away, once you have filled your new framing myth [6.6-12].
From Varus (in the second row?), the address turns to Greek Muses – maybe your cue to point to their statues
arrayed in niches around the ornate theater? You tell them rather brusquely to push along & start providing themes to fill
the middle range you just defined [6.13].
With the Muses’ voice, you tell about a drunken old singer partly coerced & partly seduced to draw out wellknown song [6.13-26]. You have to project, then, song belched out by a drunken sot.
To get a feel for an old soak’s voice, it might help to know about binges & their effects. You might even pretend
to be hung over, the better to get the leaps & slips from breathless recollecting to tear-jerky apostrophe, vociferous
appeal, scandalous hints. It goes without saying, that if actually drunk you would likely lack the power to discern
difference, distinguish varying tones, get the fun of expertly cycling through voices & sets.
In order to tell how the world begins, grows innocently, then gets queered by humans [6.31-42], you might bring
back & twist the portentous voice you practiced for the positive world view of eclogue four.
A tale of passionate nymphs that drown a pretty boy [6.43-44] might call for melodramatic flair like Córydon’s
[ecl. 2], which still may not suffice for tragic cries from a queen compelled to roam the hills by lust for a snow-white bull
[6.45-60] – perverting the root sense of bucolic, ‘cattle care’.
From scabrous histrionics the song abruptly shifts to an opposite extreme: upliftng tones like those of Mopsus &
Menálcas [ecl. 5] to tell of a poet – Gallus – roaming amorously (like the queen) until uplifted & redeemed by the
Muses’s gift of ancient pipes to praise Apollo [6.64-73].
Veering again, the song concludes with a breathless riff through cannibalism, incest, rape, & flight [6.74-81] – all
too like the themes omitted from Arcadian legends when Virgil chose to present Pan only as the inventor of the pipe
[2.32-33] & his Arcadia as the originary place [4.58-59].
Closing, catch your breath, pronounce with deliberate emphasis the concentrated coda. Weigh out the words that
look back & put a new construction on the whole burst of song [6.82-86]. Everything just sung gets reinterpreted in two
ways – as transmitted by a river that flows down from Arcadia & as made up, every bit of it, by the god that set the initial
restrictive rule – Apollo.
Will this voice be directly RELATED to the close of eclogue five or rather must you REFER it back to something
earlier in the book, the way the opening of five had to be RELATED not to the ambitious close of four but to the more
cautious opening of three?
To comment on this, you look again at how the fifth eclogue ends – with an exchange of gifts between the singers
[5.85-90]. There Virgil made the elder singer Menálcas give the pushy young Mopsus a pipe. Then he imagined Mopsus
giving Menálcas a staff. In short, Mopsus without the staff but with the pipe is the closing voice.
How then might the combination – Mopsus + pipe – RELATE to the opening voice of eclogue six, with its
retrospective history? Retrospective, you reply, the image of the pipe itself already was. In fact so pointedly did Virgil
102
Readers ignoring the poetological hint of ‘variation’ & veering from the heroic-civic range, seek to identify here Publius
Alfenus Varus (birth & death not dated, but held consular office in 39 BCE), said by old commentators to have served as a commissioner to redistribute land in northern Italy & to have saved Virgil’s own property from confiscation; but such stories were very
likely inferred from the poetry since they are not recorded by historical texts.
103
Cf. the attitude assigned to Menálcas at the opening of the previous poem.
104
Cf. ‘kings’ [3.106], ‘Saturn’s kingdoms’ (Golden Age returning, ecl. 4.6], lost ‘kingdoms’ of Melibœ́us [1.69], but also
Mopsus pushing to get beyond ordinary bucolic shade & purveying political allegory, or the singer of eclogue four pushing to get
beyond woods or to get woods beyond their bucolic state, not to mention Títyrus pushing to get to Rome [ecl. 1].
18
SIXTH ECLOGUE
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
RELATE it to eclogues two & three that he seemed almost to pester you to reread & make up explanations. It’s as if the
pipe were Virgil’s most explicit version of the commentators’ CF – meant to make you notice that recursion more & more
recurs as we move along in the book & to make you yourself try making up commentary.105
Looking back you see more sharply that pushy Mopsus was just the latest of the innovative voices that amplified
the mythic frame in the first half book. You recognize now that with Mopsus & Menálcas hailing Daphnis as a god &
honoring Julius Caesar, Virgil gave the new frame definitive form. But before that, preparing the way, he had pushed the
frame to its greatest reach in the fourth eclogue, when he imagined all Roman history & all nature transformed by the
new boy – ‘Jove’s great increase’ – flattering Caesar Octavian [4.49].
Gathering forces for that push, now you can infer, he depicted brazen Damœ́tas singing of ‘all things full of Jove’
[3.60], & Córydon in a productive countryside promising milk & flowers & seeking to make the spell of song charm his
distant boy [ecl. 2]. To establish the frame, of course, Virgil made up the story of Títyrus getting to Rome & authorized
by the new god Caesar Octavian [ecl. 1].106
Combining the innovative pushes with the retrospective pipe draws threads from the entire half book:
eclogues ⇒
themes ⇓
V
IIII
iii
ii
i
pipe
Menálcas
“greater”
Framer
Menálcas
Framer
Títyrus
pushes
Mopsus
seer-bard
Damœ́tas.
Córydon
Títyrus
With this in mind, you might infer that the compound – Mopsus + pipe – actually prepares for the sixth eclogue’s report
of growth & retreat. The three reported moments – simple bucolic [6.1-2], push for the highest [6.3-5], retreat to middle
range [6.6-12] – must RELATE to the book’s development.from bucolic beginnings [i, ii, iii] to fullest reach [IIII] to ample
myth [V]. The fifth eclogue itself must already fall into the middle – less than four but more by far than the range of one
through three.
Counting, then, on the peculiar mix of pushy Mopsus with retrospective pipe, you cast the voice in the sixth eclogue as
directly RELATED to the close of the fifth. Waiting in the wings – in corners of Virgil’s mind & yours – lurks for now the
revision of Menálcas newly endowed with the staff – a hint of various functions & different fates: rule animals or people;
authorize prophetic speech that conveys compelling myth; support an old man forced to journey weary miles.
CONTEXTS [ECL. 6]
Virgil, too, RELATES the sixth eclogue to Mopsus & the whole mythic frame when he makes the Framer claim
that Apollo rebuked ambition with an oracular command: ‘A grazer, Títyrus, it behooves to graze sheep fat, declare a
song drawn down’ [6.4-5].
The name Títyrus & the oracle not only RELATE this new voice to the mythic frame, they take you back to the
heart of the first eclogue & the oracle that gave the frame its program: ‘Graze your cows as before, boys; send up your
bulls’ [1.45]. Faced with a second oracle now, you realize that Virgil has thrown you yet another CF – again to make you
comment.107
Taking the hint, you might remark, for instance, that the first oracle dealt with cattle, while the second mentions
sheep. Cattle figure at the top of the bucolic scale in terms of value & size, goats at the bottom, sheep between.108 You
infer that Virgil has reduced the value of property allotted the Framer (call him Títyrus2 ) to match the reduced level of
song – neither simple bucolic nor ambitious heroics at the level dictated by the Roman fling of Títyrus1, so in between.
You reflect, too, that the source of the first oracle was the God at Rome thinly disguising Octavian as the power
that authorized this book. It is, then, reauthorization drawn now from Apollo, a favorite deity of Octavian to be sure, but
also a traditional poetic & prophetic power – thus rooted not only in politics but in literary tradition.109 Again you may
suspect that some specific literary agenda unfolds together with the accomplished frame of political myth.
Literary focus might be implied, too, by another change. Virgil cast the first oracle in bucolic terms – familiar care
for ‘cows’ & expansion using ‘bulls.’ You had to infer the ideological thrust – ‘as before, but more’ – using the themes of
pastoral return with growth to mask radical change in politics. You might infer as well that Virgil was making his themes
105
Here the request for commentary becomes about as explicit as a poet can make it: cf. nn. 100 & 1. Old commentators
thought that Virgil had meant to provoke them by closing the match in eclogue three with riddles, which obviously cry out for solutions
[3.104-07].
106
Cf. the Títyrus series, above, n. 104.
107
Cf. nn. 100 & 1.
108
Design, 174 cf. n. 59.
109
Design, [247] s.v. Apollo; 254, s.v. Octavian.
SIXTH ECLOGUE
19
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
of traditional cow-care & increase of ‘bulls’ stand for his own work – was in fact signaling the return with growth in bucolic tradition that he was carrying out .110 In the second oracle, however, Virgil draws a contrast between pastoral work
& poetics – graze ‘sheep fat’ but make ‘song drawn out or down.’.
What can it mean, setting sheep against song? The ‘fat sheep’ reminded one reader with a memory well stocked &
an aptly connective mind of the usual piona mēla that get variously stolen & barbecued in Homer’s epics.111 That would
let you infer that ‘fat sheep’ can stand for poetic fullness even in the middle range, like that which you have seen in the
fifth eclogue or find here, in the variously cosmic & tragi-comic scope of the drunken song.
As for ‘song drawn out or down’, old commentators detected a metaphor from working wool: drawing out from
the tangled woolly mass fine filaments for spinning into yarn or thread.112 The metaphor might well make you think of
the retrospective pipe & the present retrospective report, where Virgil has been looking back & DRAWING THREADS from
the previous eclogues, indeed TYING together the whole mythic frame, but also PULLING BACK from it, DRAWING DOWN to
the middle range.
Could you take the story of the drunken singer as a hint that Virgil himself considers the whole push to build the
mythic frame as a kind of binge & its revision, now, a kind of hangover?
Would you infer, then, that Virgil used Varus as a pretext to shift focus, to vary & start a different agenda that
would be less pointedly Roman & more literary? If so, what would you expect to become the main motive & cause?
In response, there comes to mind the bit of geographical lore at the close: that the river Eurotas – said to have
been blessed by the singing of Apollo [6.83] – rose in the mountains of Arcadia & mingled with the river Alpheus, then
flowed down past Sparta to the sea. How might such a role for a stream from Arcadia & companion to Alpheus fit the
agenda for Arcadian Pan already traced in the first half book?113 An interesting wrinkle? Again, stay tuned.
THREADS DRAWN UP/DOWN [ECL. 6]
Having fabricated a mythic frame, woven in his ambition for heroic epos, promoted a political agenda with new
gods, & made himself the old-time seer-singer of the new regime, Virgil pauses to look back. In the reckoning, he raises
consciousness of the eclogues as a progressive sequence by pointing to a ‘first’ stage & to developments. He brings back
the figure of Títyrus, but now subjects it to a less overtly political god – Apollo – with an oracle that restricts & redirects
growth by revising the poetic program from that first Roman ‘as before, but more’ to ‘as before, but less’..
To Apollo Virgil assigns framing roles in ways that tease & stretch our minds. First he imagines the god forcing
Títyrus down from the highest to a still rambunctious version of the middle range. Then he projects contrasting
developments for this middle range: its energy threatening to out-match Apollo, despite the legendary risk (pretentious
satyr, Mársyas flayed), but then flattering the god by programming an epos about the origin of one of his sacred groves.
Finally, V. forces us into a total double take by claiming that the entire song stemmed from Apollo singing once upon a
time to assuage his painful loss of a boy beloved.
Within the imagined song, he describes the creation of the world as if from the vertical threads (warp, ordia) of a
loom. The image reinforces the metaphoric link between poetic process & wool working suggested in the fourth eclogue
by identifying the poet’s vision with what the Fates commanded to their spindles [4.45-46].
In closing, Virgil imagines that Apollo’s original song was overheard & remembered thanks to a river that flows
down from Arcadia – a hint of growth toward the ambitious goal of challenging & defeating Pan at home, which surfaced
at the programmatic climax to eclogue four [4.58-59].
[6] MAINLY IN PLAY: ecll. 5-4, 3-2, 1;
LtEpos Catullus 64 (p. 101), Lucretius (p. 100), Varro of Atax (p. 97 Morel);
GrBepos Th (id. 14);
GrEleg Callimachus, Aitia (p. 98);
GrEpos. Callimachus, Artemis (Hymn 3, p. 98), Apollonius (p.97 ); Hesiod (Theog., p. 90; Homer (Shield,
p.91).
FORM (narrative: Títyrus) 86 = {(5, 7), <14, [14, 6: 14, 13, 8], 5>}
110
The phrase "stand for" describes figurative language: metonymy – part standing for whole or whole for part (here: kine for
poetry containing kine) – or metaphor – part of one domain standing for part of another domain (here: kine transferred from farm life to
stand for a poetic kind). Metonymy thus entails shifting focus within a domain or field, while transfer between domains or fields marks
metaphor On cattle standing for the bucolic strain in epic tradition, Design, 248 s.v. bucolic, symbols of.
111
Noted on ecl. 6.5-6 by a learned & energetic scholar who made the first modern effort to gather full evidence of Virgil’s
RELATEDNESS to Greek & Latin texts, both poetry & prose: Fulvius Ursinus, Virgilius collatione scriptorum graecorum[, et aliquot
Latinorû, praesertim Poetarum, manuscript] illustratus (Antwerp: Plantin, 1567).
112
Translatio a lana quae deducitur in tenuitatem (Servius, cf. n. 57 above).
113
Cf. nn. 92 & 673.
20
SEVENTH ECLOGUE
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VII. MELIBŒ́US REDRAWN {ARCADIANS SIFTED: VATIC AMBITION DOWNED}
Again a single framing voice or narrator, with no cue as to posture, whether to sit or stand. But the speaker will
need a deep breath & measured tone for another report of poetic history. Indeed the manner at first may well be arch,
since the story starts by describing things the speaker could not have seen take place, yet get described as having
happened just ‘by chance’. The arch tone might well continue as the speaker gives an elaborate excuse for coming to the
scene, seduced from winter chores back home because his chief billy goat went astray.
The report livens up & even sparkles with bits of repartee between the distracted goatherd & the scene’s central
figure, described as trying to persuade the goatherd to neglect those serious chores back home to listen in on a singing
match: bucolic play between two singers, both first rate, young, perfectly matched, & both Arcadians.
Even more stagy, the contest between two singers prompts careful thought for contrast, whether the reporter tries
to project each character in turn or two other actors step in. Since Virgil introduces them as equally young & well versed,
Arcadians both, yet assigns victory to one, the performer or performers have to figure out how the two differ dramatically
& theatrically to make the performance work.
CONTEXTS [ECL. 7]
After describing the scene as preset ‘by chance’, Virgil procedes with emphatic art that provokes strong doubletakes – from CF to CF. First he portrays Daphnis as present – settled down in the shade of a tree that is musical & ever
green, unlike the typical beeches of the first half book.114 He thus provokes us to relate this version of Dasphnis to the
others met during construction of the mythic frame?115 He makes us wonder if he means to imagine a new & pristine
moment in bucolic tradition – mythic time prior to his own new mythic frame with its Daphnis dead & deified; a moment
imagined as before Menálcas aged [5.4] & before Títyrus grew old & got emboldened to reach high – ‘send up bulls’
[1.45] – but then drawn down to more measured song [6.3-5].
A repeated name also provokes us to compare versions of Córydon – represented here as a humble goatherd,
orderly, & courting a girl as well as a boy Aléxis but in the earlier version a boastful keeper of kids & sheep who tried
using the power of song to reach across the gap between country & city to get at his master’s darling Aléxis [ecl. 2].
A new name provokes if anything sharper scrutiny, since Virgil calls the second singer Arcadian too, yet consigns
his figure to defeat: Thyrsis a shepherd like the reporter of eclogue six (Títyrus2) & like him ambitious – also endowed
with forceful attitudes & prophetic language that echo eclogues four & five. Explaining & interpreting these echoes of
power poetics, Virgil makes Thýrsis style himself not just a swelling ‘poet’ but also eager to become a ‘seer’ or ‘bard’
(vates). In this way Virgil reviews & names the threads of vatic voicing in the first half book, above all their fullest,
furthest reach in the fourth & fifth eclogues & their hangover in the sixth.116 Looking back he uses for the first time the
word vates itself to characterize that voicing. You may recall too that a thýrsis in Greek was the stalk tipped with a pinecone & brandished in Bacchic orgies – a motif well suited to recall the sixth eclogue, which featured Silenus – one of the
troupe that carouses with Bacchus – & described as bloated with the Bacchus of yesterday.117 Thus when Virgil engineers
defeat for bacchic & vatic Thýrsis he takes another step in the restrictive program with which he opened eclogue six &
the second half of his book.
While trimming vatic & bacchic threads, Virgil expands others. Weren’t you startled when he identified Córydon
& Thyrsis, as Arcadians?118 Did you relate that the Arcadian agenda traced through the first half book? To be sure, you
might have expected Arcadians to compete in their own original mountains where Prœteus’ daughters ranged [6.48-51]
& Eurotas rose [6.83]. Yet Virgil herds them together in northern Italy on the bank of the river Mincius by Mantua. For
this miraculous version of his own home place, Virgil also makes the landscape artful & peaceful like the repose of
Títyrus1 & the rest of the mythic frame.
Perhaps you found that the sharpest shock of all came when Virgil made this drawn-down Daphnis address the
114
See p. 24 & [5.14, n. 335].
Daphnis – removed & elevated god consolidating the mythic frame [ecl. 5], background hunter [3.12], type of beauty [2.19];
but also implicit in the figure of Títyrus1 as piper [1.2, 10], since the piper Daphnis figured in the first idyll by Theocritus: cf. ‘Mythic
Music: Pan’s Pipe’ in. “Two Programmatic Plots,” 35–38.
116
Horace used the term uates to describe his own role in a prophetic poem (Epode 16.66) RELATED to the fourth eclogue: cf..
Design, 174.
117
Patron god made to stand by metonymy for the substance patronized, cf. above n. 110.
118
Motifs evoking Arcadia & the pipes (invented by Pan) include the mediation of cosmic song by Eurotas, which flows from
Arcadia [6.83]; the vision of Pan coopted by new Roman myth in the song of a Menálcas endowed with a powerful pipe [5.59]; the
challenge to Pan in Arcadia as ultimate poetic contest [4.58-59]; the quarrel over quality of pipes [3.21-27], the prestigious pipe
inherited & the pipe’s invention by Pan [2.32-39], but first the pipe assigned as a basic bucolic mytheme to Títyrus [1.2/10]: cf. nn.
113, 92, & 673.
115
SEVENTH ECLOGUE
21
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new framer as Melibœ́us. Take this as yet another CF on the poet’s part:119 look back & notice that Virgil again imagines
this character arriving with goats at a scene of bucolic ‘play’ because displaced from more important property & work
elsewhere. But now he imagines Melibœ́us endowed with the full range of bucolic wealth, not only goats but sheep &
cattle, unlike that first version, which he represented as a goatherd-farmer-citizen-seer-singer displaced by revolutionary
force.You might suspect, too, that Virgil changes the cause for the arrival with peculiar point: no longer driven by brutal
military force [1.70] but led by the wayward whim of a goat.120
THREADS DRAWN UP/DOWN [ECL. 7]
With Melibœ́us, Virgil brings back his opening voice of epic vision lost. From some corner of his mind he
connects this figure to a version of the bucolic range gathered now from threads of all the previous eclogues, including
the revised Daphnis & Córydon but also now from the first idyll the name of shepherd Thyrsis – singer of the tragic song
of Daphnis dying (p. 96). He thus projects a past prior – indeed then a prequel – not only to his own ideological &
Roman versions of Melibœ́us & Daphnis as presented earlier in the book but also to Theocritus.
In sketching this second exchange of songs, Virgil cues for comparison & contrast with the earlier exchange,
likewise introduced as poetic ‘shifts’ (altern-), but differentiated in ways that fit the later moment in the book:
Camenae (Latin muses) ‘love’ songs [3.59] for complementary exchange enlarging bucolic range;
Muses (Greek) ‘wished to remember verses [7.19] for contradictory exchange drawing threads from earlier in the
book & sharply dividing the bucolic range.
The exchange unfolds through six pairs of four-line stanzas – a length normal for epigrams – arranged in thematic
sequence indicated by titles meant to recall those used in the epigram book of Posidippus.121 For each exchange, motifs
are shown on levels from lower to higher in order to underline the fact that V makes only Thyrsis reach for the highest
range:
CORYDON
THYRSIS
–––
1)
Exordial
(framing)
future ‘bard’
EITHER like Codrus
Muses our love ... OR devote pipe
Arcadians: poet’
grazers
–––
2)
Dedicatory
3)
Erotic
4)
Descriptive
chiasmus [X]:
future gold
future marble
now marble
Diana (virgin):
male heads hunted
Priapus (phallos):
poor garden output
Galateia: sweet,
gently invited after work ends
(ego) bitter if not
eager for work to end now
spring coolness warding off
hut hot defying
summer heat
winter cold
5)
DescriptiveErotic
autumn joy
summer dryness
chiasmus [X]
gets dry if Alexis goes
gets ‘green’ if Phyllis comes
6)
EroticDescriptive
myrtles to Venus,
laurels to Phœbus
while Phyllis loves
ash, fir, ‘most lovely’
(from heroic range)
appeal to Lycidas
hazels (coryli)
beat myrtles &
Phœbus’ laurels (cf. 1)
‘if you more often visit,
ash & pine yield to you’
(heroic to bucolic)
ring
composition
119
Cf. n. 100 & 1.
Not to mention the motives of the Melibœan voice that opens eclogue four with disdain for bucolic woods & pronounced
ambition for Roman history & epic heroism: epic ambition dissembled by Virgil & dissociated from both Melibœ́us1 & Melibœ́us2.
121
Cf. n. 83.
120
22
EIGHTH ECLOGUE
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
[7] MAINLY IN PLAY: ecll. 6-4, 3-1;
GrBepos Th idylls 5, 6, [8], [9].
FORM (narrative:Melibœ́us2 ) 70 vv = 22 + 48 : {5, 8, 7, [48], 2}
[48] = [ <4 / 4> × 6: 2 x 4: 2 x 4; 2 x 4]
VIII. FRAMER TO SIFT & CLOSE {ARCADIAN VERSE / VATIC CHANT}
In vain you look for hints of where & when this Framer sits or stands. But his opener gives you very pointed cues
how to perform, for he says that this bucolic challenge match stopped nature in its tracks. The image of an audience
spellbound by bucolic drama hints at the dramatic verve required to perform this eclogue & the powerful effect
envisioned for the reader. Spellbinding & spellbound become a kind of stage direction & key signature for the piece –
drama pushed to an extreme not yet experienced in the book. Extremes become a formative motif at every level.
Yet the new extreme of bucolic difference can’t hold spellbound the Framer. Like every other framing voice in
the book thus far, starting with the urbane disdain for Córydon’s disordered passion, this one strays between a bucolic
foreground & some range evoked as far or higher, dignified in this case by reference to the authority & style of tragedy –
Sophocles – as a peak to which to aspire. You take the cue to gesture, pointing, although the text locates the flattered
figure at a distance – navigating off an exotic river’s boulders or along strange coasts – as if not imagined seated in the
theater’s front row. Parenthetically you reflect that this address seems more occasioned by the needs of the developing
thematic sequence in the book than by the clash of old & new cultural frames that energized & shaped the first eclogue.
Tragedy, even though cited as a distant standard, suits only too well the reported clash of bucolic voices. You will
need to strive for a tragic climax well beyond the force of Córydon1 to play the part of this lover – Damon – who stands
& recounts his fatal love of a girl: for her he fell at first sight; she rejects him & marries Mopsus. You will have to stretch
to imagine how to perform the closing shriek with which he jumps from a cliff.
Damon done for, Virgil gives a curious cue: the Framer claims to be at a loss & asks the Muses to take over:
remember the similar moment, when Títyrus2 called on them for help & you could pretend to enlist their statues from the
theater niches [6.13]? The voice that lies outside & beyond the Framer’s range is represented as that of a wife desperate
with love: this gives you your first (& only) chance in the book to pretend to perform a female role. The range, however,
will be rather restricted & specialized. Her themes & the very form of her singing suggest incantatory power – magical
spells appropriate for a would-be witch – deployed to ‘draw down’ from the city home to the country Daphnis, her errant
spouse.
Again a single framing voice reports contrasting voices, which may be performed, as before, by two players or
merely mimed by the one taking on two roles; but in either case, the voicings for all three want to be weighed.
Framer – divided between a forcefully theatrical, even tragic, foreground & higher interests elsewhere: it all
sounds RELATED to Melibœ́us2 <Córydon2> [ecl. 7] like some exasperated development. Yet someone might insist that
one motif – ‘from you my start, for you will I turn off’ [8.12] – brings to mind not so much Melibœ́us 1 & 2 – drawn down
to the bucolic range – as Títyrus1 & Títyrus2 – marked by reaching beyond the bucolic range for the Roman mythic
frame.122 The Framer’s ambitious gesture is RELATED to the thankful praise for the God at Rome by Títyrus1, the ensuing
praises of the Caesars – Julius & Octavian – in eclogues three, four & five, & Virgil’s heroic ambition in eclogue four.123
Retreat from that full framing myth has set the key for the book’s second half, giving way for Virgil’s more limited – bucolic – agenda. Even when this agenda achieves its goal, however, it will remain bucolic in range. For this reason, then,
the Framer here already looks beyond to further forms of public praise & heroic song – the full range of epos for Rome.
Damon –variously erotic & histrionic voicings recalled from Córydon1 & demented lovers [6.43-60] to build to
the tragic denouement.
Alphesibœ́us – characterized as beyond the range of the Framer, so to be reported by the same Muses that were
invoked for cosmic song by Títyrus2 [6.13] – some motifs & voicing you might develop from the spells & material
mutterings of Thýrsis [7.25-28, 41-44, 49-52], but then from there trace back to the strain of powerful singing with its
vatic ups & latterly its downs.124
CONTEXTS [ECL. 8]
Although this version of bucolic music gets described as able to transfix nature, Virgil imagines it as unable to
keep the Framer from looking beyond, with a glance & an ambition that send you back into comparative mode, looking
122
Cf. nn. 106 & 104, also the similar language of desire to tell heroic deeds, n. 88.
Ibid.
124
Power singing, notes 127 & 104.
123
EIGHTH ECLOGUE
23
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
to the plots of Melibœ́us (1 & 2) & Títyrus (1 & 2]. Starting from them Virgil developed the mythic frame through the first half
book. Revisiting them, he began to focus on the agenda for the second half. By assigning the beginning & ending to one
cause – the distant object of praise – he reinforces other hints that the book hangs together as a whole, which thus,
explicitly now marked as such, he dedicates to its first authority – Títyrus’ God.125
This address to the patron, however, presumes his absence from the theater, even from Rome, not present as
before in the front row. The distancing may be factual, as commentators often assume, squabbling as to what naval
expedition when. But the absence may also be invented – a convenient further remove from the initial agenda in order to
promote the other line. This agenda grows in the tragedy of Damon, his lament cast into regimented segments that are
punctuated & carried by a refrain of Arcadian verses. Virgil uses him to amplify the myth of Pan inventor – first to make
a pipe [2.32] & now the invention made out of pity for lovers [8.24], perhaps a hint that Pan’s frustration led him to
make the pipe, which bore the name of the nymph he tried & did not get to rape.126
The incantatory reply addresses the refrains directly as ‘songs’ (carmina) – a word that in Latin can indicate many
kinds of rhythmic language all the way from epic narrative & hymnic praise, as in the first six eclogues, to magical spells,
as here. This latter sense – lower if you will – gave rise to the derivatives in French & English, charme > charm, spellbinding.127 The songs of Alphesibœ́us are represented as charms though hardly charming & are said to be conveyed by
the Muses (female) not the Framer (male). They are imagined as able to draw an absent Daphnis down from the city
home. Once again brows knit & run back over the transforms of a figure: Daphnis now withdrawn by the lowest form of
song from all involvement with the distant & prestigious range symbolized by the city.128
Together on a Roman stage, these two voices are the most breathless & racy in the book. They build to their
contrasting, tragic / comic, climaxes by means of sound bites, flash-backs, mythological examples – all the episodes set
off & the stories driven by the pulse of the refrains. We have to imagine twanging, thumping, pounding an instrument in
musical accompaniment to the lines repeatedly belted out. Two dramatic peaks: when the failed lover shrieks farewell to
woods & leaps into the sea & when the insistent witch after so much dark intensity claims unexpected fire & the arrival
of her man – two moments of great theater, the greatest in the book thus far, spectacular, not to be underplayed or
dismissed.
THREADS DRAWN UP/DOWN [ECL. 8]
Continuing the frame of mind established through the return of Melibœ́us & his synthesis with a Córydon
reformed & restrained, Virgil reformulates his familiar tension between restraint & forceful ambition in still more drastic
terms. But before embarking on these exacerbated bucolic contrasts, he pauses to take stock. Once again, as when
opening the sixth eclogue, he introduces the motif of beginning the book (when ‘first’); but now he adds the motif of
bringing it also to a close. He recalls the political figure that gave the original impetus to growth (‘first’, 1.44; n. 23) &
that occasioned the heroic vision of the fourth. As there, so here, Virgil represents the young Caesar as meriting poetic
service at the highest level of style, which there was represented by a promise of heroic epos, but here by tragedy in the
tradition of Sophocles. The shift in focus from heroic epos to tragedy comes with the developing context of the book &
its challenge to bucolic tradition; for now Virgil is intensifying & amplifying the tragic strain within the bucolic range
itself, before closing this bucolic book & moving on to fuller forms of epos.
In his move to new extremes, Virgil represents the bucolic range as disposed no longer into reciprocal dialogue as
in the seventh, fifth, or third eclogues but into two sharply contrasted strains that connect only in the framing mind, which
they polarize: Arcadian verses that convey fatal powerlessness to defeat love but then songs cast in the form of magical
spells that draw a disloyal lover back from the highest range. In both Virgil incorporates themes of tragedy that reach
beyond the bucolic range & would have struck familiar chords of memory in the theater crowd (cf. p. 22).
[8] MAINLY IN PLAY: ecll. 7, 6-4, 3-1;
LtTrag Ennius (p. 99), Medea;
GrEpos Apollonius (p. 97);
GrBepos idd. 2, 3;
GrTrag Euripides, Medea.
125
See above n. 23.
Cf. the increments in Arcadian motifs: nn. 118, 113, 92, & 673.
127
V stretched song’s range to histrionic & prophetic heights in efforts to move unresponsive boys [ecll. 2, 4 & 6], the latter
traced to the passion of Apollo for Hyacinth: Design, 158, nn. 26, 27. V thus made song approach the style of chants, enchantments,
spells; & he stretched it as far as the city & the names of kings [ecl. 3] & to full heroic & hymnic range [ecll. 4, 5].
128
Cf. above, n. 115.
126
24
NINTH ECLOGUE
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
FORM (narrative: Framer) 108 = 36 (frames & refrains) + 36 (‘verses’) + 36 (‘songs’): {5, 8, 3, [45]1, 2, [45]2}
[45]1 = [(4,1,3,1,5,1) (4,1,5,1,3,1) (4,1,5,1,3,1)]129
[45]2 = [(4,1,3,1,5,1) (4,1,5,1,3,1) (5,1,3,1,4,1)]
VIIII. MENALCAS GONE {VATIC FRAME DISMANTLED}
The framing viewpoint that bracketed the bucolic range & looked to leave it for more ambitious song does not
return, unless dismembered & portioned into two figures – one still ambitious & nostalgic for remembered bucolic song,
the other represented as leaving the bucolic range:
Lýcidas – opening voice, youthful, eager to get song, even though put off by the other. Rejects for himself the
older herdsman’s title of seer-bard (vates). You may, then, refer this voicing to traces of the successive framers & the
positive frame of mind they represent [8, 7, 6] – pushing to define & fill out the program of song ‘drawn from & down’
that shapes the book’s second half.
Mœris – goatherd, defeated seer-singer (vates), thus related to the magician-singer who emulated spells of a
magician Mœris [8.95-99], also further related to the would-be seer (vates) Thýrsis [ecl. 7] & the whole innovative push
that built the mythic frame of the first half book & that here gets drawn down to its close – flight from the bucolic scene
as inherited from Theocritus & amplified by Virgil in the first half book.130
CONTEXTS [ECL. 9]
The cause of it all becomes an issue, as in the first eclogue. There Virgil imagined a positive cause for Títyrus1 –
the God exercising power even from the city to secure bucolic ‘repose’. But for Melibœ́us1 the reported cause was
negative – godless, barbarian soldier that displaced the citizen farmer. That was Virgil’s partial & partisan way of coopting Caesar Octavian while blaming his soldiers for properties seized.131
Here Virgil describes the new force with more legalistic language as ‘new-coming squatter, usurper in fact, not
law’ (possessor, ‘sitting in’); he also now represents the actual imperative: ‘old farmers, get along.’ This negative voice
was left to be inferred in eclogue one, where Virgil represented only the positive imperatives – ‘graze as before ... send
up’ [1.45] – attributed to the God.132 Instead of that expressly Roman political presence, here V uses vague & generic
language that masks political power: ‘chance’ upsetting ‘all’.
That was Virgil’s opening gambit, where imagining a present god launched his whole new mythic frame. This,
now, is his end game. At this point in the progression of themes, Virgil no longer describes anything as secured by
authority in the city. He writes, instead, that a figure familiar from the first half book, Menálcas, had once secured some
country place with songs but now has lost his powers. Only bits of his former singing can be remembered. The dialogue
unfolds at all because provoked by the youthful, energetic Lýcidas – endowed with a name suggestive of Pan’s Arcadia
(‘Wolfson’, cf. p. 10) & portrayed as out of touch with the Italian scene, which here Virgil imagines as untenable without
the mythic frame of the first half-book.133 Having linked the frame with Menálcas already in the fifth eclogue, here he
can make the ruin of Menálcas represent suspension of the new frame. As its symbolic residue, Virgil imagines old
Mœris – defeated seer-bard, his memory weakened by ill luck as well as age.
You have seen enough to infer that this is meant as the last straw for the mythic frame.134 You saw the figure of
Menálcas reach its peak with the frame fulfilled in eclogue five. You have seen the figures of Títyrus & Melibœ́us
brought back & revised to redesign the frame. Focused on the forest, as it were, you may have neglected some of the
trees.
If reading were a nature walk, would you have noticed the beeches & how they change along the way? More than
likely you don’t have to be reminded of the book’s first setting: Títyrus1 sitting pretty beneath a single broad-spread
beech. But have you kept in mind how the forms of beech changed? The setting imagined for Córydon1 to roam in love –
beeches thickly grown together, their leafy tops thus forming a canopy where the bucolic lover raved [2.3-4]. But then the
neighboring old beeches & beech wood carved with emblematic designs of Damœ́tas & Menálcas [3.12, 37]: all of which
let you infer that beech serves as another signal of development in the mythic frame – another CF.135
129
Omitted are vv 28a, 76, which do not fit the overall design: cf. Otto Skutsch, “Symmetry and Sense in the Eclogues,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 73 (1969): 156.
130
Power (Orphic) poetics: see above n. 124, also nn. 106 & 104 &.; Design, 254, s.v. Orpheus & for the mythic frame, nn. 106
& 104, also in Apollonius, n. 697.
131
Cf. above, n. 23.
132
Cf. n. 59.
133
Cf. nn. 96, 82, 71, & 59.
134
See above nn. 124, & 127.
135
Cf. nn. 100 & 1.
TENTH ECLOGUE
25
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Your tour of beeches takes you to Mopsus’ boast of having just inscribed his song on fresh green bark of beech
[5.14]. That follows the outburst of eclogue four that urged woods to grow worthy of a Roman consul & announced the
birth of great scion of Jove. For contemporary denizens of Rome, might this bring to mind their ‘Jove of the beech grove’
(Jupiter fagutalis)?136 As we look back, now on Mopsus’ boast, it clearly represents the intrusion of the fourth eclogue
onto the framework of the book. No wonder, then, in eclogue nine if old beeches with broken tops feature in the
landscape lost. Broken beeches, like the undoing of Menálcas, offer conclusive signs that the dominant agenda & mythic
frame of the first half book have been reduced.
In another sign of mythic reduction, one of the fragments of old song by Mœris features a rustic Daphnis looking
up at the star of Julius Caesar. Virgil thus completes the process of undoing & taking apart the ideological synthesis of
the first half book. There he identified the old bucolic hero Daphnis with the deified Julius in the songs of Mopsus &
Menálcas [ecl. 5]. Then he drew Daphnis down, first to serve as the focus for the seventh eclogue & then, still lower in
the eighth, as the spouse charmed from the city. Virgil thus leaves the mythic frame intact in the background, while
keeping the figure of the bucolic hero in mind for further designs.137 Where they tend may be inferred from the closing
hint of song resuming at another place & time, whenever Menálcas comes – another reminder that Menálcas at the close
of the fifth eclogue was left reserved – suspended with the staff of authority & travel in some corner of the poet’s mind.
THREADS DRAWN UP/DOWN [ECL. 9]
Building on the extreme polarity represented in eclogue eight, Virgil draws it to a new extreme with renewed
dialogue. He names his opening voice Lýcidas, with its hint of Arcadian myth (lyk-, ‘wolf’: cf. p. 24), which adds to the
array of Arcadian motifs we have been tracing in its gradual growth.138 But Lýcidas recalls, too, the uncanny goatherd
that conferred poetic authenticity in the seventh idyll (p. 5), so that Virgil creates an ironical blend for us to entertain: he
teases us to imagine a major figure from Theocritus admiring & regretting the amplified & Romanized version of the
bucolic range produced in the first half book & gradually distanced & deconstructed in the second.
In the figure of Mœris, then, Virgil represents the vatic strain that he has gradually reduced in eclogues six
through eight & now draws down to its minimal stage – vestigial, with prospects only of repetitive service to ungrateful
force rather than the mythic expansion of the first through fifth eclogues. The image of the defeated bard carrying kids to
the city is Virgil’s most ironic take on the costs to creative art of making public myth.
Once again Virgil provokes us to look back to the first eclogue: how he imagined Títyrus leaving the bucolic
range to journey to Rome & getting the programmatic oracle – both conservative & expansive – that framed his ambitious
take on Theocritus. There he described the resultant version of the bucolic-georgic range as free to play whatever it would
[1.10], but also obligated to offer regular sacrifice to its authorizing power – ‘each year on twice six days our offerings
send up smoke’ [1.43]. The idea of sacrifice owed to authority grew into the crowning theme of the new frame at the
climax of the first half book [5.65-80].
In the ninth eclogue, now, Virgil imagines yet another journey to the city with obligations to sacrifice, but without
the freedom to make music. Here animals for sacrifice must be provided to a new power, with no hint of return to the
country. Or if return may be inferred, it must be not to freedom but to forced service & continual sacrifice to power
portrayed now as usurping. Virgil represents the new power, moreover, not as an intrusive squatter on the land. Instead of
a divine oracle in the city authorizing return to an enhanced status quo, Virgil locates in the country a brusque command
from the newcomer who has seized control of the familiar bucolic-georgic range, thus giving voice to what in the first
eclogue appeared generically as godless soldier, barbarian (cf. p. 24).
It is emblematic of this final arrangement that Virgil portrays as absent & powerless the figure that he developed
in tandem with the mythic frame in eclogues two through five – Menálcas. Enigmatically Virgil hints that fresh song
would be possible again if Menálcas would arrive, leaving open the question of where & when that might be supposed to
occur. One final time, stay tuned.
[9] MAINLY IN PLAY: ecll. 8-6, 5-3, 2-1;
GrBepos Th (idd. 3, 6, 7).
Form (dramatic) 67 = 1; [28]; 7; [29]; 2
[28] = [5/4/6; (6:3)/(1:3)]
[29] = [(2:5/2:5); 5/10]
136
CIL (Corpus of Latin Inscriptions) VI.452.
Cf. n. 115.
138
Cf. nn. 673, 92, 113, & 118.
137
26
TENTH ECLOGUE
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
X. ARCADIA AS FRAME (MENALCAS HOME: EPIC-ELEGIAC GALLUS TO BUCOLIC-TRAGIC
HERO)
Posture not specified but attitude alert – addressing one nymph, then many, keeping an eye on goats, citing
characters well known to the crowd: a mimic actress & her sometime lover, the poet Gallus.
When the whistles & cat calls for the notorious names die down, you take time deliberately to paint a setting very
different from any seen thus far – Arcadian mountains gape & weep at the sight of Gallus sprawled beneath a crag. On to
this rare scene, you draw a picturesque parade of country types that you introduce as Arcadians all – a stretch, since
among them figure a shepherd identified by an old Latin term, swineherds, Apollo, Silvánus – a god of the Italian woods
– & Menálcas – now described as damp from gathering winter’s acorns, which was an ancient provender in Arcadia.139
Despite the fact that this version of Arcadia is blatantly fictive & confused, you end with a detail that seems designed to
authenticate the rest: personal sight – an epiphany – of one classic Arcadian himself, Pan, with scarlet berries on his face.
You represent this motley crowd querying Gallus about his love & when V makes him reply, the pace picks up.
You have to project pathos – broad gestures to signal histrionics – high theatricality of opera or the tragic stage. The plot
would thicken, irony grow ever more piquant, were the actress cited as a potential reader actually to perform the piece –
female playing her male lover.
For tragic voicing, look back again to how you imagined the beaten Mœris [ecl. 9],the suicidal Damon [ecl. 8],
truculent Thyrsis [ecl. 7], the bull-mad queen [ecl. 6]: Pasíphaë & not Gallus, who figured there as redeemed from love
by poetic power; but before that also Mopsus lamenting the dead Daphnis [ecl. 5], or Damœ́tas who won in tragic (goat)
song, & even Córydon1 in erotic rage [ecl. 2]. You realize that energies which went to push the mythic frame to heroic
reach, the highest range of epos,140 here get drawn back & redirected to the measure of tragedy as the highest rank in
dramatic verse.
CONTEXTS [ECL. 10]
Taken by the lover’s tragic eloquence, you might fail to notice the posture & location in which Virgil makes him
speak – laid low to die of love beneath a lofty crag while Arcadian mountains weep & pretend Arcadians gather round.
Only here does Virgil bring to its fullest stage the alternative agenda that you tracked step by step from the start until at
last he can situate his song in the mythic Arcadia he has defined as song’s originary site.141
Signalling this as a culminating development, he includes among the Arcadians the figure of Menálcas that was
so central to development in the first half book. We have seen Menálcas amplified with the Italian landscape of the
mythic frame but finally exiled. Now Virgil redefines & relocates the figure in an imaginary distant past as an Arcadian
of primeval times – gathering acorns as winter feed for pigs & people, as Arcadians were supposed to have done before
the moon.142
Virgil’s opening pitch to the nymph, Arethúsa, too repays another trip to the myth handbooks. He hints at a
version of her story that told of failed rape & flight. Unlike the Greek bucolic poets, Virgil supposes Arethúsa a blithe
nymph in Arcadia until she bathed in the waters of the river Alpheus – a stream that mingles, remember, with Eurotas
near both rivers’ sources high in the mountains of Arcadia [ecl. 6]. Bathing her lissome limbs she inflamed the river to go
after her. Arethúsa got away only by flowing undersea & emerging as a fresh water spring in Sicilian Syracuse.
With that version of her story in mind, Virgil asks Arethúsa to help him produce songs & he augurs that her
waters may stay fresh when the time comes – fated in her story – when she will have to flee from Arcadia beneath the
sea. He thus positions his framing voice at a time & place before her flight to Syracuse – not only in the land of Pan but
at a very early moment on the scale of mythic time, prior to the moment evoked by Theocritus in his first idyll. Indeed
these time & place coordinates, along with gathering acorns, convey Virgil’s claim to originality in the tradition.
In the end, Virgil portrays Gallus despairing & making emphatic gestures of fatal flight like a tragic hero, capping
the energetic strain in the book. Yet the eclogue and entire book close with the broader framing voice in goatherd guise
expressing contentment, fulfilling the promise to leave the bucolic range that first was made in eclogue eight. In fine, in
the book as a whole Virgil has completed two complementary mythic frames, both of them shaped by one idea: ‘as
before, but more.’ One he built from melodrama – first political [ecl. 1: Melibœ́us1 / Títyrus1 ], then erotic [ecl. 2,
Corydon1], then rising through comic by-play & vatic competition [ecl. 3], to visionary, vatic utterance & hymnic scope
[ecl. 4 & 5], before the hurried, almost orgiastic, retreat from Roman myth [ecl. 6, Títyrus2 reduced]. He turned, then, to
rummaging in his own store with ruminative recollection [ecl. 7, Melibœ́us2 seduced] that sorted out his complementary
poetic strains – the ambitious from the artfully reflective & composing (vatic & pushy Thyrsis vs discreet Córydon2 ).
The latter – the calculating & measured strain – he made the guiding principle for the agenda & frame that he pushes to
completion by the close of the second half book. He moves through a stark vision of tragic love & fleeting recovery of
139
Cf. p. 95.
See, if you wish, again notes 104 & 127.
141
See above nn. 118, 113, 92, & 673.
142
Cf. n. 673 & Design, 192.
140
TENTH ECLOGUE
27
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
incantatory power [ecl. 8], carries out a final reduction of his Roman myth [ecl. 9]: defeated & displaced the vatic voices
– Mœ́ris2 & Menálcas4). He thus clears the way to the fullest voice of tragic love but also recovers & incorporates
Menálcas5 on the home ground of Pan – defined for the first time in literary history as the place of bucolic origins –
regained in a climactic victory for the composing strain in Virgil’s mind & book.
THREADS DRAWN UP/DOWN [ECL. 10]
Only here at last does Virgil achieve his goal of making poetry (“as before but more”) on Pan's home turf,
Arcadia (cf. n. 118), which he defines as prior & superior to Theocritus. In effect, Virgil thus reduces Theocritean bucolic
with its Sicilian setting to secondary & even derivative status, overshadowing facts of literary history by means of
powerful new imagination. Central to this effort, Virgil replaces the first idyll’s figure of Daphnis – the bucolic hero
dying in an effort to defeat love – with a Roman poet of erotic elegy likewise described as dying because of love.
By making his dying Gallus overshadow the dying Daphnis of Theocritus, Virgil completes his challenge to
bucolic tradition. Already in the fifth eclogue, he created a sequel to the first idyll with the lament for Daphnis dead,
which itself replaced & overshadowed the post-Theocritean tradition of poetic laments.
There too he went on to create the salute to Daphnis deified as a new Roman god, with which he supplemented &
surpassed – upstaged – both Theocritus & his bucolic successors (cf. p. 16).
Now, when Virgil projects the series of desperate appeals by the dying elegiac lover, he raises his own bucolic
range to the level of tragic style that he hinted & partially realized in eclogue eight. Close attention to his language shows
that he achieves this heightened intensity by reprising & weaving together his own bucolic-georgic motifs, including a
final reprise of those already drawn down from previous eclogues, distilled & recomposed in the vignettes of remembered
song in eclogue nine. He transforms the matter & manner of earlier vignettes into the substance of vision of Arcadia that
will become an influential touchstone for literary & visual imagination in western culture.
[10] MAINLY IN PLAY: ecll. 9-7, 6, 5-1;
LtEleg Loves by Cornelius Gallus
LtTrag Phaedra;
GrBepos Theocritus (idd. 1 & 7).
28
ECLOGUE I
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
THE ECLOGUES TO PERFORM & READ
FIRST
CHARACTERS [SPEAKING / Named Only or Background]
MELIBŒ́US, cued by V[irgil] as emotive & eloquent – outspoken – pushed from fatherland, farm, & leisurely
interludes of watching goats graze while he lay & sang in a green bower.
STORY:
saw oaks struck by lightning but failed to understand the sign, now forced to flee & leave his home
farm to Godless barbarian soldier.
CRAFT:
singer but silenced & seer-bard (old Latin vates, p. 99) that failed to understand new signs– hence
in V’s mind representing end of potential for Roman epos as traditionally framed.
CLUES:
name rooted in Greek ‘honey-song-cry’, not in bucolic epos of Th[eocritus] but linked by old
commentary to tragic myth as farmer (georgos) who reared Oedipous.
TIs TYRUS, elderly slave (freedman?), grazer of sheep & cattle – lying in shade to sing of happy love for Amarýllis.
STORY:
in old age freed of wrong love; wanting to get free of slavery too set out for Rome where saw a new
GOD & heard his oracle that ordered return to work ‘as before’ with more output.
CRAFT:
player on panpipe, singer, interprets oracle, so successful seer-bard (old Latin vates, p. 99) –
hence in V’s mind representing ambition to adapt old Greek bucolic for new myth at Rome –
program implied by the oracle, ‘as before but more’.
CLUES:
name in Greek a nickname translatable as ‘Buck, Satyr, Dick’; a figure promoted to foreground
from Th’s background – one Títyros left to herd while Goatherd courted Amarýllis (id. 3); another
Tityros to sing about oxherd’s (Daphnis’) fatal love & about goatherd lying in shade (id. 7).
GOD AT ROME, framed by V as power securing a bucolic range imagined as owing Roman religious duty –
monthly payback by sacrificing tender (vulnerable/delectable) home grown lamb.
CLUES:
puts positive spin on Caesar Octavian & gives V new mythic frame for epos with hint of cost – no
similar deity & no obligation to pay out sacrifice in Th.
Godless Soldier, Barbarian, taking over carefully cultivated farm property of citizen MELIBŒ́US & framed by V as
extreme other – opposite of GOD AT ROME & Roman citizenry.
CLUES:
troops blamed but not their leader, Caesar Octavian, who took property to pay his army after 42
BCE
– in Th no such disruptive military force & loss of social order & economic base.
Amarýllis, current – affectionate – lady love of TÍTYRUS.
CLUES:
name in Greek means ‘sparkling’; figure portrayed by Th as dead (id. 4) or hidden in cave &
rejecting courtship from Goatherd while Títyros watched goats (id. 3) – further clue that V’s new
bucolic improves on situations in Th.
Galatéa, former – rejecting & greedy – lady love of TÍTYRUS.
CLUES:
name in Greek means ‘milky’, sea nymph flirting (id. 6) or elusive (id. 11) – emblematic of Th’s
version of bucolic now put behind.
SCENE
Lone, broad-spreading beech hemmed in by flowering sonorous hedge & rocky pasture ranged by cows with
room for sheepfolds: edged by lofty crag with view across a valley with farm dwellings to far horizon of blue hills.
ECLOGUE I
29
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
CUES
MELIBŒ́US enters right, spots TÍTYRUS on stage laid back: abruptly stops & points with gestures cued by ‘you’ /
‘we’ – pronouns marking contrast between the two in dialogue on-stage. TÍTYRUS in reply takes cue from ‘that
one, his, he’ – pronouns that point upwards to a third person, the figure of the GOD posted on the upper platform
& crowned to suggest divinity (or, if circumstances dictate, gesture can point to Caesar Octavian in front row).
ME143 Títyrus, you – lying back beneath a broad beech lid – 144
1
are working up a wildwood muse with a meager oat.145
We are leaving our fathers’ borders – lands once sweet to plow:146
our fatherland we flee. You, Títyrus, limber in shade147
are teaching woods to echo “well-formed Amarýllis.”148
TI
O Melibœ́us, a god it was who made us this repose,
149
5
6
for that one always will be a god to me – his altar
often stained by our own sheepfolds’ tender lamb.
143
[1-10] Familiar Frame Disrupted / Sketch for New Mythic Frame with Bucolic, Georgic, Civic-heroic Ranges (10)
Notes on how these first ten verses link tradition & V’s life work, drawn from: John Van Sickle, “Virgil vs Cicero,
Lucretius, Theocritus, Callimachus, Plato, & Homer: Two Programmatic Plots in the First Bucolic,” Vergilius 46 (2000): 21–
58.
144
[1] Títyrus: promoted to foreground by V as focal figure for his new bucolic range; cf. GrBep from background in Th[eocritus]
(id[yll]. 3, 7, p. 5). Promotion of Ti gives a clue to how V means to stretch beyond Th to make bucolic epos for Rome.
lying back: posture in ‘shade’ [1.4] captures a traditional ideal; cf. LtEp for early human & simple ethical lives (Lucr. 5.139294; 2.29-31, p. 100); cf. GrBep for legendary singer in shade (id. 7.88-89); cf. GrPhil for talk on love in setting with shade,
water, grass, songful cicadas, Nymphs’ shrine & Pan’s power (Plato, Phaedrus §230, p. 94).
broad beech: fagus, in Latin – spreading branches suit single tree as on Italian uplands still.‘Beech grove’ (Fagutal) on Roman
hill was sacred to Jove (Corpus of Latin Inscriptions VI, 452) – god linked on coinage with Caesar Octavian. ‘Beech’ a
trademark of V’s bucolic: not in Th or Plato; cf. Greek phegos, an oak with acorns eaten in old Arcadia, p. 95 (n. 673).
lid: ‘cover’ (teg- toga, detect) – a rather technical & unromantic way to evoke the traditional ideal of ‘shade’, cf. [1.5].
145
[2] working up: medita-, preparatory work, exercise, practice (cf. meditate, meditative; mediate, meddle).
wildwood muse & Pan singing; silvestr-, ‘woody, wild’; cf. LtEp invented by hill folk to explain echo (Lucr 4.565–94). V blends
Lucretian critique of bucolic mythology as rustic self-deception with traces of bucolic ideal inherited from Th & Plato. Muse:
both goddess of an art & the art & its output, the music, by metonymy.
meager: tenu-, ‘thin’, so fits the critque of bucolic myth, yet could also define a value unlike fuller georgic & heroic ranges.
oat: avena, sc. ‘panpipe’, since material implies (by metonymy) instrument made from it, which in bucolic frame would be a
‘panpipe’; yet in georgic reality ‘oat’ a weed, not good for pipes or anything else & thus awkward here, like ‘lid’ [1.1]; cf.
GrBep Th’s bucolic hero Daphnis owned pipe that on dying he left to Pan (id. 1.123-30, p. 96).
146
[3] fatherland & plowland: define Mel[ibœ́us] as old type of Roman citizen-farmer, thus old civic & georgic ranges of epos,
silenced by force – a Roman cause (etiology) not in Th; cf. GrEp.’nothing sweeter than fatherland’ (Hom[er] Od. 9.34)
plow: mark of georgic range in Hom[er], Shield [of Achilles] (p.91).
sweet: Roman value for georgic range; cf. LtEp ‘sweet little field’ (Lucr. 5.1367); cf. GrBep sweet rustling pine ≈ goatherd’s
music (id. 1.1-3; cf. 7.133); cf. GrEp for ‘sweetness’ as metaphoric praise of thought & poetry, Hunter, Selection, 70–71.
147
[4] flee: into forced exile, plight of victims of civil strife, a theme that frames V’s whole life work: John B. Van Sickle, Design, 226–
34.
limber: adjective for pliant nature of certain plants, applied via Latin metaphor also to persons in traditional posture of repose.
shade: traditional retreat for love & song, cf. ‘lying back’ & ‘working up’ [1.1-2].
148
[5] teaching woods: reverses Lucretius’ claim that nature taught music to early humans (Lucr. 5.1392-94), cf. [1.2]; woods: silv(cf. silvestr- [1.2], sylvan, Silvester, Silvia) – made basic matter & context of the bucolic range throughout the book.
echo: emphasized as feature of new bucolic range despite skepticism just hinted [1.2]; cf. GrEp more positive view of echo in
Hes[iod] – ‘Muses’ sweet singing echoed in gods’ dwellings’ (Theog. 39-43, p. 90).
well-formed: formos-, ‘full of form’, so prize horse or well framed cow described by rustics – ‘sightly’, ‘ shows shape that
strikes the eye’, cf. V, Ge[orgics] 3.52 on ‘best form’, also Ge. 3.219: cf. GrEp so metaphor for eye-catching quality that can
please, arouse, distract, like ‘Galateia good looking’ (eueides, Hom. Il. 18.45; Hes Theog. 250).
Amarýllis: ‘sparkling, eye-catching’ in Greek, so fits the Latin ‘well-formed’; cf. GrBep invisible object of affection (id. 3, 4);
cf. GrPhil Phaidros, ‘glittering’ – also erotic appeal to the eyes.
149
[6] god...made: confidence about new version of old bucolic gets represented through the blend of old Ti[tyrus] & new god vs
(v[ersu]s = ‘turned against’) Mel’s diffidence towards change: contrasting poles in mind of V. Nothing like this in Th.
repose: otia (cf. otiose) – an old philosophic value claimed for renewed bucolic range; cf. LtEp life of early man (Lucr. 5.139294, also cited at [1.1, 4]); cf. GrBep prayer for repose from passion (id. 7.126), echoing a philosophic ideal.
30
ECLOGUE I
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
He let my cows range round, as you discern, & me
myself, whatever I wanted, play with farmfield reed.150
151
ME
152
Not I to envy; staring more – there’s distress so far
10
11
153
all over fields entire. Myself, look, nanny-goats
I'm pushing, anxious. This one, Títyrus, scarcely draw;154
for just now here among thick hazels, straining hard
to give them birth, she left twin kids – troop's hope – on naked flint.155
This evil, if my mind had not been jinxed, I see
that often – struck by bolts from heaven – oaks foretold.156
TI157
But still, what sort of god you’ve got, do, Títyrus, tell.
18
The city Rome they declare, Melibœ́us, I used to reckon158
19
like to ours (the more fool I), for which we grazers159
often do wean tender nurslings from our sheep.160
As pups alike to dogs I’d known, as kids alike161
to mothers, so I did put together with little great.
But Rome mid other cities has raised its head as high
as cypresses raise theirs mid limber flowering shrubs.162
25
ME
What so great cause was there for you to be seeing Rome?163
26
TI
Freedom, if rather late, since art I’d lacked, looked back,164
27
150
[10] play: lud- (cf. ludic), as opposed to ‘work’ [1.2].
farmfield reed: agrest-, like the muse that ruled in first idyllic age; cf. LtEp when nature‘s ‘reed’ (calam-) taught music to early
man (Lucr 5.1408, p. 100); not the fictive ‘woodland oat’. Indeed ‘reed’ is a practical & usual material for pipes, thus V uses
it for this version of his renewed bucolic range more positive than that offered through Mel with ‘meager oat’ [1.2].
Reckoning. [1-10] For a discussion of these lines as prelude to this poem & V whole career, review remarks, p. 8.
151
[11-18] Familiar frame drawn down from farmer-citizen-singer-seer to merely goatherd (8)
[11] envy. in + vid-, ‘to gaze at’: denies hint by Ti’s ‘you discern’ [1.9] that Mel’s glance so intense as to project magical power,
like a seer (vates) casting a spell. Forms of seeing & seeing of forms animate drama in Th & V: cf. ‘well-formed’ [1.5 ].
153
[12] nanny-goats: third rank of bucolic property, vs sheep (middle) & cattle (highest), the latter two assigned to Ti [1.6, 9] – yet
goatherds also endowed with exceptional versatility & powers; cf. GrBep goatherd owns crafted cup, a sight to behold & challenge to Homer’s Shield (id. 1.26--56, pp. 96 & 91); legendary subject of song by Títyros ( id. 7).
154
[13] push / draw: ‘push’ translates throughout the root AG- (‘to push, drive, do’) – a basic chore of herders often used by metaphor for actions in other domains. Cf. another chore of herders,‘draw’, which translates throughout the root DUC- (‘to pull,
lead’) – also often extended by metaphor to other domains, e.g., conDUCT warfare, lead troops (DUX for ‘general’, cf. duke).
155
[15] troop: translates (sc. throughout) grex, greg-, a generic word for animals or people brought together, cf. ‘herd’, ‘flock’ & conGREGation.
156
[17] bolts: lightning sent by Jove but not understood by Mel, his figure thus defined as a failed seer-bard (vates) – linked with
original Roman poetry that V & others claimed to revive. Cf. Jove ≈ Caesar Octavian in propaganda, p. 12.
152
157
[19-44] Old Greek Bucolic Epos Renewed for Roman mythic frame (27)
[19] declare: dic-, ‘point out by speaking, tell with authority’, cf. diction, dictate.
reckon: put-,‘think’ by metonymy from georgic meaning ‘to prune’, sc. ‘to figure future shape for a vine or tree’ (cf. compute),
introduces a run of reasoning in rustic style, popular & proverbial, frequent in mime (cf.Horsfall, n. 39) & in heroic epos
(e.g., Lardinois, “Gnomai in Iliad”).
159
[20] grazers: translates generic pastor (‘who grazes animals’, ‘makes them feed’), not specialized to care for oxen, sheep, or goats
although many who should know better have a loose way of calling all herders ‘shepherds’ – abuse that fails to discern &
respect differences among cattle, sheep, & goats, the different care required & resulting different implications for poetics.
160
[21] nurslings: from the root fe-, ‘to nurse, give suck’, also in adjectives felix / infelix (nursing / unnursing) deployed by metonymy
to mean ‘lucky / unlucky, ill starred, cursed’ also in metaphoric transfers beyond the bucolic range.
161
[22-25] Old & common way of reckoning "to single out one point of interest by contrast and comparison” Race, Priamel, 7 –
priamel may come from medieval Latin *præambulum, 'fore stroll', implying a common metaphor for discourse as a journey,
often a climb (cf. climax) imagined taking place through time & space by means of metrical feet – marked by turns (verses).
162
[25] limber: here describes a plant, but cf. Ti laid back & pliant in shade [1.4].
163
[26] cause: goal sought or authorizing story (aition, etiology, p. 98), here story of going from country to city & meeting God,
which authorizes V’s bucolic renewal: cf. GrBep Th’s travel from city to country & meeting a godlike goatherd (id. 7, p. 96).
164
[27] Freedom: shown as slave’s goal, but in political struggles a key concept for defenders of the traditional Roman republic: thus
158
ECLOGUE I
31
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
after my beard was falling whiter when I sheared,
yet did look back at last & came a long time after –
once Amarýllis has me – left by Galatéa.165
In fact, for I’ll confess, while Galatéa kept me,
no hope was there of freedom nor care about my stash.166
However many a fattened victim left my pens
for sale & cheese got pressed in molds for a thankless city,
ME
never heavy with cash did my right hand get home.
35
I stared at why, Amarýllis, gloomy, you called gods,
36
for whom left fruit to dangle each from its own tree.
Hence Títyrus was gone. Themselves, you, Títyrus, pines,
themselves the springs, themselves these trees kept calling.167
168
TI
How was I to make out? For nowhere else could I
39
40
get out of slavery or get to know such powerful gods.
Here I saw that youth, Melibœ́us, for whom each year169
on twice six days our offerings send up smoke.
171
GO
172
ME
Here to me seeking he first gave prophetic echo:170
44
“Graze your cows, boys, as before. Send up your bulls.”
45
173
Lucky oldster, therefore yours your countryside
46
174
will stay & great enough for you: though naked rock
———————————————
a watchword of those who assassinated Julius Caesar. Yet Caesar’s heir Octavian claimed to restore ‘Freedom’ even as he
conspired to create a new regime.
165
[30] Galatéa: ‘milk-white; cf. GrBep nymph coaxed in vain by Cyclops (id. 11.19-21]; cf. GrEp styled ‘good looking ’ (Il 18.45,
Theog. 250) – one of fifty daughters of Doris [10.5, with note] & Nereus [6.35, with note].
166
[32] stash: saved by a Roman slave to purchase freedom; peculium related to pecus,‘livestock’ considered as ‘capital’ (wealth in
animals counted by the heads, capita, from which also ‘cattle’).This Roman custom & the story of Ti getting left by a wasteful
mistress & taken up by a better adds to the ways in which V makes Roman departures from Th..
167
[39] themselves kept calling: V often uses ‘–self’/’selves’ forms to suggest natural sympathy with human affairs; cf. GrBep for his
new version of Ti V claims a power like that assigned by Th to his bucolic hero Daphnis – mourned by nature (id. 1).
168
[40] nowhere else: underlines that V’s authority stems from Rome not from Th’s countryside & smelly goatherd (id. 7).
169
[42] here I saw: cue to point to figure of the God, as also with ensuing ‘here’ & ‘he’; in the actual theater such gestures could have
been directed to the front row. For central & formative role of seeing in V’s bucolic imaginary, cf. [1.5, 9, 11] & n.152.
170
[44] first: often points to origin (etiology, cf. 1.26], in this case V claims Roman authority for taking Th’s bucolic range – cf. LtEp
‘first’ raised light from darkness (Lucr 3.2, of philosopher Epicurus); ‘first’ brought garland back from Helicon (Lucr 1.11718, of Ennius); cf. GrEleg ‘first’ sat to write (Callimachus, p. 98); cf. GrEp ‘first’ authorizing oracle to Hesiod from Muses
while he herded sheep on Mount Helicon (Theog. 23-35, p. 90).
prophetic echo: responsum, an oracle & echo. V urges the viability of his renewed bucolic range against the Lucretian skepticism evoked via Mel [1.2] & he amplifies echo into a powerful authorizing etiological utterance, cf. p. 148.
171
[45] Oracle authorizing return to past & future growth (1)
as before: not the new ‘Freedom’ cited as cause for Ti’s trip to Rome [1.27], but rather adapting the traditionalist yearning for
return to a privileged prior state as represented in the voice of Mel – yearning for the status quo & old political 'Freedom' get
usurped as themes in propaganda of Octavian even as he subverted the traditional order.
cows, bulls: highest bucolic rank, cf. Daphnis – cowherd – sung about by shepherd rewarded by goatherd with carved cup that
emulates Achilles’ shield (id. 1).
send up: sc. for breeding &/or rearing – by metonymic transfer to the poetry that contains it, the oracle authorizes the bucolic
growth that it exemplifies & that V has been carrying out from the start: metapoetic etiology, cf. p. 98.
172
[46-63] Closing off, filling out – idealizing – new bucolic range & its new god (13/5: 18)
[46] Lucky oldster: strong cue for gesture to refocus attention on figure of Ti, redoubles emphasis on motif of age, which hints at
history of bucolic mode in Greece before V revives it here; cf. metapoetic history of Ti’s prior & present loves [1.27-36].
174
[47] great enough: not enough to make a veteran soldier feel rewarded, as commentators wryly note; yet in the traditional viewpoint assigned by V to Mel, slightness may have merit, when opposed to ambition that reaches too high, e.g., the measured
slightness of the bucolic range as opposed to vain striving for heroics, cf. ‘meager’ [1.2] as positive from this viewpoint.
173
32
ECLOGUE I
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
& marsh with muddy rush draw shut your pasture all:175
no foreign feed will trouble ewes – for nursing heavy176 –
nor evil contact from a neighboring stock do hurt.
50
177
51
Lucky oldster, here among the streams you know
& holy springs you’ll seek to take the darkling cold.
Hence, as always, from its nearby hedge your croft178 –
its willow flower grazed down by Hyblan bees –
will often with light whispering soothe in sleep.
Hence under lofty crag will leafer sing to breeze179
nor all the while will throaty pigeons, your concern,
nor doves let up their moaning from the soaring elm.
58
180
TI
Sooner thus will deer – grown light – graze upper air,
59
& straits abandon fishes – naked – on the shores;
sooner as exiles – ranged beyond each other's bounds –
will Parthian drink Saone or German drink of Tigris,181
182
ME
than from our heart will that one’s visage slip away.
63
But we from here will go – some part to thirsty Africa,
64
some to Scýthia & Oáxes snatching silt
& Britain deeply from the globe entire cut off.183
Look, ever – a long time after – will I stare
at fatherland bounds & paltry roof lid’s peak with turf
piled up – my kingdoms seeing after some summers’ ears.184
Will godless soldier get these fallows so well cared,
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
69
70
[48] all: sc. ‘of it’, adjective placed to suggest the whole of a meager space that rock & rush ‘draw shut, enclose’ (cf. [1.13, n.154)
– heart of Ti’s bucolic range & so a standard from which to measure bucolic variation & expansion through the book.
[49] nursing: cf. n.160.
[51] Lucky oldster: repetition adds still greater emphasis & introduces description (ecphrasis) of Ti’s place drawing motifs from
ideal places in Th (idd. 1 & 7, p. 5).
[53] as always: time in Ti’s place imagined as unchanging & unbroken from viewpoint of Mel – depicted as suffering a violent
break with his past.. But V also imagines Ti’s break with the past & change ordered by the oracle with its mixed message of
continuity but growth [1.45]. In short V has dramatized the loss of old Roman epos but renewal of bucolic epos at Rome..
croft: ‘A small enclosed field or pasture’ [American Heritage Dictionary], as fits the sonorous image rhymes with ‘often’..
[58] crag: rupes,‘broken rock’ (cf. rupture, disrupt) seen as towering by Mel both here & at own lost home – picturesque detail that
adds pathos & drama to figure Mel’s figure & helps V to upstage the elaborate country place worked up by Th (id. 7).
sing: voice imagined of georgic worker in bucolic setting where bees & birds make natural music [1.55, 57-58]; cf. GrBep natural music in georgic-bucolic ideal settings (idd. 1, 5, 7).
[59, 61, 63] Sooner ... sooner ... than: three impossibilities to underline a fourth, forgetting the god: another priamel for rhetorical
emphasis, cf. n. 161.
[62] Rivers added to Roman control & consciousness by recently dead generals – Saone flowing into Rhone at Lyon in Gaul captured by Julius Caesar; Tigris by Pompey in Iraq.
˘
175
185
[64-78] Silenced singer & displaced citizen-farmer – laments lost past & dubious future (10/5: 15)
[64-66] exile for more than merely Mel imagined to geographical extremes – two traditional, two drawing on recent history, all
using the special form of metonymy called synechdoche making a part stand for the whole region.
Africa metonym for south & Scythia metonym for north.
Oáxes: taken as metonym (synechdoche) for east where Pompey enjoyed military success (Oxus river?) but not otherwise known
so may be meant to imply emotion so strong as to overreach real geography?
Britain: after its recent invasion by Julius Caesar a new metonym (synechdoche) for extreme west.
globe entire: orb- tot-, sc. whole known world (cf. orbit, total) as expanded by conquest.
184
[64] kingdoms: metaphoric stretch from lost georgic range to highest thematic range (heroic & mythic) – further clue to Mel’s role
representing ranges of old Latin epos.
185
[70] godless soldier: veterans of Octavian Caesar’s army paid with property taken from citizens so thus from Mel’s viewpoint in
V’s mind; their leader Caesar hailed as God – the opposite extreme – from viewpoint of Ti.
183
ECLOGUE I
33
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
barbarian these crop-lands? Look, to what point discord’s drawn186
us citizens wretched forth. For these did we sow fields?
Graft now your pears, Melibœ́us; put on row your vines.187
Get on, once nursing herd, my nanny goats, get on.
188
73
74
Not after this will I – relaxed in a verdant bower –
see you far off there dangle down from a shrubby crag.
No more will I sing songs. Not with me as grazer,189
nannies, will you pluck clover flower & bitter willow.
TI
190
191
Here, however, you with me at least this night
78
79
could rest on verdant leafage. We have ripened fruit
& chestnuts soft & milk stored up compact in molds;
& now far off the topmost peaks of farmsteads smoke192
& greater – down from lofty hills – the shadows fall.
83
SECOND
CHARACTERS [SPEAKING / Named Only or Background]
FRAMER, cued by V as reporting with urbane detachment a full rural scene where farmers perform their regular
georgic work but grazer CÓRYDON roams & burns with love for his master’s pet slave boy.
STORY:
186
187
188
189
190
in this blended bucolic-georgic range (cf.193 peaceful close, [ecl. 1]) action will get caused here
[71] discord’s drawn: ‘disharmony, bad tuning’ in society marks breakdown of old republican ideal of concord, harmony – ‘discord’ personified acts like a bad herdsman, drawing citizens away from their property & forces them forth into exile (cf. n. 154
for pastoral drawing).
[73] row: ord-, “originally a weaving term, ‘a thread on the loom’,” Oxford Latin Dictionary, comparing ordior, “to lay the warp
of (a web)” as a spider does, so used in Pliny (Natural History 11.80). The loom’s vertical thread (warp) gets stretched by a
common metaphor to domains requiring a notion of strict (sc. stringlike) array in space or time: warp ≈ vine-row ≈ ship’s keel
or its ribs ≈ oratorical opening ≈ army rank ≈ socio-politico-economic class. Here the metaphoric texture is bitterly ironic
where georgic ranking gets lost to & wasted by military force.
[74-78] Ideal bucolic place & craft lost to Mel: traditional ‘song’, sc. epos, silenced (5)
nursing: felix, by metonymy, ‘prosperous, lucky’; cf. nn. 160 & 176.
bower: most poignant loss, since a privileged site; cf. GrBep in Th (idd. 3, 6, 7, 11);cf. GrEp Homer’s bucolic Cyclops (Od 9).
crag: used for Ti’s enduring site, now for Mel’s lost spot. Again serves to color figure of Mel as emphatic & emotive, cf. the
emotive ‘staring’ – strongly emotive gaze, wonder, amazement [1.11, 36], though here just sees [1.5, n.148].
no more will I sing songs: can- carm-, ‘to produce epic hexameters in whatever range – bucolic, georgic, heroic’ but also work
enchantment with ‘charms, spells’. Mel’s forced silence contrasts with the worker singing in Ti’s range [1.56] & with Th’s
tragicomical Goatherd – silent because scorned by an Amarýllis shown as never sparkling or opening her grotto (id. 3).
no more will I sing songs: can- carm-, ‘to produce epic hexameters in whatever range – bucolic, georgic, heroic’ but also work
enchantment with ‘charms, spells’. Mel’s forced silence contrasts with the worker singing in Ti’s range [1.56] & with Th’s
tragicomical Goatherd – silent because scorned by an Amarýllis shown as never sparkling or opening her grotto (id. 3).
[79-83] Disrupted Older Epos briefly Drawn into new Bucolic-georgic Range (5)
[79] at least this night: very restricted terms of time (unlike traditional noon-tide singing or repose, e.g., id. 1, Phaedrus, & opening scene here) employed by V to express how tenuous yet crucial it is for him to work out in his own mind a blend between the
remnant of traditional epos that he represents through the eloquent Mel & the new frame represented by old but venturesome
Ti & the new God at Rome.
192
[82] farmsteads far off: to close V stretches frame of Ti beyond its already large bucolic reach to include a georgic range
imagined reaching across a valley to far hills – picturesque & typical of Italy. Thus V begins to fill the thematic gap between
the bucolic range of Ti & the distant city with its new & potentially heroic myth (god). These motifs of georgic peace overshadow the disturbed farmlands voiced through Mel. They represented a traditionalist’s view of change. The closing images of
extensive order imply that V has worked from dismay at loss to begin to formulate a new order focused on Ti & framed by the
god with potential for expansion to ever wider horizons of ideology & ambition for epos.
191
193
Cf. (cf. n. 1) prompts you to invent commentary by looking for similarity & difference with other text/s – likeness a clue to generic
34
ECLOGUE
II
again by force though not of Rome but love.
CLUES:
V puts this frame together (composes) with motifs drawn & varied from the previous eclogue (cf.
ecl. 1). Th too framed songs by others in his own voice (idd. 6, 11).
CÓRYDON, cued by V as emotive slave, grazer of sheep & goats, neglecting work of pasture & farm for love of
Aléxis – a recent obsession, since once loved Amarýllis [2.14].
STORY:
singing fails to charm desired boy, so singer finally turns mind back to winter farm chores left
neglected because of love.
CRAFT:
honored with legacy of well-made pipe, also represented as a singer as eloquent in reach for
distant love as was MELIBŒ́US protesting loss of georgic & civic home.
CLUES:
frustrated love for ‘well-formed’ boy contrasts with satisfied love for ‘well-formed’ Amarýllis [1.5]
& with various love of monster shepherd Polyphémus for Galateía (idd. 6, 11), that offered prequel
to Homer (Od. 9) – also comparisons with bucolic-tragic & bucolic-heroic figures..
DAMŒ́TAS, old master who bequeathed precious pipe to CÓRYDON.
CLUES:
represented as bucolic authority for V’s version of bucolic range, thus complements Roman
authority from god [1.45] – legacy a hint of challenge, cf. song by Damoitas (id. 6) challenging
Homer (Od. 9).
Aléxis, owner’s pet boy whom CÓRYDON fails to charm with song – object desired beyond bucolic reach, so
provoking stretch for higher & more distant range.
Amarýllis, neighbor girl – ill-tempered so unlike the beloved of Ti (ecl. 1) but more available than Aléxis, so still
more valuable than the unavailable female in Th (idd. 3 & 4).
Amýntas, neighbor boy who courts CÓRYDON in vain.
Daphnis, grazer whose good-looks CÓRYDON thinks he can match.
CLUES:
Daphnis leading oxherd & singer (idd. 1, 6) so boast hints that V’s bucolic may even surpass Th.
Ióllas, rivals CÓRYDON for Aléxis’ love (so meant as master & owner of both slaves?).
Menálcas, neighbor boy, more homely & dark – from sun while working outside? – than house slave Aléxis.
Nymph, Spring-nymph (Naïs, Naiad), local divinity of pools & springs.
Pallas, Athena, cited as founder of cities that the bucolic lover scorns.
Pan, god here identified as first to invent panpipe from reeds.
Théstylis, neighbor girl, courts CÓRYDON & makes farm-workers salad.
SCENE
Bucolic-georgic range like the peaceful blend at close of eclogue one – not one broad beech but many – close
together, spindly, tall – near sunny fields where farmers plow. Time span from hot midday to cooling dusk.
CUES
After brief musical interlude, actor that played the God still in place above doffs divine regalia & like a tragic
prologue sets scene & describes dilemma & style about to unfold on stage below that represents the blended
bucolic-georgic range. Then player of Melibœ́us dons mask of youth, strips to slave tunic, & performs on cues for
gesture & footing signaled by shifts between ‘oh’ & ‘ah’ & apostrophes pointing the finger by abrupt &
exaggerated turns now to the absent boy & now to himself.
———————————————
continuity, unlikeness a clue to specific new values – so that you learn to ‘discern’ [1.9] changes from Th & other poets but
also (starting here) changes from eclogue to eclogue in the order of the finished book, for which cf. pp.22 & 96.
ECLOGUE
194
II
FR Grazer Córydon burned with love for well-formed Aléxis,195
35
1
darling of their owner, nor had anything to hope.
Only through a thick beech grove with shady tops196
he kept on coming. There alone he used to flaunt
these unsettled songs with futile zeal to hills & woods:197
5
198
6
FR{CO
O cruel Aléxis, nothing care you for my songs?
199
For us no pity feel? Do you push me, then, to die?200
Now even stock is seeking to take the shade & cold.
Now verdant lizards too hide out in thorny brakes
& Théstylis is crushing thyme & garlic – tangy
herbs – for reapers wearied by the snatching heat.201
But woods along with me with throaty locusts echo
while I beneath the burning sun your traces scour.
13
Wouldn’t it rather have been enough to bear Amarýllis’s202
14
gloomy wrath & haughty scorn? Or bear Menálcas –
dark however he is, you how gleaming white?
O well-formed boy, don’t place your trust too much in hue.
White privet flowers drop off, dark hyacinths get picked.203
18
Yet I’m despised by you. You don’t search out my sort –
19
how rich in sheep or how awash in snowy milk.
194
[1-5] FRAMER shows distant – urbane – disdain for bucolic turmoil caused by love (5)
[1] well-formed: again ‘good looking’ like prize cattle, but reassigned from willing female [1.5, n.148 ] to unwilling male controlled by Master. A master would control too a slave’s ‘freedom’ [1.27], for which V made Ti go to Rome; hence ‘master’ here
implies the highest thematic range, beyond bucolic reach.
Córydon: name linked by Servius (cf. n.57 ) to Greek corydalis, ‘lark, a good singer’.
Aléxis: name bodes badly for love, since linked by Servius to Greek ‘not speaking, not lexical’; cf. also ominious link to Greek
for ‘warding off’.
196
[3] beech grove: same tree but more [cf. 1.1, n. 144 ]: generic similarity yet specific difference that consolidates & amplifies –
creating a marker for – V’s new Roman version of the bucolic range. In nature, beeches growing close in groves have spindly
trunks with high tops intertwined, quite unlike the single broad tree that V assigned to Ti.
197
[5] unsettled songs: bucolic epos described as deranged by love, cf. [1.77, n. 189], but deranging force provokes eloquent language here as V imagined it doing in the case of Mel.
hills & woods: basic setting & content of bucolic range, cf. [1.5, 83].
195
198
[6-68] Bucolic lover’s pitch to reach distant boy across gap between bucolic & highest ranges (63)
[6] songs: enchantments in epos (hexameters) projected by erotic energy in vain attempt to control an object in the highest & most
distant range, cf. [1.77, n. 189].
200
[7] push: V extends basic push of herdsman (cf. n. 154) by metaphor to use of psychic force – a metaphor also current in English,
e.g., ‘drive to death’.
201
[11] reapers: V after blending the georgic range with Ti’s bucolic range [1.82-83], V amplifies the blend from peaceful evening to
full day’s work – georgic order vs bucolic disorder caused by love; cf. GrEp reapers for king (Shield, p. 91).
202
[14] Amarýllis: if name suggests ‘glitter’ in Greek, in Latin hints at ‘bitter’ (amar-) as here & in Th (id. 3); but can also hint at
Latin ‘love’ (amare), more like the beloved of Ti [1.5].
203
[18] picked: translates leg-/lect-, which by metonymy also means picking words from texts, so ‘to read’ (cf. legend, lecture, lesson
& select, elect; also cognate with logic, eclogue) – challenging to translate since English lacks this metonymic blend – fundamental to bucolic imagination – language, flowers & lovers envisaged as objects to get, things to pick.
199
36
ECLOGUE
II
A thousand lambs of mine are ranging Sicily’s hills;
milk I’ve got in summer fresh & winter too.204
I chant205 what Amphíon would, whenever he called livestock,206
Amphíon styled Dircéan on Actæon’s Aracýnthus;207
& I’m not so ill-formed, I saw myself just now at the shore,208
when calm from winds the sea stood still. Not I would Daphnis
fear (though you were judge), if copies never trick.209
27
O, might it only please you in paltry countryside
28
to dwell with me in groundling huts & go shoot deer210
& push with verdant mallow twig my troop of kids!211
Along with me in woods you’ll mimic Pan in singing212
(Pan first to join together several reeds with wax213
arranged. Pan cares for sheep & for sheep’s masters)
nor should it shame you with reed to rub your little lip.
34
These same things to know, what didn’t Amýntas do?
35
I own – composed of seven unequal hemlock stalks –
a pan-pipe, which in gift Damœ́tas gave me once
while dying & declared: “Now this one has you next.”214
Declared Damœ́tas. Foolish with envy Amýntas looked.
39
Besides, a duo that I found in a tricky valley –
40
little wild bucks, hides still sprinkled now with white –
that dry two ewe’s teats daily: them I keep for you.
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
[22] fresh: translates nov- (‘new’) with sense specialized to the bucolic range.
[23] chanting: cant-, ‘sing again, repeat song’ (Habinek) – echo & repeat of can-, cf. [1.77] & [2.6].
[23] Amphíon: blend of bucolic with heroic-tragic range, cf. SocMem, Gr&LtTrag legend has Amph born with twin Zethus to
Antíope after her rape by Zeus in satyr form & reared by herdsman; when grown, the twins return to Thebes, kill the king &
rescue their mother from torment by queen Dirce, whom they kill by tying her to a bull – another bucolic twist to the tale.
Amph also legendary for raising walls of Thebes with power of song – further challenge to bucolic range.
[24] Actæon: son of royal princess by herdsman, hunter, saw goddess Diana naked so she turned him into a stag to be killed by his
own dogs – tragic legend set in hills & woods: suits context & thus seems best correction for the corrupt text handed down.
[25] ill-formed: cf. ‘well-formed’ [2.1, 1.5, n. 148] & erotic force of sight in bucolic imagination, here too V challenging Th on the
latter’s home turf.
[27] copies: imagin-, here for ‘reflection’ in the restless (thus in reality useless) mirror of waves. Comparing Cor to Th’s
emblematic oxherd Daphnis (idd. 1, 6, 7), V hints at uncertainty as to how his work relates to Th – poor reflection in impossible verse medium? deceptive imitation? not inferior in looks, but by any other criteria?
[28] paltry, groundling: scanty, poor & down to earth – qualities of bucolic range when contrasted with civic & heroic ranges; cf.
[1.2, 47, nn. 145 & 174].
[30] push: sc. herd, drive, cf. [1.13 n. 154].
[31] mimic, singing, : a further way of hinting at conceiveable relations among artists & arts. Although referred literally to voice
& performance, ‘singing’ means by metaphor & metonymy ‘producing epos (hexameters)’, cf. [1.77, n. 189] & [2.6, n. 199].
[32] Pan first: cf. ‘first’ for God authorizing Ti’s bucolic range [1.44, n. 170]; but here V casts Pan as originator of bucolic range,
cf. GrBep V makes explicit a hint from Th’s Daphnis dying in Sicily & calling Pan from Arcadia (p. 96, n. 673) to take back
the pipe (id. 1.123-30, p. 96); cf. GrPhil Pan’s.power evoked in ideal bucolic setting (Phaedrus §230, n.144).
[38] dying & declared: ‘pointed out in words’ [cf. 1.19] – a framing utterance in the legal & ritual form of a last will & testament;
cf. the formulaic utterance of Ti’s God [1.45],‘send up bulls’. That formula projected V’s growth beyond Th, while this one
casts V as‘following’, ‘going after’ (secund-, ‘second’) in yet another metaphoric hint of V’s relatedness to Th. V imagines a
master with a name from Th (id. 6) ‘dying’ & handing down his pipe to a successor, sc. V himself. Th had imagined Daphnis
‘dying’ & returning the pipe back to its inventor (id. 1) – closing tradition. V opens it to new growth.
ECLOGUE
II
37
To get them from me Théstylis long since appeals;
215
& she will yet, since paltry you find gifts from us.
44
Down here come, well-formed boy. For you, look, nymphs bring lilies216
45
in basketfuls. A spring-nymph gleaming bright, while plucking
you pale violets & poppies’ topmost heads,
narcissus yokes with flower of sweetly tangy dill.217
Then weaving in wild cinnamon & other soothing herbs
she paints soft hyacinths with yellow marigolds.
Myself will pick out peaches hoary with tender down218
& chestnut kernels that my Amarýllis loved.
I'll add on waxy plums – for this fruit honor too –219
&, laurels, you I’ll pluck & you beside them, myrtle,
since set in this way you will mingle soothing scents.
55
Córydon, you’re country. Aléxis doesn’t care for gifts,220
56
nor, if with gifts you’d challenge, would Ióllas concede.221
Woe! Woe! What have I wished me, wretched? Lost, I’ve sent
hot southern wind to flowers & boars to limpid springs.
59
Whom do you flee, ah, mindless? Gods as well have dwelt222
60
in woods & Trojan Paris.
223
Pallas herself let care
for citadels she set. Let woods before all else please us!224
Grim lioness after wolf; himself wolf after nanny;
gamy nanny chases after flowering clover,
Córydon after you. Their own pleasure pulls each one.225
65
Look how bullocks bring back plows hung down from yokes
66
& sun the growing shadows doubles as it goes.226
227
Yet me love burns: what measure would there be for love?
68
215
[45-55] Garland of colors & scents to charm distant boy (11)
216
[45] well-formed: visual & physical again, cf. [2.26, 1]; [1.5, n. 148].
217
[48] yokes: sc. joins together as a yoke does oxen – georgic metaphor widely used.
218
[51] pick out: leg- as directed to fruit, cf. [2.18, n.203].
219
[53] honor: mark of distinction & value from civic & heroic range.
220
[56] Córydon: shift from Alexis back to self, collapse into self-reproach.
221
[57] challenge: cert-, ‘keep sifting out, discern’ – basic bucolic idea of testing difference; cf. [1.9, 11, n. 152].
222
[60] flee: that described exile of Mel. [1.4] here transferred to flighty & fugitive beloved who shuns pursuer.
ah, mindless: cues an even more abrupt shift, from self to reproach for Alexis; for the tragic emotion, cf. [2.69].
223
[60-1] Paris: cf. SocMem prince of Troy while herding flocks judged beauty contest among goddesses. He awarded the prize –
Apple of Discord – to Venus (Aphrodite) who offered as a bribe Helen,most beautiful woman but already the bride of
Menelaus, who promoted the Greek war against Troy to get her back – bucolic root for heroic epic. Hence ‘Paris’ links the
highest range with the ‘woods’ that represent the bucolic range, cf. [2.5], [1.1].
224
[62] woods before all else: sc. bucolic range vs everything beyond, cf. [1.48, n. 175].
225
[63-65] Priamel with themes from large to small – paradox comparing Cor’s love to animal drives. cf. [1.24, 59].
226
[67] growing shadows: cf. ‘greater shadows’ [1.83] – with dynamic motifs of closure V amplifies the bucolic-georgic blend framed
by Ti’s new Roman myth.
227
38
ECLOGUE
II
A Córydon, Córydon, what mindlessness has taken you off?228
69
229
Your vine’s half-reckoned with, leafy, not yet pruned on its elm.
Why don’t you rather at least prepare to finish weaving
something use requires from withies & soft rush?230
You will find, if this one scorns you, another Aléxis.
73
THIRD
CHARACTERS [SPEAKING / Named Only or Background]
MENÁLCAS, young owner of cattle, sheep, kids, but not in charge.
STORY:
gossipy lover of boy & girl & song, nosy neighbor.
CRAFT:
via Conon & Phœbus (aka Apollo, one of gods used in propaganda by Caesar Octavian) –
astronomic & prophetic – competes in riddling contest like old seer-bards (vates, p. 99 ).
CLUES:
name recalls herder rated less attractive than the desired boy (ecl. 2), hence prompts us to try to
discern similarity & difference; also used by one of the bucolic poets who followed Th.
DAMŒ́TAS, hired hand (slave?) looks after others’ cattle, sheep, goats.
STORY:
gossipy lover of girls – rustles livestock, gets into singing matches.
CRAFT:
claims goat as prize for singing contest (hint of origin of tragedy); competes in riddling contest like
old seer-bards (vates, p. 99); linked too with powerful singing via Orpheus & Jove (i.e. Jupiter,
ruler of gods & used in propaganda of Caesar Octavian).
CLUES:
name recalls dead master & metaphor of inheritance in poetic tradition (ecl. 2), thus provokes
more queries about similarity & difference – does V imagine a time prior to previous eclogue, a
prequel, in manner of Th who imagined the Cyclops as youthful at a time before that recounted by
Hom? But would such a retreat in time harmonize with hint of maturing in figure of MENALCAS?
PALǼMON, neighbor with Greek name but familiar with old Latin Muses (Camenae).
STORY:
CRAFT:
happens onto squabble, gets warned to pay close heed.
attuned to Caménæ (Latin Muses, p. 99), so rooted in Italian countryside & claims to demand the
kind of song they love – shifting back & forth between singers – a form however that recalls the
exchanges of speech in Greek epos – both bucolic (Th) & heroic (Hom).
Ægon, off making nice with Neaíra, so she won’t prefer MENÁLCAS, left his sheep for DAMŒ́TAS to keep.
CLUES:
in Th was owner who left flock to another’s care while off to get glory in Olympic games (id. 4).
Alcímedon, craftsman of cups divinely carved from beech wood that depict Conon – astronomer in court of
———————————————
[69-73] Bucolic lover looks down on love from standpoint of georgic work (5)
228
[69] A Córydon, Córydon: final shift, climactic repetition, marks epilogue responding to Framer’s prologue [2.1-5].
mindlessness: a notorious theme, cf. SocMem & LtTrag ’heartless with flaming love, downcast, he crafted rape from mindlessness’ (Tereus, Accius); cf. GrBep Cyclops asked where wits had flown leaving his chores neglected (id. 11.72-74); lovesick
girl, Simaítha asked herself about her wits (id. 2.19).
taken you off: cep-, cf. ‘captured’ & ‘caught’ commonly used for victory in battle, thus another metaphoric link between bucolic
& heroic ranges – love & war.
229
[70] half-reckoned, pruned: put- ‘to prune’ [cf. 1.19, n. 158] – georgic reasoning vs mindlessness of bucolic love, which was
faulted in the prologue: common metaphoric transfer of georgic ‘reckon, prune’ to processes of judging & figuring out, e.g.,
compute, impute, repute.
elm: living tree (arbor) employed in Roman practice to support the vine; wild in Ti’s ideal landscape [1.58].
230
[72] weaving ... use: weaving craft already hinted by motif of milk compressed into cheese [1.79], sc. by a woven mold; here weaving made explicit & linked with utility as ‘measure’ [2.68] needed to extinguish fire (metaphor) of love.
rush: weedy edge of Ti’s bucolic close [1.48] redeemed for utility by craft.
ECLOGUE
III
39
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Alexandria (c3 BCE) – & Orpheus – mythic poet of power to move nature.
Amýntas, boy loved by MENÁLCAS, though was name of would-be lover scorned by CÓRYDON (ecl. 2).
Amarýllis, one of the flirts of DAMŒ́TAS (cf. ecll. 2 & 1).
Bávius & Mǽvius, city poets deserving scorn.
Caménae, nymphs of a spring just outside Rome – invoked in first Roman literature as native Latin powers in
place of Greek Muses (cf. p. 99). Invoking them here, V claims to recover old poetics for new myth.
Damon, lost goat in contest with DAMŒ́TAS but would not pay.
Daphnis, hunter with reeds made into arrows not pipe (cf. beauty, ecl. 2).
Galatéa, flirts with DAMŒ́TAS – prior, wasteful love to TÍTYRUS [1.30, 31].
Ióllas, rival for love of Phyllis – owner? (ecl. 2).
Melibœ́us, known to speakers yet not owner of this flock: hint of time prior – prequel – to the first eclogue?
Micon, owner? keeper? of vineyard (georgic range) vandalized by DAMŒ́TAS.
Phyllis, girl loved by Ióllas & DAMŒ́TAS.
Póllio, city poet – lover of bucolic muse & maker of tragedies (cf. goat song of DAMŒ́TAS).
Títyrus, just a grazer of goats, not sheep & cattle – another hint of a prequel to first eclogue?
SCENE
Spring countryside blending georgic fields & bucolic woods.
Grassy plot for sitting close to ancient beech trees & vineyard of Micon.
CUES
Short musical riff as Framer, who reacted to Corydon’s restless shifts with sweeps of arms & pointing hands,
withdraws. Meanwhile the player of Títyrus – donning the mask of a middle aged man – advances to play
DAMŒ́TAS. His approach provokes the figure still on stage: reflective Córydon suddenly turns into inquisitive &
possessive MENÁLCAS, sparks insults that build until the ruckus attracts the former Framer now dressed in a
farmer’s broad hat who ushers all to sit on grass for orderly & symmetrical but still snappy trade in songs.
MN231 Declare me, Damœ́tas, whom’s herd? Melibœ́us’s?232
DA
No, really Ægon's; Ægon handed me it just now.
MN
You sheep, as always, malnursed herd: while he himself233
1
feels up Neaíra, fearing she’ll like me not him,
right here an outcast keeper twice an hour milks ewes –
DA
its sap from the herd gets drawn below, their life from lambs.
6
A bit more sparely (mind!) toss manly men that talk.
7
We know who did it to you,(while billy-goats crossed their eyes)
& in what shrine (but – making it happen – Nymphs just laughed).
MN
That was then, I suppose, when me they saw hack down
with an evil hook poor Micon’s trees with fresh-grown vines.234
231
[1-54] Spat over property & sexual propriety grows into metapoetic clash over song (54)
232
[1] whom’s herd?: ‘whom’ instead of the normal ‘whose’, since V replaced normal cuius with cuium – an old & rustic form. It
made one ancient reader protest & makes us wonder why such a show of old-time language here? Does V mean to suggest a
time warp? Does he want us to think that this scene takes place at an earlier time? Earlier than what? The previous eclogue?
Or earlier than the historical disruptions represented in eclogue one? In any case, a prequel? Can this hint at olden times
when seers, vates flourished? [cf. 3.104, n. 84, p. 13].
Melibœ́us’s: name & form also imply a prequel to eclogue one, since there Mel was shown going into exile with goats [1.4, 74],
but here is imagined owning sheep in a peaceful time.
233
[3] malnursed: cf. [1.49, n. 176] & [1.21, n. 160].
234
[11] fresh-grown vines: growth suggests recovered & broad georgic range in mythic frame of Ti, thus more ample than the
40
ECLOGUE
III
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DA
Or here beside the ancient beeches when you shattered235
Daphnis’ bow & arrow reeds, which, mean Menálcas,236
you when seeing given the boy, not only grieved
MN
but, if you had not somehow harmed, you would have died.
15
What should owners do, when thieves dare try for such?
16
Did I not see you, rascal, plot to steal his buck
away from Damon, even though Wolfie barked & barked?
& when I shouted, 'Where's that fellow sneaking to?
DA
Títyrus, push your troop!', you lurked behind the sedge.
20
Though I beat him in chanting, he wasn’t going to pay237
21
the billygoat my pan-pipe earned by making songs.238
If you don't know, that goat was mine: as much to me
did Damon himself confess, but said he couldn't pay.
MN
You beat him with music? When ever did you possess
a pipe well-yoked with beeswax? Didn’t you used to strew239
DA
your wretched song in sleazy streets with shrieking straw.240
27
So don't you want us then to try in turns what each
28
can do? So you will not beg off, I stake this youngish
cow – she fills the milk pail twice, her udder feeds
MN
two calves. Declare with what pledge though you’d challenge me.241
31
Nothing from the troop would I dare stake with you.
32
At home there's father, there’s his fresh & nasty wife:
two times a day both count the herd, he even kids.
34
But that which you’ll yourself confess by much the greater
35
(since this craze amuses you), I will stake cups
of beechwood made, divine Alcímedon’s chiseled work,242
where a limber vine – inscribed above by making lathe –
with ivy growing green its straggling clusters garbs:
mid-point two figures: Conon & who was the other –243
———————————————
neglected vine support tree (arbor) & vineyard of Cor [2.70] & the lost viticulture of Mel [1.73].
235
[12] ancient beeches: emphasis on age implies great size – spreads of wide branches & smooth surfaces of pale bark apt for carving words: motifs complement & amplify a basic motif of V’s bucolic range, cf. [1.1, n. 144] & [2.3, n. 196], also beech grove
(Fagutal) of Jove (n. 144).
236
[13] arrow reeds: translated to show V’s metonymy, which underlines how ‘reed’ (calam-) was useful for making more than just
bucolic pipes, thus here weapons for hunting,& potentially war (the civic-heroic range); cf. the metonymy {‘reed’ ≈ pipe}
already imported & amplified from Th for V’s bucolic range [1.10] & [2.33] as opposed to the initial metonymy assigned to
Mel, {‘oat’ ≈ pipe}, where ‘oat’ was not a material viable for making anything.
237
[21] chanting: cf. [2.23, n. 205].
238
[22] billygoat: V imagines Dam contesting with ‘goat song’ – legendary as the origin of tragedy, ‘goat-singing’ (a welcome insight
by Brian Breed), adding to other hints that Dam represents a powerful strain & potential for growth in the bucolic range
toward higher ranges, cf. ‘send up bulls’ [1.44].
239
[26] yoked: sc. ‘joined together’ – again georgic metaphor, cf. [2.48].
beeswax: cf. GrBep likewise fastened the pipe returned by dying Daphnis to its maker Pan (id.1.129).
240
[27] streets...straw: not in the fields & woods & not with ‘reeds’ so not authentic bucolic music.
241
[31] challenge: cf. [2.57].
242
[37] beechwood: tree already representing V’s bucolic range [3.12]; [2.2]; [1.1] & now imagined as material for an artifact .
chiseled work – subject to description (ecphrasis) that varies & challenges tradition of such works & their descriptions: cf.
GrBep goatherd’s cup marvellous to see (id. 1, p. 96); cf. GrBep Achille’s shield (p. 91)
243
[39] Conon: court astronomer, cf. GrEleg figured in Callimachus, Aitia (p.98), links Men with urbane craft & points to poetic
horizons beyond the bucolic range..
ECLOGUE
III
41
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
that with his measuring rod for peoples marked the globe244
entire – what times the reapers, what bent plowmen have.245
Nor yet have I set lips to them, but keep them stored.
42
Two cups the same Alcímedon likewise made for me
DA
43
246
& folded all their handles round with soft bearsbreech
& Orpheus set mid-point & woods going after him;247
nor yet have I set lips to them, but keep them stored.
MN
Yet if you still look to the cow, no use that you praise cups.
48
Not today will you get off; I'll come wherever you call.
49
Let hear this only ... Well?... Who’s coming? Look, Palǽmon.
I'll make it so that you bait no one else with talk.
So push, if you've got anything. Delay from me there’s none:248
DA
I flee from no one. Only, neighbor Palǽmon, put
these things – no little matter – back in your deepest mind.
249
PA
250
Declare since we’ve sat down together on forage soft.
54
55
& now all fields, now all the trees are giving birth,251
now woods are leafing out, the year’s now most well-formed.252
Take up, Damœ́tas; you from there, Menálcas, go.253
In shifts declare: in shifts Caménæ love their songs.254
255
DA
244
245
246
247
248
249
From Jove our Muse first took: all are full of Jove.256
59
[4] 60
[40] peoples globe entire:gent- orb- tot-(cf. gentile, orbit, total) – further stretch in range, cf. [1.66].
[41] reapers ≈ regular georgic work [2.11]; plowmen ≈ lost georgic range [1.3, 70]; cf. GrEp Arat (p.94 ) & Hom Shield (p.
91).
[44] bearsbreech: acanthus, stately & prickly in nature, but made to curl out softly on the ornate capitals of columns in Corinthian
style. Did it flourish wild as it does today in nooks on the Palatine hill?
[45] Orpheus: emblematic of poetic power, cf. GrEp Apollonius (p. 97, n. 697). V thus adds heroic range to tragic in making Dam
a figure of poetic power & ambitious reach beyond bucolic bounds, though V has made 'woods' represent the bucolic range
here in his book, cf. [1.5], [2.5, etc].
[52] push: cf. n. 154 [1.13].
[55-59] FRAMER now emerges from exchange to command ordered growth in song (5)
[55] Declare: again of authoritative pointing utterance, [2.38], [1.19].
251
[56] now all ... now all: sc. ‘every ... every’ – strong variation & growth to fullness of bucolic-georgic range, cf. [1.48 , n. 175]; cf.
LtEp to motifs of wider space V adds emphatic motifs of time recalling ideal spring when first ‘farmfield muse’ flourished
(Lucr. 5.1395-96, 2.32-33), cf. [1.10]; cf. GrBep also Greek bucolic nature favoring song (id. 1.1-21; id. 5.31-34, 45-59; id.
7.133-147), & in bucolic imitator of Th, ‘everywhere spring, everywhere pastures, everywhere udders of milk’ ([id.] 8.41-42).
252
[57] well-formed: V pushes metaphoric stretch from good-looking animals & persons to whole year, cf. [2.1], [1.5, n. 148].
253
[58] Take up: in + cip/capt (‘put hand to, get a hold on, grasp first’) from actual grip with hands metaphoric to beginning a process or speech understood as a journey or development (travel or growth) that can be projected as a series from beginning
through middle to end; cf. ‘first took’,’prin- + cip- [3.60].
254
[59] in shifts: trading back & forth, exchanging, as speakers were said to do in bucolic & heroic epos; cf. GrBep ‘in shifts
(amoiba-)’ they argued (id. 1.34: two lovers carved on cup); ‘in shifts (amoibai-)’ bucolic song (id. 8.31-32, 61]; cf. GrEp ‘by
shifts (amoibe-)’ they argued (Il. 18.506: trial carved on Achilles’ shield); cf. common metaphor describing epic conversation,
‘give speech back in shifts’ (apameib-).
Caménae. nymphs of a spring near Rome; cf. LtEp they stood for Greek Mousa in Saturnian verse of first Latin Odyssey (p.
99) & were said to be called Muses by Greeks (Ennius, fr. 487 Skutsch, cf. p. 99), hence like other vatic motifs part of V’s
effort to color his new mythic frame as return to an older state – etiological thrust, cf. [1.45] & p.4 & p. 98.
250
255
[60-107] Songs in shifts push each other to grow to recover vatic voicing (48: 4-12-8-8-12-4)
The couplets mimic epigram not only in form but also style – proverbial & pithy, like epitaphs, spells, oracles, riddles; cf. n. 39.
256
[60-63] Hymnic prelude to gods – hints at vatic developments to come (4)
[60] first took: opening theme of praise to deity &claim of divine support, like a hymn, cf. n. 644, p. 90.
all full of Jove: sc. ‘everything, all things’ – a still further stretch from bucolic base towards comprehensive language & vision
in the new mythic frame; cf. GrEp ‘each ..., every ..., everywhere full of Zeus’ (Arat., 2-4,.p. 94, n.245): ideological thrust
42
ECLOGUE
III
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
He takes care of lands. My songs are his concern.257
MN
But me Phœbus loves; for Phœbus always I’ve
his gifts on hand of laurel & hyacinth’s soothing blush.258
259
DA
260
With an apple Galatéa seeks me – gamy girl –
63
[12] 64
& flees to willows, yet desires getting seen before.
MN
Amýntas, my fire, volunteers himself to me,
so Délia soon to our dogs will not get better known.
DA
For my Venus I’ve got gifts, since I myself marked out
the place where soaring pigeons heaped together a nest.
MN
Whatever I could, I sent the boy – picked from a wildwood
tree, ten apples, golden: others tomorrow I will.261
DA
O how often & what to me has Galatéa uttered!
Winds, some part to the ears of the gods may you bear back!262
MN
What good that you at heart, Amýntas, don’t spurn me,
if, while you go after boars, I tend the nets?263
75
DA264 To me send Phyllis; the birthday party’s mine, Ióllas.
[8] 76
When I kill a youngish cow for harvest, come yourself.
MN
“Phyllis I love before others; for when I left she wept
& long said, ‘Well-formed Ióllas, fare you well! Fare well!’.”
DA
Gloomy is wolf for stalls, for ripened harvests rains,265
for trees the winds, for us the wrath of Amarýllis.
MN
Sweet for plantings moisture, arbutus for kids when weaned,
limber willow for nursing herd, for me Amýntas.
266
DA
83
Póllio loves our Muse, however countrified;
[8] 84
267
Piérian Muses graze your reader a youngish cow.
MN
Póllio makes fresh songs himself too; graze a bull
———————————————
there flattered Macedonian king, here Octavian, whose coins displayed Jove, cf. n. 80, p. 12.
257
[61] songs: sc. this form of epos; cf. [2.6] & [1.77].
258
[63] laurel, hyacinth: said to result from erotic misadventures of Phœbus: cf. SocMem & GrEp girl Daphne escaped the god’s
lust by turning into laurel (daphne); boy Hyacinthus killed by god’s discus blown off course by jealous wind – boy’s blood
gave rise to flower named for him by the god. In one version,D & H were brother & sister (Dix, “Grynean Riddles,” 257).
259
[64-75] Erotic – Charming powers at work on fields of Love (12)
260
[64] Galatéa: nymph imagined as more sexually forthcoming than in other contexts, cf. [1.30, n. 165]
gamy: racy, sexy as lascivious as a goat.
261
[71] golden: value from the heroic range – above & beyond the bucolic – intensified by specifying exact number (decem) in vatic
style, topped by boast of doing it again next day; cf. GrBep ‘I bring ten apples, more tomorrow (id. 3.19-20); cf. GrEp
‘golden fleece’ as blend of bucolic & heroic ranges, n.693; Héracles stole golden apples of Hespérides (‘Daughters of Evening’ (Arg. 4.1434-35); fair golden apples guarded by Hespérides (Hesiod, Theog. 215-16); cf. popular legend, three golden
apples used by Hippómanes to delay Atalánta; one golden apple tossed by Strife into wedding party of Péleus & Thetis causing quarrel that led to beauty context judged by the oxherd Paris [2.61] & bribe of Helen that led to the Greek war on Troy.
262
[73] bear back: translating refer, verb applied metaphorically to carrying things & words, here hint of echo from bucolic range
to mythic range, cf. [1.5, n. 148]; cf. GrBep Th on reach of bucolic fame to court of Zeus.(sc. of Ptolemy in Alexandria: id.
7.93).
263
[75] nets: set to close off woods & enmesh animals driven by hunters beating bushes.
264
[76-83] Erotic – bucolic range to higher range: climax to love exchanges (8)
265
[80/82] Gloomy vs sweet – opposite themes in priamels with identical form, cf. [1.23, n. 161].
266
[84-91] Metapoetic interplay & stretch – between bucolic range & tragic range (8)
267
[85] Pierian Muses: called to enlarge reach of Latin Camenæ, cf. LtEp Greek goddesses linked in Latin (georgic) epic with tradition & sweet power of song (Lucr. 1.926, 946; cf. 4.1., 21); cf. GrBep but called best medicine for love (id. 11.1-3) &
invoked by feckless farmer-lover (id. 10.24]; cf. GrEp in older Greek (georgic) epic, Muses of Hesiod – born in Pieria, near
dwelling of gods on Mount Olympus (Theog. 53; W & D 1).
ECLOGUE
III
43
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
that soon would seek with his horn & scatter sand with his feet.268
Where he delights you’ve come, let who loves you, Póllio, come!269
DA
for him let honey flow, harsh bramble bear sweet balm.270
MN
Who hates not Bávius, let him, Mǽvius, love your songs;
& foxes let him likewise yoke & milk he-goats.
271
DA
91
272
Boys that pick the flowers & berries near ground growing,
[12] 92
oh!, flee from here where cold in the forage lurks a snake.
MN
Spare, sheep, to march too far: the river bank’s not rightly
trusted; even your ram himself now dries his fleece.
Títyrus, fling your grazing nannies back from the stream;273
DA
myself, when it comes time, I'll wash them in the springs.
MN
Push, boys, your ewes: if heat has taken away their milk,
as just now happened, vainly we’ll mold teats with hands.
DA
Woe, woe, how thin a bull I’ve got in vetch that’s fat!
The same love ruins both the stock & the master of stock.
MN
These sure – nor love the cause – can scarcely stick to bones;
some evil eye bewitches me my tender lambs.
274
DA
103
275
Declare in what lands – & you’ll my great Apollo be –
[4] 104
276
the span of sky no ampler than three ells would spread.
MN
278
PA
Declare in what lands do flowers get born inscribed with names
of kings & Phyllis just for yourself alone you’ll get.277
107
Not ours to settle between you two disputes so great:
108
both you & he are worthy the cow & whosoever279
either fears loves – even when sweet – or tries though bitter.
Close at last the rills, boys. Meadows have drunk enough.280
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
111
[86] fresh songs: new tragedies, cf. [2.22, n. 204].
[99] where ... come: oracular & riddling style, sc. vatic, cf. [3.60] & n. 39. Paraphrase to unfold metapoetic import: ‘you have
come to the point of making fresh songs in the highest (sc. heroic & tragic) range; if your success delights someone (sc. me),
may that person (sc. I) also come to join you making songs in the highest (sc. heroic-tragic) range’.
[89] honey: traditional symbol for sweet gift of Muses, cf. GrBep e.g., id. 7.82-85, hence hint of more poetic flow to come, with
miraculous reversals in nature.
[92-103] Apotropaic (‘turning away’)– charms protect bucolic range: spells in vatic verses (12)
[92] flee: sudden shift in emphasis & tone from fullness & confidence in the expanding bucolic-georgic range to themes of risky
edges & threats from within & without; cf. varied inflections of fugitive Galatéa [3.65], elusive Aléxis [2.60], ejected Mel
[1.4]; cf. GrEp proverbial style recalling Hesiod (W & D, p.91). .
[96] Títyrus: not endowed with sheep & cattle, which stand higher on the scale of bucolic values & were assigned Ti.[1.7, 9] –
another of this eclogue’s hints of prequel to eclogue one? cf. GrBep goatherd status was assigned to Tityros (id. 3].
[104-07] Vatic riddles: dialogue builds to climax in traditional vatic contest (4)
[104] Declare: again pointed command introducing special utterance, cf. [3.55, n. 250], [2.38, n. 214], but here V introduces a
contest of riddles, recalling a legendary competition between seers to guess numbers of fruit on a tree & piglets of a sow (cf.
decem at n. 261) – hence vatic climax to whole exchange & hint of move to recover old Latin poetry.
[105] span of sky ... three ells: cf. GrEp hint of heavens carved on Hom’s Shield (p. 91) argues: Dix, “Grynean
Riddles,” 260; cf. other hints of the Shield [3.41, n.245].
[107] kings: theme of highest range inscribed on flowers (bucolic range) – Hyacinth likely the name meant, cf. [3.63, n. 258] &
careful reckoning by Dix.
[108-111] FRAMER: worth affirmed for both singers & any lover: fullness declared for mythic frame [4]
[109] worthy: dign-, ‘deserving of, fit for, measuring up to’ (cf. ‘dignify, dignity, deign, disdain’) – basic to processes of relating, comparing, assigning value that typify bucolic work, metaphoric thought, & V’s mind; cf. n.193; often where some prize
or honor is at stake, with sense that something or someone lower meets & merits the higher.
[111] enough: value of measure & need for closure affirmed for this swelling bucolic-georgic range, which V has pushed to
horizons far beyond the narrow space called ‘enough’ for Ti [1.47, n. 174], above all by interweaving a dense tissue of
threads drawn from epos of Hom (heroic), Hesiod (mythic, georgic), & their later Greek emulators (Apollonius, Aratus,
44
ECLOGUE
IV
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
FOURTH
CHARACTERS [SPEAKING / Named Only or Background]
FRAMER, looks back & down on bucolic woods – unlike PALǼMON (ecl. 3], who found bucolic singers worthy &
more like the urbanely disdainful FRAMER [2.1-5].
STORY:
excited by birth envisioned as heroic catalyst for universal change, tries to persuade infant boy to
take hold in right way.
CRAFT:
eloquent & pushy seer-singer – bard (old Latin vatic voice renewed).
PARCAE, (‘Sparing Ones’) – Latin for Fates – goddesses that set fate (‘spoken destiny’ for a life) for an infant
(‘not-yet-speaking’) when first it speaks (fatur).
CLUES:
imagined singing at wedding of Peleus & Thetis about their son Achilles & his brutality in war at
Troy & then decline from Heroic to Iron Age (Catullus 64, p. 101: radical new blend of heroic
legends into continuous causal chain linking Homer, Hesiod, Apollonius of Rhodes).
Boy, infant sent from heaven as increase of Jove, sc. Jupiter – father & ruler of gods & men [linked in
propaganda with Caesar Octavian, p. 12] yet born of mortal mother.
Apollo, a.k.a. [also known as] Phœbus, god of seers [a patron god of Caesar Octavian, cf. 3.62] & father of
legendary first poet Linus.
Callíope, muse of heroic epos, a daughter of Memory by Jove, & mother of powerful singer Orpheus.
Linus, a son of Apollo, inventor of verse & music, teacher of Hercules & Orpheus.
Lucína, goddess of childbirth, because she brings to light [luc-] – a.k.a. Diana, sister of Phœbus Apollo.
Pan, Arcadian god – power in bucolic range (ecl. 1; id. 1; Phaedrus), invented pipe (ecl. 2, id. 1).
Póllio, fan of bucolic song & tragic poet (ecl.3) but here hailed as Roman magistrate – consul, office he held in 40
BCE
– & negotiator of peace between factions of Caesar Octavian & Marc Antony.
Sicilian Muses, sc. Theocritean – reductive summary of first three eclogues, ignoring how V has upstaged Th &
pushed far beyond even his most generous & rich bucolic-georgic blend (id. 7).
SCENE
Rome (?), since BARD wants woods worthy of a Roman consul, hails a consul, & seeks to charm a boy imagined
as freshly born & destined to rule the whole world.
CUES
Martial music as the two singers withdraw. Palæmon tosses farmer hat to the wings, strides forward & with
grandiloquent gestures belts out urgent pleas cued by pronoun shifts.
FR281
Sicilian Muses, let us sing a bit greater songs.282
1
———————————————
Euphorion) as well as from V’s contemporary Roman Gallus. .
281
[1-17] Outline for hymn to new hero: vision of order to emerge from chaotic world (3{4}3{4}3)
282
[1-3] Framing growth beyond poetic ranges touched thus far in book (3)
Sicilian: refers back & summarizes [1-3] as ‘Theocritean’ by metonymy from Th’s island origin. Diminishes the abundant
growth beyond Th in [1-3] as less than the further growth planned here.
greater: cue for growth in theme & realized in style, cf. ‘greater’ [1.83] & program for growth [1.45].
songs: sc. epos in ranges higher than bucolic; cf. [3.61], [2.6], [1.77, n. 189].
IV
45
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
Trees & groundling tamarisks do not please all.283
If we are singing woods, let woods get consul worthy.284
3
285
Now at last the final age of Cumæ's song has come.
4
286
The centuries' great row is being born afresh.
Now comes back too the Maiden, back come Saturn's kingdoms.287
Now fresh offspring gets sent down from lofty sky.288
7
You at least this boy being born, by whom iron people
8
first will cease & golden rise through the world entire,
help, chaste Lucína – your Apollo at last now reigns.289
10
290
With you then consul, Póllio, will this worthy time
11
291
go in & great months will take up their forward march.
With you then leading, if some traces stay from our crime,292
erased they’ll set lands loose from nagging forms of fear.293
294
14
15
He will take up the life of gods & see the gods
with heroes mingled & himself get seen by them
& rule a globe by fathers manhood forced to peace.295
296
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
17
297
But earth will – care free – pour you, boy, first little gifts
18
[2] Trees: representing bucolic range, cf. [3.56] & [1.39, 5, n. 148].
groundling ‘close to earth, humble‘ – traditional value of bucolic range when compared with broader & higher ranges, cf. [1.2,
n. 145]; [2.28, n. 210].
tamarisks: typify bucolic range (id. 1.13), (5.101), but burn on the battle field (Il. 21.350); woven by Hermes into sandals to disguise tracks of Apollo’s cattle being stolen from hilly pastures of Pieria (Hermes 81, 102: epic hymn & bucolic origin myth).
[3] worthy: both singers & any lover were deemed ‘worthy’ of bucolic prize [3.109-10] while here the bucolic range gets challenged to grow worthy of higher range.
[4-7] Frame with cosmogonic & mythic time – climax, renewal, return, birth (4)
Building myth of emerging order, cf. p.4.
Cumæ: Greek town south of Rome, as old as Rome itself, with shrine of Sibyl – prophetess producing oracles often cited at
Rome; hence motif marks Framer an old-time seer (vates) with access also to Greek authorizing past.
[5] great: mag-, maj-, max-. ‘greatness’ typifies highest range, cf. [4.1 ]
row,ord- ties in with powerful metaphoric network of spinning, threads, weaving, cf. [1.73, n. 187] & [2.72, n. 230].
[6] Saturn’s kingdoms: regna ≈ highest range – metaphor for lost farm of Mel [1.69]. Saturn (Greek Kronos) the father of Jove
(Zeus) defeated by him & relegated to rule blessed heroes somewhere in west, sc. prehistoric Italy: cf. Saturnian as early Italic
verses, p. 99.
Maiden: virgin Justice; cf. LtEp fled wicked humans (Catull. 64.397-408, p. 101); cf. GrEp Justice left earth after humanity
declined (Arat., 96-136, cf. nn. 245 & 256, & p. 94), also Hesiod (W & D 109-201, p. 91).
[7] down from...sent: contradicts Lucr., cf. LtEp Lucr. argued that life was not sent down from heaven (2.1153-54), which in
turn rebutted Hom. Il. 8.19; so V in effect returns to heroic range & framing myth.
[8-10] Change cast as end of Iron & rise of Golden Race.
Lucina, Apollo: brother & sister – statues in niches stage to salute? cf. LtEp both said to have shunned wedding of Peleus &
Thetis (Catull. 64.300-04, p. 101) – parents of Achilles who proved fatal to Apollo's favorite city Troy. Apollo also linked with
Octavian Caesar – serves V’s creation of new myth from old threads – Trojan ancestry, Aeneas, for Caesar's line.
[11-14] Change linked to office (consulship) marking year on calendar & to negotiating political accord. (4)
worthy time: decus hoc ævi – ‘this grace of time’ or ‘this gem of an era’; cf. ‘worthy’ [4.3, n. 284].
[12] take up: metaphoric from hand to cosmic time, cf. [3.58, with note 253].
[13] leading: duce, in ordinary Latin ‘general, leader’, but contains root for a basic act of herding, ‘draw’ (n. 154) – here metaphoric as V refers to Pollio’s diplomacy reconciling Caesar & Antony: not military command but more like herding.
[14] erased: unthought, reversed as applied to ‘traces of crime’ – critique of brutality of civil war & its consequences, cf. plight
of Mel [1.3-4, etc.]; cf. LtEp promises to marry ‘erased’ when Theseus left Ariadne (Catull. 64.59, 142, p. 101). Fear striking
the sight through forms, cf. [1.5, n. 148].
[15-17] New child imagined as grown hero ruling pacified world. (3)
gods: mixed with heroes, cf. LtEp in heroic age (Catull. 64.384-86], cf. GrEp with Phaiakians (Od. 7.201-03).
[17] forced to peace: Latin ‘peace’ shares root meaning to hammer, pound (pac- & pact-, cf. impact – Noun /Verb – compact –
Noun/Verb/Adjective).
[18-45] Three stages envisioned for new order’s gradual growth to universal sway (28 = 8{5::3:3}9)
297
[18-25] First of three projected phases for child’s growth – miraculous gifts from nature (8)
46
IV
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
of ivy ranging everywhere with cyclamen
& smiling bearsbreech mingled with Egyptian beans.298
Themselves will nanny goats bring home their teats with milk299
full-stretched & livestock will not need to fear great lions.
Cradles by themselves will pour you soothing flowers.
The serpent perish & deceptive poison forage
perish, sweet Assyrian balm get common born.300
25
301
26
But soon as you can pick & read of heroes' praise
& parents' deeds & get to know what manhood is,
the field will yellow bit-by-bit with ears grown soft
& grapes blush dangling down from carefree briars;
& hardened oaks will sweat out honey like the dew.
30
302
Some few, though, traces will survive of ancient fraud –
31
303
the sort to bid with boats insulting Thetis, girdling
towns with walls & splitting furrows into earth.
33
304
Another Tiphys then there’ll be & other Argo
34
305
that transports picked heroes, likewise other wars
& still again to Troy a great Achilles sent.306
36
307
37
Hence, when age firmed up at last makes you a man,
transport will concede its war with sea nor sailor
pine exchange trade goods: all earth will bear all things.308
No ground will suffer hoes, no vineyard reckoning hook,
the oak-like plowman, too, at last loose yokes from bulls,309
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
[20] Earth of its own accord first created crops, cf. LtEp for humankind (Lucr. 2.1157-59]; cf. GrEp earth gave of its own
accord in Golden Age (Hesiod, W & D 117-18).
[21] themselves: cf. [1.39, n. 167].
nanny-goats: lost with Mel, cf. [1.12, n. 153] & [1.74, n. 188) here recovered & amplified.
home: base, a site protected & controlled: from it plot lines run & to it they return, cf. [3.33], [1.35].
[25] balm: rarity foreshadowed [3.89, n. 270] – climax to first phase of growth.
[26-36] Second phase of projected growth divided into three parts:
[26-30] boy old enough to read & greeted by further miracles from nature (5)
[31-33] traces of Iron Age still linger (3)
[34-36] heroic age will recur as prelude to full return of Golden Age (3)
[26] pick & read: leg- for choosing flowers or letters, words, cf. [2.18, n. 203].
[31] ancient fraud: civilization tracing its mythic origin to theft (sc. ‘fraud’) of fire by Prometheus, as distinguished from ‘traces
of our crime’, sc. Roman civil war still festering [4.13]; cf. LtEp ‘traces of old penalty’ borne by Prométheus at wedding of
Péleus & Thetis (Catull. 64.294]; wicked art of navigation (Lucr. 5.1006]; cf. GrEp Prométheus’ son Deukálion first made
cities & temples & ruled men (Arg. 3.1086-89, p. 97).
[32] Thetis: a daughter of Nereus, ‘Old-man-of-the-Sea’, so sea goddess, here by metonymy ≈ ‘the sea’, cf. LtEp with not so
cryptic reference to Catullus’ idiosyncratic revision of heroic legends, that insisted on calling Argo the first boat to penetrate
sea & on making its sailing cause Thetis & Peleus to fall in love, cf. n. 287 & p. 101.
[34] Tiphys: pilot of the Argo.
[35] picked: sc. specially chosen, select, cf. [4.26].
[36] great: cf. ‘great’ [4.5, n.286 ].
[37-45] Third phase of projected growth – heroic adulthood (9):
Traces of Promethean culture erase themselves & bucolic miracles flower, boy imagined as very different hero from Achilles
[39] all...all: new stretch in comprehensiveness, cf. ‘full of Jove [3.60, n. 256], ‘every tree’ [3.56, n. 251], ‘before all’ [2.62, n.
224], & ‘pasture all’ [1.48, n.175] cf. GrEp ‘they do not go on ships, plowlands bear fruit’ (Hesiod, W & D 236-37]; earth
gives products to Cyclopes without agricultural toil (Od. 9.109-112], nor do Cyclopes need to sail (Od. 9.125-30).
[41] no...hook: projects idealized past moments to enduring future ideal, cf. LtEp natural life of early humans – no plowing,
pruning, & planting but contentment with earth’s gifts (Lucr. 5.933-42, p. 100); vine not pruned, shade not trimmed, plows
rust for wedding of Péleus & Thetis (Catull. 64.38-42, p. 101); cf. GrEp Homer’s Cyclopes & Lotos eaters free from farming
toil. Viticulture [1.73], [2.70] valued in Roman cultural frame.
IV
47
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
nor wool still learn to fake a various reach of hues,
but ram himself exchange his fleece in meadows – saffron
yellow now & now with purple's soothing blush.
Vermilion of its own accord will clothe the grazing lambs.
45
310
46
“Run centuries such,” the Parcæ to their spindles have declared –311
concordant in their fateful statements’ staying rule.
Step up to, oh, great honors, (soon will be the time),312
dear offshoot from the gods, of Jupiter great growth.313
49
Look how the world keeps nodding with its incurved mass –
both lands & tracts of sea & sky poured forth.
Look how all enjoy the century that’s to come.314
52
O then for me may a long life’s final part still stay
53
315
& breath as much as will be enough to declare your deeds!
Not me with songs will Orpheus from Thrace defeat316
not Linus, though one his father, one his mother help –317
Orpheus Callíope, Linus well-formed Phœbus.
Pan even, if he challenge me (Arcadia as judge),318
Pan (even Arcadia judging) would declare his own defeat.319
320
59
321
Take up with a laugh, little boy, to get to know your mother:
60
to your mother long discomforts these ten months have brought.
310
[46-59] New Frame authorized as universal fate: basis for refounding Greek epos on Roman terms (7/7)
311
[46-52] Divine authority claimed for new myth expanded to universal reach (7)
[45] Parcæ: cf. thread row metaphor in cosmic time [4.5, n.286); cf. LtEp they sang ‘Run spindles, drawing (duc-) threads that
follow fates’ while spinning at Achilles’ parents’ wedding & telling of his violent life (Catull. 64.326-27, etc.).
centuries such sc. ‘as these’ & not as those predicted by Catull, where Achilles’ violence at Troy presaged decline to the iron
present: V claims authorizing past from Catull & corrects it too.
312
[48] great honors: usually highest civic offices at Rome, e.g., consul, censor, but here pointing higher still, cf. [2.53, n. 219] &
‘great’ [4.36, 12, 5, 1].
313
[49] offshoot, growth: subol-, increment-, new child identified in georgic metaphors as ‘twig’ sprouted or ‘seed’ planted or
‘scion’ grafted – a new high point for the mythic frame inaugurated with the God of Ti & his oracular imperative for growth
[1.45, with note] & amplified by image of Jove as universal cultivator & link with Caesar Octavian [3.60-61, p. 12].
great: further emphasizes & reinforces mythemes of emerging order, cf. n.36 & ‘great’, ‘greater’ [4.48, 5, 1].
314
[52] all: most far-reaching use yet of this word, cf. its varying reach & scope – [4.39]. [3.60] back to the rocky & marshy croft
of Ti [1.48] – the most basic & ambitious logical category in cosmogonic myth, in rhetoric, & in poetics; Burkert, Cosmogony, 88, “concept of ‘all’, ‘everything’, ‘universe’ ... a logical concept , not mythical intuition.”
enjoy: laet-, georgic metaphor from root meaning, ‘manured’ which nurtures metonymic extension & specialization to
mean ‘joyful, prosperous’ – so here V imagines everything in the cosmos as like a well fertilized farm; cf. that other rural
(bucolic-georgic) metonymic shift from ‘well nursed’ to ‘lucky, blessed’ [1. 74] & georgic metaphors [4.49].
315
[53-59] New myth authorizes Virgil to refound epos starting with challenge to bucolic Pan (7)
[54] deeds: ‘things done’ (facta) worthy of getting pointed out, declared – in heroic epos dictated by ‘utterances’ (fata) by the
Parcæ: hint of V’s aim to match Homer with Roman heroic epos based on the new mythic frame created in this book..
316
[55] Orpheus: cf. [3.45, n. 693 & p. 97], cf. SocMem & GrEp V recasts the old contest among bards – [3.104, n. 84, p. 13]
– recovering for himself the role of an old Roman bard (vates) challenging Greek authorities & powers, both legendary bards
& their parents – poetic & prophetic gods.
317
[56] Linus: princling reared among lambs, so bucolic range, cf. GrEleg killed by dogs (Callim. Aitia 26 Pfeiffer, p. 98); cf.
GrEp song of Linos (Il. 18.570, p. 91): cf. [1.2 & p. 14]; also [5.88-90].
318
[58] challenge: cf. [3.31 & 2.57] – basic discernment imagined at a potential turning point for whole tradition of epos.
319
[59] Pan...even Arcadia: at the climax of his projected contest V places the god he earmarked as the inventor [2.32, n. 213] &
now locates in the home territory that Th too signalled – a none too subtle sign that V, beyond his challenge to wider ranges of
epos, aims to upstage Th’s version of the bucolic range , putting behind Th’s Sicily & with it Th’s status as inventor.
320
[60-63] FRAMER urges new born to make the right first use of lips.
321
[60] Take up: ‘get first hold, begin’, metaphoric; cf. [3.58, with note 253].
48
ECLOGUE
V
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Take up little boy: whoever for his parent has not laughed,322
him no god deems worthy of board nor goddess of bed.323
63
FIFTH
CHARACTERS [SPEAKING / Named Only or Background]
MENALCAS, elderly & authoritative.
STORY:
loved by DAPHNIS & now hails him as new god protecting countryside.
CRAFT:
singer-seer – bard (vates) – producer of a long praised song.
CLUES:
name alerts us to discern similarity & difference within book, e.g., here not young & scrappy as in
ecl. 3: does aging by a character (metaphor of maturation) hint that ecl. 5 a sequel to ecl. 3?
MOPSUS, a goatherd youthfully innovative, ambitious, thin-skinned & contentious.
STORY:
in fresh grief mourns DAPHNIS as lost protector of countryside & inventor of Bacchic rites.
CRAFT:
singer-seer – bard (vates) – has just now freshly written songs on green beech bark (sc. the book).
CLUES:
name prompts discovery or memory that after the war at Troy (hence as a sequel to Homer) one
Mopsus was said to have defeated the Homeric seer Chalcas in a divining contest: told in a short
epos that may have revised & challenged an earlier version – Hellenistic Greek by Euphorion of
Chalcis, brought over into Latin by Virgil’s friend C. Cornelius Gallus.
DAPHNIS, dead singer-seer – bard here amplified into culture hero with powers to enrich the bucolic & georgic
ranges, resembling Bacchus, the god of wine & theater – used in propaganda by Marc Antony, who
rivaled for power Caesar Octavian.
STORY:
ox-herd carried off by Fates, requires epitaph inscribed on tomb but becomes fructifying god
demanding regular sacrifice.
CRAFT:
singer-seer – bard.
CLUES:
lament for dead DAPHNIS & praise of his elevation to divine state form a sequel to Th, who
reported his dying words & death (id. 1) – a sequel amplified & Romanized by hint of death &
divinization of Julius Caesar (for similar shift from mortal to divine, cf. Alexandrian queen’s hair
transformed into constellation, ecl. 3.39-40).
Ægon (ecl. 3), Alphesibœ́us (ecl. 8), Damœ́tas (ecl. 3 & ecl. 2) – drawn together into bucolic cohort to celebrate
Daphnis as new god.
Amýntas, faulted as foolish enough to match himself with Phœbus like the satyr Mársyas, whose challenge to
Phœbus got him skinned alive.
CLUES:
cf. ecl. 3 – beloved – & ecl. 2 – unloved.
Antígenes, failed suitor of MOPSUS.
Títyrus, assigned to keep goats while others sing (cf. ecl. 3) hence this scene imagined as somehow apart from or
prior (prequel) to time & place of the old oxherd & singer Títyrus authorized by a God at Rome (ecl. 1).
SCENE
Familiar shade (cf. ecll. 2 & 1) declared shifty by ambitious MOPSUS in push to get to vine-wreathed bower (cf.
lost bower of MELIBŒ́US, ecl. 1).
322
[62] laugh: rid-/ris-, imagined as child’s first use of lips, not a wrong utterance (fa-/fat-) that might not fit what the Parcæ
uttered [4.47]; cf. LtLyr child’s good-omened laugh for parents (Catull. 61); cf. GrEp ill-omened fear of father by baby son
(Il. 6).
V
49
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
CUES
Solemn music as FRAMER from stage left moves toward MENÁLCAS – in mask now of old age – who has entered &
taken a stand front & center, from which hesitantly he queries the other, provoking MOPSUS to reply & draw them
both back & up stage to – center back – to the bower.
MN324 Why haven’t we, Mopsus, since we’ve come together – both good,–325
1
326
you at puffing light reed pipes, I at declaring verses –,
why not sat down right here where hazels mingle with elms?327
MO
You're the greater; to you, Menálcas, it's fair I hearken,328
whether beneath these shadows from restless zephyrs shifty329
or up to the bower we rather get – look where the wildwood330
MN
vine has sprinkled clusters sparse around the bower.331
7
Amidst our hills, alone Amýntas challenges you.
8
MO
So what, if he himself with song would challenge Phœbus?
MN
Take up first, Mopsus, if you’ve got some Fires of Phyllis332
or any Alcon’s Praises or Disputes of Codrus.333
MO
Take up, while Títyrus safely keeps your grazing kids.334
12
Indeed these songs, which I just now wrote out
13
335
on verdant bark of beech & marked in measuring shifts,
I’m going to try out: you then bid that Amýntas challenge.336
MN
As much as limber willow cedes to pale green olive,
as much as lowly nard to beds of scarlet rose,
by so much, in our judgment, Amýntas cedes to you.
But, boy, cease now from more: we've made it up to the bower.
19
———————————————
323
[63] worthy: dign- again; cf. [4.3, 12], [ 3.109] & ‘life of gods’ in restored Golden Age [4.15]. Such marked recursions of
motifs prompt readers to look back & look more closely than ever for similarities & differences.
324
[1-19] Singer matured in book pushed by newcomer to regain lost place of Melibœus.
325
[1-3] Why...not...here: bewilderment at failure to settle in/for range made familiar earlier. Query provokes look at prior openings to discern developments in book: [4.1-3] Framer dissatisfied with bucolic range & pushing beyond; [3.1] Menálcas suspicious of bucolic change; [2.1-5] lofty & urbane Framer reports singer’s erotic reach for object beyond bucolic range; [1.1-10]
power from beyond disrupts Mel’s bucolic-georgic-civic frame & affirms Ti’s bucolic-georgic range – new mythic frame.
326
[2] verses: ‘turns’ as of plow at furrow’s end – georgic Latin metaphor for Greek epos; cf. ‘verses’ sung by vates & fauns –
Saturnians denounced by Ennius (p. 99).
327
[3] elms with hazels:trees defining V’s bucolic [1.14] & georgic [3.70] range.
328
[4] greater: a value for discerning difference in diverse domains – here in domain of personal age & authority, portrays this version of Men as older, thus implying a sequel to young Men [ecl. 3]; cf. uses in other domains, [4.1, 4, 49] & [1.83].
329
[5] shadows...shifty: devalues feature that defined bucolic range [1.4; 2.3].
330
wildwood: uncultivated, cf. [3.70]; [1.2].
331
[7] bower: bucolic place lost to Mel [1.75] & in V’s mind now recovered through this voice from the tales of defeat for the Iliad’s
seer, cf. [3.104] & [1.16-17, Mel vates].
332
[10] Take up: sc. begin speaking, a metaphor from act of first taking in hand , cf. [4.12, 60], [3.58, with note 253].
fires: sc. ‘passions’ interpreted by common metaphor as fire, heat, flame.
Phyllis: name of female sought by two lovers [3.76, 78], hence a love story to tell.
333
[11] disputes: like the quarrel in ecl. 3.
Codrus: old king of Athens, hence theme in heroic-mythic-civic range.
334
[12] Take up: again implied metaphor of song as journey through time, cf. [4.60]..
Títyrus: for a like hint of prequel to ecl. 1, cf. [3.96].
335
[14] beech: cf. hints of development through the book [1.1], [2.3], & [3.12, 37].
bark or ‘rind’ (cortex) hinting at liber that means ‘bark’ & by metonymy, since it can be written on, also ‘book’.
shifts: cf. traded speech traditional to heroic & bucolic epic [3.59].
336
[15] challenge: third mention in eight lines, hints a some definitive contrast & sorting out, cf. [4.59].
50
V
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
MO337 Daphnis by cruel death snuffed out the Nymphs bewept
20
(you, streams & hazels, bearing witness to the Nymphs)
(a)
while having closely hugged her own child’s wretched corpse
his mother calls the gods & stars of heaven cruel.338
23
Not in those days, Daphnis, did anyone push their cows well-fed339
24
to the cold of streams, nor did any four-footer even so much
(b)
as take a sip from a brook or touch the forage turf.
Daphnis, even Punic lions gave a groan
at your departing – echoed by wild hills & woods.340
28
Daphnis even arranged to yoke for charioteers
29
Armenian tigers & to draw up Bacchus’ troupes
(c)
& weave soft leaves around the limber thyrsis shafts.
As vines to arbors grant their worth, as grapes to vines,341
as bulls to troops, as growing crops to fat plowed lands,
so you all worth to yours. When fates had taken you off,342
Pales left the fields herself & likewise Phœbus left.343
35
In furrows, where full grown barley seeds we’d often set,
36
unnurturing darnel & barren oats are getting born.344
(d)
Instead of violets soft, instead of purple narcissus,
thistles rise & thorn bush with its pointed spikes.
39
Sprinkle ground with leaves, draw shadows over springs,
40
you grazers (Daphnis sets such things on his behalf),
(e)
& make a mound, & on the mound inscribe a song:
DAPHNISgIgINgWOODSgKNOWNgHENCEgTOgHEAVEN’SgSIGNS
KEEPERgOFgWELL-FORMEDgTROOPgMORE WELL-FORMEDgMYSELF.345
MN
Such is your song for us, o poet like a god,
44
45
as sleep on turf for the weary, as to put out thirst
through seething summers by sweet water’s leaping rill.
Not only with reeds you match your master, but with voice;346
Lucky boy, you’ll now be another after him.347
Yet we’ll declare in turn for you these songs of ours
whatsoever way & lift to the stars your Daphnis –
337
[20-44] Lament for dead Daphnis (developed in regular segments: 4,5,7,4,5: 25 total verses)
[23] mother: grief here at death counters new birth & potential joy [4.60] – other thematic reversals of ecl. 4 follow.
339
[24] push: cf. [1.13, n. 154]; cows: cf. [1.45].
340
[28] wild, fer- emphatically evokes range of lions, [5.27], beyond ordinary bucolic ‘hills & woods’ [2.5; 1.5, 83] & ‘hazels’ [5.21,
3; 1.14]; cf. GrEp lions bursting into bucolic range from wilderness (Hom, Il. 18.573-86, p. 91).
341
[32] worth: decus, cf. [4.12] – phonetic-semantic range of dignum (‘worthy’), cf. [3.109], [4.3, 63]; also translatable as ‘grace’:
key motif in priamel, cf. [1.23, n 161] & [3.80, n. 265].
342
[34] Fates: personified utterances of the Parcæ, cf. [4.47].
343
[35] Pales: goddess of livestock, cf. Palatine hill, site for Pan & legendary Arcadian settlement in Rome. Departure marking rural
decline recalls Justice going as Iron Age comes, cf. [4.6].
344
[37] oats: in georgic range, a weed – only by forced metonymy a bucolic pipe, [1.2].
345
[44] WELL-FORMED: rustic looks made into bucolic vision, cf. [3.57], [2.45, 17, 1]; [1.5, n. 148]. The four pithy phrases linked by
sound & pointed placement of key words replicate the style of epigram – signalled by V with ‘inscribe a song’.
346
[48] reeds: strong & valid material for pan-pipes – generic continuity in bucolic range, cf. [5.2], [2.32], [1.10, n. 150].
347
[48-9] match your master: another way to think of tradition, complementing notions progressively more explicit such as outgrowing style & theme [4.1-3]; obeying generic type & formal practice [3.59]; inheriting [2.38] & mimicry [2.31]; but also the
oracular imperative to repeat & out-produce [1.45].
338
V
51
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
up to the stars bear Daphnis. Us, too, Daphnis loved.
MO
52
For us could anything be more great than such a gift?
53
348
Himself the boy was worthy of chanting & those songs
of yours a long while now had Stímichon praised to us.349
55
MN350 Bright Daphnis stares at Mount Olympus’ foreign sill351
56
& sees beneath his feet the clouds & heaven’s signs.352
(A)
353
Therefore brisk pleasure grips the woods & rest of country –
Pan & grazers & the nymphs that haunt the oaks.
59
No wolves work up against stock their plots, nor any nets354
60
work up against deer their guile: good Daphnis loves repose.355
Themselves with joy the unshorn hills their voices fling
(B)
356
to heaven’s signs. Themselves now crags, now trees themselves357
sing out the songs: “A god, Menálcas, he's a god!”358
64
359
Be good & prospering (Oh!) for yours! Aha! Four altars:
65
look, for you two, Daphnis, two for Phœbus: offerings360
(C)
I will stand for you each year – two cups of fresh361
milk foaming & of fatty olive two big bowls –
& I’ll from vessels pour fresh nectar – island wines –
& first off cheer with copious Bacchus banquet feasts,
when cold, before the hearth, when harvest time, in shade.
For me will chant Damœ́tas, Ægon, too, from Crete;
Alphesibœ́us mimic satyrs’ tireless leap.
71
72
(D)
These yours will always be, when we pay again to Nymphs362
348
349
350
[54] chanting: repeating songs, cf. [2.23] & [3.21].
[55] a long while now: teases by describing this praise of new god as ‘old & famous’, yet its theme forms a sequel to the lament for
death described as carved ‘just now’ – markers thus lose value in logic of narrative & retain rhetorical force: ‘old’ valued as
better than or superior to ‘new’.
[56-80] Daphnis celebrated as new god on high (developed in regular segments – 4,5,7,4,5: 25 total verses)
[56] stares: mir-, ‘wonders, marvels, admires’ as ‘miraculous’, cf. the exsightability of Mel, [1.11, 67, 36].
352
[57] sees beneath: a cosmic vision; cf. LtEp philosopher Epicurus’ mental journey up & around the cosmos to grasp material
reality of nature & return like Roman general to defeat & celebrate triumph over religion (Lucr 1.62-79]; cf. GrPhil Plato’s
vision of souls driving chariots upwards to look down & get real knowledge (episteme, ‘overstanding’: Phaedrus 247]; but V’s
Daphnis also allegory for murdered Julius Caesar – atheme that caps V’s myth of emerging order.
353
[58] pleasure: voluptas represente now as a constructive drive within the amplified bucolic-georgic range rather than as passion to
reach beyond, cf. [2.65].
354
[60] get up: medita-, ‘work up, practice’ (cf. meditate) – metaphor, imputing thought to animals & tools for hunting ; otherwise
used to describe poetry as work, [1.2].
355
[61] repose: leading motif of new bucolic range – made [1.6] by god of Ti. (Octavian Caesar) so now linked with new bucolic god
(great uncle & adoptive father of Octavian, Julius Caesar).
356
[62] Themselves: three times in two lines – climactic use of natural motifs to trumpet emerging ideological vision, cf. [4.21,23 &
43, 45] & [1.38-39, n. 167].
357
[63] crags: picturesque frame for ideal bucolic places – secured by God for Ti [1. 56] & lost to Soldier by Mel [1.76].
358
[64] he’s a god: climax, most pointed echo of Ti [1.7-9] – restating & amplifying the root idea of V’s new mythic frame.
359
[65] altars: as for regular killing of a kid, [1.7].
360
[66] offerings: further echo & reinforcement of new mythic frame, cf. [1.43]..
361
[67] fresh: another positive motif from first four eclogues, cf. [1.22, n. 204].
362
[74] always: stretches this already amplified bucolic-georgic blend to claim all time to come; cf. ‘always’ [1.53] in first image of
Ti’s new bucolic range. There V in voice of Mel treated Ti’s past as identical with his future, suppressing discontinuity. Then
he represented discontinuity as caused by Ti’s desire to get free of past via travel to Rome. Yet V fudged even this image of discontinuity by making the God’s oracle order return to the past ‘as before’ albeit with new growth. V thus masked yet also
revealed & authorized the novelty of his new bucolic range & framing myth.
351
52
ECLOGUE
VI
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
their yearly vows & when with rites we scour farm fields.363
75
364
While boars love hilly yokes & fish love running streams,
76
while bees get grazed on thyme, while locusts graze on dew,
(E)
always will your honor & name & praises stay.365
As to Bacchus & Ceres, so to you each year
MO
will field hands vow: you, too, will bind with vows fulfilled.
80
What shall I give to you, what gifts for such a song?
81
366
For not so much please me the hiss of coming southern
wind or shorelines harshly struck by surf or streams
MN
that run full out their course down valleys strewn with stones.
84
We confer on you before this brittle hemlock pipe:
85
this taught us “Grazer Córydon burned for well-formed Aléxis,”
this same one taught “Whom’s herd? Melibœ́us’s?”367
MO
But you take up the staff Antígenes did not get,
when often he used to ask (& then he was worthy of love) –
well-formed with even-matching knots & bronze, Menálcas.368
90
SIXTH
CHARACTERS [SPEAKING / Named Only or Background]
TÍTYRUS, grazer of sheep.
STORY INVOLVES CRAFT:
speaker tells that he first found bucolic range worthwhile but then tried singing in
the heroic range, only to get drawn down by an oracular order from CYNTHIUS, [sc. APOLLO as
worshiped on the island of Cynthos]; so now will leave high themes to others & sing in the middle range.
CLUES:
name TITYRUS & oracle from a god recall how V opened & first authorized his book: that first
oracle ordered return to bucolic past compounded by future growth, this one orders withdrawal
from the highest ranges & limits growth to a middle range; that god was new & political, Roman
(sc. Caesar Octavian) / this one traditional & poetic (though linked with Caesar Octavian); that
grazer was assigned cattle & sheep (highest & middle bucolic values) / this one only sheep but fat.
363
364
365
366
367
368
[75] scour: annual georgic ritual (lustr-) purifying fields, earlier used as metaphor for erotic hunting [2.13].
[76] hilly yokes: sc. ridges joining hills as yokes join oxen – variant georgic metaphor; cf. [2.48, n.217] & [3.26, n. 239].
[78] stay: amplified from the meager future of Ti’s poor bucolic croft [1.47] to the heroic blend implied by ‘honor, name, praise’ –
climax to priamel, cf. [1.23, n. 161], & [3.80, n. 265] & [5.32].
[82] not so much: sc. your song pleases me more than the natural sounds I find most pleasing, such as tempest & flood – boistrous
& violent, more suited to the heroic than the bucolic range, hence quite different from the values cited by Men, which were
intimate, gentle, & sweet, central to the bucolic ideal [5.45-47]; cf. the pushy character assigned Mop from the start.
[87] this same: V’s claim of sameness, like cf. in commentary, prompts us to look back in order to identify points of similarity &
discern points of difference, cf. [1.11, n.152] & n. 193. Linking one ‘same’ pipe to [2.1] & [3.1] relates those eclogues to
Men: yet not only from eclogues 2 & 3 but also from 1 & 4 did V draw threads for Men’s song, which he calls ‘long praised’.
V thus rounds out his new mythic frame – from its first nucleus in Ti’s new god (Octavian) to new scion-seed of Jove
to the new god Daphnis (Julius) equated with Ceres & Bacchus & demanding perpetual sacrifices.
[90] well-formed: bucolic value of good looks, cf. [5.43-44]; [3.57]; [2.1]; & [1.5, n. 148]. Here attributed to staff linking Mop
with a powerful thread in epos.
staff: could be imagined serving Ti on the trek to Rome that first reversed Th: cf. GrBep travel to country from city with staff as
gift (id. 7.128-29); cf. GrEp laurel staff ‘amazing to see’, cf. [1.11, n. 152] – ‘first’ [cf. 1.44] given by Pierian Muses to
authorize Hesiod (Theog. 23-35]; staff ‘studded with golden nails’ held by authorized speaker in council (Il. 1.246, cf. Il.
1.29]; staff (rhabdon) wielded by new born Hermes rustling Apollo’s cows (Hymn to Hermes 210).
VI
53
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
PIERIAN MUSES, invoked to honor tragic poet (ecl. 3) & now to tell story of song performed by ...
SILÉNUS, seer-singer – bard – hung over from overdose of Bacchus (sc. wine, by metonymy) & forced to cough up
song that represents vividly as present the voices of ...
PASÍPHAË, queen in plea for help to hunt white bull she longs for &
LINUS, old poetic inventor & mentor newly instructing Gallus to write epos about a wood sacred to
APOLLO – the god revealed at end as the originator of all the singing heard by ...
Eurótas, river flowing down from Arcadia, who bade that all Apollo sang get remembered by ...
Laurels, the tree into which Daphne changed to escape rape by ...
APOLLO, who draws TÍTYRUS down to middle range from ambition for highest range, gets challenged by singing
of SILÉNUS although it originated from him, & who originally pleased the gods by working up the whole
song in challenge to the music of the heavenly spheres.
Ægle, flirtatious nymph of a spring (naïd, cf. ecl. 2).
CLUES:
‘fetter’ & ‘gleam’ fits role in getting song.
Chromis & Mnásyllus, eager for song, whether satyrs like old SILÉNUS from the troupe of Bacchus or herdsmen
allowed intercourse with the troupe.
CLUES:
mna- implies ‘remind’ & ‘remember’ in Greek; chrom- ‘ loud sound’ or animal ‘neigh’ or ‘grunt’.
Evening, a.k.a. Greek Hesperus & Latin Vesper, also by metonymy, Evening Star.
Thália, a muse & a grace (Hesiod, Theogony 77, 109: name meaning ‘festivity’, ‘abundance’).
Varus, Roman military man whose name means ‘bent’, ‘crooked’; ‘stretched’; ‘diverse’ – suited to serve the
programmatic bent imposed by APOLLO.
SCENE
Not spelled out for TÍTYRUS, though his history linked with woods & grazing (implying bucolic range of ecll. 3, 2,
1); however, SILÉNUS said to sprawl in a bower (cf. site lost by MELIBŒ́US, ecl. 1, & reached by push from
Mopsus, ecl. 5) & to sing until shut down by Evening Star (cf. closure by motif of day’s close. ecll. 2 & 1).
CUES
Bacchanalian music with tamborines & shrieking pipes as MENÁLCAS figure trudges off with knotty staff &
MOPSUS figure comes forward fingering the retrospective pipe. Begins as TÍTYRUS in somewhat chastened tones to
recount variations in his poetic fate, then with growing confidence appeals to Muses (statuary in niche) & rises to
the cues for emphatic & agitated voicing – bravura con brio – that spring from the text.
TI369
At first with verse of Syracuse our Thália deemed370
1
371
play worthy; neither did she blush to dwell in woods.
When I would sing of kings & combats, Cýnthius tweaked372
my ear & warned, “A grazer, Títyrus, it behooves
369
[1-12] FRAMER looks back & describes oracle forcing him to draw back from growth of first half book (12)
370
[1] First: points back to the book’s earliest phase [ecll. 1-3]; cf. GrSat ‘first (1) ...; but then (2) ...; & now (3) greater toil than
those’ – autobiographical outline by Silénos (Euripides, Cyclops 1-10, p. 93).
of Syracuse: greatest Greek city in Sicily, birthplace of Theocritus; thus ‘verse of Syracuse’ means ‘verse like that of
Theocritus who hailed from Syracuse’ (by metonymy, place standing for person).
371
[2] play: light poetry – cf. [1.10] – as opposed to exercise & toil – [1.2].
dwell: bucolic life vainly offered to distant object of love, [2.29].
in woods: typify bucolic range – [1.5]; [2.5]; [3.57]; [4.3]: this further thread from ecll.1-3 confirms the Theocritean label just
assigned [6.1].
372
[3] sing : second phase in autobiography of Ti – reach beyond Theocritean ‘play’ [ecll. 1-3] for higher epic range [ecll. 4 & 5]; cf.
[1.77, n. 189]; [2.6, n. 199]; [3.61, n. 257]; [4.1].
kings & combats: sc. highest range of epos (civic-heroic-mythic), cf. [4.6, 17, 34-36]; [5.64, 79-80]; cf. GrEleg ‘kings’ rejected
as theme by Callim. when ‘first’ starting to write (Aitia, fr. 1.3, 5 Pf, p. 98] – ambition rejected by V not from ‘first’ but only
now at the third moment defined here – a distinction lost on most commentators who miss V’s departure from Callim.
54
VI
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
to graze his sheep fat, but declare a down-drawn song.”373
5
Now (for you'll have plenty, Varus, such as will374
6
375
declare your praises & set down your gloomy wars)
I will work up a farmfield muse with a meager reed.376
The forbidden I don’t sing. If though these too someone picks,377
if anyone taken by love reads, you our tamarisks, Varus,378
you all our grove will sing; nor is any plot more dear379
to Phœbus than one that’s written Varus' name on top.
12
Push through, Piérians.380
TI {PI381 Two boys – Mnásyllus & Chromis –
13
382
saw Silénus lying sprawled in a bower asleep,
his veins as always puffed by the Bacchus of yesterday,383
only that – from his head slipped far – his wreathes, too, sprawled384
& heavy his ewer hung from its handle worn by use.
They – by the oldster often beguiled with hope of song –
step to & throw on shackles from the wreathes themselves.385
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
19
[5] down-drawn: de+duct-, ‘from’ + ‘draw ≈ lead’, mapped by old commentary (Servius, p. 7, n. 57) as metaphor from working wool, i.e. (id est, ‘that is to say’) drawing filaments down from a mass of wool to spin yarn or thread; cf. Parcae spinning
yarn & yarning about about a new Roman hero to be better than Achilles, [4.44, n .311].
[6] Now: sc. at the third moment, after ‘first’ [6.1-2] & ‘when’ [6.3-5]; V thus imagines the greatest thematic range in the middle
not at the end of the outline, unlike Euripides’ Silénos (n. 370). The story pattern – ‘first ... then ... then...’ – typifies cosmogonic myth, as opposed to ordinary ‘once upon a time...’ (e.g., Od. 1.10, ‘begin from some point...’):. Burkert, Cosmogony, 91. V thus prepares to introduce a cosmogonic variant on ecll. 4 & 5: cf. n. 36.
[7] praises...wars: the heroic range of epos now blocked by Cynthius; it was to be absorbed & outgrown [4.26, 35].
[8] work up: medita-, again ‘toil’, ‘exercise’ as opposed to ‘play’, cf. [6.1] but also [5.60, n. 354] & [1.2].
farmfield: agrest-, as in Ti’s confident poetics – [1.10] – & apt here for third poetic moment imagined as drawn down from the
highest range [6.3] yet only to the middle – georgic, ‘working land’ – not all the way back down to bucolic play [6.1-2].
meager; by now established as a merit of measure & restraint, holding back from highest ranges; cf. [3.111]; [3.28, n. 210];
[1.47, n. 174]; [1.2, n. 145].
reed: harundin-, Latin replacing Greek-Latin calam- as substantial metonym for ‘panpipe’, cf. [1.10] & [2.32] – joins ‘farmfield’ as sign that present project will not be just a retreat to the initial & simpler bucolic range.
[9] forbidden: iub-/iuss [juss-], ‘to bid, command’, sc. themes of highest range barred by oracular order from the god.
picks...reads: cf. [4.26, n.301 ].
[10] taken: sc. captive – one of many metaphoric mappings between the military & the erotic domains (i.e., between the domains of
Roma & Amor); i.e.,‘captivated’; cf. [2. 69 , n. 228]: through the metaphor V suggests that psychic state of erotic seizure
makes for best reading; cf. GrPhil. Phaedrus passim (p. 94).
tamarisks: representative of V’s bucolic as rooted in previous epos, cf. [4.2].
[11] plot: pagin-, area for planting, marked off by pegs, thus here georgic metaphor for space marked off as if pegged on a scroll
for writing (cf. pact, pagan, page, but also peace, pax = *pac+s, as hammered home by force).
[13] Push through: perg- (per + ag-), brusk as if herding animals, cf. [1.13, n. 154].
Pierians: earlier called to bridge gap between bucolic & heroic-tragic ranges, cf. [3.85, n. 267]; cf. LtEp, GrBep, GrEp Muses
from Lucr., Theocr., Hesiod now to frame song in middle range of epos .
[13-26] (Re)setting the scene & pushing on – Hesiod’s Muses told to herd new epos in the middle range (14)
[14] Silénus: old ally of wine god, caught drunk by herdsmen of Midas with whom he conversed on nature (so Servius, cf. p. 7, n.
57); cf. GrSat name also for drunken, oversexed father of satyrs (n. 370] & cf. GrPhil for ugly figures (with flutes or pipes)
that open to reveal divine images, Plato, Symposium §215 a-b.
bower: privileged place for song lost to Mel [1.75 & n. ***] & just regained with push from Mop [5.6, 7, 19]; cf. GrEp antron
prepared for union of Jason & Medea, where Orpheus sang (Arg. 4.1131, p. 97).
383
[15] puffed: inflat-, sc. swollen – metaphoric from swelling caused by air but here by Bacchus (metonymy for wine); cf. the
ambitious Mop ‘good at puffing’ [5.2] & abundant Bacchic motifs at [4.18-25, 28-30] & [5.29-31, 60-64, 79-80]. With hints
of puffy poetics & Bacchic motifs.
yesterday also prompts a backward look & reinterprets the growth of ecll 4 & 5 as a poetic high or binge.
384
[16] wreathes: sert-, woven of flowers & worn at banquets.
385
[19] shackles: cf. old tale of Silénus captured by Midas’ herdsmen & forced to discourse wonders [6.14, n. 382].
382
VI
55
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
To them – still fearful – Aegle allies herself & strikes:386
20
Aegle loveliest of spring-nymphs paints him – seeing387
at last – his brow & temples with berries red as blood.
He at the guile, though laughing, “Shackles for what do you plait?
Unloose me, boys. Enough as it is to seem you could.388
The songs you wish for, get to know; for you, the songs,
for her other goods in trade.” Right off he takes up himself.389
390
391
Then truly you’d see fauns & wild beasts play in counted
26
27
cadence, then hardheaded oak trees shake their tops.
Nor does Parnássus’ crag delight so much in Phœbus,392
394
nor Rhodópe & Ísmarus stare so much at Orpheus.393
30
For he was singing that throughout the great void pushed
31
would have been the seeds of lands & air & sea
395
along with fluid fire; that out of these first thread-rows396
all & itself world’s tender globe would together grow –397
386
387
388
389
390
34
[20] Aegle: ‘gleam, fetter’ – hint of erotic appeal to eyes; cf. Amarýllis [1.5, n. 148]. cf. GrEp Aigle a daughter of Hesperus, told
Argo’s crew how Héracles stole golden apples, cf. [3.71]: she changes form from nymph to willow back to nymph & points
thirsty heroes to spring (Arg. 4.1422-49, p. 97); also word for the ‘gleam’ from the Golden Fleece – spread in marriage
bower for Jason & Medéa – that glittered (amary-, cf. Amarýllis) kindling ‘sweet desire’ in eyes (Arg. 4.1145-47).
[21] seeing at last: waking up to an erotic sight (n. 386 ), so ‘taken’ like the imagined ideal reader for the poem [6.10].
[24] Enough: oracular & gnomic style like popular wisdom in mime (n. 39), also evokes measure & restraint in poetics, cf. [1.47,
n. 174] & [3.111].
[26] trade: sc. song for sex, suiting his traditional character, cf. [6.14, n. 382] – metaphor from commerce, cf. [4.39].
takes up: metaphoric from hand to mouth, cf. [5. 10, 12],[4.12, 60], [3.58 with note 253].
[27-30] Epos in the middle range imagined as wielding Orphic power over nature (4)
[28] play ... shake: cf. [3.45] & [5.58-59, 62-63], [4.52]; cf. LtEp wild beasts exult in spring (Lucr. 1.14); cf. GrEp Orpheus
stirred fish to leap & follow hymn to Artemis like shepherd charming sheep with shrill pipe (Arg. 1.570-79); Muses’ singing
provoked echoes from Mount Olympus & gods’ dwellings (Theog. 36-52, 69-71).
392
[29] crag: cf. [5.63] & [1.76]. Parnassus looms over Apollo’s oracle at Delphi so challenge implied to him on his turf – risky,
since challenge to Apollo got satyr Marsyas skinned alive; but cf. multiple challenges [4.55-59].
393
[30] Rhodópe: ‘Rosy faced’ & Ísmarus in Thrace – to north from Greece – a mountain range & mountain; cf. GrEp Orpheus
hymned Apollo’s deeds at Delphi (Arg. 2.700-719]; cf. n. 697, p. 97.
stare: wonder at, cf. Daphnis [5.56, n 351] & Mel [1.11].
391
394
[31-40] Silenus imagined herding cosmos & nature into shape by means of singing (10)
[31] singing that: singer portrayed in process of making the world through song; cf. GrEp Homer’s account of the god of craft
Hephaestos turning out the shield for Achilles’ to which V has referred repeatedly, e.g., [3.41, n. 245] & [3.104, n. 276]. The
similarity with making the shield first remarked by Brian Breed.
pushed: co- + ag-, ‘driven together, coaxed’ – bucolic metaphor for creating cosmos, cf. ‘herding’ [3.98, 20] & [1.13, n. 154].
seeds: planted vainly in furrows [5.36], but here georgic metaphor for atoms; cf. LtEp ‘seeds’ metaphoric for atomic matter
(Lucr. 1.1018, 1103; 2.65, 105, 109]; ‘seeds herded together’ themselves of their own accord in cosmic creation – blending
georgic & bucolic domains (Lucr. 2.1059-63], cf. V’s images of miracles taking place themselves, of their own accord [4.21,
23, 43, 45].
396
[33] thread-rows: ord-, ex- + ord-, warp of loom, cf. LtEp vertical threads (Lucr. 4.32] in under & across which gets drawn the
weft = horizontal threads, woof. Cf. metaphoric reach – ‘great ROW’ of centuries [4.5, 47] & vine ROW [1. 76, n. 187); &
georgic-bucolic metaphors in Lucretius: in cosmic creation, SEEDS formerly DRIVEN together to no avail at last get FARMED,
CULTIVATED – those that suddenly thrown together always become the WARP (first threads, exordia) of great things – of earth,
sea, sky & breathing kind (2.1058-63).
397
[34] Song imagined as drawing thread from wool [6.5] & now as weaving the cosmos, cf. song identified with fates uttered by Parcae as they spin [4.45-46]. The metaphor that relates song to weaving the cosmos does not occur, however, in all of the oldest
manuscripts & ancient commentators on V. One set hands down his ex omnia primis | omnia et ipse... (‘from these first (sc.
things) all (sc. things), all & itself...’). The other set has the metaphor – his ex ordia primis | omnia et ipse... (‘from these first
(sc. things) the thread-rows, all of them & itself ...’); but in this case ordia (‘thread rows’) was imported by Henry Nettleship,
drawing from Lucr. 4.32: ...in ordia prima (‘into the first threads’), which shows the boldness of Lucr with language, splitting
into its two component parts a word that he often uses to describe cosmic process – primordia (first threads, 72 uses). Trying
to imagine what V must have composed & how some copies came to diverge, it seems (1) easier to suppose that a copyist might
395
56
VI
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
then lead with hardening soil & closing Nereus off398
35
from Sea & taking bit by bit the forms of things;399
& lands now stand amazed as freshly sunshine starts
& deeper fall the rains from clouds moved ever up,
when woodlands undertake at first to rise & when
sparse creatures range through hills not knowing yet nor known.400
401
402
Hence pebbles flung of Pyrrha, Saturn’s kingdoms (he
40
41
relays) & birds of Caúcasus & how Prométheus stole.
To these he yokes at what spring sailors shouted “Hylas’s403
got left,” so all the shore would echo, “Hylas! Alas!”
Also lucky if livestock never had there been,404
Pasíphaë he soothes for a snow-white bullock’s love.
405
46
TI{PI{SI406 Ah! maid malnursed, what mindlessness has taken you?407
47
With bogus mooing Prœteus' daughters filled farm fields,408
yet not a one went after bedding down so base
with beasts, however much for her neck she feared the plow
———————————————
carelessly write a common & colorless ‘all’, (2) harder to suppose that some copyist would come up with a specific metaphor,
‘threads the first’, which fits the metaphoric frame set up (like a poetic warp) by the program for song ‘drawn-down’. Such a
CONTEXT (our common metaphor from weaving again!) must affect editorial choices about readings – a principle that I recall
laid down by Peter Elder to a seminar on paleography conducted in Widener Library D, which I audited as a freshman.
398
[35-6] Sea: Pontos personified as father to ‘Nereus’ (Theog. 233-36], also focalized to name the Black Sea & its region.
399
[36] bit by bit: like imagined gradual return of Golden Race [4.28]; cf. LtEp frequent for atomic ‘seeds’ in Lucretius.
400
[39-40] first: cf. [6.1, n.370] – ‘woodlands’, ‘range’, & ‘hills’ all mark this as the originating moment for what human passions
will transform into the bucolic range.
401
[41-46] Civilization invades innocent nature (three couplets: 2 x 3 = 6)
[41-42] Disordered origin myths.
Pyrrha: obscurer wife instead of better known husband, Deucalion, son of Prometheus – a hint of the old story that after a first
corrupt race had been destroyed by a flood the sole surviving pious couple – Pyrrha & Deucalion – threw rocks (‘bones of
their mother Earth’) over their shoulders to regenerate human kind.
Saturn’s kingdoms: here not clearly framed in mythic time, cf. [4.6].
birds: vulture/s or eagle/s sent by Zeus to torment his uncle Prometheus for stealing fire that created civilization, cf. ‘ancient
fraud’ [4.32-34]. cf. GrEp an eagle kept eating Prometheus’ liver that kept growing back (Theog. 521-25). Gore from wound
used as drug by Medea (Arg. 3.851-53, cf. 2.1248-54: torment by eagle)
403
[43-44] Civilization invades the sea; cf. ‘insulting Thetis’ [4.32].
Hylas: cf. GrEp along Argo’s way, boy beloved by Héracles got seized by nymphs & could not answer lover’s call (id. 13.58-62;
Arg. 1.1207-1357). V has already accepted from Catull (64] the theme of Argo as first ship [4.34-36], treated there as first
cause for heroic love (Peleus & Thetis) but here as first cause for erotic loss.
404
[45-46] Bucolic range – original part of civilization, cf. GrEp Il. 18.523-29, 573-89; Od. 9.122-24 (pp. 91 & 90 – gets deranged.
lucky if livestock never: imagining civilization without its bucolic range rings ironic in context; cf. LtEp epic & tragic wishes to
undo what proved fatal:‘Would that ships ... had not’ (Catul 64.171-72], Pasíphaë’s daughter – Ariádne – protesting her
abandonment by Théseus; cf. LtTrag ‘Would that firwood beam had ne’er been felled nor ship had got its first thread-row of
getting up’ (incohandi exordium: the metaphor from weaving, Ennius, Medéa 210-11 Jocelyn, recalling Euripides’ tragedy
Medéa as well as the epic version in Arg., p. 97).
405
[46] Pasíphaë pasi + phae, ‘for all shining – cf. other erotic sight names, [6.20, n. 386]; cf. SocMem Cretan queen driven to love
white bull, was wife of king Minos; daughter to Sun (Hélios), as her name’s Greek roots imply & so half-sister to Pháëthon,
also ‘shining’, cf. [6.62]. Pasíphaë gave birth to three siblings – Phaedra (‘bright’ like Phaedrus) fatally enamored of Hippolytus at Athens, Andrógeus murdered at Athens, & Ariádne, betrayed by Athenian Theseus (p. 98). Pasíphaë was also aunt
to Medéa (Arg. 3.1076]; & soon to give birth to Mínotaur – monstrous half-bull concealed in labyrinth by Daedalus & killed
by Theseus with help from Ariadne, whom he then betrayed (cf. Catull. 64, p. 101 & n. 701).
402
406
[47-60] Burst of empathy for tragic queen, cf. Homer’s pathetic apostrophes to Patroclus (Il. 16) (14)
407
[47] taken: cf. tragic madness [2.69, n. 228] & ‘taken’ by love [6.10].
408
[48-51] Prœteus’ daughters, princesses of Argos driven by Hera to believe that they were cattle; cf. GrEp they feared getting
yoked to the plow but never lusted for bulls. Their father built two temples to Artemis who saved them from ranging the uncivil
hills (ourea axeinia Ψ & H. White) of Arcadia & removed their wild spirit (Callim. Hymn 3.233-36).
VI
57
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
& often searched her brow, though smooth, in dread of horns.
51
Ah! maid malnursed, now you are ranging over hills409
52
while he – his snowy flank on hyacinth softly propped –
on pale green forage chews beneath a dark holm-oak410
or goes for one of the great troop’s cows.
TI{PI{SI{PA
“Close off, o Nymphs,411 55
o Nymphs of Netting, close now at last the glens of groves:412
if by chance some heifer’s ranging tracks should bring
themselves before our eyes; or if it chance that him –413
taken by verdant forage or going after stock –414
down through to Gortyn’s stables any bossies draw.”415
TI{PI Then he sings of her who stared at apples from Evening’s girls,416
60
61
then Pháëthon’s sobbing sisters round with mossy bitter
bark he wraps & rears from the soil as alders tall.417
63
Then next sings Gallus ranging near Perméssus’ streams418
64
how one of the sisters drew him up Aónia’s hills419
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
[52-60] Redoubled appeal builds up to impassioned call for help to hunt the prey.
now you: a triply layered irony for alert performer-reader – (1) ‘you’ are ‘ranging’ like first creatures [6.40] but ‘now’ neither
‘you’ nor hills are innocent; (2) ‘you’ like Proteus’ daughters range hills [6.48-51, n. 408]; (3) ‘you’ range as did your husband Minos over Cretan hills after the nymph Britomartis (Callim. Hymn 3.190-200). Further bucolic irony, that Minos was
said to have been born from Europa after her rape by Zeus in the form of a bull.
[54] posture & position transfer bucolic ideal from man to beast, cf. [1.1-2, 4, n. 144].
[55] Close off: abrupt shift to direct address, apostrophe, prompts performer-reader to reach out to nymphs conveying urgency –
voicing imagined as felt by (1) the queen herself; or on her behalf by (2a) Silénus [from 6.31]; or by (2b) the Muses [from
6.13]; or by (2c) Tityrus [from 6.4]; or by V.
[56] Netting: sc. nets set to entrap prey in hunting, cf. [3.75] & [5.60]; cf. GrEp nets (diktua) saved Britomartis who lept into sea
to escape Minos (Callim. Hymn 3.190-200], hence V calls nymphs ‘Dictaean’, but Dicte also a mountain in Crete.
[58] tracks: sc. straying traces, cf. traces of Prometheus’ deceit [4.31] & of civil strife [4.31] or of hunted loved one [2.12]; cf.
LtEp to escape the labyrinth after killing Minotaur Theseus ‘steers his ranging tracks with meager thread’ (Catul. 64.113]; cf.
GrEp traces of Apollo’s stolen cattle seen with his own eyes (Hermes Hymn 219-20).
[59] taken: the military metaphor again, reduced now to animal drives, cf. [6.47, 10 & n. 406].
[60] Gortyn: city in Crete, here seeming home base for queen when not deranged on hills; cf. GrEp but Homer on Shield cites
Knossos, the usual seat of Minos, as city where Daidalus (‘fashioner’) made a dance floor for queen’s daughter Ariadne (Il.
18.590-92). Could V replace Knossos with Gortyn to hint at legend of the latter’s founding by a prince from Arcadia: mytheme
from Pausanias 8.53.4, cited by Stephens, Poetics Ptolemaic, 93.
[61-73] Focus on passion continues, but in transformative tales (12: 1, 2, 9)
[61, 62, 64] ‘Then ... then ... then’: triple adverb of time & place gets story moving again after tragic digression.
[61] her who stared: Atalanta marveled [5.56., n.351], cf. apples as love gift [2.51], [3.64, 71]; cf. LtLyr little golden apple
unbound Atalanta (Catul. 2.11-13]; cf. GrBep Atalanta looked & fell madly in love when Hippómanes took apples in hand (id.
3.40-43]; apples stolen by Héracles from Hesperides (‘Daughters of Evening,Hésperus’), among them Aegle [6.20, n. 386]. V
first to BLEND apples of Hespérides with those that wowed Atalánta, who was associated with Arcadia by an important SOURCE
for this eclogue (Callim., Hymn to Artemis 3.215-224).
417
[62-3] Pháëthon: a son of Hélios, half-brother to Pasíphaë, his catastrophic death from failing to control the chariot of his father
the Sun caused grief said to have changed his sisters’ form, but V makes power of song effect change, as Servius remarked; cf.
Silénus’ singing creating cosmic web [6.31]; cf. LtEp river Penios brought trees to adorn wedding of Peleus & Thetis (terms
that V adopts quoted) – ‘lofty’ & ‘beeches’, & ‘tall’ & ‘laurels’, ‘nodding’ plane, limber’ sister of flaming (etymological)
Pháëthon, & ‘soaring’ & ‘cypress’ (Catull. 64.285-91], followed by Prométheus bearing ‘traces of old penalty’, cf. [6. 42]);
cf. GrEp Pháëthon’s death & his sisters’ grief (Arg. 4.596-626).
418
[64-73] Gallus raised from erotic elegy to etiological epos on vatic theme (9)
[64] Perméssus: river flowing down from Mount Helicon, cf. GrEp where Muses gave staff to Hesiod & authorized telling truth
or fictions like the truth (Theog. 5.22-25).
Gallus ranging: sc. wandering in love, as Servius warns, hence metapoetic reference to his love elegies.
419
[65] Aonia: location of Mounts Helicon (where Hesiod was initiated) & Cithaeron (where Oedipous was exposed & reared by
Melibœ́us) in Bœotia (‘Cow country’) – the fat plain over the mountains north of Attica & Athens. Thus V imagines Gallus led
by one of the Muses up to height where they initiated Hesiod – metapoetic allegory for difference beween writing erotic elegy
(lowest range) & writing epos in the middle range; cf. GrEleg Callimachus dreaming of colloquy with Muse on heights, then
58
ECLOGUES
VI & VII
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
& how to him – a man – rose Phœbus’ chorus all,
how grazer Linus – hair with flowers & bitter parsley graced –420
declared to him with godlike song what he should sing:
“To you these reeds (look, take them up) the Muses give,421
that they to Ascra's oldster gave before, with which422
enchanting he would draw stiff ashes down from hills:
with these by you let Grýnia’s grove’s rise get declared,423
so there’s no glade where more Apollo flaunts himself.”
TI
73
424
What next should I place? That Nisus’ Scylla that fame went after –
74
how, her gleaming loins bound up by barking frights,
she baited Ulysses' boats & on the engulfing deep,
with (ah!) her sea-born dogs at fearful sailors tore?425
or how he spun the yarn of Tereus’ limbs exchanged:426
what meals him Philomela fed, what gifts prepared,
with what haste he sought sites unwreathed & on what wings427
429
before – malnurtured – hovered over roofs once his?428
81
All that once, while Phœbus worked them up, Eurotas430
82
heard – enriched – & bade that laurels learn outright,431
———————————————
descending to foot of hill for lower genre (p. 98) – V moves Gallus upwards here from elegy to epos.
420
[67] Linus: legendary bard, cf. [5.88], [4.55, n. 317, & p. 14].
421
[69] reeds: calam-, Greek origin but bonafide material for pipe, e.g., that Mopsus good to puff, cf. [5.2] & Pan first fashioned
[2.32], Ti.played [1.10].
422
[70] Ascra: in Bœotia, home to Hesiod.
423
[72] Grýnia: site not far from Troy where Homeric Chalcas lost vatic competition with Mopsus, as translated by Gallus from short
epic by Euphorion, noted by Servius, cf. [3.104, n. 84] – hence a vatic song though not overtly political.
424
[74-81] Last roundup features epic & tragic themes of destructive passion – reversion to the wild (8)
[74] Nisus’ Scylla: another blend, like ‘apples’ [6.61] – Nisus’ daughter Scylla betrayed him for love of Minos, cf. his stories in
background [6.45-60]; but V blends her with Homeric monster that ravished Odysseus’ crew (Od. 12.85-100). Full sources:
Lyne, Ciris.
425
[75-77] barking ... dogs: skylax, Greek ‘yelping’ in Homer (previous note), but cf. GrEp skylax, by metonymy ‘bitch’, sc. by metaphor, ‘whore’ (Callim. Hecale fr. 288 Pfeiffer). Cf. LtEp. ‘Scyllas bound up with raging dogs’ (Lucr. 5.892-93).
426
[78-81] Tereus & Philomela (sister of Procne) turned into birds by tragic passions: cf. LtTrag story known to theater audiences
\from Latin tragedy – king of Thrace & two sisters – one his queen & the other his victim, with one or the other name assigned
each sister in different versions. In all versions the king rapes the virgin, rips out her tongue, but she weaves a fabric to inform
her sister, his queen, who gets revenge by killing their son & feeding him to his father the king; tragedy by Accius, cf. [2.69] &
[6.47]; cf. metaphors of weaving for poetics [6.71, 33, 5].
427
[80] sites unwreathed: de + sert-, literally ‘abandoned, left behind’ so ‘deserted’, but in context, given the celebratory wreathes
(serta) of Silénus & the horrific banquet fled, Tereus can well be imagined seeking places far from civilization with its
symposia & banquet wreathes, so deserta.
428
[81] malnurtured: infelix with final, bitter irony; cf. [6.47, 52], [3.3], [1.21, 49, 74, n. 176].
429
[82-86] Summing up to close – mind-boggling etiologies point to Arcadia as a source for the song (5)
Stepping back from Silénus & supposing a stand point or point of view powerful enough to comprehend that whole range of
singing from cosmogony through transforming passions to civilization dissolved, the speaker – Títyrus? or V, as perhaps at
[6.74] – forces us to do a double-take & review everything represented heretofore by assigning it to an intermediary from a
source in Arcadia & to Apollo emulating the spheres’ music & herding pain in love.
430
[82-83] all that once: not ‘first’ moment of cosmic origin myths, cf. [6.33, 39] but “normal beginning of a tale” that “creates its
own time”: Burkert, Cosmogony, 91.
worked them up: medita-, as in poetics of Ti [6.8] & attributed by Mel to Ti [1.2]; cf. LtEp Phœbus ‘working up’ (medita-)
music – greatest joy to gods – that echoes music of the cosmic spheres (Varro of Atax, Chorographia, p. 97 Morel), John B.
Van Sickle, Design, 235; cf. GrPhil Plato imagined cosmic spindle of necessity with revolving spheres & music issuing (Republic §617], cf. metaphoric net of wool, spinning, weaving here.
Eurotas: river rising high in Arcadian mountains, mingling with Alpheus, flowing down past Amyclae & Sparta to the sea, Callim. fr. 699 Pfeiffer; Pausanias 8.54.2.
431
[83] laurels:originate from Arcadian nymph Daphne fleeing rape by Apollo: cf. laurels Apollo’s gifts[3.62].
ECLOGUES
VI & VII
59
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
he sings (the valleys struck relay to heaven’s signs),432
till Evening’s star bade pushing sheep to folds & relaying433
counts & marched forth (though Olympus pined for more).434
86
SEVENTH
CHARACTERS [SPEAKING / Named Only or Background]
MELIBŒ́US, grazer of goats, sheep, & cattle & also a farmer with seasonal work, cf. [1.3-4, 2; 3.1].
STORY:
remembers once when his buck strayed, which led him to hear a great match between Arcadians in
shifts of verse [‘verses’ meaning turns – like furrows or rows from a plow turning back].
CRAFT:
familiar with Muses’ wish to recall verses in shifts, cf. shifts, but songs Camenae love (ecl. 3.59).
DAPHNIS, authoritative & focal figure to which others come to perform.
STORY:
had already sat down to hear contest, welcomes MELIBŒ́US as neighbor to listen.
CRAFT:
facilitates recall of verses in shifts.
CORYDON ARCADIAN, grazer of goats, youthful – modest & measured.
STORY:
mixed goats with sheep but kept own style – lover of boy & girl.
CRAFT:
responsive to Muses, but drawn down, modest, refined.
THYRSIS ARCADIAN, grazer of sheep, youthful – immodest & expansive.
STORY:
mixed sheep with goats, but kept own style – lover of girl & boy.
CRAFT:
ambitious – growing poet & would-be seer – bard (vates).
Alcíppe, Aléxis, Codrus, Galatéa, Lýcidas, Micon, Phyllis, here variously helper, competitor, lover.
Buck, chief male goat or billy (one meaning of títyros in Greek) – imagined as drawing MELIBŒ́US down from
greater work at home to absorb & relay Arcadian play in verse.
Muses, Greek goddesses of poetry – (ecll. 6 & 3) – expressed wish to remember verses back & forth in shifts
between singers: cf. Caménae (ecl. 3) – Latin Muses said to ‘love shifts’, but songs not ‘verses’.
SCENE
Lone evergreen oak by reed-woven bank of Mincius – river near Virgil’s Mantua in northern Italy – shown as
peaceful, unlike the real countryside described by MELIBŒ́US (ecl. 1.3-4, 11-22) – in cold season towards winter.
CUES
Bacchic tamborines & buzzing pipes modulate to flowing flutes while singer TÍTYRUS2 moves down stage right to
meet figure that played CORÝDON (ecl.2). Meanwhile from left enters – peering left & right like anxious herder &
guiding steps with staff – the figure left at the fifth eclogue’s close as MENÁLCAS with the staff of MOPSUS.
ME435 By chance beneath a rustling holm had Daphnis sat436
432
433
434
435
1
[84] struck relay: sc. echo: cf. GrEp Muses echoed by Mount Olympus & dwellings of gods (Theog. 36-52, 69-71).
[85] till Evening’s star: Hesperus – daughters’ stolen apples [6.61]. Shadows end both day & poem [2.67]; [1.83].
bade: yet another cause imagined as setting parameters for song, cf. by Eurotas [6.83] & by Apollo [6.12, 4].
herding sheep: cf. ‘seeds herded’ through void [6.32, with note]; work herding flocks [3.98, 20].
[86] relaying counts: cf. ‘counted cadence’ [6.27]; cf. [3.24], stern proprietors count flock, with note.
Olympus pined: song imagined entertaining gods; cf. GrEp final variant on motif of Muses delighting Mount Olympus, cf.
[6.82-84] & ‘joy’ gods take in Apollo’s song according to Varro of Atax, [6.84, n. 430].
[1-20] FRAMER ( Melibœ́us2) recalls looking in from elsewhere & overhearing a bucolic memory match (20)
436
[1-5] Prelude – Description (ecphrasis) of a bucolic scene settled before the Framer arrived (5)
60
VII
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
& Córydon & Thyrsis pushed together their troops into one,437
Thyrsis sheep & Córydon nannies stretched with milk,438
both flowering in their times of life, Arcadians both,439
440
a pair well matched to chant & ready to echo back.
5
Down here, while tender myrtles I defend from cold,
6
my buck – troop’s man himself – had ranged. But I at Daphnis441
look. He back at me – when he sees – “More quickly,” says,
“come down here, Melibœ́us, your buck & kids are safe;442
& if you can any way let go, take a rest in shade.443
Down here through meadows bullocks come themselves to drink;444
& here its verdant banksides Míncius weaves with tender445
reeds & bees swarm echoing out from holy oaks.”446
13
———————————————
[1] By chance: cause of action masked, unlike divine causes at previous moments programming the book’s development: order
from Apollo pulling back from growth [6.3-5, 82]; oracle from God at Rome authorizing return & urging growth [1.6, 44].
had ... had: verbs in past perfect tense create idea of scene as settled before arrival of observer (Meliboéus), thus not caused or
affected by him; unlike arrival of Mel [ecl. 1] imagined as interupting ‘repose’ & erotic ‘play’ & provoking Ti to provide
etiology of new bucolic range – god at Rome.
rustling holm: shade imagined making sound & ever-green: cf. ilex, ‘holm-oak’ as rest for white bull while queen ranged [6.54]
as opposed to summer shade from beech leaves [2.3], [1.2]; the ever-green ‘holm-oak’ does not mark season. For sonorous
nature [2.13], [1.54-58]; cf. GrBep pine’s sweet whisper’ (id. 1.1).
had Daphnis sat: previously settled situation of Daphnis implies priority in mythic time (prequel) to versions of Daphnis as dead
[ecl. 5] or dying (id. 1, n. 679).
437
[2] into one: emphasis on oneness here as prelude to later sharp separateness; cf. LtEp ‘into one ball unlike forms come
together’ (Lucr. 2.286-87), ‘into one place’ (Lucr. 6.344); cf. GrEpigr ‘toil of all poets herded into one’ (Meleager, 129.4 G-P
= AP 12.257); cf. GrBep ‘Damoitas & Daphnis into one place their flock once drove’ (id. 6. 1).
438
[3] nannies stretched: goats called ‘stretched’, sc. full of milk – normal to describe full udders, hence figurative language, a
transfer from part (teats) to whole (goats); cf. Golden Age ideal, ‘teats ... full-stretched’ [4.21-22], but ‘nanny’ [1.74, n. 188].
439
[4] flowering: metaphoric from plants to herders, cf. [1.25], [2.64].
Arcadians both: V surprises by blending Arcadians with Daphnis, a bold advance over previous hints of Arcadia, e.g., down
from it river Eurotas flowed [6.83]; on its hills Prœtides ranged [6.48-51; as home to Pan [4.58-59]; cf. Pan inventor [2.3133]; also notion of Arcadia as primordial place (n. 673), which fits the image of old mythic time just remarked [7.1]
both ... both: cf. ‘good both’ [5. 1, with note]: [GrBep] ‘both ... both ... both ... both ...’ ([id.] 8.3-4).
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
[6-13] Drawing georgic Framer (Melibœ́us2) down to bucolic range (again) & getting him to stay & discern (8)
[6] Down here: opens burst of locating language that pushes fiction of speech as placement, cf. [6.74: loqu- ≈ loc-].
defend from cold: corroborates hint of season other than summer in opening motif of shade ‘ever-green’ [7.1].
[7] buck – troop’s man – himself: V expands ordinary word for he-goat – ‘buck’ (capr-, cf. capricious) – with metaphor that
echoes old bucolic, also adding a ‘self’ word, making the whole phrase so emphatic & redundant as to make reader suspect
some not so subtle hint. It comes to mind that an old synonym for ‘he-goat’ is tityrus; cf. first arrival of Mel drawn to bucolic
range by Títyrus [1.1]; ‘self’ word naturalizes & masks the artful trick of getting the rangy voice of Mel back down to the
bucolic range: cf. ‘self’ words for spontaneous acts by nature [5.63, 62, n. 356], [4.43, 23, 21], [1.39, n. 167]: [cf. GrBe]
‘billy – husband of white nannies’ ([id.] 8.49).
[8-9] Daphnis & Melibœ́us: blending figures from very different moments in the book (p.14 & 25), V stretches mind to
imagine mythic time beyond & back before he used these figures to launch & build the mythic frame of first half book.
come down here: urging again, draws Mel back & down to bucolic range: cf. ‘Down here come, well-formed boy’ [2.45].
[10] rest in shade: two motifs from prior ideal; cf. ‘limber in shade’ – Mel. to Ti. [1.4] & ‘rest with me’, Ti. to Mel. [1.79].
[11] Down here: third use of placing word hits rhetorical high – climax in fiction of specific placement.
meadows: stood for the amplified bucolic range], [4.43], [3.108].
bullocks: not previously property assigned to Mel, so may stand here as traditional property of oxherd Daphnis,marking this
scene as generic bucolic even though located on V’s specific Italian river bank. If assigned to Mel, would expand his configuration from mere goats [1.12 & 7.7] to cattle; cf. bullock loved by Pasiphaë [6.46]; oxen plodding home at dusk [2.66].
themselves: cf. ‘himself’ [7.7] with referral to other motifs of nature acting on its own.
[12] here: hīc, “at this point (in action, speech, or thought),” Oxford Latin Dictionary – reinforces series of adverbs, consolidates illusion of actual presence, cf. [5.3], [3.5, 12], [1.14, 42, 44, 51, 79].
Míncius: river at V’s home Mantua – V surprises by blending Italic landscape with ideal bucolic motifs, cf. p. 20.
weaves: cf. other metaphors variously blending human craft & cosmic process], [6.5, 33, 82], [2. 72], [1.2].
[13] reed: harund-, Latin reed also of Ti2 reduced to middle range [6.8], here for V’s home in northern Italy; not Greek calam-,
for which cf. [6. 69], [5.42, 2], [2.34], [1.10, n. 150].
echo: defining motif of bucolic range for V; cf. echoes to gods [6.84, 86]; nature rejoices [5.62-63]; woods echo [2.13]; Ti
VII
61
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
447
How was I to make out? I’d no Alcíppe or Phyllis,448
14
who at home would close off weanling lambs from milk449
& it was a challenge – Córydon versus Thyrsis – great.450
Yet I put my serious matters after those two’s play.451
At which point then they both led off to strive by shifts452
of verse (verse shifts the Muses to remember wished):453
these verses Córydon, Thyrsis those relayed in row.454
455
CO
Nymphs, our love, Libéthrides, concede me either
456
20
21
———————————————
teaching woods to echo [1.5].
bees: their humming typical in musical bucolic nature, cf. sonorous croft [1.55]: cf. GrBep bees prettily hum (id. 1.107) & surround springs, where language hums (id. 7.142).
swarms: exāmina (*exAGmen, ‘a drive, push, herding forth’, cf. agmen, ‘a driving, pushing forward, drove’): basic pastoral
work [1.13, with note] extended by metaphor to marching men or anything that moves in concerted fashion; in Ge V will make
bees representative of heroic & civic range.
447
[14-20] Georgic work put off by lure of recollective bucolic play (7)
[14] How was I to: not so much a question as an excuse to shift from ‘work’ down to ‘play’: cf. excuse by Ti for shift from from
bucolic play upwards to Rome [1.40].
Alcíppe: girl’s name; cf. GrBep she rejected advance (id. 5.132).
Phyllis: cited as typical theme for song [5.10, n. .332]; a contested object of love [3. 78, 76, 107].
449
[15] home: secure base, cf. [4.21, n. 299].
close off: a basic bucolic chore; cf. ‘wean tender nurslings’ [1.21, with note] but ‘close off’ (sc. for hunt) at histrionic heart of
song [6.55, 56].
weanling lambs: adds sheep to property assigned Mel, earlier defined as ‘your buck & kids’ [7.9], which may explain a
marginal note in an ancient manuscript implying that hedos sc. haedos, ‘kids’, should be read here not ‘lambs’.
450
[16] challenge: certamen, sifting out significant differences – root idea also in ‘discern’ [1.9] (cf. ascertain; certify, certain); cf.
SocMem challenge match metaphoric to struggles in war, politics, law, n. 636; cf. [6.29] Apollo; [5.8, 9, 15], [4.58], even
Pan in Arcadia; [3.31], [2.57]: cf. LtEp. ‘great matches of war’ (Lucr. 2.5; cf. 1.475, 4.843, 5.1296); ‘great match’ of a race
(Lucr. 5.787), & agitated struggle by atoms forming world (Lucr. 2.573).
great: emphatic at verse end, implies ‘a very great one’ – ironic since ‘great’ linked with ranges higher than bucolic [6.31, 55],
[4.5, 12, 22, 36, 48, 49], [3.99, 104], [1.23, 47, cf. ‘greater’ [5.4, 53], [4.1], [3.35], [1.83].
451
[17] play:term of Ti for bucolic music [1.10] & again for first bucolic moment [6.1] & for nature stirred by song [6.28]; ‘play’
[lud-, 1.10] was differentiated from a term that suggested work [medita-,1.2], which V used to describe Ti’s projected work in
the middle (georgic) range [6.8].
452
[18] in shifts: basic way to speak in epos – bucolic & heroic ranges], [3.59, n.254].
453
[19] verse: a turn back, metaphorically like a furrow from a plow – emphasizes form of craft over force of song [6.1], [5.2], possibly another of V’s hints of recovering an archaic Latin poetics,‘verses with which once fauns & seers sang’, n. 720.
Muses: Greek goddesses of poetry, cf. Pierians [6.13], convey powerful tradition of Hesiod [6.69] & fatten bull for tragic poet
[3.85]; cf. GrBep & cf. GrEp also goddesses of Theocr. & Hesiod. used by V to frame this recollective & recursive moment
when he is gathering threads to weave Arcadian myth: in ecl. 3 to amplify his political frame he introduced the singing with
‘love’ from Latin Caménae.
wished: past tense & intentionality
remember: implies looking back & drawing down threads from previous work – precisely what V does here.
454
[20] in row: ord-, again the metaphor of thread for array & control, cf. [6.33, n. 396], [4.5, n. 286], & [1.73, n. 187].
Reckoning. [1-20 MEL] Mel as voice of V’s broad epic vision again portrayed as coming from outside down to the bucolic range, not
this time driven by soldiery & interrupting song. Instead led by lead goat (his tityros) to hear song exchange remembered by will of
Muses – causes internal to the bucolic range & V’s book: unlike disdainful Framer [2.1-5] & Ti2 [ecl. 6], the latter imagined moving
from low to high, then back to middle, while Mel here speaks of move from middle to low (bucolic range).
448
455
[21-68] The Great Challenge Match – Discerning Metapoetic Difference (48: <4/4> x 6)
Dense with threads drawn from previous eclogues & woven into six pairs of priamels, cf. [1.23, n. 161], [3.80, n. 265], & [5.32,
n. 341]. Together the six pairs develop from hymnic prelude through themes & rhetorical forms, including chiasmus (abxBA)
& ecphrasis (description of thing or place, cf. Ti’s place [1.51] & Thyrsis’ cup (p.96 ) & Achille’s shield (p.91 ).
EXORDIAL [i/I: 21-28] ‘first thread’ frames sequence with hymnic form: modest measure vs brash ambition (4/4)
456
[i 21-24 CO] Nymphs, our love: hymnic appeal to female divinities of country, more limited & local than the Muses [7.19, with
note]; cf. Nymphs ordered to help erotic hunt for white bull [6.55-56, with note]; Nymphs wept for dead Daphnis & will get
offerings with him [5.20, 21, 74]; Nymphs winked at easy sex [3.9]; Nymphs fill flower baskets to win Alexis for Cor [2.46];
cf. GrBep Nymphs taught narrator oxherding on hills a song famed perhaps to Zeus’ throne (id.7.91-93), Nymphs of Castalia
invoked to recall & compare present with Homeric past (id. 7.148).
Libéthrides: ‘of the damp place’, cf. an identifying epithet for Nymphs called earlier ‘of Netting’ or ‘of Crete’ [6.56]; but
VII
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
62
ECLOGUE
such a song as to my Codrus (songs he makes
(i)
to Phœbus near in verse), or, if we can’t do all,
Th
my rustling pipe from holy pine will dangle here.
24
457
25
Grazers, with ivy grace your poet as he grows,
Arcadians, so that Codrus' guts with envy burst.
(I)
Or, if he praise beyond what please you, bind my brow
with cyclamen, lest evil tongue harm bard to be.
458
CO
459
28
This head of bristly boar to her of Delos little
29
Micon gives & branchy horns of long-lived stag.
(ii)
If suited this will be, from polished marble whole
you’ll stand – your calves with tragic stage boots scarlet laced.
32
———————————————
‘damp’ hints at two possible places linked with poetics: up in Thrace, a haunt of Orpheus near Pieria & Mount Olympus, cf.
Pierian Muses [6.13, with note], also [8.63] & [10.72]; or down at Mount Helicon between Attica (Athens) & Bœotia
(‘cowland’, Thebes): cf. Muses drawing Gallus up Helicon, which was wet with springs [6.65, 69, but Theog. p. 90]; cf.
GrEp ‘Libethrid maids get up a hymn to honor Hippomedon’ (Euphorion fr. 32 Van Groningen), where some details point to
the vicinity of Pieria & a place that boasted Orpheus' tomb; cf. other traces of Euphorion, n. 84 & vatic exchanges of
eclogues three & five..
to Phœbus near: a slight upward push but more modest than vatic challenge to Phœbus], [4.55-57]; cf SocMem. style of popular wisdom with modesty & piety; cf. [5.9]; cf. GrBep second after Pan (id. 1.3).
pipe...dangle: if not possible to match Codrus, then retreat from bucolic range, restoring ‘pipe’ to its inventor Pan on his sacred
pine, cf. [2.36] & [8.24], also promise to end book [8.11]; cf. GrBep dying Daphnis left pipe to Pan (id. 1.123-30, p. 96).
457
[I 25-28 THYR] Grazers: rough command to figures made by V to typify bucolic range, cf. [6.4, 67], [5.41, 59], [2.1], [1.21, n.
159].
ivy: vine linked to Bacchus & Golden Age [4.19] & marvelous cup [3.38] – poet: term for pushy & ambitious Mopsus [5.45] .
grows: also pushy, cf. cosmic growth [6.34]; mythic growth [4.49]; growing shadows that shut off day & song [2.67]; yet
alternative manuscript gives ‘poet at birth, getting born’, cf. ‘boy getting born’ [4.8].
Arcadians: pushes generic ‘grazers’ beyond their Italo-Sicilian range toward image of older bucolic time, cf. n. 673.
envy: evil eye, theme of black magic suits profile of would’be seer, cf. [1.11, n. 152], also [7.58], [3.14, 103], [8.13].
guts burst: cf. SocMem vulgar thrust to rustics not rarified appeal to distant deities; cf. LtLyr woman with ‘three hundred’ sexual partners, ‘busting all of their guts’ (Catull. 11.20).
bind ... bard: would be like old Latin poet (vates, p. 99), but in degenereate & vulgar form – purveyor of magical spells.
cyclamen: miracle plant in returning Golden Age [4.17]. V thus again looks back to his new mythic frame [ecll. 1-5] & characterizes it as archaizing & vatic, all the while withdrawing from that ambition – first reducing Ti2 [6.3-5], now subjecting
Thyrsis to ‘defeat’; cf. further reducing vates Mœris [8.96, 98]; also Mœris defeated vates [9.1, 16, 53, 54, 61, cf. p. 24].
Reckoning. [i/I – 21-28] V contrasts two poetic programs: (Cor) modest appeal to goddesses less than Orpheus & Muses though
linked with both (thus commentaries wrong to identify these Nymphs as merely a learned name for Muses), then modest ambition to
rise toward Phœbus, but willingness to quit the bucolic range [cf. 8.11]; (Thyr) present forcefulness & further upward push toward
vatic voice. Making Thyr apply the innovative term‘Arcadians’ to generic ‘grazers’ echoes & confirms V’s own push towards fuller
Arcadian myth [7.5]. V thus has it both ways: extending his Arcadian mythology in the voice of Mel [7.5] yet underlining its radical
boldness by repeating it in the pushy voice of Thyr. Here he makes it typify the ‘swelling poet’ & ‘would-be bard’ that he derives from
the vatic growth of the first half book [ecll. 4 & 5] & now in the second half is drawing down in order to expand the Arcadian myth.
458
DEDICATORY [ii/II: 29-36] hymnlike: sacrifice to Diana (virgin) vs Priápus (phallus ≈ tityros) (4/4)
Complicates contrast with thematic progression: sacrificial animals to marble vs marble to gold.
459
[ii 29-32 COR) Delia: ‘of Delos island’, where Diana & her brother Phœbus were born; but Delia just a lover [3.67].
boar: wild male animals for goddess of hunt, cf. [5.76], [3.75], [2.59], [10.56].
deer: cf. [5.60], [2.29], [1.59].
little Micon: adjective glosses name’s Greek meaning, cf. ‘micro’ – a further case of V’s interest in root meanings of words.
boots: particular attribute of Diana as goddess of hunting, hint too of her links to tragic-heroic range, e.g., Actaeon [2.24]; cf.
GrEp her prayer to her father for maids to tend her boots (Callim. Hymn 3.15-16).
VII
63
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
A bowl of milk, Priápus, & this cake each year’s460
TH
enough to look for: you a paltry garden’s keeper.
33
(II)
Now for a time we’ve made you up in marble; but,
if nurture further fill the troop, may you get golden!
36
CO461 Sea-born Galatéa, sweeter to me than Hyblan thyme,462
37
brighter than swans, more finely than white ivy formed,
(iii)
when bulls well-grazed first seek again their pens,
TH
if any care for your Córydon has you, may you come.
40
To you may I seem more bitter than Sardinian herbs,463
41
more rough than broom, more cheap than seaweed flung on shore,
(III)
if this day now’s not more for me than a year entire.
Get home, grazed full, if there’s any shame, get, bullocks, get.
464
CO
465
Moss enveloped springs & forage softer than sleep
44
45
460
[II 33-36 THYR] marble: promised as highest honor by Cor [7.31] but here challenged by ‘gold’.
milk: here disdained from standpoint of higher ambition, but otherwise a mark of bucolic abundance – [7.3, 15], [5.67], [4.21],
[3.6, 98], [2.22], [1.81].
each year: used as excuse for slighting sacrifice, unlike honorific pledges to sacrifice – [5.67, 79], [1.42].
enough: here demeans but elsewhere a value of measure & discretion, not without ironic contrasts with larger ambitions; cf.
[6.24], [4.54], [3.111], [2.14], [1.47]: [9.55], [10.30, 70, 77].
keeper: cf. ‘of well-formed troop’ [5.44]; ‘foreign’ steals [3.5]; but ‘of your troop” [10.36] – paltry: ordinarily a bucolic merit,
but here disdainful, cf. [1.68] & [2.44].
nurture: fetur-, expansive & ambitious motif, cf. other ‘nursing’ motifs, nn.160 & 176 .
golden: glittering phallus & reach for highest range vs white marble for chaste Diana: cf. ‘golden race’ [4.9], ‘golden loveapples’ [3.71]; cf. GrBep lovers offer own statues in gold for Aphrodite (id. 10.33).
Reckoning. [ii/II – 29-36] To compile Thyr’s offering, V has drawn threads from the mythic frame of the first half book, e.g., rituals for
God of Ti [ecl. 1] & for the new god Daphnis [ecl. 5, cf. p. 18]. He has also drawn ‘gold’ down from cosmic import in public myth to
grotesque garden excess – from heroic growth to erected phallus – too big for the enclosed & guarded space.
Rhetorically, again expansive themes despite a frame where expansiveness has been put down.
461
EROTIC [iii/III: 37-44] still in hymnic frame, shift to bucolic theme of love: contrasting tones – gentle :: bullying (4/4)
Courteous priamel coordinated with a single day vs insultive priamel expanding day to year.
462
[iii 37-40 CO] Galatéa: cf. [3.64, 72], [1.30, 31, with note].
sweeter: valued in love; cf. [5:47], [3.110, 82], [1.3, with note]; [cf. GrBe] spring not sweeter than Muses ([id.] 9.34-35).
brighter: ‘white’, implies ‘milky’, root meaning of name in Greek; cf. [6.75], [5.56], [2.16, 46], [1.28]: [9.41, prequel to book]:
cf. GrBep ‘O white Galateia’ (id. 11.19).
well-formed: visible beauty, a touchstone & trademark for V, cf. [5.44, 86, 90], [3.57, 79], [2.1, 17, 45], [1.5, with note]: cf.
[7.62], [10.18].
fed: cf. [5.24], [1.54, grazing bees]: cf. [9.24, prequel, 31].
463
[III 41-44 THYR] I more bitter: sarcastic metaphor: does V imagine Thyr reproaching some beloved in harsh terms? or putting
harsh words in the mouth of Galateia? cf. ‘bitter bark’ [6.68, 62], ‘love’ [3.110, metaphor]; ‘herb’ [1.78].
bullocks: cf. [7.11, with note] – grazed full: sarcastic, telling them ‘enough already’, cf. [7.40].
Reckoning. [iii/III – 37-44] Blithe & coaxing vs bullying & harsh: for Cor. V draws on ideal features of bucolic range like sweetness,
brightness, visible & striking in form], [1.5, n.148], [2.1], [3.57, n. 252]; for Thyr bitterness, roughness, violence in a priamel that
builds to impossibility (adynaton) of time deformed (day like year).
464
DESCRIPTIVE [iv/IV: 45-52] ecphrastic (as of cup or shield): ideal coolness vs summer heat :: Smokey heat vs winter chill (4/4)
Beyond merely contrasting descriptions (ecphrases, cf. iii/III) concentric patterning of contrasted themes (chiasmus).
465
[iv 45-48 COR] Moss: spectacular & cooling, opens description (ecphrasis) of ideal coolness; cf. [6.62].
springs: water an old ideal feature of bucolic range, cf. [6.43], [5.40], [3.97], [2.59], [1.39, 52, with ‘pines’]: cf. [9.20, prequel], [10.42]; cf. GrBep waters (idd. 1, 7, p. 96); GrPhil Phaedrus, p. 94; & GrEp Hom Shield, p. 91.
soft: also typical of ideal placement; cf. [6.53], [5.31, 38], [4.28], [3.45, 55], [2.50], [1.81]: cf. [9.8], [10.33, 42] .
sleep: cf. [6.14], [1.55]. Cf. LtEp ‘soft sleep’ (Lucr. 3.112); cf. GrBep ‘fleeces softer than sleep’ (id. 5.50-51).
roofing: teg-/tect- in ideal nature of Ti but also lost culture of Tereus & Melibœus, cf. [6.81], [1.1, 68].
sprinkled: making the ideal dappled shade], [6.40], [5.7, 40].
shade: adds to image of bucolic ideal, cf. [7.10], [5.5, 48, 70], [2.3, 8, 67], [1.4, 83, with notes]; cf. [7.58], [8.14], [9.20, 42:
‘parasols’ a prequel], [10.75, 76].
soon now: cf. ‘now at last’ [4.4], also variously ‘now’ or ‘soon’ [4.4, 6, 7, 10, 27, 48 – adverbs of time to push idea of turning
point in cosmic time]: not yet summer since buds still swelling (Servian commentary).
64
VII
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
& verdant arbutus roofing you with sprinkled shade,
(iv)
fend off the solstice from the herd, soon now comes summer
scorching, now the buds swell out on limber stalks.
466
TH
Here's a hearth & torches fat, here always fire’s
the most & columns blackened by incessant soot;
48
49
(IV)
here we care as much about the north wind's cold
as wolves for counting care or raging streams for banks.
467
CO
52
468
Junipers & chestnuts – shaggy – take their stand;
53
& apples sprawl spread freely each beneath its tree.
(v)
All things are laughing now: but if well-formed Aléxis
TH
from these hills should go, you'd see dry even streams.469
56
The field dries: forage thirsts & dies – the weather’s fault.470
57
———————————————
limber: lent-, V’s metaphoric identification of plant & human, cf. [5.16, 31], [3.38], [1.4, 25, n. 162], also. [10.40] – not the
more dynamic georgic motif found in other manuscripts – laet-, ‘well manured’ ≈ fertile ≈ joyful, that V gives to Thyr. [7.60],
cf. [4.52, the same root put to work in a georgic metaphor as a verb].
466
[IV 49-52 THYR] here: adverb of place as in [7.12], but this interior shelter contrasts with the contest’s outdoor setting.
hearth: hint of winter season, cf. winter worship of new god [5.70]
fat: metaphoric for pine pitch, cf. [6.4], [5.33, 68], [3.100]; cf. LtEp ‘torches fat with resin & much soot’ (Lucr. 5.296)
fire: one of four basic elements in cosmogony [6.33]; metaphor ≈ love [5.10], [3.66], [8.81]. most: superlative marks exaggeration by speaker, cf. ‘Jove ... his very most’ [7.60].
we care as much: defying nature, not in harmony with it, high point in priamel relating defiance to ‘wolves’ & ‘streams’.
cold: again implies winter, cf. [7.6] & [5.70], [2.22], also [8.14], [10.47, 48, 57, 65, also serpent [3.93]: cf. [8.71]; but refreshing coolness vs summer heat [5.25], [2.8], [1.5]; cf. GrBep Menálkas snug in cave roasts beech nuts & scorns winter ([id.]
9.15-21).
wolves: kill recklessly without counting, cf. destructive for bucolic range [5.60]; as bad as ‘rain for crops’ [3.80], [2.63], linked
with magic & vatic spells [8.52], [9.54]; cf. SocMem wolves rapacious; [cf. GrBep] ‘Wolf, spare my kids’ ([id.] 8.63).
streams: water, but violent, not idyllic ‘springs’ [7.45], cf. [7.56, 66]; [6.64], [5.21, 25, 76], [3.96], [1.51]: [8.4], [9.40, prequel], also here raging, as in Mopsus’ rough metaphor describing song by Menálcas [5.84]
banks: ordinarily enclose & limit, cf. [7.12], [3.94]. streams: water, but violent, not idyllic ‘springs’ [7.45], cf. [7.56, 66],
[6.64], [5.21, 25, 76], [3.96], [1.51]: [8.4], [9.40, prequel]; also here raging, as in rough metaphor for song [5.84].
Reckoning. [iv/IV – 45-52] Chiasmus disposes contrasting topics in each ecphrasis – cool spring shelter & summer heat to hot shelter
& winter cold (a + : b – :: b + / a – ], the first two in nature, the second two defying nature, but incorporating by metaphor natural
violence, as of floods & wolves. Each represents an imaginative reach – extreme – of bucolic range.
467
DESCRIPTIVE – EROTIC [v/V: 53-60] Places linked with human love – from green to dry :: from dry to green (4/4)
Descriptive again (ecphrases) with opposing themes arranged in symmetrical pairs (chiasmus: X in form – abBA).
468
[v 53-56 COR) Junipers: J. oxycedrus, ‘Prickly juniper’, shrub or tree (30 to 45 feet), native to Arcadia & other Mediterranean
sites & chestnuts: enclosed in prickly husks till ripe [2.52], [1.81] – so shaggy (hirsut-) describes both trees.
apples: cf. GrBe ripe autumn fruits on ground in idyllic georgic setting – climax to bucolic journey of initiation (id. 7.14446).
all: locally bucolic no longer cosmic, cf. [6.34], [4.52], [3.56]; [cf. GrBep] Daphnis: spring everywhere, but if Naïs leaves,
cattle & herdsman dry ([id.] 8.41-43, 48).
laugh: metaphor from human emotion, cf. Silenus mocking [6.23]; acanthus welcoming new child [4.20]; newborn to reconcile
with mother [4.60, 62]; cf. LtEp laughing nature (Lucr. 1.8, 3.22, 5.1395, but treacherous sea, 2.559, 5.1005); dawn sets sea
laughing (Catull. 64.269-74); cf. GrEp dawn set shores laughing on day of Medea’s fatal marriage (Arg. 4.1170-74); ‘earth,
all of it, laughed’ ≈ tread of warriors marching out (Il. 19.362); Livrea Arg. IV, 330 traces the laughter metaphor through a
wide range of Greek literature.
well-formed: again V’s preferred & privileged beauty that catches eyes, cf. [7.38, with note].
Aléxis: here a present love, not distant as before [2.1]; cf. ‘chestnuts’ & ‘apples’ offered there as love gifts.
469
[56] dry even streams: notion of nature’s sympathy for human figure, cf. nature mourns dead Daphnis [5.25-26]; nature misses
absent Ti [1.38-39]; cf. GrBep animals mourn dying Daphnis (id. 1.); cf. GrEp horses grieve for doomed Patroclus (Il. *.**).
Reckoning. [v/V – 53-60] For Cor positive bucolic threads, even an amenable Alexis – love sweet, no longer bitter. For Thyr georgic
threads & another show of over-reaching in hint of ‘green’ root sense & prospect of flooding rain.
470
[V 57-60 THYR] field: georgic range [6.8, 48], [5.35, 75, 80], [3.56], [1.10, 12, 72], [9.3, 61], [10.24].
dries ... thirsts: since water a basic motif in idyllic country scenes, drought negates idyll, cf. [7.45]. grove ... all: ‘all’ emphatic
[6.11], [1.47].
God of wine: Bacchus, to whom Thyr related since his name shared with fennel stalk tipped with pine cone & carried by satyrs
& maenads in orgies.
grows verdant: ‘green’ when Phyllis comes, because her name in Greek means ‘leaf’ (phyla) according to an old story about a
ECLOGUE
VII & VIII
65
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
The god of wine begrudges slopes their vine-shoot shade.
(V)
Whenever Phyllis comes the grove grows verdant all
& Jove comes down his very most with joyful rain.
CO471 The poplar’s dearest to Hércules, the vine to Bacchus,472
myrtle to well-formed Venus, laurels of his to Phœbus
60
61
(vi):
Phyllis loves hazels; them while Phyllis loves,
not myrtle, not Phœbus’ laurels are going to defeat hazels.
TH
473
Ash in woods most lovely, pine in garden court,
poplar alongside streams, fir on lofty hills:
64
65
(VI)
but should you, well-formed Lýcidas, visit me more often,
ash would cede to you in woods & pine in gardens.474
ME475 These I remember & Thyrsis – defeated – striving in vain.
From that time on it’s Córydon, Córydon’s for us.
70
EIGHTH
CHARACTERS [SPEAKING / Named Only or Background]
FRAMER, looks in, down & back on the bucolic range, like Melibœ́us (ecll. 7 & 1) & like prior framers (ecll. 6, 4
———————————————
Phyllis who died & became a leafless tree when left by lover; but when he returned & hugged the tree, it sprouted leaves, cited
by Servius (p.7 , n.57 ), cf. Dix (1995] 258.
Jove ... very most: cf. ‘fire most’ [7.49].
joyful rain: third & last time in book this georgic metaphor –, ‘joy’ ≈ ‘well manured’ [5.60], [4.52], but not right reading for
[7.48], rain ambiguous, too – force of nature [6.38]; ‘gloomy for ripe crops’ [3.80]; threatens singers [9.63]; cf. LtEp rains
perish when father ether throws them headlong into the lap of mother earth (Lucr. 1.25-51).
471
EROTIC – DESCRIPTIVE [vi/VI: 61-68] Praise in Priamels – Tree favored by lover bests other trees :: Lover bests trees (4/4)
472
[vi 61-64 COR] while Phyllis loves hazels, they will best the gods’ favorites.
dear: cf. ‘no page to Phœbus dearer’ [6.11]; [8.15 ‘dew dearest to flock’].
hazels: shrubby nut trees of landscapes framing first half book [5.3, 12]; [1.14]: tree name (coryl-) closest to singer’s Corydon.
going to defeat: militant metaphor for metapoetic thrust, cf. ‘me not Orpheus, Calliope, Linus, Apollo will defeat’ [4.55-57].
473
[VI 65-68 THYR] Each tree finest in its site, but each will cede to Lycidas if he favors Thyr.
ash: fraxin-, nowhere else in‘woods’ of V’s bucolic range: cf. [1.5, n. 148] & p.12; cf. SocMem & LtTrag ‘ash fixed fierce
forced into bones’ (Accius 4 Morel) ≈ spear (metonym); cf. GrEp ‘ash of Péleus’ ≈ ‘spear of Achilles’ (Il. 21.162).
most lovely: pulchr-, also Ægle [6.21], but beauty elsewhere in book described as‘well-formed’ [7.55, 38, with note]; cf. LtEp
pulchr-, ‘lovely, fine, choice’ Ennius (8 occurrences), Lucretius (6 times); in V, Georgics. (4), Æneid (44).
pine: that longed for absent Ti [1.38]); ‘pine’ ≈ ship (by metonymy) to cease commerce [4.38]; ‘talking’ in Arcadia [8.22] & cf.
promised dedication of pipe on sacred pine, sc. to Arcadian Pan [7.24].
fir: abies, nowhere else in the Bucolics, although V uses ‘fir’ for warships & ribs of the Trojan horse & as a deadly spear, like
ash (Ge. 2.68; Æn. 2.16; 5.663; 11.667); cf. LtEp trees cut down in primeval heroic woods (Ennius, Annals 175-79 Skutsch:
cf. Il. 23.114-20) include fir, ash, pine, holm-oak & the grove entire echoed, cf. [6.11], [10.8]; cf. holm [7.1], [6.54], [9.15] &
oak [1.17], [4.30], [6.28], [7.13], [8.53].
Lycidas: in Greek, ‘Wolfson’, with Arcadian links (p. 24): cf. wolf’s proverbial rapacity [7.59, with note]; cf. GrBep name of
picturesque goatherd & singer, Muses’ familiar who gives authorizing gift of staff (id. 7).
Reckoning. [vi/VI – 61-68] With a delicate downward modulation, V shifts Phyllis from cause of green for entire grove to preference
for one shrub, linked to name of singer (coryl- ≈ Cory-), which subtly varies stronger insistence on etymology (Phyll- ≈ ‘green’).V then
makes Thyr force trees from heroic range onto bucolic‘woods’ & posit human herdsman as superior to nature. As in prior priamels, V
thus portrays Thyr as reaching beyond the bucolic range.
474
475
[69-70 MEL] Vain (vatic) force defeated; measured manner prized (2)
V draws further down the residue of his vatic strain & promotes his artfully measured strain to function as the predominant &
framing thread as he proceeds to fill out his growing Arcadian myth.
66
VIII
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
& 2), but if anything even more detached – since now imagined as looking back to a first moment &
forward to a definitive departure from the bucolic range to reach for the highest range.
STORY:
work in the bucolic range was started by the authority of a distant figure, whose heroic deeds he
hopes some day to tell (cf. the ambitions framer in ecl. 4) – ambition that will make him abandon
the bucolic range.
CRAFT:
singer with sense of beginning & ending the present book & aim to move beyond it to the highest
range identified as heroic & tragic.
DAMON, young goatherd & keeper of orchard.
STORY:
tragic – suicide for love of Nysa as she marries Mopsus.
CRAFT:
Arcadian verses, traced to Pan as making music in Arcadia & first maker of the pipe from reeds
(cf. ecl. 2, where also “first” in time but no mention of Arcadia as the place).
ALPHESIBŒ́US, reporter of powerful singing by Pierians, like Títyrus (ecl. 6).
STORY REPORTED:
CRAFT:
woman employs magic to draw down her beloved from city.
songs like a seer’s (vates) – spells with power to enchant & charm.
PIERIANS, Muses called to enable report of powerful singing (cf. ecll. 6 & 3).
Amarýllis, maid-servant called to aid erotic magic (cf. ecll. 3, 2 & 1).
Barkin, the dog that signals the return from the city of Daphnis [dog’s name in Greek Hylax means ‘one that
barks’]: a bark of recognition, like old hound Argos recognizing his long absent master, Odysseus.
Daphnis, beloved drawn by powerful songs back from city.
Evening, aka Greek Hesperus & Latin Vesper, also by metonymy, Evening Star (cf. ecl. 6 close).
Mad Mountain, translating Greek Mǽnalus, which contains root meaning ‘mad’ – a main landmark of Arcadia.
Morning Star, sc. Lucifer, ‘Bringer of Light’.
Mœris, seer-singer – bard – here with songs as spells practicing black-magical powers.
SCENE
From Rome (?) FRAMER reports on bucolic scenes – vast nature, then focused on early morning with dewy grass
& on night enclosed in house – all the while himself looking beyond & planning to move to higher range.
CUES
Urgent, brief repeated rhythms in music & while player of Melibœ́us declares the frame. Then player of Córydon
becomes DAMON & defeated vatic Thyrsis relays the magical spells of ALPHESIBŒ́US.
FR476 The muse of grazers – Damon & Alphésibœ́us, 477
1
at whose challenge match a young cow quite forgetting
forage stared & by whose song were lynxes stunned
while streams themselves, changed, put their rushing course to rest:
the muse we’re going to declare of Damon & Alphésibœ́us.
5
You for me – if now you pass Timavo’s rocks478
6
476
[1-16] Siting, Citing, Sighting: pushing bucolic to tragic heights & close (16)
477
[1-5] Ominous escalation: bucolic match amplified into clash of contrasting visions that stuns into silence with more than Orphic
power both tame & wild animals as well inanimate nature: Coleman, Eclogues, 228.
muse: sc. ‘music’ by metonymy: cf. like metonymy in other metapoetic moments – [1.2]; [3.60, 84]; [6.12].
stared: sc. in wonder, marveled: cf. strong reactions to uncommon sights], [1.11, 36]; [5.56]; [6.61]; nature’s standstill –
cattle neither eat nor drink when Daphnis dead [5.25-26]; cf. LtEp ‘The sun, too, remembers to put its endless runs to rest’
(Calvus, Io); cf. GrEp Orpheus charmed rocks & rivers by songs (Arg. 1.26-27, p. 97).
challenge: sc. bucolic exchange – [7.16]; [5.15]; [4.58]; [3.31] – yet reduced to raw difference with no imagined time or place,
unlike [7.1-20]:‘verse’ at dawn & ‘songs’ at night – polar opposites in V’s mind, though represented with nearly identical patterns of stanzas & lines.
478
[6-13] FRAMER – despite bucolic spectacle – looks back to beginning & forward to ending the whole bucolic venture.
VIII
67
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
or skim the shore beside Illyria’s plain – oh, ever479
will it be that day when I declare your deeds?480
Oh, ever, that I’d relay throughout the globe entire481
those songs of you though worthy only tragic boots?482
From you these present songs first took, for you they’ll cease.483
Take in what your bidding led to & let this ivy creep484
486
around your brow among the laurel victory wreaths.485
13
Cold shade of night had scarcely left the sky
14
when dew on tender forage is dearest to the herd:
Thus Damon led – inclining on a polished olive staff:
487
FR{DA
488
Morning Star, be born & come, push day to help,
while I complain – by unworthy love of yoke-mate Nysa
16
17
(a)
caught – & still to gods in my last hour I speak,
although with them as witness I have nothing gained.
20
Take up Mad Mountain verses, my bone flute, take up.489
Mad Mountain always has its rustling grove & talking490
22
———————————————
Timavo: river flowing into top of the long, narrow Adriatic sea that separates Italy from its neighbor to the east – ancient
Illyria (Yugoslavia, Albania): distant geography locates Caesar on campaign.
479
[7] skim: literally, pick & read the shore: navigation compared to picking out sense from a text – [2.18].
480
[8] declare your deeds: echoes ambition to compose epos in the highest range, sc. civic-heroic-mythic], [4.54 ].
481
[9] globe entire: recalls reach of mythic frame – [3.40] & [1.66] – no longer accessible from bucolic range..
482
[10] tragic boots: sc. tragedy (by metonomy), standing for heroic range now beyond ordinary bucolic reach, cf. [7.32].
483
[11] first: points back to book’s start with authority (poetic etiology) for framing myth – ‘first’ [1.44] – that figures too in mythic
growth – ‘our Muses first from Jove’ [3.60] & ‘of Jove great increment’ [4.49]; cf. GrBep ‘Zeus first & last ...Ptolemy among
first’ (id. 17.1-4: priamel – mortal ruler ≈ divine ruler); cf. GrEp ‘end & begin with you’ (Il. 9.96-97: Nestor to Agamémnon).
‘First’ [6.1] also marked book’s ‘first’ phase [ecll.1-3] from fuller reach [ecll. 4-5]. Now ‘first’ evokes the frame of heroic
myth around Octavian & makes it a pretext for finishing the present bucolic project & moving on to higher ranges of epos.
484
[12] bidding: speaking with authority to cause to do or make – [6.9], [5.15], [4.33].
ivy, claimed by Thyr [7.38], comes with Golden Age [4.19], artful ornament [3.38].
485
[13] laurel: emblematic of Apollo a deity linked with Octavian – [7.62, 64], [6.83], [3.63] & n. 23, p. 19.
486
[14-16] Times without precedent for song in this book – early morning but then dead of night in the second sequence.
For upright posture with staff, cf. implicit postures of Mel [1.1] & [7.1] – coming into the bucolic range & poised to go somewhere else: cf. GrBep goatherd leans on pine to sing, before suicide in despair of love (id. 3.38; cf. other links with goatherd
Mel [1.77]); Cyclops serenaded Galateia from dawn to dusk while sitting on the shore (id. 11.12-15).
487
[17-61] Damon’s verses: tragic story of early love at first sight betrayed, leading to despair & suicide (45)
488
[17-20/a4] Dawn star – planet Venus in the east, Lucifer, ‘Light bringer’, but in the west at evening Hesperus], [6.86]; [10.77] –
underlines exceptional theme of dawn that opens bucolic song: cf. more usual evening as closure], [1.83]; [2.67]; [6.86].
push: ordinary bucolic work here metaphoric for desire to ‘herd’ day itself; cf. ‘herding anxious’ [1.13 with note]/
by unworthy love ... caught: like ideal reader ‘caught by love’ [6.14].
yoke mate: georgic metaphor for marriage partner, cf. ‘yoke’ [2.48, n. 217], [3.26, n. 239] – ‘wife’, not that was but that was
hoped for (so Servius).
last hour: extreme moment – adds to hints that V here pushes bucolic range to extremes & toward its close: ‘extreme’ three
times in this eclogue, then at [10.1], but nowhere else in book.
489
[21] Take up: metaphoric from hand to mouth, cf. [6.26], [5. 10, 12], [4.12, 60], [3.58 with note 253]. (x 8 + 1)
Mad Mountain: Mǽnalus – recalls Greek mainomai, ‘be insane – in battle, in drinking, in love’ : cf. GrBep 'outright madness'
of Cyclops in love (id. 11.11, cf. id. 10.31): bad omens for lover here.
bone: tibia, ‘long bone of leg’ made into a flute. Traffic in body parts smacks of magic.
verses: as Muses wished to recall [7.18]; also recollective of previous turns [6.1]; cf. GrBep ‘Begin, dear Muses, the oxherd
song’ (id. 1.64).
Reckoning. This refrain recalls a defining text of Th’s bucolic, with significant changes: where Th’s ‘oxherd song’ suited the Sicilian
oxherd Daphnis, V.’s ‘Mad Mountain verse’ adds to his growing array of Arcadian motifs, building on the bold blend [7.1-20] that
located Arcadians on the arty banks of Mincius & affirmed restrained poetics over the forceful Thrysis – name also in Th for shepherd
that sang ‘oxherd song’ (id. 1). With ‘Mad Mountain verse’ V claims direct access to Pan’s homeland, while Th’s Daphnis had to call
Pan to come from Arcadian Mainalos or Lykaios to take back the pipe (id. 1.123-130, p.96).
490
[22-24/b3] amplifying legend implicit in Th that Pan invented the pipe: cf. ‘Pan first’ [2.32]; cf. GrBep Daphnis calling Pan to
come for pipe – further step in transforming bucolic range from Sicilian (Theocritean) to Arcadian (Virgilian).
68
VIII
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
pines: it always listens to the grazers’ loves
(b)
& Pan, who first forced suffered art on artless reeds.
24
Take up Mad Mountain verses, my bone flute, take up.
To Mopsus Nysa’s given: lovers, what should we hope?491
26
Let gryphon now be yoked with horse & bashful doe
(c)
arrive in after time at cups to drink with dogs.
Fresh torches, Mopsus, cut; for you a wife is drawn.
As married sprinkle nuts: Evening for you leaves Œta.
30
Take up Mad Mountain verses, my bone flute, take up.
O yoked with a worthy man, while you look down on all492
32
& while in hate you hold my pipe & nanny goats
(d)
& shaggy eyebrows & my freshly sprouting beard,
nor trust that any god gives care to mortal things.
35
Take up Mad Mountain verses, my bone flute, take up.
Inside our croft I saw you (I it was that drew you) –493
37
little girl with mother – picking dewy apples.
(e)
One year after eleven then at last had got me –
I at last could really touch from earth the brittle boughs:
I saw, I perished – luckless ranging took me off.
41
Take up Mad Mountain verses, my bone flute, take up.
What sort Love is I now know: birth to him on flinty494
43
whetstones dole out either Tmaros or Rhodópe
(f)
or last Garamántes – a boy of not our kind or blood.
45
Take up Mad Mountain verses, my bone flute, take up.
Savage Love a mother taught with her own children’s495
47
blood to smear her hands. You, mother, too, were cruel.
(g)
———————————————
rustling grove: enlarges image of Arcadia using motifs established separately as important in the second half book: cf. ‘rustling’ oak & pipe [7.1, 24], ‘grove’ [6.11, ‘all’, 56, 72]; [7.59 ‘all’].
491
[26-30/c5] Mopsus: now used as type of ambitious & victorious lover, cf. ambitious singer [ecl. 5]; cf. Gr&LtEp victorious seer
(Euphorion on Grynia’s Grove, translated by Gallus); the woman is ‘drawn for him’, i.e. led to him as his bride.
Sprinkle nuts, i.e. scatter them as gifts to onlookers: cf. SocMem Roman wedding custom (Catul. 61.121-27).
Evening leaves Œta: mountain in Greece, standing for East (as in Catull. 62.1-7, also a marriage poem).
Reckoning. Priamel with disappointment as the point (climax) of set of unnatural events: cf. [1.59-63].
492
[32-35/d4] Dam complains that Nysa hates his property, pipe, & visage: cf. Cor’s despair at beloved’s scorn [ecl. 2 passim]; cf.
GrBep shaggy brow of Cyclops (id. 11.31).
Reckoning. Priamel – her hate (point) of his salient qualities & properties.
493
[37-41/e5] Love at first sight & fatal when Nysa visited his orchard with her mother: cf. GrBep Cyclops fell for Galateia, who came
from the sea with his mother, also a sea nymph (id. 11.25-27: Clausen 249, especially helpful); also city girl, Simaítha, who
saw, went crazy & caught fire (id. 2.82]; & Atalánta cited by suicidal goatherd as a mythic parallel for falling in love (id.
3.41-42): cf. other links with his figure [8.14-16]; cf. GrEp ‘Zeus saw & as he saw love enclosed his mind’ (Il. 14.293-94:
Gow 51, citing other examples from bucolic poetry).
494
[43-45/f3] Shift from particular case to generic type – love not of ordinary birth: cf. GrBep feckless goatherd denounces cruel love
as suckled by a lioness & reared in woods (id. 3.15-16).
Tmaros in western Greece (Epirus) & Rhodópe to north, cf. [6.30, n. 393] – Orphic haunt. Garamántes: tribe of eastern
Sahara desert, north Africans.
495
[47-50/g4] Savage love a mother:sc.tragic love made Medéa kill her sons; cf. teaching & taught [1.5], [5.87]; cf. SocMem &
LtTrag Medéa ‘wounded by savage love’ (Ennius, Medéa exul 254 Vahlen).
Uncurbed ... cruel: both she & he at fault: both adjectives used as predicates – attributing qualities to love & to Medéa – so
explained by the good La Cerda, who credits Nannius: Ludovico della Cerda, Bucolica et Georgica (Horace Cardon: Lyon
1619] praising Petrus Nannius, In Virgilii Bucolica commentaria (Th. Langius, Basel 1559). Failure to recognize predication
of both adjectives in Clausen 252.
Reckoning. Manner vatic, like a riddle or jingle: cf. vatic style at [3.104-07], [4.58-59].
VIII
69
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
Cruel was mother more? Or more uncurbed that boy?
That boy was uncurbed; you, mother, too, were cruel.
50
Take up Mad Mountain verses, my bone flute, take up.
Now let wolf flee willingly even sheep, let hardened496
52
oaks bear golden apples, alder with narcissus
(h)
flower, let tamarisks from their bark fat amber sweat,
& let owls challenge swans, let Títyrus Orpheus be,
Orpheus in the woods, Arion among dolphins.
56
Take up Mad Mountain verses, my bone flute, take up.
Let all (if you will) become mid-sea! Fare well you woodlands!497
58
Headlong down into waves from a soaring hilltop’s lookout
(i)
I’ll be borne! Have this last gift of one that dies.
60
Turn off, my flute of bone, Mad Mountain verse, turn off.
498
FR These Damon. You, what Alphesibœ́us echoed back,499
declare, Piérian Muses: not all can we all.
500
FR{PI{AL
63
501
Bring water out & with soft cloth these offerings bind,
& fatty boughs & manly incense set on fire,
64
(A)
so I with magic rites can try to turn my mate’s
not yet crazed senses: nothing missing here but songs.
Draw from the city home, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
Songs can even from the sky draw down the moon;503
67
502
69
496
[52-56/h5] Let world turn upside down, impossibilities (adynata) occur in nature & poetics – climactic point of priamel:
oaks ... golden apples: cf. golden apples given [3.71], oaks sweat honey in Golden Age [4.30].
tamarisks ... amber: cf. tamarisks represent bucolic range [6.10]; [4.2].
Títyrus ... Orpheus reduces Ti to status of simple rustic, separated from Orphic powers evoked earlier [ecll. 1-6]: cf. GrBep
dying Daphnis makes his death the occasion for unnatural miracles (id. 1.131-136).
497
[58-60/i3] Let all become mid-sea!: sc., ‘get flooded’ (as in the primordial time of Pyrrha [6.41] & Deucalion) – extreme variant &
reduction of a motif that marked expansion of the new mythic frame in the first halfbook: cf. ‘all’ pasture of Ti [1.47]; ‘all
(world) full of Jove [3.60]; ‘all’ cosmos [4.52] & [6.34]; ‘all’ nature [7.55]; cf. GrBep feckless goatherd only threatened to
leap into the sea (id. 3.25-26], fell silent, imagined himself as prey to wolves.
last gift: cf. ‘last hour’ & ‘last Garamantes’ [8. 19, 44], but then ‘last chore’ [10.1].
498
[62-63] FRAMER bridges & contrasts ‘verses’ with ‘songs’ (2)
499
Appeal to Muses creates illusion that FRAMER could not produce a usual bucolic exchange [7.5].
echo back: echoes oracle [1.44, with note]; cf. [10.8].
Pierian Muses: to supply female voice & power of magical spells: cf. appeals to them for extra reach [6.13] & [3.85, n . 267].
not all can we all: gnomic form of speech, characteristic of mime & oracular, vatic style (cf. n. 39): modest like the poetics of
Cor [7.23] & revised program for second halfbook [6.3-5], but commentators find the notion common also in tragedy & epic:
cf. ‘not please all’ [4.2].
500
[64-109] What the Pierians supply: Nocturnal incantation by a betrayed lover & her serving girl (45)
501
[64-67/A4] Water, fire, offerings – rites to create mad love so the ‘songs’ needed are spells: cf. ‘offerings’ of Ti for his god [1.43],
‘offerings’ for Daphnis when the bucolic hero was used for political allegory [5.66]: cf. GrBe incantations by Simaítha, who
lives on the city’s edge, to get Delphis (urban doublet of Daphnis) back into her bed (id. 2).
502
[68] Songs: just defined as charms, incantations, magical spells. (1x8 +1)
draw: basic verb for bucolic work, cf. Mel with difficulty ‘draws’ goat [1.13]; Pollio herding negotiations to end civil war
[4.13]; Ti’s song ‘drawn down’ [6.5]; trees ‘drawn’ from hills [6.71]: cf. GrBe ‘that man of mine to my house’ (id. 2.17).
Daphnis: effort to get this figure back to bucolic register after its expansion into political allegory & new framing myth [ecl. 5],
already reduced to more closely bucolic measure [7.1-20] but here still more..
from the city home: double metonymy, ‘city’ standing for the heroic-civic-ideological range of new mythic frame [ecl. 5},
‘home’ for bucolic range in its simpler pre-Roman (Theocritean) scope.
503
[69-71/B3] Examples of black magic – song ‘drawing down’ the moon: cf. ‘draw’ [8.68, with note]; cf. SocMem ‘The Marsian
with his spell bursts snakes apart’ (Lucilius 575-76 Marx); cf. GrCom ‘Hire a Thessalian hag to draw down the moon & lock
her up in a box’ plots the debtor, since without the moon to measure months, no interest would be owed (Aristophanes, Clouds
749-50] – thus not ‘always a love charm’ despite some recent commentary.
70
VIII
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
with songs could Circe change to pigs Ulysses’ crew;
(B)
at sung enchantments chilly snakes in meadows burst.
71
Draw from the city home, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
At first three each for you these strings in threefold hue504
diverse I put around & thrice your image round
73
(C)
these offerings draw: uneven counts delight the god.
With three knots plait, Amarýllis, each three hues; now plait,
Amarýllis, & declare “I Venus’ shackles plait.”
77
Draw from the city home, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
As this mud grows hard & as this wax melts down505
by one & the same fire, so let Daphnis by our love.
79
(D)
Sprinkle meal & brittle laurels fire with pitch.
Evil Daphnis burns me, I this laurel at Daphnis.
82
Draw from the city home, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
Let Daphnis love as much as when a heifer tired506
84
through groves & lofty glades her bullock searching
(E)
crumples near a water’s rill on verdant marram,
lost – forgetful now to cede to tardy night –
such love keep him & I not care that it be cured.
88
Draw from the city home, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
These spoils he faithless left me once-upon-a-time,507
90
his own dear pledge, which I now, Earth, for you set down
(F)
upon the sill itself: these pledges Daphnis owe me.
92
Draw from the city home, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
Himself to me this forage & these venoms skimmed508
94
from Sealand Mœris gave: at Sealand most they grow.
(G)
Mœris I’ve often seen with these become a wolf
& set himself down in woods & stir from sepulchers souls,
besides draw planted crops across from another’s field.
98
Draw from the city home, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
———————————————
Ulysses’ crew: also harassed by Scylla [6.76].
snakes: an evil signaled along with other proverbial lore in vatic style [3.80], to vanish with Golden Age [4.24].
burst: effect also of vatic vehemence of Thyr [7.26].
504
[73-77/C5] Ritual by threes in linguistic changes – three each’, ‘three-fold’ (sc. ‘triple’), ‘three’; verb ‘plait’ three times: cf.
‘Shackles for what do you plait’ [6.23]; cf. GrBep thrice & three in superstition – ‘a hag taught me to spit thrice into my
bosom’ (id. 6.39-40], cf. ‘thrice pour & utter’ (id. 2.43).
505
[79-82/D4] Homeopathic magic – as same fire both hardens mud & melts wax, so may our charms melt Daphnis (point of priamel);
then, since ‘laurel’ is Latin for Greek daphne, burn ‘laurel’ to make Daphnis burn with love for me: cf. felt etymology of
Phyllis ≈ ‘verdant, green’ [7.59] – hints of Orphic & etymological powers in language.
506
[84-88/E5] May Daphnis love as painfully as a heifer would a bullock: cf. Pasiphaë ranging in love for a bull [6.52]; Cor ‘lost’ in
erotic despair [2.59]; cf. LtEp ‘Lost she forget to give in to late night’ – of a doe pursued by a dog, in an epic on the death of
Caesar by Varius (Macrobius, Saturnalia 6.2.20]; cow searching desperately meadows, groves, streams for her calf that was
taken to be sacrificed (Lucr. 2.355-65]; cf. LtLyr ‘lost in love’ (Catull. 45.3).
507
[90-92/E3] Souvenirs (clothing?) left behind, now interpreted in a legal metaphor as a deposit to be kept safe by the guarantor
(earth) to guarantee their owner’s return (Coleman 249-50]; cf. GrBep Simaítha plucked the fringe of Delphis’ garment &
threw it into the fire (id. 2.53-54]: no hint of the Roman legal metaphor there, but a rich tradition of making a garment, hair,
or nails stand in (by metonymy) for a person (Gow 45).
508
[94-98/G5] Poisons from Medea’s land picked by Mœris – name not in Th & introduced as a wizard, which is an extreme form of
bard (vates), which he will be called [9.32-34]: cf. Medea as tragic murderess [8.47-50/g).
draw crops across: rural magic expressly barred by archaic Roman law.
rouse souls: cf. GrEp Odysseus gets the dead to speak (Od. 11.34-37] .
ECLOGUES
VIII & IX
71
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Bear embers, Amarýllis, out & cast in a running stream509
100
beyond your head & don’t look back! With these I’ll get
(H)
at Daphnis. He for gods cares nothing, nothing for songs.
102
Draw from the city home, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
“Look! on its own the ember itself, before I can bear510
104
it out, has snatched the offerings with flickering flames. Be it good!”
(I)
For sure there’s something there & Barkin barks on the sill.
Do we trust? Or for themselves do lovers themselves feign dreams?
Spare my songs, now Daphnis comes from the city, spare.
107
511
108
NINTH
CHARACTERS [SPEAKING / Named Only or Background / <Recalled in bits of old song>]
LYCIDAS, youngster energetic & enamored of song, but a herdsman? (root of name: lyk- ‘wolf’ Arcadian totem).
STORY:
hints of once competing for love of Amarýllis & loving song.
CRAFT:
made ‘poet’ by Piérian Muses & by local yokels declared a bard (vates) – ambitious title that he
rejects – unlike Thyrsis [ecl. 7].
MŒRIS, goatherd elderly & forgetful.
STORY:
defeated & gloomy at loss of familiar countryside.
CRAFT:
made poet by Piérian Muses & also declared a bard (but a base variety of bard, magician &
wizard) by fellow grazers – expected to praise Thyrsis [7.27].
MENALCAS, absent master singer.
STORY:
defeated & gloomy, driven from familiar countryside.
CRAFT:
once powerful singer-seer & bard.
NEW COMER–SQUATTER, new term for the force called godless soldier [1.70].
<Amarýllis, beloved by LYCIDAS & courted once upon a time by MENALCAS.>
<Caesar, Julius – named openly & called Dionean – epithet encoding his clan’s mythic genealogy: Dione as
509
[100-02/H3] peak of despair – no hope to get at Daphnis or change love: cf. ‘step up to’ [4.48].
step to & throw on shackles: in retrospect hints at magical overtone also in binding of Silénus [6.18].
nothing care: erotic desperation, cf. ‘Care you nothing for my songs?[2.6].
510
[104-08/I4] Look: evokes sudden sight of ember bursting into flames – hint of success by the spells: cf. dramatic imperatives –
look! look! – cues for gestures as if to sights crucial to argument & structure [2.66]; [4.50, 52]; [5.6]; [7.8].
Lovers themselves feign dreams?: another gnomic formula in style of mime: cf. ‘not all’ [8.63]; cf. SocMem ‘What he suspects
the lover dreams, although awake’ (Publilius Syrus 16 – mime fragment) – the pithy style of mime, noted first by Ursinus &
later repeated without credit; cf. LtEp ‘Are not seers (vates) able to feign for you many dreams that subvert the rational in life
& upset with fear your fortunes all?’ (Lucr. 1.104-06]; cf. SocMem – LtTrag ‘superstitious seers & impudent prophets –
either lacking art or mad or driven by need, who ignorant of their own path, show others the way’ (Ennius, Telamon 319-321).
Reckoning. V emphasizes contrast between Arcadian ‘verse’ & ‘songs’ in Sicilian (Theocritean) style, yet makes the two panels with
remarkable similarity in form & even theme – from the plot of tragic separation to the fleeting hint of love rejoined.His reuse in
extreme terms of prior themes prepares for the book’s closure that the FRAMER foretold.
In another sign of closure, V again evokes a critique of fiction by Lucretius, but with a difference. At the book’s first
moment [1.2] he alluded to Lucretius’ dismissal of wild wood music & Pan as rustic fictions, but he turned them into leading threads of
new framing myth.Now, however, V recalls how Lucretius attacked the deceptive fictions of seers (vates) & says nothing to mitigate the
critique. It hangs resonating between the texts, leaving us to realize the illusory & fictive quality of the supposed return of Daphnis
from the higher range & to focus on the negative values linked in the popular mind with seers, despite the positive status implied in
ecll. 4 & 5, altered [ecl. 6] & undercut with the defeat of Thyr [ecl. 7].
511
[108] Daphnis comes: so ‘songs’ work – realize the power encoded in the Orphic myth: charms, vatic spells, imagined working
where Arcadian ‘verses’ only retell a tragic denouement. Yet the Lucretian attack on fiction resonates. Irony thrives.
72
IX
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
mother (by Jove) of Venus, who was mother (by the Trojan prince Anchíses) of Ænéas, who was father (by
ECLOGUE
Creusa) of Iulus – to whom was traced the name Julian. Thus here Julius Caesar identified with clan
mythology (cf. pp.99-100 ) apart from new disguise in bucolic allegory [ecl. 5] as...>
<Daphnis, elevated [ecl. 5] to the status of new god of farmers (georgic range) & herdsmen (bucolic range) in
allegory of Caesar dead & deified, but here drawn down to status of farm hand – cf. variations on Daphnis
& related motifs through ecll. 8, 7, 5, 3, 2, 1; idd. 1, 6, 7 & p. 96.>
<Galatéa, nymph not charmed by singer & songs – cf. versions in ecll. 7, 3, & 1; idd. 6, 11.>
<Varus, general [ecl. 6] who might have had power to avert seizure of property from citizen-landowners like
Melibœ́us [cf. ecll. 7, 3, 1].>
Varius & Cinna, singer-seers – bards – the rank assigned Mœris & not claimed by LYCIDAS.
SCENE
Country road stretches across flat land past tomb towards city from low hills left behind where skeletal beeches
loom on property lost to new squatter who has taken the land & threatened even life.
CUES
Plodding rhythm & lugubrious voicing, skirl of bagpipes, while the actor that played DAMON approaches from
off-stage in the role of LÝCIDAS, sizes up the situation with evident astonishment, & sharply queries the actor who
has just finished the energetic songs drawing Daphnis from the city but now appears headed for the city himself.
Their dialogue unfolds in fits & starts, now moving left & back, now halting to remember bits of song.
LYC512 Where do your feet draw, Mœris? Where the road does, to the city?513
MŒ
514
515
O Lýcidas, alive we’ve come to what we never feared,
1
2
516
that some new-comer – squatter on our little field –
512
[1] Querulous Voice – Can this be flight from bucolic range to civic range? (1)
Alarm if not just wonder – vivid emotion – expressed in surface drama warns us to consider movement to the city as strange, perhaps ominous, from the viewpoint of an ordinary herdsman in the bucolic range. Sudden movement ‘to the city’ reversing the
emphatically forced movement ‘from the city’ just enacted [ecl. 8] hints at V’s underlying program – to complete here in this
eclogue his on-going move [ecll. 6-8] away from the romanized bucolic range of the first five eclogues in order to ready his
final move in the tenth eclogue to his new Arcadian version of bucolic myth.
513
[1] Where ... to...?: defines plot as action of moving out – a displacement like others that define or discriminate; cf. moving from
the bucolic range [8.13, 58, 108]; from georgic work to bucolic play [7.16]; from prologue to story [6.13]; from shade to
grotto [5.1-20]; from bucolic beech to Rome & back [Ti, 1], from georgic & civic order into exile (Mel, 1].
your feet draw: folksy turn of phrase in style of mime – wry humor – body’s lowest part rules the rest (trope: part for whole –
synechdoche, a species of metonymy): cf. GrBep ‘Where do you drag your feet’ – query by goatherd to city poet moving from
city to country (id. 7.21, p. 5);‘wherever her feet drove her’ – girl slapped by old lover flees to new one (id. 14.42); cf. GrEp
‘Him as he spoke his feet bore off’ (Il. 15.404): Patroclus rushing to go plead with Achilles – remarked by Victorius, reported
by Germanus 1575; but also Antílochus leaving battle to report Patroclus’ death (Il. 17.700]; Thetis off to get arms for
Achilles from Hephaistos (Il. 18.148] – examples from Bruce Heiden, who notes that all involve change of scene & purposeful
haste, as Paris too after making love with Helen (Il. 6.514).
Mœris: name prompts comparison with the wizard-vates able to draw off planted crops from fields [8.96-98].
to the city?: counters ‘draw from city’ [8.68 etc]; cf. GrBep creeping ‘from the city’ to the country encounter that authorizes
Theocritean bucolic range (id. 7.2); cf. GrPhil.Socrates broaches dialogue with query to handsome boy & invites talk as they
walk (Phaedr. 227A, Symp. 173 B, noted by Clausen 269).
514
[2-29] Evoking Virgil’s romanized bucolic range [ecll. 1-5] & giving reasons why it must be left behind (5: 4/6; {6:3}/{1:3})
515
[2-6] Retreat & loss blamed on two causes – a specific local agent & a vaguely general ‘chance’ (5)
[2] Lycidas: name brings to mind the absent lover courted by Thyr by naming trees with heroic links [7.67], but specifically too
Lykidas, the odoriferous goatherd who challenged a bucolic poet’s move from city to country & authenticated his song: a myth
of origin & authority – etiology – for the Theocritean bucolic range (id. 7, p. 5). Yet the name’s root meaning, ‘Wolfson’,
also echoes old Arcadian myths, thus it can work in V’s mind as a link or bridge between his Theocritean & Arcadian frames.
516
[3] new-comer – squatter: outsider who takes control in fact whether legally or not (Coleman 256: helpful also in following
notes). To ‘possess’ is etymologically to ‘sit first or before’ (prot+sed-/sess-): more legalistic & local, modulated from the
broadly polemical ‘godless soldier, barbarian’ [1.70].
our little field – diminutive, affectionate form: cf. ‘paltry rooflet’s peak’ [1.68-69]; also vociferous ‘distressed so far | all over
IX
73
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
declare: “This countryside is mine. Old farmers, out.”517
To him these kids (may it turn out not well!) we send – 518
6
519
defeated, gloomy now, since chance turns over all.
520
LYC
For sure I’d heard, that where the slopes themselves take on521
7
to draw downhill & send a yoke with soft incline522
as far as water & beeches – old, their tops now broken –523
MŒ
all of it your Menálcas had kept safe with songs.524
10
You’d heard & rumor was. But, Lýcidas, our songs have strength
11
amidst Mars’ arms as much as at Dodóna (they
declare) do doves of Jove, whenever his eagles come.525
In fact, had not a raven leftwards from a hollow526~
———————————————
fields’ [1.11-12]; cf. LtEp early man tried to cultivate ‘sweet little field’ & drove the (bucolic) woods up hillsides to make way
for (georgic) plantings (Lucr. 5.1367-71]: cf. ‘lands sweet to plow’ lost to Mel [1.3] & tissue of relatedness between V’s new
bucolic-georgic range & Lucretius’ images of primitive & ideal human culture [1.1-10, with notes].
517
[4] “This countryside is mine”: at last V represents the brutal reality of change in the Italian countryside, which he muffled at
the start in order to emphasize the positive message – ‘as before’ [1.45], which suited Caesarian propaganda.
“old farmers, out!”: renames the propertied class of Mel not merely ‘citizens’ [1.72] but ‘farmers’ (georgic range). Such
words with swords from the godless soldier could be imagined driving Mel into exile [ecl. 1], where V represented only the
positive oracle of the god.
518
[5] these kids: for sacrifice carried by old cultivators now merely tenants to new landlord; cf. ‘victim for market’ [1.33]; ‘twin
kids – troop’s lost hope’ [1.15], but also sacrifices owed Rome [1.7-8, 43] & climactic sacrifices to new bucolic-georgic god
capping first half book [5.65-80]; ‘kids’ a recurring & thus a defining motif for the bucolic range [7.9]; [3.33]; [2.30].
well may it not turn: common imprecation, curse in vatic style, adds to profile of Mœris as wizard-vates (n. 513).
519
[6] defeated, gloomy: cf. defeats in song [4.59], [7.69] & ‘gloomy’, baleful sorts [2.14], [3.80], [6.7], [10.31].
chance turns: ‘bad luck’ blamed as decisive force – politically neutral, unlike the effective causes cited at the book’s start: the
godless barbarian soldier mentioned as negative in the country [1.70] & that God portrayed as positive at Rome [1.6, 44-45].
all: always evokes widest context of any specific moment, so a good guide to scope expanding & contracting through the book:
cf. ‘not all can we all’ [8.62-63, with note]; nature [7.55]; cosmos [6.34]; whole song [6.82]; cosmos [4.52]; nature [3.5560] & pasture = rocky little croft [1.48] – index to rise & fall of mythic frame.
Reckoning. [2-6] V replaces the positive oracle at Rome & it’s conservative message – ‘as before but more’ – with a brutal negative in
the fields – old order out, new rule.V masks the power at Rome that forces change by blaming ‘chance’ – ideologically neutral – as the
cause that disrupts property & tradition. He shifts too from the celebratory terms of grateful sacrifice & yearly ritual to the pathetic
picture of offering ‘kids’ – a distant echo of loss by Mel.
Moves between the bucolic range & higher thematic ranges provide causal myths for the bucolic range, beginning with
Ti’s trip to Rome, which authorized & inaugurated the vatic developments of the first half book, V here completes his progressive &
gradual retreat [ecll. 6, 7, 8] from that Roman & vatic scope by evoking defeat & withdrawal ‘to the city’ [9.1].
520
[7-16] The romanized bucolic range & its undoing: its representative figure & his ill-fate (4/6)
521
[7] For sure I’d heard: hearsay, gossip – folksy turn with metapoetic irony: V imagines Th’s defining goatherd Lykidas (p.5 )
hearing about the Romanized bucolic-georgic range [ecll. 1-5]: a mind tickling cognitive blend!
slopes ... draw down: colles-, ‘hills’, also for vineyards [7.58] & [9.49, a georgic prequel], otherwise only in Ge. & Æn.
522
[8] yoke – ridge joining two points (sc. ‘yoking’ like oxen, a georgic metaphor), cf. [5.76], [10.11], so joining oxen [2.66],
[4.41], flowers [2.48, with note].
soft incline: also with ‘yokes’ of Mount Parnassus (rising over Apollo’s oracle at Delphi:Ge. 2.291-94).
523
[9] as far as water: cf. ‘Mincius’ with its broad, pond-like stretches & reedy banks [7.12], but sea shore [2.26] & [9.39] &
recurrent springs & sea shore of Theocritus.
beeches – old ... broken: cf. ‘beech’ as index to new mythic frame in first half book (p. 24, nn. 144, 196, 242, & 335).
524
[10] all – a further poignant reduction of V’s once expansive bucolic-georgic range: cf. ‘all’ [9.5, n.519].
your Menálcas: surprise & a shock of recognition as ‘your’ links Mœr the defeated & displaced vates to Men & thus to the vatic
poetics of the Romano-Theocritean mythic frame [ecll. 1-5].
saved by songs: refers to the creation of the mythic frame.
525
[13] doves of Jove: fleeing his eagles – also Jove’s birds, but symbolic eagles topped the banners carried by Roman legions, that
could impose possession on Mantuan territory (Coleman 159, Clausen 271-72).
526
[14] raven leftwards: lore typical of a seer (vates), hence fits figure of Mœr (n.513 ) – portrayed as reading signs well, unlike
Mel’s failure to get meaning of lightning-stricken oaks [1.16-17], where his mind not the omen was called unlucky,‘left’.
Reckoning. [7-16] V draws down threads for a closely woven vignette that recalls the bucolic-georgic range & its Roman mythic
frame from the first half book. He bids that frame farewell with a final variant on one of its key motifs: ‘beeches’ portrayed now in
closure as ‘old’ & ‘broken’. He also reduces the scope of ‘all’ from the secured ‘croft’ of Ti [1.47] through its progressive expansions
& cosmic variations. With fine irony, he imagines a defining figure of Theocritean bucolic as prizing V’s Romanized bucolic range
(represented by the poetic power of Menálcas) & regretting that it could not hold. In like fashion, Derek Walcott concludes his pastoral
epic Omeros by denouncing the metaphoric basis for its first three books. V indeed had already renounced the mythic reach of the first
74
IX
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
holm warned me to cut any sort of fresh quarrel short,
ECLOGUE
527
LYC
not this your Mœris would be alive nor Menálcas himself.
16
528
17
Oh! Does crime that great fall on anyone? Oh! From us
was your kind soothing nearly snatched with you, Menálcas?
Who would sing the Nymphs? Who would sprinkle ground529
with flowering forage, draw shade verdant over springs?
Or songs that I picked up on the sly from you just now,
when you to our darling Amarýllis took yourself:530
22
<MN
“Títyrus, graze my goats till I’m back (the road is short)
<
& push them, Títyrus, when they’ve grazed, to drink & pushing
<
don't run up against the buck – with his horn he strikes.”
MŒ
Likewise these – not quite yet made – that he sang for Varus:531
532
<MN
“Varus, your name, if only Mantua survive for us –
<
Mantua, woe!, too close a neighbor to wretched Cremona –
<
LYC
>
25>
26
27>
chanting swans will bear aloft to heaven’s signs.”
533
23>
>
29>
534
So that your swarms of bees may flee from bitter yews,
30
so that your cows well-grazed with clover stretch their teats,
take up, if you’ve anything. Me like you the Piérians made535
———————————————
half book in the revisionary oracle that opens eclogue six.
527
[17-29] Spelling out linkage between the new bucolic myth & the figure of Menálcas (6:3)
Power now lost to create new bucolic myth by absorbing & digesting political force.
528
[17] crime – reference to brutality of civil war, including land seizures like those represented here: cf. more generically of civil
strife, ‘our crime’s traces’ [4.13].
529
[19-20] sprinkle ground ... draw shade: cf. Men’s mandate from Daphnis that herders ‘sprinkle ground ... draw shadows over
springs’ [5.40].
[21] on the sly: tacit-, implies something unspoken & unheard, which is an ironic way to describe getting access to another’s
speech, i.e. metapoetic irony about the very nature of intertextual relations, thus portrayed as somehow furtive, tricky.
just now: implies nearly present moment, yet time when Men loved Amarýllis sounds like time prior (prequel) to first half book:
cf. Amarýllis difficult love [3.81], alternate love [2.14, 52]; regular & satisfying love of Tí [1.5, 30].
530
[23-25] Prequel to the new myth in the old bucolic range: erotic background in tradition (3)
V very closely translates Th: cf. GrBep hapless goatherd lover of Amarýllis left Títyros to mind his herd (id. 3.3-5).
road is short: hint of slight bucolic range – a prequel to V’s expanded range, where roads lead to city, cf. [9.1].
push ... pushing: ag- (as in agitate, agenda, agent), ordinary act of herding: cf. ‘herding anxious’ [1.13, with note].
buck: lead male goat, also known as tityros, hence etymological irony here; cf. ‘buck – troop’s man himself’ [ 7.7].
Reckoning. [17-25] For alerted readers an intriguing blend of plots & characters distilled from previous eclogues & Th – imagined
as prior to events of the first half book, thus a prequel. V also uses Lýc to ‘remember’ fragments of Men’s singing that have struck
readers as close to Th. Such close ‘memories’ serve to represent time before the clash of mythic frames & force of Roman history in the
first eclogue that energized the first half book & turned Theocritean into Roman bucolic.
531
[26-29] Undigested political verse as prequel to integrated bucolic myth (1: 3)
[26] not yet quite made: as if a draft, so prior to the dynamic synthesis of first half book: cf. ‘unsettled songs’ [2.5]
532
[27-29] V makes Mœris ‘remember’ the civic crisis mediated by the new bucolic myth of the first half book (3)
[28] Varus, your name: cf..’name of Varus’ [6.12].
[29] if only Mantua survive: imagined as before the forced displacements represented by [9.4] & [1.3-4].
Reckoning. [26-29] V dismantles the synthesis of the first half book & isolates its bucolic-georgic range through the voice of Lyc. He
draws bucolic motifs from Men’s earlier song [19-20]. He also evokes a state of erotic affairs imagined as prior to the roles of
Amarýllis in other eclogues & like her role in Th: called by Servius a ‘word for word’ translation from Th, but V has sharpened it &
endowed it with rustic Latin style (Clausen 274-75).
Next V isolates (through the vatic Mœris) the political vector of the earlier synthesis. Again he uses Varus [6.11-12] to represent
the heroic-civic range detached from Caesarist ideology & myth. Naming Varus, a general with local authority in the north, & a
‘squatter’ on the property, V resorts to terms less polemical than ‘god & ‘godless soldier, barbarian’ [ecl.1].
533
[30-50] Measured poetics defined rejecting vatic strain & framing two prequels to the vatic myth of the first half book (7: 2, 5/2, 5)
[30-36] Vatic ambition in poetics eschewed for modesty via reused voice of theocritean Lycidas (7)
[30] So that ... so that: two prayers for prosperity in georgic & bucolic range, priamel rising to command song.
535
[32] take up: point of the priamel, climax strengthened by drawing down the by now familiar metaphor for starting off: cf. [8.21,
etc.], [6.26], [5. 10, 12], [4.12, 60], [3.58 with note 253]..
Me like you: equates Lyc with Mœr.
534
IX
75
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
a poet. Songs I, too, have. Me like you a bard
declare the grazers, though to them I don’t give trust;
for I don’t seem so far to declare songs worthy of Cinna536
or Varius, only to squawk like a goose mid rustling swans.537
36
MŒ538 This I push by myself &, Lýcidas, slyly unroll,539
37
540
if I’ve got strength to remember – not unknown’s the song:
<MŒ “In here, Galatéa, come: what play is there in waves?
<
38
541
39>
542
Here spring is purple, varying here the ground pours flowers
~
.>
———————————————
Pierians: muses, not nymphs; cf. ‘Pierians’ [8.63, with notes]; cf. GrBep ‘I too am a rustling mouth of the Muses’ (id. 7.37).
made: fecit, Latin for Greek root of poet; cf. ‘god made this repose’ [1.6], making Roman power the maker, sc. poet.
[33] a poet: sc. maker of song, cf. ‘growing poet’ Thyr [7.25]; ‘poet like a god’ [5.45].
Me like you: repeats & thus emphasizes the equation, giving greater force to the ensuing denial of similarity.
a bard: vates; cf. bard-seer-wizard role of Mœr [8.95-99, with notes); ‘bard to be’ boast by Thyr [7.28, with notes to bardicvatic strain in book]; cf. GrBep ‘All call me the best of bards’, ariston aoidon (id. 7.37-38).
[34] declare the grazers: generic figures of the bucolic range, as in boast by Thyr [7.25, with note].
but I’m not quick to credit: modest, claims not to challenge urbane poets: cf., poetic restraint of Cor [7.21-24]; cf. GrBe ‘but I
am slow to credit ... no match in song either for the great Sicélidas ... or for Philétas’ (id. 7.38-41).
536
[35] songs worthy: cf. ambition for songs in heroic style [8.10; 4.52]; ‘consul worthy’ [4.3]; cf. LtEleg ‘songs I’d declare worthy of my mistress’ (Cornelius Gallus 6-7).
Cinna: cf. n. 11.
537
[36] Varius: also n. 11; cf. his epos on Caesar’s death from which V took & refined a simile [8.85-89, n. 506].
Reckoning. [30-36] V casts plea by Lýcidas as a priamel, building through prayers with contrasting themes. In the dramatic situation,
the promises seem tactless – since Mœris on the road & dispossessed could not enjoy sweet honey & abundant milk.
Undercutting the plea for more song, V adapts a passage in which Th. defined bucolic poetics as measured rather than
ambitious – approved by the emblematic goatherd Lýkidas (p. 5). V makes his own Lýcidas reject the ambitious poetics associated
with ‘bard’. V thus extends his series of confrontations between measure & ambition – dramatized in the match between Thyrsis &
Corydon [ecl. 7] & carried to extremes in the contrast between Arcadian verses & vatic spells [ecl. 8].
V places the affirmation of measured poetics roughly at the center of the eclogue, inviting reference to the centers of the second
eclogue (pipe inherited from Damœ́tas, sc. homage to Th as originator of bucolic tradition) & of the first eclogue (encounter with god
at Rome, which established V’s advantage with respect to the Theocritean & Hesiodic tradition defined by authorizing encounters –
with Lýkidas on a country road (id. 7), & with the Muses on Mount Helicon (Theog, p.90 ).
538
[37-43] Via Mæris old bucolic (theocritean) prequel to Virgil’s romanized bucolic range (2, 5: 7)
Voice of Mœris imagined weakened & cagey , yet draws multiple threads from the first half book to evoke Theocritus’ use of
Homer in the bucolic range not yet transformed by V’s romanizing myth (2: 5)
539
[37] I push: ordinary act of herding [cf. 9.24], [1.13, with n. 154], here pushed as metaphor for mind engaged in poetic work.
unroll: process of remembering song portrayed by metaphor from process of unrolling a scroll to read a poetry book; cf.
developing hints of eclogues as parts of book – bark inscribed [5.13]; page like garden plot [6.12]; verses like furrows across
plot [5.2], [6.1], [7.19], [8.4]; promise to close [8.11]
540
[38] nor unheard of is the song: ironic, given dense reuse of threads drawn down from earlier in the book; cf. your song had
Stímichon praised [5.55]; cf. GrBep ‘desirable hymn’ (id.1.61).
541
[39-43] Bit of Mæris’ old song evokes Cyclops wooing: prequel to this book yet woven from its main threads (5)
[39] In here come, Galatéa: cf. ‘Down here’ [7.6]; ‘Down here, come’ [2.45]; Galatéa [7.37]; [3.64, 72]; [1.30, 31, with
note]; cf. GrBe “O gleaming Galateia, ... come to me” (id. 11.19, 42) – the bumptious Cyclops to the elusive sea
nymph; but also herdsmen competing in praise of place (id. 5.44, 51, 55).
play: cf. ‘play’ a defining process of bucolic range [7.17]; [6.1, 28]; [1.10].
542
[39, 40, 41, 43] here ... here ... here ... here: adverbs representing place repeated to create image of specific location;
repetition (anaphora) emphasizes & amplifies metaphoric fantasy of elocution as real location: cf. similar locution
≈ location metaphors at crucial junctures of positing, amplifying, revisiting & revising the bucolic range [8.67];
[7.12, 24]; [5.3; [3.5, 12]; [1.14, 42, 51, 79]; cf. [9.60, 61, 62] & [10.42, 43]; but also boast of hot, smoky hearth,
defying winter cold], [7.49-51]: cf. GrBep ‘here’ of spots apt for singing (id.1.12; id. 5.32, 45).
[40] spring: cf. season of birth in full bucolic-georgic nature [3.56-57], but actually named in simile [10.74].
purple: cf. ‘purple narcissus’ [5.38].
various: cf. ‘hues’ of wool in Golden Age[4.42].
ground pours flowers: cf. in Golden Age, ‘earth will pour gifts’ [4.19-21] & ‘cradles flowers’ [4.23]; ‘flowers &
ground-growing berries’ [3.92]; ‘narcissus & flower of dill’ [2.48]; ‘willow flower’ [1.54].
[41] around the streams: cf. “here among familiar streams” [1.51].
gleaming, bright: attractive light, cf. [7.38]; [6.75]; [5.56]; [2.16, 46]; [1.28: least sensuous – hoary beard of
aging Títyrus].
poplar: cf. ‘poplar’ of Hercules [7.61] & ‘along streams’ [7.66].
looms above: verb used nowhere else in book but forboding in Æn..
76
IX
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
<
around the streams, here gleaming poplar looms above543
>
<
ECLOGUE
a bower & limber vines weave shade as parasols.
>
544
<
Come in here: let the surf gone crazy strike the shores.”>
43>
LYC
What as to those I’d heard you singing one clear night?545
44
The counting I remember, if I could keep the words:
45
546
46
<MŒ “Daphnis, why gaze up for signs that rose before?
Look the star of Dione’s Caesar forth has marched,547
the star by which lands take delight in crops & from548
which over slopes that bask in sun grapes draw their hues.549
Graft your pear trees, Daphnis: heirs will pluck your fruit.”>550
50
543
[42] a bower: emblematic: cf. where Silenus drank, slept, sang [6.13]; preferred to ‘shade’ as place for song by Mopsus
[5.6, 19]; lost to Mel as place to sing [1.75, with note, p. ***).
limber: lent-, again one of V’s defining qualities for his bucolic range, cf. ‘limber’ [7.48, n. 465], [5.16, 31], [3.38,
83], [1.4, 25, n.162]; cf. [10.40].
vines: at georgic fringes of the bucolic range: cf. ‘vines’ [7.57, 61]; [5.32]; [3.11, 38]; ‘half-pruned’, sc. half
thought through [2.70: georgic work opposed to love]; ‘vines set in ordered rank’ [1.73: lost georgic work]; cf.
[10.40].
weaving: rural craft used to portray by metonymy & metaphor poetic work: cf. ‘finish weaving’ [2.72]; ‘weave
before, fringe, edge’ river bank with reeds [7.12]; cf. [10.71]; cf. GrBep trees weaving shade (id. 7.7-8).
shady parasols: umbracul-, ‘a means for making shade’, so umbrella ‘little shade’: Some ancient critics accused V
of making up the word, which apparently they found too mannered; but a contemporary of Servius, Macrobius, came
to V’s defense by citing examples from prose to describe man-made or natural screens against the sun (Saturnalia
6.4.8]; cf. ‘shade’ as another defining motif of the bucolic range [9.20], [8.14], [7.10, 46, 58], [5.5, 40, 70], [2.8,
67], [1.4, 83]; cf. [2.3], [10.75, 76].
Reckoning. [37-43] As with the fragments for Menálcas, V lovingly makes another version of his bucolic range imagined as if prior to
& independent of the explosive synthesis with Roman power effected in the first eclogue. The situation might fit a young Títyrus making
his mistaken pitch to Galatéa who would prove a wasting love [1.30-35], while behind it lies Th – his Cyclops wooing Galateia from the
sea (id. 11] & his herdsmen praising each his own place for singing (id. 5]. The good La Cerda argues in detail how V improved on Th
in choice & progressive arrangement of motifs. At the climax V stretches to “shady parasols,” a technical & prosaic term that jarred
some readers & must be an example of his strained style.Cf. n. ***.
To compose this idealizing version of the bucolic range, V draws key motifs from defining moments in the book – some of which
he will use also to construct his full version of Arcadia [ecl. 10]. The density of familiar motifs confers an ironic edge, since he locates
this hyperbucolic springtime in a context characterized by motifs of wintry displacement.
544
545
[44-50] Lycidas used for prequel to V’s new mythic frame [ecll. 1-5]: Caesarist myth not yet linked to Daphnis (2: 5)
Again one of V’s mind stretching blends.
[44] one pure night: cf. GrEp ‘in the pure night’ (Arat. Phainomena 323); cf. [3.39, 60, with note].
[45] counting ... words: cf. ‘marked in measuring’ [5.14].
546
[46-50] Old song of Mœris remembered by Lycidas (5)
[46] Daphnis: here a georgic worker, farmer: cf. buildup & deconstruction of Daphnis figure – from implicit
identity with Ti as new bucolic hero [ecl. 1], to background [ecll. 2 & 3], to Caesarist god [ecl. 5], then drawn
down to bucolic focus [ecl. 7], & to object of love recovered by spells from city [ecl. 8], so now to georgic observer
of Caesar’s star.
signs that rose before: cf. signs that ‘described times to reap’ [3.41].
547
[47] Dionean Caesar: capsule reference to basis of Caesarist myth: Dióne (with Jove) produced Venus who (with Trojan
prince Anchíses) produced ÆnéasI, supposed ancestor of Julian clan, including Julius Caesar & his sister’s greatnephew, the Caesar adopted from the Octavian clan.
forth has marched: ‘Evening ... marched forth’ [6.86]: cf. GrEp ‘stars stepped forth’ (Il. 10.252, remarked by La
Cerda).
548
[48] crop lands: cf. example in focal priamel – abundant farms at peace under power of god Daphnis=Caesar [5.33];
crop lands’ taken by ‘godless soldier’ [1.71].
delight in: ‘get satisfied by’ [8.75]; [6.29]; [3.88].
harvests: cf. [3.77, 80].
549
[49] slopes: sc. vineyards, cf. [9.7, with note; [7.58].
grape: climax to priamel, cf. [5.32}, likewise ‘crop lands’ [9.48]; [4.29]; [10.36].
draw: again that basic verb in bucolic work & thought; cf. ‘draw’ [9.1, 8, 19 with notes).
hue: cf. [8.73, 77; [4.42]; [2.17].
550
[50] Graft your pears: unlike ‘graft now your pears’, which was bitter because Mel.was shown as exiled [1.73].
heirs will pluck: Mel’s exiled goats will not pluck clover [1.78]; ‘pluck’ [2.47].
fruit: as at [7.54; [2.53; [1.37, 80]
Reckoning. [44-50] Drawing the Daphnis figure down yet further from identification with a new Roman god, V reduces it to humble
IX
77
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
MŒ551 All things age bears off, mind also. Often I’d552
51
as a boy, I remember, chanting long set down the suns:
forgotten now so many songs & voice itself
at last flees Mœris: wolves got to look at Mœris first.
But yet those things enough will tell you often Menálcas.
553
LYC
554
By pleading causes you draw out too long our loves
55
56
555
& now all flat the plain lies still for you, & all,
just look, the breezes from their windy noise have dropped.556
From right here on’s mid-road for us, because Biánor’s557
sepulcher takes up appearing. Here, where field hands558
strip thick leafage off, here, Mœris, let us sing.
Here put down your kids; yet we will come to the city.559
560
Or, if we fear that night may tie in rain before,
62
63
we may a while go chanting along (the road hurts less):
so we can go while chanting, I'll lighten you your load.561
MŒ
Boy, cease from more & what now stands ahead, let’s push:562
songs better then, when Menálcas comes himself, we'll sing.563
67
———————————————
georgic status in a countryside portrayed as prior hence a prequel to the ruin of the Roman republican frame dramatized in the figure
of Melibœ́us [ecl. 1]. Thematic threads tie this vatic vision to those of ecll. 4 & 5.
551
[51-67] Mœris despairs of more song but Lýcidas lacking tact insists (5/10)
V adds motifs of mortality – pathos of aging – to seal closure of his vatic strain. To Lýcidas he assigns a tissue of thematic
threads that earlier in the book favored song but that here & now clash with the situation described as inimicable to song: in
effect completing the deconstruction & farewell
552
[51-55] Mœris replies to confidence with dismissal (5)
[51] All things age bears off: a further reduction of ‘all’; cf. [9.5, with note on variants of the motif]; cf. SocMem a proverbial
saying (La Cerda; on proverbs in mime, n. 39); cf. LtEp ‘All we see almost flow away in lengthy time (aeuo)’ (Lucr. 2.68); cf.
[10.43 ‘time itself’, aeuo); cf. GrEpigr ‘Time carries all away’ (Plato, Anth.Pal. 9.51).
[54] wolves got to look ... first: superstition, world of magic & vatic lore: cf. ‘wolves’ & Mœris as wizard [8.95-99]; cf. GrBep
‘Won’t you speak? Did you see a wolf?’ (id. 14.22: pun, since the girl’s new lover was called ‘Wolf’).
[55] Menálcas will tell: another hint that V has not quite finished with this figure.
553
[56-65] Lýcidas urges singing despite unsuited situation, but if not here, then as they go (7/3)
554
[56] By citing causes: cf. ‘What cause for seeing Rome?’ [1.26]; cf. LtEp ‘though citing many causes you delay’ (Lucr. 2.398).
our loves: sc. for songs: cf. ‘our love’ the Libethrid nymphs [7.21]; but ‘loves’ for beloved [3.109].
555
[57] all flat ... plain lies still & all: leaving behind the traditional heights & waters of bucolic place, trudging across territory
where farmers strip leaves; ‘all’ repeated in further variation & reduction of an indicative motif: cf. [9.51, 5, with notes):not
the hilly contours of ideal places for song [9.7-9]; [2. 5]; [1.46-58, 76]; cf. GrBep ‘still the sea, still the winds’ (id. 2.38].
556
[58] all breezes from their windy noise: cf. ‘sing to breezes’ [1.56];’restless zephyrs’ [5.5]; cf. LtEp ‘wind raged with
threatening noise’ (Lucr. 1.276].
557
[59-60] From here mid-road: ‘hence’, adverb of place, often used in metaphor to signal motion in mind, as if thoughts were
places & thinking a kind of move through space (sc. locution ≈ location): cf. ‘hence, from here’ [6.41]; [5.43]; [4.37]; [3.93];
[1.38, 53, 56, 64]; also review ‘here’ with note], [9.40-41].
sepulcher of Biánor: name of hero identified by old commentary with a son of Manto, hence a grandson of seer Tirésias &
the half-brother of seer Mopsus (cf. p. 15): cf. “souls from sepulchers’ raised by magic of Mœris [8.98]; but also monument
for Daphnis [5.43-45]; cf. GrBep ‘not yet mid-way ... not yet marker of Brasilas’ – locates meeting with Lýkidas (id. 7.10-11].
558
[60-61] here field hands strip thick leafage: cf. ‘field hands will vow’ [5.80]; thick: [2.3]; [1.14]; leafage: [1.80], cf. ‘leafer’
by metonymy for one who cuts leaves whether for ensilage or bedding], [1.56]; cf. [3.57]; [2.70]; [10.30].
559
[62] Here put down kids: cf. ‘these kids to him’ [9.6 with note].
560
[63-65] singing the road hurts less: cf. ‘evil contact hurt’ [1.51, with note on rare verb); cf. GrBep ‘but herd, for we share the
day & the road’ (id. 7.35-36: cheery challenge to Lýkidas to sing).
562
[66-67] Mœris hushes Lýcidas for the moment, but leaves open the possibility of further song when Menálcas comes (2)
563
[66] Turn off any more, boy: cf. so, too, Menálcas to Mopsus when they get from shade to bower [5.19 with note].
[67] Songs better then, when Menálcas comes: leaves open potential for further song & even return by Men, but urgent questions as to time & place, since Italo-Theocritean bucolic range so thoroughly left behind & lost.
Reckoning. [51-67] V uses the motifs of age & forgetfulness to complete closure of his vatic strain. To open the strain, he had used age
to very different effect, when he made the hoary hairs of Títyrus imply the long age of bucolic tradition about to get a new start through
forceful synthesis – hurtful yet energizing & renewing – with Rome.
78
ECLOGUES IX & X
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
TENTH
CHARACTERS [SPEAKING / Named Only or Background]
FRAMER – SINGER-WEAVER OF BOOK, goatherd – as also Mœris, Damon, Melibœ́us1 & 2, Córydon1 & 2, Mopsus,
Menálcas.
STORY:
having toiled on entire book, now gets the closure earlier foreshadowed [8.12].
CRAFT:
singer of songs for GALLUS & weaver of book as a whole.
ARCADIANS – SHEPHEARDE, SWINEHERDS, MENALCAS, Silvánus – along with APOLLO & PAN: all drawn by
vociferous suffering of...
GALLUS, lover & poet, framed now in a new version of the bucolic range by Arcadians & sheep.
STORY:
dying for love of Lycóris & seeking cure in bucolic woods.
CRAFT:
ranging in elegy [6.64], then drawn up to epos about roots of APOLLO’s grove [6.65-73] & now
drawn down to elegiac version of bucolic hero.
Arethúsa, nymph addressed at home in Arcadia before attempted rape by river Alpheus forced her to flee for
refuge as a pure spring in Sicilian Syracuse & farewell from Daphnis dying (id. 1.117 ).
Lycóris, fictive name used by Cornelius Gallus for the woman in his elegies – lyc-from Greek lyk- ‘wolf’ (an
Arcadian totem, cf. Lycaeus, Mount Wolf’ or Lycidas, ‘Wolfson’); but Latin lupa ‘wolf’, a common metaphor for whore. The woman so nicknamed by Gallus acted in mimes under the stage name Cytheris (from
Venus born on Cythera). Her common name was Volumnia (‘rolling’, cf. ‘volume’, a book scroll).
Mount Wolf (Lycǽus) & Mount Mad (Mǽnalus) – two main landmarks of Arcadia.
Mount of Virgin Maids (Parthénius) – a landmark of Arcadia.
Piérians, Muses of Hesiod & Theocritus – variously cited or invoked for effective powers [ecll. 9, 8, 6, 3] – their
authority extended now in retrospect to making the whole book.
SCENE
Arcadia imagined at some mythic time before Arethúsa fled to Sicily where she got addressed by the oxherd
Daphnis dying in Theocritus’ first idyll.
CUES
As often for a musical finale, rhythms & voicings return from various moments to sound a fuller chorus. The
figures that retreated now return to left & right & the eager LÝCIDAS now speaks out as FRAMER leaving to the
defeated weary old singer MŒRIS to pick up the part of the passionate & defeated GALLUS.
FR564 This last chore, Arethúsa, concede to me:565
———————————————
Reinforcing the closure of that Italo-bucolic venture, he makes the bumptious Lýcidas boast of features incompatible with
bucolic song as it flourished in previous eclogues – the looming tomb, the stillness & flatness, allowing for no echoes, the stripped
shade, the threatening rain. Yet if we think of Lýcidas as a representative figure from Th imported & related to V’s bucolic venture, we
could recall that a hero’s tomb marked the road of a productive encounter in Th, so here it becomes a clue to the disconnect between
Th’s affirmation of bucolic worth (id. 7, p. 5) & V’s deconstrucive program here as he readies his move beyond both Th (Sicilian &
Italian) & his own romanizing (Italian & Sicilian) version of a bucolic range..
564
[1-8] Framer sets stage for return to archaic Arcadia with new force – sc. ‘as before but more’ (8)
565
[1-3] Appeal to Arethúsa to allow songs for Gallus of a sort to get read by his beloved Lycoris (3)
[1] This last: sc. final, cf. ‘last’ for extreme histrionic effects, used in book before only at [8.20, 44, 60]; cf. GrEpigr ‘last turn’,
sc. of the scroll seen metaphorically as a chariot race’ (Meleager, 129.1 G-P = AP 12.257). chore: labor, a word not in other
eclogues (cf. 10.64], but often for farm toil (Georgics) & travail of travel & battle (Æneid); cf. theme of toil implied by verb
‘work’ for poetry [6.8, 82] & [1.2], contrasted with ‘play’ [7.17]; [6.1, 27]; [1.10]; cf. GrEpigr ‘toil of poets herded into
X
79
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
a few for my Gallus – but such as Lycoris herself would pick – 566
songs have to get declared: who’d not give Gallus songs?567
3
568
So that to you, when you slip beneath the Sicanian surge,
the bitter Doris doesn’t mingle in her waves,569
take up: the frantic loves of Gallus let’s declare,570
while snub-nosed nanny goats are shearing tender shrubs.571
———————————————
one’ (Meleager, 129.4 G-P = AP 12.257), cf. ‘into one’ [7.2, with note]; cf. GrBep ‘worked up this song ... on the hill’ (id.
7.51); ‘the hill worked up about Daphnis wasting in love’ (id. 7.74]; ‘cicadas at work’ (id. 7.139); ‘from love they toil in vain’
, on cup of Thyrsis (id. 1.37-37). Arethúsa: a spring in Syracuse, Sicily, home of Th; cf. Syracusan, sc. Theocritean, verse
[6.1]; cf. GrBep ‘Goodbye Arethoísa & Sicilian streams’, Daphnis’ last farewell before calliing Pan from Arcadia to take back
the pipe (id. 1.117-18, p.96). concede me: cf. ‘Nymphs, concede me [7.21]; ‘would Ióllas concede’ [2.57].
566
[2] a few: suggests the poetics of slightness: cf. ‘meager oat’ [1.2, with note) & ‘meager reed’ [6.8, with note]. for my Gallus:
sc. mutual love between poets who share songs, cf. [5.85-90]; cf. GrEpigr poetic garland honoring friend (Meleager, G-P
129.5-6 = AP 12.257]; cf. GrBep poets exchange songs (id. 6.42-46; id. 7). Lycóris: fictive name for woman addressed by
Cornelius Gallus in elegies, it contains Greek root lyk-, ‘wolf’ (cf. p. 24); cf. Lycidas [9.2 etc.]; Lycísca,‘Wolfie barked’
[3.18]. Lyc- may recall an epithet of Apollo, Lycoreus (Callim. Hymn 2.19], thus set a fashion for pseudonyms of mistresses
in Roman elegy – Propertius’ Cynthia from Cynthius, sc. Apollo, cf. [6.3] & Tibullus Delia from Delos island of birth for
Apollo & Diana, cf. [7.29; [3.67]; cf. SocMem ‘wolf’ (lupa in Latin) linked to Arcadian legend (p. 10), the wolf shrine of Pan
on the Palatine hill – Lupercal – along with resonance in the Roman street, where ‘wolf’ metaphorically means ‘woman for
hire’ – apt for an actress in mime whose liaisons kept public eyebrows raised. herself: sc. even she, but ‘self’ in the book often
suggests spontaneous sympathy & action by nature for something human, e.g., [5.62-63, with note 356], [1.39], so here hints
that song in bucolic guise might be more persuasive than elegy. would pick: sc. ‘pick to read’, cf. [2.18, with note); reading
meant mouthing with the lips,but for an actress reciting in the theater. Servius writes that she performed the sixth eclogue &
titilated Cicero, despite her erotic link to his foe, Marc Antony: a tale too good to be factual though it may ring true to the
characters & times: cf. ‘if one caught by love picks out’ [6.9-10]; ‘at last can pick out praise’ [4.26]; cf. LtEleg ‘pick to read
temples richer by your trophies’ (Gallus 2.4-5].
567
[3] songs ... declared: the further singing foreshadowed during flight from the Italic setting [9.67]; cf. ‘declare songs worthy’
[9.35-36], echoing LtEleg ‘declare songs worthy of my mistress’ (Gallus 2.6-7). declare: again assertive speech with programmatic, sc. metapoetic, force,as before [9.4, 13, 34, 36], [8.5, 8 (cf. 4.54), 63. 77], [6.5, 7, 68, 72], [5.2, 55]; [4.46, 54 (cf.
8.8)]; [3.1, 31, 55, 59, 104, 106]; [2.38, 39]; [1.19, n. 158]. Who would deny?: rhetorical question, implying ‘No one’ cf.
GrEp ‘Who would not sing easily of Phœbus’ (Callim. Hymn 2.31).
Reckoning [1-3] With ‘last chore’ V makes good on his earlier promise to end the book & leave the bucolic range [8.6-13]. As he goes
he evokes Th’s mythic frame only to revise it: where Th closed his opening idyll with a farewell to Arethoísa by the bucolic hero
Daphnis, V opens his closing eclogue by greeting her afresh in a voice as close as any fiction can be to the poet’s own & by imposing
the elegiac lover Gallus as a Roman version of Daphnis, thus replacing Th’s bucolic hero.
The urge to declare songs for Gallus reenacts the bucolic & epigrammatic tradition of love between poets; but aiming to make
songs such that the elegist’s mistress would choose to read goes a step beyond. It hints that bucolic song might move her as elegy could
not. Thus it implies a competition between literary genres – erotic elegy & bucolic epos.
568
[4-6] Plea to Arethúsa for help to transfer troubled Loves (sc. elegies) of Gallus into bucolic range (3)
A not so subtle hint (warning? reminder?) that the theme of ‘troubled loves’ concerns her too.
[4] So that you ..., when you ..., take up: cf. ‘so that ..., take up’ [9.30-32, with note]; cf. GrBep ‘if ..., if ..’. (id. 7.103-14) –
such offers take the form of short priamels building the plea by means of successive themes (cf. n. 341 ). when you (sc. will)
slip beneath Sicanian surge: sc. at that future moment when Arethusa will flee Arcadia to avoid rape & will flow under the
‘surge’, sc. of the waves, near Sicania, i.e. Sicily, where Th has his Daphnis bid her farewell.
569
[5] Doris: a daughter of Ocean & the wife of Nereus (Theog. 241), hence mother of daughter-waters – another Doris, Thetis
(Achilles’ mother) & Galateia [7.37 with note) – & here by metonymy standing for the sea off Sicily, which had been settled by
Dorian Greeks: cf. GrBep ‘Dorian water’ to mourn Dorian Orpheus – bucolic poet Bion (Moschus, Lament for Bion 18); cf.
also by metonymy for sea – Thetis [4.36]; Nereus [6.35]; cf. LtEp Amphitrite for sea (Catull. 64. ). not intermix: cf. GrBep
water, sc. fresh, of river Alpheus traveling under Dorian sea from northwestern Greece to mingle with fresh water spring
Arethoísa in Sicily, does not mix with waters, sc. salt, of the sea (Moschus 6.5).
570
[6] take up: point of priamel-prayer – a final, emphatic use of familiar metaphor to state climactic program of the book, cf.
‘Take up’ [8.21, etc.], [6.26], [5. 10, 12], [4.12, 60], [3.58 with note 253]. frantic loves: sc. his elegiac verse called Loves;
cf. Gallus ‘ranging (sc. driven by love)’ below Mt. Helicon [6.64, with note]; cf. LtEleg ‘<songs> gloomy because of your
mischief, Lycóris’ (Gallus 2.1).
Reckoning [4-6] V revises & posits new source for bucolic tradition: Th & Moschus located Arethoísa in Sicily; Moschus brought
Alpheus to her there. V writes that she WILL flow there from her Arcadian home & asks her still at home before her coming flight to
help retail ‘frantic loves’ of elegy, which thus become a prequel – ominous antecedent – to her own erotic stir.
Strong inference: V wants us to imagine his poem taking place not in Sicily but in Arcadia & at a point on the mythic time scale
before Th made Daphnis dying bid the nymph goodbye in Sicily & summon Pan to Sicily from Arcadia to take back the pan-pipe. V thus
claims double superiority with regard to Th: not only in place – the original Arcadia of Pan not the secondary & derivative Sicily – but
in time – prior to the nymph’s escape, hence prior to her Sicilian presence in the first idyll.
571
[7-8] Gamy goats & echoing woods also weave this eclogue into the fabric of the book
80
573
X
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
To unhearing ears we don’t sing: woods echo back to it all.572
8
What were the groves or what the glens that had you, Nymphs574
9
of springs, when Gallus because of unworthy love was perishing?575
For not any yokes of Parnássus & none of Pindus made576
delay for you & not Aónia’s spring Aganíppe.577
12
578
Him even the laurels, even the tamarisks bewept.
13
579
Him – lying sprawled beneath a lonely crag – bewept
Mad Mountain’s pines as well & rocks of chill Mount Wolf.580
———————————————
[7] snub nosed goats: simae, so V relates this Framer to previous goatherd figures – Mœris [9.6]; Damon [8.33]; Melibœ́us &
Córydon [7.3, 7-9]; Damœ́tas & Títyrus, Menálcas [3.34, 96-97]; Córydon [2.30, 64]; Melibœ́us [1.12, 74]; cf. LtTrag ‘gamy
snub nosed flock’ (Livius Andronicus, tragic fragment 3]; cf. [GrBep] ‘snub nosed (simai) goats’ ([id.]8.50]. tender: vulnerable, easy to cut, cf. ‘tender lamb’ [1.8]. shrubs: uirgult-, pathless thickets, virgin copse of laurel or hazel to be harvested
for weaving if not cleared for planting, so crackling with fire (Georgics & Æneid); cf. ‘thick hazels’ [1.14] & laurels [6.83];
[3.63]; ‘when I sheared’ [1.28].
572
[8] To unhearing ears we don’t sing: cf. nature captivated by song [8.1-5]; nature jives to singing & gods unwilling to have it
stop [6.27-28, 84-86]; nature echoes good news of Daphnis deified [5.62-64]; from my lips to gods’ ears [3.73]; teaching
woods to echo [1.5 ): cf. GrBep fame of songs to throne of Zeus (id. 7.93]. to it all woods echo back: cf. ‘all’ in its varying
ranges [9.5, 51, 57, with notes]; response & respond [7.5]; echo [1.5, n. 148, 1.44] & [7.13, n. 446]; also ‘woods’ an indicative motif of the bucolic range, cf. p. 12 & [1.5, with note 148].
Reckoning [7-8] Inviting us to look back yet again & take stock of the system developed in the book, V links his final framing voice
with the recursive goats & echoing woods that have linked successive eclogues in their turns.
573
[9-30] Arcadia (‘as before but more’): appeal to Gallus (22)
Virgil puts together an image of poetic Arcadia to replace Theocritean Sicily as the original site of bucolic song & to frame his
new Roman version of the old bucolic hero’s bout with love.
574
[9-12] Nymphs of springs not there to aid Gallus in new role as bucolic hero dying of love (4)
Virgil refocuses & refines appeal by Thyrsis to Sicilian nymphs (id. 1), drawing down threads too from earlier in this
book.
[9] What groves?: nemor- [8.22, 86]; [7.59; [6.11]; cf. [10.73]. what glens: cf. ‘glens of groves’ where Pasiphaë would hunt
her bull [6.72] & ‘glens’ [10.57]. Nymphs of springs: Naïads, cf. Ægle [6.21] & Naïs [2.46]; cf. GrBep ‘Where were you
nymphs while Daphnis was wasting away? (id. 1.66-69).
575
[10] because of unworthy love: that caused tragic suicide [8.18]; yet reader ‘taken by love’ would make poem fill grove [6.10];
cf. Gallus ranging (sc. writing love elegy) along Permessus river below Aonia’s hills [6.64-73]; cf. LtEleg bitter love typical
of elegiac code – “<songs> gloomy because of your nastiness, Lycóris” (Gallus 2.1). perishing: cf. LtLyr ‘perish in love’
(Catull. 45.5); cf. GrBep Daphnis dying because he rejects (id. i.66) or fails to win (id. 7.76) love.
576
[11] Parnassus: mountain rising above Apollo’s oracle at Delphi (western Greece), site of spring called Castalia. Pindus:
mountain in Thessaly (northern Greece), source of river Peneus; cf. GrBep ‘Where were you nymphs while Daphnis was wasting away? By Peneus’ glens below Pindus? You weren’t by Sicilian waters, where he was dying, to aid (id. 1.66-69).
577
[12] Aónia: where V located Gallus at two levels, the lower for love elegy & the higher, etiological epos [6.64-73, with note
419].
Reckoning [9-12] V shifts from mythic frame of Thyrsis’ song to its opening salvo, which merely wondered if Sicilian nymphs had
wandered off to northern Greece, since they weren’t at home to rescue Daphnis. V makes his Framing Voice call on Nymphs of
Springs (‘Naïad girls’) – a hint of Greek, ‘girls that love waters’, which could imply the Muses who bathe in Permessus on Mount
Helicon – & he endows his Framer with greater literary reach, imagining the nymphs absent not merely from Sicily but from such key
literary sites as Apollo’s Parnassus & Helicon’s poetic waters – Permessus’ source Aganíppe. Their absence implies difference
between the two genres of Gallus – saved from fatal elegiac love by the Muses authorizing etiological epos [6.64-73]; but translated
into bucolic epos where the elegiac lover becomes a Roman version of old bucolic Daphnis fated to die, cf. Design, 191–92.
578
[13-18] Arcadian nature – newly landscaped by Virgil – mourns elegiac lover enrolled at mid-bucolic range as shepherd (3 & 3)
Virgil’s appropriation of the elegist dying for love supplants Theocritean Daphnis.
[13] laurels ... tamarisks: two plants V made emblematic of the bucolic range in his book, he now transplants to furnish his new
Arcadian landscape: ‘laurel’ [8.13, 83]; [7.62, 64]; [6.83]; [3.63]; [2.54] & ‘tamarisk’ [8.54]; [6.10]; [4.2, with note].
579
[14] lying sprawled: like drunken Silenus & his wreathes [6.14, 16]; cf. [10.40]; unlike Gallus erect – ranging & drawn uphill
by Muse from erotic elegy to etiological epos [6.64-73]. beneath a lonely crag: recalls ‘crag’ marking picturesque landscape
[6.29]; [5.63]; [1.56, 76]; cf. [10.58]; cf. LtEp ‘beneath a lonely crag’ (Catull. 64.154); cf. LtLyr ‘Thespian (sc. Heliconian)
crag’s caves that cooling Aganíppe waters’ (Catull. 61.27-30); cf. LtEleg ‘Sicilian crag’, sc. Mount Etna (Catull. 68.53).
bewept: nature mourned absent Títyrus [1.36-39]; but mountains rejoiced at apotheosis of Daphnis [5.62-64]; cf. GrBep wild
& tame nature mourned Daphnis as he was dying (id. 1.71-75), ‘hill got worked up & oaks grieved’ (id. 7.74-75).
580
[15] Mad Mountain, Mount Wolf: root meanings of names for mountains Mǽnalus & Lycǽus, which are geographical
hallmarks of Arcadia: cf. Mount Mad with talkative pines,with pipe invented by Pan [8.22]; cf. GrBep Daphnis called to Pan
from Mainolos & Lykaios to come to Sicily to take back the pipe, sc. that Pan invented (id. 1.123-25).
X
81
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ECLOGUE
Around him stand sheep too: we’re not ashamed of them,581
nor should you, godlike poet, be ashamed of sheep.582
For even well-formed Adónis grazed his sheep by streams.583
18
584
19
There also came the shephearde; slowly swineherds came,
from winter’s acorn harvest wet Menálcas came.585
All ask, “Where from that love of yours?” Apollo came:586
“Gallus, why get crazy? Your concern, Lycóris,587
through snows & bristling camps goes after someone else.”
23
There too Silvánus came with his head’s farmfield honor –588
24
brandishing big lilies & flowering fennel stalks.
Pan – Arcadia’s god – came, whom we saw ourselves589
581
[16] Virgil casts Gallus as a shepherd – down-graded from oxherds Daphnis & Títyrus1 [1.9] but like the reduced Títyrus2 [6.5].
no shame in sheep: ironical, as if elegist somehow superior to bucolic matter, cf. like play with idea of humble bucolic, ‘no
shame’ to rub lip with reed [2.34].
582
[17] godlike poet: so, too, Mopsus [5.45]; ‘poet’ Thyrsis too [7.25]; ‘godlike song’ of Muses authorizing etiological epos of
Gallus [6.68].
583
[18] well-formed: indicative value (georgic-bucolic eye for attractive shape) – established by V at defining moments in book, cf.
[7.38, 55, 62, 67]; [5.44, 86, 90]; [4.57]; [3.57, 79]; [2.1, 17, 45]; [1.5, with note]. Adonis grazed sheep: cf. Amphíon
called stock [2.23]; Paris dwelt in woods [2.60-61]; cf. GrBep Adonis herds sheep & hunts (id. 1.109]; ‘Adonis grazes sheep
on hills’ (id. 3.46].
Reckoning [13-18] Working up his version of Arcadia, V first draws in plants – tamarisk & laurel – that he has made significant in the
book, then adds two mountains that also in Th stood for the Arcadian homeland of Pan. V makes this newly contrived landscape emote
for his new version of Daphnis dying, as he imagined mountains emoting for Daphnis deified [ecl. 5] & woods for absent Títyrus [ecl.
1], like Th, who made nature emote for Daphnis dying (idd. 1 & 7].
V positions his Roman Daphnis beneath a feature of spectacular landscapes in the book –‘crag’ (rupes, which suggests a jutting
rock, broken off – rup-, rump-) that renders select places more vast & picturesque.
By drawing his version of Daphnis down from the topmost rank of oxherd – assigned Ti [1.9, 45], & Daphnis (id. 1) – to the middle rank of shepherd, like Ti twice [1.8, 21], [6.4-5] & Thyrsis [7.3] & (id. 1.7), also Hesiod herding csheep on Helicon (p.90), V
enforces the restrictive measure he has set for this second half of his book, starting with Títyrus reduced from vatic ambition to the
middle range [6.1-8], but then defeat for the would-be vatic shepherd Thyrsis [ecl. 7], while more humble goatherds figure as framing
voices [7 & 10].
Once again V offers a comparison between the bucolic present & mythic herdsmen & once again the comparison provokes an
ironic undertow: Paris in woods provoked the Trojan war [2], Amphíon used a bull to maim & kill a queen [2]; Adonis got killed by a
boar while hunting, causing grief to his lover Aphrodite, to which Th. made Daphnis allude in a sarcastic taunt.
584
[19-30] Autopsy before inquest: cause of dying sought by newly drafted Arcadians (12: 5-2-5)
Queries about cause of death foreshadow failure to get poetic medicine to cure love: cf. GrBep Hermes, grazers, Priápus,
& Aphrodite came to interrogate if not taunt dying Daphnis – his reply with taunts only to Aphrodite (id. 1.77-113].
[19] shephearde: archaic English spelling, where V used archaic or dialectal Latin. swineherds: pigs not among Th’s animals,
which in order from lowest were goats, sheep, & cattle; cf. GrEp swineherd Eumaios loyal to returned Odysseus unlike
treacherous goatherd Melánthios (Hom, Od 17-19).
585
[20] wet from winter acorns: dampness of ‘winter’ sets the season as close of year & implying also the book’s close; ‘acorns’
recall the legendary old-time Arcadians eating acorns (n. 673) as well as the use of acorns in northern Italy to feed pigs.
Menálcas: defining figure for the book retrieved for its close – the return hinted earlier [9.67]; cf. [GrBep] Menálkas roasting
beech nuts ([id]. 9.15-21).
586
[21] “Where from that love?”: as if bucolic poetry needs to be reminded of the cause of elegiac poetry.
587
[22] “Why get crazed?”: failure to understand force of love ironic from Apollo: cf. Apollo’s erotic pain & frustration [6.8283];‘crazy’ [9.43]; [3.36] & ‘mindlessness’ of Córydon [2.69]. your concern: tua cura, Lycóris; cf. ‘throaty pigeons, your
concern’, where tua cura echoes cooing of doves & perhaps elegies of Gallus (Clausen 300, citing O. Skutsch); cf. GrBep
‘seeking you a girl (tu kora) gets carried by her feet among all the springs & groves” (id. 1.82-85: ‘carried by feet’, cf. [9.1,
with note); tu kora reechoes in tua cura, which reechoes in Lycóris).
588
[24] Silvánus ... farm field honor: Italic god of woods (siluae): cf. ‘farm field’ [6.8]; [1.10] & ‘honor’ [5.78]; [4.48]; [2.53];
‘Silenus’ [6.14] & ‘fauns’ [6.27].
[25] brandishing full grown lilies: cf. ‘full grown’ [5.36] & ‘lillies’ [2.45] – miracle of summer flowers in winter landscape;
cf. LtEp ‘Pan brandishing piney veils of his half-wild head’ (Lucr. 4.586), cf. [1.2 with notes].
589
[26-30] Pan present & seen: his counsel of despair (5)
[26] Arcadia’s god: cf. emphasis on Arcadia as home to Pan [8.22-24], [4.58-59]. blushing with bloodlike berries: cf. ‘she
paints ... with berries red’ [6.22]. no measure for love: again treats romantic passion as an uncontrollable force; cf. ‘what
measure for love’ [2.68]. cruel love: cf. ‘cruel’ [8.48, 49, 50]; [5.20, 23]; [2.6]. Priamel – love gets not enough of tears ≈
forage not enough of waters ≈ bees not enough of clover ≈ goats not enough of leaves: cf. priamel & climax [2.63-65, with
82
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blushing with bloodlike elder berries & reddening lead:
Says he, “Will you know no measure? For such things Love cares not,
cruel Love can’t get enough of tears, nor turf of rills,
nor bees of clover, nor can nannies enough of leaves.”
30
590
31
But – gloomy – Gallus: “Yet, Arcadians, you will chant,”591
he says, “these songs to your hills, alone well skilled to chant,592
Arcadians. O how softly then my bones would rest,593
if your pan-pipe at some time hence my loves declared594.
34
But really would that I’d been one of you to either595
35
596
keep your troop safe or make wine of your ripened grape!
Surely, whether for me Amýntas it were or Phyllis597
———————————————
note].
Reckoning [19-30] V populates his new version of archaic Arcadia not with Theocritean Hermes, despite Arcadian associations of the
god, or with Th’s sexual Priápus & Aphrodite, but with figures that draw significance from relatedness to his book: Menálcas (unifying
feature of the first half book here adapted to old Arcadian diet & custom) & Apollo [7.23]; [6.3, 12, 29, 73, 82]; [5.9, 66]; [4.10, 57];
[3.62, 104], along with touches of old Latin country language & the Italic god of the ‘woods’ that form the matter of the book –
Silvánus, himself tricked out with reprised motifs – & above all Pan, described as vividly there (seen, sc. an epiphany) & endowed with
nostrums about insatiable love.
Via this final version of Apollo, V evokes elegy’s basic dilemma: desire for a mistress who desires some other.
The epiphany of Pan in his homeland caps the design that V has been promoting since he endowed his new bucolic hero with a
panpipe [1.2, 10] & insisted on the version of myth that made Pan rather than Hermes invent the pipe [8. 24]; [2.32-33, cf. pp. 20,
19, 14].
590
[31-69] Gallus’ three appeals (apostrophes, ‘turns away’) – to Arcadians, to Lycos ris, to elegiac loves/Loves in bucolic woods (39)
Virgil uses the agitated & histrionic persona of the elegiac lover to achieve two ambitions: amplify & consolidate the new image
of old Arcadia but also to raise bucolic mime to tragic style – thus outdoing the tragic final outburst of Daphnis (id. 1).
591
[31-41] First Appeal: to the newly assembled Arcadians (4 & 7: 11)
Projecting the ideal of new (old) Arcadia & seeking to sublimate elegiac & bucolic madness from love.
[31-34] Flattery to Arcadians: articulating a new myth of ideal poetics (4)
[31] But – gloomy – Gallus: so too Mœris & Menálcas [9.5, also ‘defeated’ ); ‘gloomy wars’ of Varus [6.7]; banes of
rural life [3.80]; wrath of Amarýllis [2.14]; cf. LtEleg ‘<songs> gloomy because of your nastiness Lycóris’ (Gallus
2.1). Arcadians: first evoked in eclogue seven [7.4, 26, with notes]. you will chant: between wish & mild command, not
‘sing’ [6.3], 4.1, with note] but ‘sing over again’, cf. [9.29, 52, 64, 65]; [8.71]; [7.5]; [6.71]; [5.54, 72]; [3.21, 25];
[2.23].
592
[32] these <songs> to your hills: cf. ‘unsettled <songs> with futile zeal to hills & woods’ [2.5]. uniquely skilled,
Arcadians: amplifies & pushes to a climax V’s new equation of Arcadia with the original & best poetic art: cf. earlier
contributions to the myth of Arcadian poetics (pp. 20 etc.)
593
[33] softly bones would rest: cf. ‘soft’ an indicative value in the bucolic range [8.64]; [6.53]; [5.31, 38]; [4.28]; [3.45,
55]; [2.50]; [1.8]; cf. [10.42]; ‘rest’ [8.4]; [7.10]; [1.79]; cf. SocMem common wish for the dead, ‘May earth be light
for you!’ here given an erotic overtone – typically elegiac mingling of death with love.
594
[34] your pan-pipe: cf. ‘pan-pipe’ [8.24, ‘reeds’ invented by Pan; ‘rustling pipe on pine’ sc. for Pan [7.24]; ‘hemlock
pan-pipe’ [5.85]; a bone of contention [3.22, 25]; ‘pan-pipe seven hemlock’ [2.36]; ‘oat/reed’, instrument of Títyrus
[1.2, 10]. at some time hence declared my loves: yet his passion for the actress is the subject here & his Loves (sc. his
elegies) serve V as for building up & even overdrawing poetic Arcadia: cf. ‘loves ... sweet ... bitter (amores amaros)’
[3.109].
Reckoning [31-34] Adapting the motif of gloom from the elegist himself, V exploits the elegiac manner of passionate exaggeration to
amplify his own new version of the bucolic range as Arcadian. The imagined futures – ‘you will chant’ & ‘if you declared’ – describe
the present poem, where V has already set the Loves of Gallus within the new Arcadian frame & used the histrionic energy of the
elegiac persona to enlarge the new image of.Arcadia as the archetypal site for song.
595
[35-41] Unreal wish that Gallus had been an Arcadian & that there love could be easily satisfied (2: 5)
Virgil uses the hallucinatory energy of the elegiac lover to draw key motifs from earlier in the book & recycle them in an
intensified vision of bucolic perfection, where even erotic madness would be tamed.
[35] would that I had been one of you: cf. LtEp ‘Would that Attic ships had not touched Cretan shores in that first
time’(Catull. 64.171-72]; cf. GrBep ‘Would that you had lived in my time so I could have herded your goats & listened
to your voice while you lay singing sweetly under oaks or pines’ (id. 7.86-9).
596
[36] keep your troop: cf. ‘keeper’ [7.34]; [5.44; [3.5]; “troop” [7.2, 7, 36; [6.55; [5.33; [3.32; [2.30; [1.15]. make
wine: sc, work as a ‘vintner’, a word used only here in eclogues, once in Georgics. ripened: describing harvests [3.80].
grape: also in idealized georgic range [9.49]; [5.32]; [4.29: ); cf. ‘vine’ as georgic chore no longer to be needed in
Golden Age [4.40] & pruning as neglected georgic chore [2.70], cf. [3.11]; lost georgic range of Melibœ́us [1.73].
597
[37-41] Climax to first appeal: fantasy of erotic satisfaction easily come by (5)
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ECLOGUE
or whatever rage (so what if Amýntas swarthy?598
Violets as well are dark, & hyacinths are dark),
they’d lie with me among willows, beneath a limber vine:599
wreathes for me would Phyllis pick, Amýntas chant.600
41
Here springs are chilly; here, Lycóris, meadows soft;601
42
a grove’s here: just by time with you here I’d get spent.
43
602
Now, though, crazy love for you keeps me in arms
44
of hard Mars amid his spears & marshalled foes,
where you – far from our fatherland (may I not believe so far!),603
alone! without me! Ah hard! – are seeing Alpine snows604
———————————————
[37] Amýntas ... Phyllis: male or female lovers represented as willing, unlike, e.g., Aléxis [2.1-2] or Nysa [8.18]; cf.
Amýntas [5.8, 15, 18], [3.66, 74, 83], [2.35, 39] & Phyllis (Dix, “Grynean Riddles,” 258, for possible links with
Cornelius Gallus & Euphorion)], [7.14, 59, 63], [5.10, already a commplace theme]; [3.76, 78, 107]; Design, 188–89,
n. 81 “NAMES,”; cf. GrBep ‘whether soft Philinos or some other’ (id. 7.105).
598
[38] whatever rage: sc. any other available means of satisfying desire, where ‘rage’ gets sanitized (by a metonymic shift)
from its usual meaning of madness caused by destructive passion that cannot be assuaged; cf., similar metonymic shift
in English, ‘she was all the rage’; cf. counsel to accept available love [2.73, with note on avoiding tragic love]. so what
if swarthy: dark complexion praised [2.18]; cf. GrEpigr ‘No matter if she’s dark’ (Asclepiades, Gow-Page 5.3-4 = AP
5.210]; cf. GrBep ‘violet & hyacinth dark’ (id. 10.28).
599
[40] sprawl with me: cf. ‘sprawl’[7.54], [6.14, 16]. among willows: location where Galatéa flirted [3.65]. beneath a
limber vine: ‘limber’ a defining quality of V’s bucolic range [9.42, with note]; ‘limber vine’ featured in craft [3.38] &
‘vine’ [10.36, with note]. Here linked with ‘willow’ as a living arbor (English word drawn from Latin for ‘tree’ ), but
willows grow best in low-lying wet locations unfavorable for grapes that prefer the higher & drier slopes.
600
[41] Wreathes: as for celebrating with song & dance, cf. Silenus [6.16, 19]. pick: here means both gathering flowers &
weaving them together, hence a metonymic shift, cf. [2.18, with note]. chant: repeat songs of others, cf. [10.31, with
note].
Reckoning [35-41] At the eclogue’s center, V recycles the center of the second eclogue [2.35-39], which he amplifies with key motifs
from both the bucolic & georgic ranges – building up via the viewpoint of the passionate elegist. Crucial to this phase, V imagines even
the erotic madness that drives the tragic plots of both elegy & bucolic epos as reduced to a harmless urge & easily satisfied with willing partners – ultimate hallucination of the elegist translated into bucolic guise.
601
[42-49] Second Appeal: to Lycóris (8: 2/6)
Virgil employs lure of bucolic ideal in contrast to the harsh & risky journey caused by her version of elegiac love.
[42-43] Elegiac distillation of bucolic ideal – typical elegiac plea to recalcitrant object of love (2)
[42] here ... here ... here ... here: repeated adverb forces illusion of actual place, as in a nostalgic vignette], [9.39-43, with
note). springs: another motif basic to bucolic], [9.20], [7.45], [6.43], [5.40], [3.97], [2.59], [1.39, 52 – the demesne of
Títyrus]. chill: a bit more frosty, icy even (gelid-], [10.15] than basic ‘cool’ (frig-), which may be seen as escape from
excessive heat [2.8; [1.52], yet often itself wintry or otherwise repugnant if not dangerous [8.14, 71]; [7.6, 51]; [5.25,
70]; [3.93], [2.22]; cf. [10.47, 48, 57, 65]; cf. GrBep in La Cerda – shade, seated posture, cool water, chattering grasshoppers (id. 5.31-34). Lycóris: the aim of the whole appeal, motive for the whole fervent praise of Arcadia; cf. ‘O cruel
Aléxis’ [2.6], ‘O might it only please’ [2.28], ‘Down here, come’ [2.45]. meadows: a further (georgic?) reach, as in
[8.71], [7.11], [4.43], [3.111]. soft: basic bucolic quality [10.33, with note].
[43] Here’s a grove: another kind of woodland, also basic to bucolic range], [10.9, with note].
With you here just by time I’d get spent: sc. ‘if you were with me, I would not be worn down by frustrated desire, as
now, but only by time – growing old together with you’; cf.LtEp ‘humankind spends its time in futile concerns’ (Lucr.
5.1430-31]; elsewhere Lucretius warns against the painful delusion of fixated love [4.1058-1120].
602
[44-49] Bucolic lure fails to capture distant object of elegiac love (6)
[44] but now this crazed love: sc. as opposed to the Arcadian harmony they would share if only she were with him; cf.
‘Why get crazed?’ [10.22, with note]. keeping me in arms | of hard Mars: sc. love draws his mind away from Arcadia
to her in the ‘snows & bristling camps’ [10.23]; cf. ‘Mars’ arms’ that drove song from the Italic countryside [9.12].
603
[46] far from fatherland: sc. distant, as if suffering exile; cf. ‘far’ [6.16]; [1.76, 82]; ‘fatherland’ lost by Melibœ́us [1.4,
68]. may I not believe: believing as opposed to knowing; trusting], [8.35, 108]; [3.10, 95]; cf. [9.34].
604
[47] alone! without me!: gasped, broken phrases represent lover as crazed & self-centered – part of his fantasy to
imagine her ‘alone’ if not with him, though she was ‘going after someone else’ [10.23]: a theme all too common – someone vainly loved vainly loves someone else. Ah, hard!: histrionic sigh, further intensifies image of passionate excess in
the elegiac manner; cf. ‘hard Mars’ [10.45] & ‘hard oaks’ [4.30]; cf. LtLyr ‘with mind so hard & foul did lioness or
Scylla with her lowest loin breed you?’ (Catull. 60.1-3]; ‘hard, have you no pity for your sweet little friend’ (Catull.
30.2]. Alpine snows & cold: raised in Roman consciousness by recent military exploits of Julius Caesar; cf. other
geographical themes that presuppose recent military ventures], [1.62, n. 181]; cf. SocMem snows of Alps proverbial,
e.g., ‘Jove with hoary snow bespat the wintry Alps’ (Furius Bibaculus, fr. 15 Courtney).
84
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ECLOGUE
& cold of river Rhine. Ah! may cold not hurt you!605
Ah! may jagged ice not cut your tender soles!606
49
607
I’m going to go & measure songs that I’ve set down
50
608
in verse of Chalcis with the Sicilian grazer’s oat:
it’s been decided to prefer to suffer in woods609
among the wild beasts’ lairs & cut on tender trees610
my loves: the trees will grow; you also, loves, will grow.611
605
54
[48] Rhine: river marking an extreme bound of Caesar’s military expansion beyond the Alps; cf. LatLyr ‘crosses lofty
Alps | sighting monuments of Caesar great – | the Gaulish Rhine’, where ‘great’ ironic, since it was honorific epithet
claimed by Caesar’s rival Pompey (Catull 11.9-11). Ah!: another passionate gasp – repetition amplifies histrionic
effect. may cold not hurt you!: as in ‘singing the road hurts less’], [9.64] & [1.51, with notes] – ‘hurt’ not otherwise in
Bucolics & rare in Georgics & Æneid, e.g., ‘hurt power’ of Juno motive for whole heroic historical & mythic plot (Æn.
1.10). old: also at [10.42-43, with note]; cf. LtEp ‘Cold tortured humans who were naked without hides; but lack of purple garments adorned with gold does not hurt us, if we have common cloth’ (Lucr. 5.1426-29 – the purple & gold are the
‘futile concerns’ for which humans spend time: cited as context for [10.43].
606
[49] Ah!: for a third time, hits rhetorical high, reinforced by third repeat of personal pronoun ‘you ... YOU ... YOU; cf.
pronoun build up – ‘you ... we ... WE ... YOU ... he ... HIS ... HE’ [1.1-9]. may jagged ice not cut: elegiac fantasy
portrayed as fixing finally on a sensuous extremity susceptible not only to tickling, teasing, & erotic stroking, but to penetration, cutting, bleeding, so that the extreme anxiousness expressed about such a vulnerable part of her body betrays
an unconscious urge to violence from his part. tender: adjective implying vulnerability – shrubs sheared by goats
[10.7]; trees cut with inscribed Loves of Gallus [10.54]; fresh forage grazed [8.15]; myrtles at risk from cold [7.6];
reed bent [7.12]; fresh young globe spoiled by human history [6.34]; lambs hexed by evil eye [3.103];fruit pickable
[2.51]; lamb for sacrifice [1.8, ‘will stain’], to get sold in town [1.21]. cf. LtEleg a similar sensuous sensibility
(underlining marks terms that recur in the Bucolics) ‘where my bright gleaming goddess brought herself with her soft
foot | & placed her glistening sole straining down when it rubbed the threshold so that her shoe rustled.” (Catull. 68.7072): ‘bright gleaming’: candid-, cf. [7.41, with note]; ‘soft’, moll-, cf. [10.42 & 33, with note];’sole’ [10.49]; ‘straining’, -nix-], [1.14]; -threshold’, limin-], [8.92, 107], [5.56], ‘rustle’], [9.36, ‘shrill’ antithetical to song]; Mǽnalus
with ‘rustling grove’ favors song [8.22]; trees that favor song [7.1, 24].
Reckoning [42-49] (2) Having exploited his new elegiac-bucolic hero to amplify the image of Arcadia, even imagine curing erotic
rage, V pushes the paradox further. He portrays the elegiac-neobucolic lover trying to use threads drawn from previous eclogues
(above all the second) to succeed where elegy fails & attract the fugitive object of unrequited love.
(6) In verses that Servius described as ‘translated all from Gallus’ V elaborates on the typical elegiac frustration as bluntly
sketched by Apollo. In the process, he recycles fewer motifs from earlier in the book, but rises to rhetorical heights that may well mimic
if not outdo elegiac mannerism & reach toward tragic peaks. Motifs shared with the erotic elegy of Catullus, may belong to the Roman
erotic repertory that would have appeared, too, in the Loves of Gallus.
607
[50-69] Third & final Appeal: to Loves (sc. Elegies) in woods (sc. bucolic range): rage recurs & defeats lover (5, 7, 8)
Looking back, Virgil reminds us how he has exploited the work of Gallus – both his etiological epos in constructing a vatic
voice (ecll. 1, 3, 5, 6] & now his elegies in drawning down threads to weave the new Arcadia. Pressing on, Virgil makes an
explicit theme of his experiment with inscribing elegiac love into the bucolic frame. Taking advantage of this potent elegiac
& bucolic blend, he achieves his goal of rising to tragic style.
[50-54] Transposing Gallan Poetics – from etiological epos to neobucolic (Theocrito-Virgilian ) epos (5)
As before, Virgil makes Gallus project a poetic future that reflects what has been done in the present work.
[50] I’m going to: like Melibœ́us leaving Italic landscape for exile, 'we from here will go' [1.64].go & measure: as in the
poetic program of Mopsus [5.13] – the vatic figure drawn from Gallus’ epos about vatic competition in Apollo’s grove
at Grynia [6.69-73, cf. p. 13]; yet ‘measure’ cannot contain passion], [10.28]; [2.68].
608
[51] songs set down in verse of Chalcis: sc. the etiological epos drawn by Gallus from Euphorion of Chalcis ( cf. p. 13);
cf. contrast between 'songs’ & 'verse’ [refrains of ecl. 8]; [6.1] vs [6.3, 9]; & ‘songs’ [ecl. 3] vs ‘verses’ [ecl. 7].
Sicilian grazer: sc. Theocritus of Syracuse – his first idyll set in Sicily: cf. Arethúsa [10.1, with note]; ‘Syracusan verse’
[6.1, with note]; ‘Sicilian Muses’ [4.1, with note]; ‘lambs of mine are ranging Sicily’s hills’ [2.21]. grazer: metaphormetonym for poet in bucolic tradition; cf. ‘grazer’ [9.34]; [8.1, 23]; [7.25]; [6.4, 67]; [5.41, 59]; [2.1]; [1.21]. oat: cf.
‘with meager oat’ [1.2].
609
[52] decided to prefer to suffer: sc. ‘put up with’], [4.40]; [2.10]. in woods: sc. in the bucolic range itself], [10.8, with
note].
610
[53] among wild beasts’ lairs: remarked as a stylistic mannerism (affectation of Greek) by early readers; cf. wild beasts
moved in rhythm by singing of Silenus [6.27]. cut on tender trees: sc. inscribe his book of elegies into the bucolic
range; cf. ‘cut’ [9.14]; [8.29]; [3.11]. tender: vulnerable, cf. [10.49, with note]: cf. GrEleg bark inscribed by lover to
declare his beloved ‘beautiful’ (Callim. Aitia fr. 73 Pfeiffer): Acóntius to Cydíppe, cf. trees taught to echo Amarýllis
‘well-formed’ [1.5]: “Two Programmatic Plots,” 47.
611
[54] trees will grow, you loves will grow: hint of dynamism in poetics, cf. [7.25, boastful]; [2.67]; cf. [10.73] & [4.49].
Reckoning [50-54] V dramatizes his own shift from use of Gallus’ etiological epos to use of his elegies & their hypererotic persona to
complete the new Arcadian version of the bucolic range.
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With mingling Nymphs I’ll meanwhile go to scour Mount Mad612
55
or hunt fierce boars. Not me will any cold forbid613
from circling round with dogs the glens of Virgins Mount.614
615
Already now to myself I seem to go mid crags
57
58
& echoing glades – amused by thwirling Parthian points616
with a Cretan bow: as if this would be our rage’s cure617
———————————————
Intensifying the sense of the book as a whole that he has been developing step by step, V now looks back to his first version of the
bucolic range, where he made Melibœ́us describe it with a strained metonymy – using a Latin word for weed (‘oat’) to stand for the
bucolic panpipe, which was more regularly represented even in Latin by the Greek ‘reed’. Now V makes a unique & pointed echo of
that opening misuse of ‘oat’. By repeating his strained usage, he naturalizes it as an emblem of his style; cf. p. 76, ‘oaten pipe’ like
the name Títyrus becomes a Virgilian hallmark in later pastoral tradition.
Making a theme of his uses for Gallus’ works, V has the elegist decide not only to inhabit the woods that typify the bucolic range
itself, but even to wander into wilder zones, & to inscribe his loves on the basic matter of bucolic – trees: their natural growth becomes
a metaphor for what V is doing here – amplifying both elegy & bucolic by making the elegiac lover into a Daphnis. Growth implies that
elegiac loves translated into bucolic terms become more desperate & even fatal, rising to the tragic level that V has been seeking in the
latter part of the book, e.g., [6.45-60] & [8.10, 14-61].
612
[55-61] Cure sought in hills but bucolic fancy fails (7: 3/4)
[55-57] While trees grow & amplify loves, the lover will try to purge passion via a georgic ritual or a perilous hunt. (3)
[55] mingling: as also ‘mingling’ trees [5.3]; plants & heros [4.16, 20]; blooms & scents [2.5 5]. Nymphs: ordinarily
companions of Diana for hunting; in book, lost to Menálcas [9.19]; close to Orpheus & Muses [7.21); ‘of netting’ called
to help erotic hunt for bull [6.55, 56, with note); mourned dead Daphnis [5.20, 21] & themselves worshipped with him
[5.75]; gave conniving snicker at erotic liaison [3.9]; facilitated erotic allure [2.46]. Mad Mountain: as at [10.15,
with note]. scour: lustr-, go through in effort to purge, like Córydon [2.12] – metaphoric since adapts rural cleansing
ritual as if it might purge erotic madness, cf. [5.75].
613
[56] boars: hunting trophy for Diana [7.29]; wild game loving hills [5.76]; hunted [3.75]; would befoul springs [2.59].
614
[57] Threat to invade isolated little valleys in Arcadia on the slopes of Mount Parthénius (sc. Virgins Mount). circling ...
dogs: varies ‘gleaming loins bound up by barking brutes |... tore ... with dogs’ – Scylla – her thighs sensual yet wreathed
by barking, biting maws [6.75-77]. glen: “a small, secluded valley,” American Heritage Dictionary; cf. ‘glens’ where
Naids were not [10.9, with note]; also upland vales where Pasiphaë would hunt her bull [6.72]; cf. SocMem ‘glen’
(saltus) metaphoric for female sexual organs (Plautus, Casina 5.2.41, Curculio 1.1.56].
Reckoning (55-57: 3) V takes the georgic theme of ritual cleansing from the projected worship of Daphnis & makes his elegiac substitute for Daphnis propose to purge passion by ‘scouring’ Mǽnalus. Wrongly the phrase gets interpreted to mean just ‘take a
mountain walk’, which ignores the sense of ritual circling to purge & cleanse erotic rage.
The name Mǽnalus implies rage, cf. [8.21], which calls for the full ritual sense of ‘scour’ – to rid the mountain of its root meaning, which undercuts hope of there getting rid of passion – a grim pun (paronomasia) typical of tragic style (e.g., Oidipous ‘swollen/knowing foot’ or Helen who snatches & destroys).
Pushing on from ritual to hunting, V elevates the figure of Gallus to equal, indeed to outdo, tragic features already remarked by
Hunter, Theocritus A Selection, 98–100, pointing to elements that suggest tragedy (id. 1.115-21: 116, 117, 120; 123] & heroic epos
(id. 1.125). Th portrayed Daphnis as like the tragic Phaidra. Conte, Rhetoric, 120–21, remarks that Phaidra went in search of her
beloved & Gallus tries to purge himself of passion, sharing elegiac & tragic motifs, p. 121, n. 22. V intensifies irony, since he echoes
what he wrote about Phaidra’s mother Pasiphaë in her passionate hunt through the hills for a bull [6.55-60, with note].
At the climax, V adds yet another irony absent from Th, whose Daphnis rejected a willing female that hunted him in the hills. V
imagines Gallus laying siege to 'glens of Maidens Mount’. V thus describes the therapeutic hunt in language marked by traces of the
very erotic rage to be cured – hunt, virgin glens, not to mention the menacing dogs around a female’s fatally attractive loins.
615
[58-61] Hallucination – hunt seeming to happen now (4)
Virgil portrays his bucolic-elegiac hero as rushing from prospective plot to compulsive yet imaginary action.
[58] to myself I seem to go: for 'seeming' cf. [9.35], [7.41, [6.24]. crags: picturesque & wild nature, cf. [10.14, with
note]. echoing: as in [6.44], [5.64], but also 'echo back, reecho' [1.5] & nature’s response [6.84], [10.8, with note].
glade: as also [8.86], & glade of Apollo in epos emulated by Gallus from Euphorion [6.73].
616
[59-60] Parthian points: arrows legendary of the Parthian empire, which included modern Iran, Iraq, & much more.
Cretan horn: ‘horn’ for ‘bow’ – material standing by metonymy for weapon – linked with Crete by tradition (Coleman).
‘Parthian’ & ‘Cretan’ a strained geographic blend expressing emotional stress to tragic effect; the expression goes
over the top, sounds overwrought, a parody of tragic style, sc. paratragic. V may ironize too that this hunt with Cretan
bow (‘horn’ in Latin, but toxon in Greek, because made from ‘yew’, tax-) is no cure (medicina) for love, though Cretan
(Cydonean) apples were thought to cure poison from the bow (toxikon pharmakon): Boyd, “Cydonea,” 173.
617
[60-61] our rage: erotic madness bursting out in full force despite the attempt to cleanse it ritually or to work it off
through hunting: cf. ‘whatever rage’, which would redue rage to easy sexual liaison [10.38]; cf. a similar fall from hallucination to reality, ‘Córydon ... pure country’ [2.56]; cf. GrBep Muses as love medicine (id. 11.1-3). that god learn:
not the new Roman gods of first half book; cf. ‘that one’ [5.64]; ‘that one’ [1.7].
Reckoning [58-61: 4] Upward shift to a dramatic high point – stagy self-deception: like any tragic hero, the lover glancing selfconsciously about, then in a stage whisper evoking spectacular features of landscape that V draws from picturesque moments earlier in
the book as well as exotic weaponry that reeks of Alexandrian learning. But the high point provokes an emphatic low – a dramatic
86
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ECLOGUE
or that god toward men’s evils learn to get more mild.
61
Already again now neither nymphs of oaks nor songs
62
themselves please us: you, woods, yourselves again concede!618
Not any chores of ours can ever change that god,619
not if we should drink of Hebrus while it’s cold620
& go on up to a watery winter’s Thracian snows,
nor if, when – dying on lofty elms – bark book-like dries,621
we’d turn Ethiopians’ sheep down under Cancer’s sign.622
Love defeats all things. Let us, too, concede to Love.”623
69
———————————————
about face like that of Córydon [2.56] to telegraph with gestures & bathetic tones.
618
[63] You woods, yourselves: repetition enhances expressivity; cf. woods as basic bucolic matter [10.52 & 10 , with note].
-selves: a favorite intensifier, often implying active sympathy from non-human source, sc. ‘by its / their own initiative or
volition, of its / their own accord’; cf., e.g., ash flames up [8.106]; billy-goat strayed & cattle come [7.7, 11]; gods
depart , nature celebrates [5.35, 62, 63, 64]; miracles [4.21, 23, 38, 43]; cf. [3.74, 95]; ‘ woods kept calling’ [1.38-39];
but also ‘Lycóris’ [10.2] & lovers suppose [8.108]. concede: as opening appeal], [10.1, with note].
619
[64} that god: again with still greater & more bitter emphasis, cf. ‘that god’ [10.61, with note]. chores: sc., this poetic
effort, cf. this last chore’ [10.1, with note].
620
[65-66] Hebrus while it’s cold: river in Thrace, which was proverbial for harsh winters & land of Orpheus; cf. Orpheus
[8.55, 56]; [6.30]; [4.55, 57]; [3.46]; also the exile of Melibœ́us projected to extremes of south, north, east & west
[1.64-66]. cold: as earlier, [10.48, with note); cf. GrBep Pan threatened with being ‘turned by the Hebrus river near the
north star in mid-winter’ (id. 7.111-12). snows: like the camps where Lycóris runs [10.23, 47].
621
[67] dying: extreme recalls dying outcry of Damon [8.20, 60]; paratragic outbursts by Córydon [2.7, 38]. lofty: also
‘deep’, sc. stretched through space ≈ glades where lovelorn heifer lost [8.86]; Thyrsis again [7.66]; mythic stretches
[6.38, 76]; distant sky, dwelling of gods [4.7]; stretching dimensions of space of Títyrus [1.56, 83]. elm: marked traditional place preferred by Menálcas but rejected by Mopsus [5.30]; arbor too leafy for vine half-pruned [2.70]; old
space of Títyrus newly praised by Melibœ́us [1.58, where Coleman 292 on target] bark booklike: liber, libr-, ‘bark’,
stands by metonymy for book: cf. ‘cut my loves on tender trees’ [10.53-54, with note); ‘described on verdant bark of
beech’ [5.13-14]. dries: as in drought evoked by Thyrsis [7.56, 57] & ‘thirsty Africa’ [1.64].
622
[68] we’d turn: vers-, cf. ‘chance turns over all’ [9.5]; cf. GrBep Pan threatened with being ‘turned by Hebrus’ in cold or
with opposite extreme of heat, herding amid ‘last Ethiopians’ (id. 7.111-12); cf. ‘last Garamantes’ [8.44].
623
[69] All things Love defeats: the failure to control love already predicted, ‘There’ll be no measure’ [10.28]; cf.’what
measure would there be for Love?’ [2.68]. all: final & most comprehensive variant on recurrent theme, cf. ‘all respond’
[10.8, with note) but ‘chance turns over all’ [9.5, with note). defeat: again the military metaphor, e.g., defeated, gloomy’
Mœris & Menálcas [9.5], cf. Gallus [10.31], & Thyrsis], [7.69]; but also Pan], [4.59] & Orpheus, Apollo, Linus, Calliope [4.53-57]. concede: cf. [10.1, 63, with notes].
Reckoning [62-69] This last outburst of V’s elegiac-bucolic hero brings to mind a musical metaphor – grand finale. For a finale, a
composer brings back motifs from before but with changes, whether resonance or dissonance – as before but more / less – that yield
new interest & heightened effect.
In the resulting retrospective & recursive move, V makes the familiar bucolic woods no longer please even the bucolic-elegiac
lover, who bids them good-bye once & for all, since V depicts him as no longer able – like Córydon – to stand back & evoke a georgic
alternative in work & love [2.69-73]. The references to destructive Love (AMOR) as ‘that god’ recall the constructive God at Rome
(ROMA) & the further Roman allegory of the new god Daphnis, praised, too, for loving godlike poets [5.45, 52].
As before, V sounds the note of exile in motifs of flight to geographical extremes. But more than the fate of Melibœ́us, this new
exile evokes pastoral transhumance – the widespread practice in the Greco-Roman world still continued in Mediterranean lands today
of driving herds between winter lowland pasturage & summer upland pasturage – also, though less explicitly, the economic & social
background for Th in the seventh idyll.
Going beyond Th, V evokes harsh Mediterranean summer when bark dries out & dies [10.67]. He draws these motifs not from
Th but from moments earlier in his own book that defined bucolic song – from the location of Títyrus through its expansions &
eventual reversals as overreaching Thyrsis & the ‘defeated’ Mœris & Menálcas, for whom ‘chance turns over all’.
V here introduces the motif of bark (liber). The novelty suits the situation in the book: ‘bark’ (liber) makes oblique reference to
the present book (liber) & ‘dying in drought’ is metaphoric for the fact that V here draws the book to its close [8.11]. In closing, thus,
he goes beyond two earlier hints of writing on ‘bark’ ≈ ‘this book’ [10.53-54] & [5.13-14].
When V then describes herding as ‘turning’ sheep, the forced usage of ‘turn’ returns to echo a verb in the seventh idyll –
Coleman 292-293 at his best, where Clausen mute – yet the forced echo now adds a hint of the form in which he works (‘would turn’,
vers- ≈ versus, the furrow-like turns of verse, cf. [10.50-51, with note].
V closes the finale with a high point – another of those pithy & sententious mottoes that resonated in tragedy & appealed to the
audiences of mime (cf. n. 39) & with which he has peppered his book, e.g., [6.24], [8.62-63], & [8.107]. In form, position, & sentiment, this last is no doubt the climax – the most catchy, memorable apothegm, which has been shaping ever since (& perhaps distorting) people’s notions about love. ‘Love’ gets used generically for three different behaviors governed by different parts of the brain –
“Lust, Romance, Attachment”: Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, passim. The romantic-fixated
X
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ECLOGUE
624
These songs it will be enough for your poet to have sung625
70
while he sits & weaves with slender mallow a wicker form,626
Piérian goddesses: these you’ll make most great for Gallus,627
Gallus, for whom my love grows hour-by-hour as much628
as alder in fresh spring verdant upwards thrusts itself.629
Let’s rise: the shade for those who chant does get to be heavy –630
———————————————
phase predominates in literature, including the figures of Gallus, two lovers [ecl. 8], &Córydon [ecl. 2]; lust in Silénus’ hint to Ægle
[6.26]; stable attachment only in Tıstyrus paired with Amarýllis or other hints of reciprocal love in eclogues three, five, & seven.
The finale also caps the masking of historical causality that V has conducted – pulling ideological wool over listeners’ & readers’ eyes. He displaced blame for violent change from Rome to the country, ‘godless soldier’ [1. 70]. In return to the theme, he further
displaced blame for defeat of the old order, renaming that ‘soldier’ a new squatter in the field & blaming an anonymous ‘chance’ for
overturning a generic all [9.5]. Now he draws from the realm of gloomy warfare [6.7] & with a favorite military metaphor, cf. [4.5359], he makes Love score victory over an ‘all’ drawn down from cosmic scope [4.52] & made to encompass the realm of personal passion – all – abstracted from its political & social, sc. ideological frame
624
[70-77] FRAMER to Pierian Muses confirms achievement of tragic style & proceeds to close his bucolic triumph (8)
Virgil calls it enough & locates himself as seated while weaving a wicker frame – metaphoric for making the book.
625
[70-74] Poet curbs the expansive Pierians & reinforces his opening motif of poet’s love for poet (5)
[70] enough: invokes esthetic norm of slightness, that less is more, cf. ‘enough’ ironically defining rocky little place of Títyrus
from the viewpoint of Melibœ́us [1.47, n.174]; but also [10.30]; [9.55]; [7.34, with note]; [6.24]; [4.54]; [3.111, with note];
[2.14, 38, n. 210]. your poet: cf. ‘godlike poet’ [10.17]; made ‘poet’ by Pierians, but not bard [9.32]; Thyrsis ‘growing poet’
& ‘bard to be’ [7.25]; Mopsus called ‘godlike’ [5.45]; cf. GrBep ‘all call me an excellent bard, but I demur’ (id. 7.38). to
have sung: cf. ‘sing’, in past of Menálcas since lost [9.19, 25] & of Mœris [9.44]; wished for [9.61]; future return of
Menálcas [9.67]; past push for more, drawn down [6.3, 9]; grove entire [6.11]; Silénus [6.31, 61, 64, 84]; challenging
Phœbus [5.9]; pushing for more [4.1, 3]; imitating Pan [2.31); trimmer in locale of Títyrus, but Melibœ́us no more [1.56, 77].
626
[71] sits: posture of Daphnis but not the singers or their judge [7.1]; not settled in familiar place [5.3]; two singers invited by
judge [3.55]. weaves: as Mincius with reed its banks [7.12-13, with note]; also Córydon with Naïd & Nymphs, alluring
wreathes [2.49, with note to tradition of weaving epigram books]; georgic task neglected by Córydon [2.72]; cf. GrBep ‘boy
weaving lovely cricket trap with asphodel stalks fastening them to rush’ (id. 1.52-53); Hunter, Theocritus A Selection, 83–84,
“weaving as an image for poetry occurs already in the archaic period (Bacchylides 5.9-10).” with slender mallow a wicker
form: which even Servius interpreted as allegory for having composed the book with a ‘very meager stylus’ (tenuissimo stilo,
sc. very fine point, stick, pen ≈ by metonymy from tool to manner of writing, so style); cf. slightness as stylistic norm (note on
previous line). mallow: a wetland plant, its fresh stem flexible, also used as a switch [2.30]. wicker form: fiscella, ‘little
woven container or frame’. Its letters are close to those of ‘panpipe’ (fistula, with -cell- instead of -tu-), but in the rustic world
would serve for chores, e.g., to collect fruit or flowers, cf. [8.37-38]; [7.54]; [3.92]; [2.45-55]; [1.36-37], to drain & shape
fresh cheese [1.81], cf. French faiselle ≈ ricotta in Italian; also to muzzle cattle or keep ewes from rams (Coleman 293).
627
[72] Pierian goddesses: evoked earlier to fill out song before], [9.32] & [8.62-63], here to close & cap. goddesses: divæ,
honorific address that reminded the learned & alert Ursinus of Homer, ‘goddess, sing’ (Il. 1.1]. you’ll make: as they ‘made’
Lýcidas a ‘poet’, sc. ‘maker’ in Greek], [9.32]; ‘makes with verses’ [7.23]; ‘made you marble’ [7.35]; ‘make a mound’
[5.42]; Pollio ‘makes fresh songs’ [3.86]; god ‘made this repose’ [1.6]. most great for Gallus: superlative unique in book
caps various boasts, cf. ‘great’ river [8.6]; match [7.16]; cosmic void & royal herd [6.31, 55]; rank of centuries, ages, lions,
Achilles, honors, increment of Jove [4.5, 12, 22, 36, 48, 49]; Apollo [3.104]; Rome vs town [1.23]; place of Títyrus ‘great
enough’ [1.47], cf. [10.70, with note]; also ‘greater’ Menálcas [5.4]; ‘gift of song’ [5.53]; ‘songs’ pushed for [4.1]; cup than
cow [3.35]; ‘shadows growing closing day’ [1.83].
628
[73] Gallus, for whom my love grows hour-by-hour: name repeated conveys affection intensified by image of quick growth &
analogy with spring & burgeoning tree: Coleman 294 well describes emotive language, reduced to limp paraphrase by
Clausen, 292; cf. poet’s love for poet [10.2]. grows: cf. Loves & trees [10.54]; ‘growing poet’ Thyrsis [7.35]; ‘growing
shadows’ close day [2.67]; cf. ‘increment of Jove’ [4.49]. hourly: but the excessive rhythm of ‘twice an hour milks’ [3.5].
629
[74] verdant: another indicative value in V’s bucolic range, used to describe ‘shade’ [9.20]; ‘marram’ [8.87]; ‘arbute’ [7.46],
‘river banks’ [7.12]; ‘forage’ [6.59], ‘bark’ of tree [5.13]; ‘lizards’ [2.9], ‘mallow’ [2.30]; lost ‘bower’ of Melibœ́us [1.75];
‘leafage’ enjoyed by Títyrus [1.80]. fresh: nov-, often implying unwelcome change, e.g., ‘disputes’ [9.14]; ‘marriage torches’
[8.29]; ‘new & nasty wife’ ≈ stepmother [3.33]; but better ‘milk’ [5.67]; ‘line from lofty sky’ [4.7]; ‘songs’ [3.86]; ‘milk’
[2.22]. spring: the one other use of word in book also isolated from its wintry context [9.40], but the season in georgic fields
& bucolic woods gets evoked as setting to sit & sing the incremental exchange of songs the Latin Muses love [3.55-57]. alder:
lifted ‘tall from soil’ by singing of Silénus transforming girls who grieved for brother’s loss [6.62-63]; would flower in topsyturvy world [8.53]. itself: as often for energy from nature, e.g., [10.63, with note].
630
[75-77] Farewell (3)
[75] Let’s rise: leaving the posture & place linked to making the book with an action drawn from nature, e.g., ‘woods first begin to
rise’ [6.39], but also a ‘thornbush’ [5.39] & ‘first golden folk’ [4.9]; cf. LtEp ‘these (sc. maladies) – all of them – thus rise
from the lands’ (Lucr. 6.788), in context with Lucr. 6.783-85, cited at [10.76]. shade: as at [9.42]. chant: earlier at [10.31,
with note]. heavy: as the ewer of Silénus [6.17]; sc. ‘pregnant’ ewes of Títyrus [1.49] & the hand of Títyrus never ‘heavy’
with cash so long as under thumb of Galatéa [1.35].
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ECLOGUE
juniper shade gets heavy; shadows harm also harvests.631
Goats go home with enough, the Evening’s coming, go.632
631
77
[76] Juniper shade is heavy: emphasizes need to close by citing a dark tree & repeating the adjective; cf. ‘Junipers & shaggy
chestnuts’ [7.53, Córydon]; cf. LtEp ‘heavy shade first assigned to certain trees so as often to cause headaches if anyone lay
under them stretched on grasses’ (Lucr. 6.783-85): cf. [1.1], citing Lucretius’ image of both early man & philosophical idyll –
‘lying stretched on turf by a rill of water under a lofty tree’. shade ... heavy: words repeated so that the usual protective cover
of the bucolic range seems to force closure. shadows: third mention & shift to plural build sense of menace. harm: noc-,
‘noxious’, ‘not inNOCent’; cf. ‘lest evil tongue harm bard to be’ [7.28, Thyrsis]; ‘not somehow harmed’ [3.15]. also harvests: extends menace from bucolic to georgic range, where ‘harvests’ favored by Caesar’s star [9.48]; valued in georgic life
[3.77, 80].
632
[77] Get on home with enough: as in ‘get on home, grazed full’ [7.44, Thyrsis – sardonic); ‘Get on ... get on’ [1.74, exit line of
Melibœ́us – pathetic]. home: ‘Draw from city home’ [8.68 etc.]; ‘Themselves will nanny goats bring home’ [4.21]. cf. ‘who at
home’ [7.15, Melibœ́us]; ‘at home there’s father’ [3.33]. enough: echoes closural motif [10.70, with note]. Evening: cf. star
bade counting sheep [6.85] & close of day that closes eclogues two & one.
Reckoning [70-77] As in musical composition, after the finale comes a coda, also recursive but more broad, for here V recapitulates &
writes fine both to this last eclogue & in his most explicit terms to the book entire.
His metapoetic allegory invokes meager style, as Servius remarked, but also other concepts in poetics: the epic ambition implicit in
the verb ‘to sing’ & the craft of making a book, adapting the metaphor of weaving used by epigram books.
Hinting at epic ambition, V hails the Pierians as ‘goddesses’ in the manner of Homer. With a polite command, couched in future
tense, he urges one further, great effort: to make these songs the ‘greatest’ for Gallus. The future tense once again, as already in this
eclogue at other decisive junctures, conveys what the poet is making or has made. In this case, V has made his shift between works of
Gallus from the etiological epos to the elegies, translating the elegiac lover into a fresh version of the old bucolic hero that he raises to
the level of tragedy – ambition foreshadowed in eclogue eight. In the process, V has shifted the time & scene of bucolic action from
Theocritean Sicily to an Arcadia depicted at an imaginary moment prior to the first idyll & populated with motley motifs from his own
book cast as company for Arcadian Pan.
The image of an alder springing upwards green clashes with the surrounding motifs of winter with which V closes down his book.
Yet the alder’s energetic upward thrust evokes memory of the story of how it arose from the grief of Pháëthon’s sisters via the power of
song [6.62-63]. Thus it mingles negative & positive traces: irreparable loss but remediating song.
In a final variant of his first principle, ‘as before but more’, V recurs to the perhaps most basic constituent of the bucolic range &
transforms ‘shade’ from its positive earlier values, e.g., [1.1-4], into a definitive closural motif.
By way of ending, then, he harks back to the desperate farewell of the displaced goatherd-singer Melibœ́us & transforms it into an
orderly command. Goats themselves never get enough, in this like lovers, as we were warned in a blunt & pithy priamel from the myth
of Pan [10.30] – as before from the mouth of Córydon [2.63-65], though here more absolute as suits a tragic plot & style. But the
framing voice can impose measure, enough for now; & the motif of satisfaction & possibility of getting home at end of day complete the
assimilation of the old order singer & goatherd figure to the newly invented mythic frame in which the newly posited literary & ethical
ideal of Arcadia emerges as the final & fullest realization of the founding principle – as before but more.
THREADS FROM TRAGEDY & EPOS
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CLUES IN SOCIAL MEMORY – THREADS FROM TRAGEDY & EPOS
Virgil’s reported success in private & on stage suggests that the Bucolics could communicate at different levels:633
for the stage, they would lend themselves to presentation like that of pantomime – thought to have become fashionable in
the theater late in Virgil’s life – as described by Thomas Beacham:634
This individual silent performer was backed by musicians playing such instruments as the tibia, cymbals, drums,
cithara, and scabellum (a clapper operated by the foot) and accompanied by either a single actor or a chorus that
sang the part and provided the narrative continuity, during which the pantomime impersonated all the characters,
male and female, in a series of interlinked solo scenes consecutively arranged.
Beacham goes on to report:
Quintilian notes that there could be two pantomimi “contending with alternate gestures” and says that Augustus
called one of them saltator (dancer) and the other interpellator (interrupter) (Inst. 6.3.65).635 The task of the
performers was to give an impression of the whole ensemble and the relationship of one character to another
while preserving the sense of the plot and creating graceful and expressive movements and gestures.
Beacham’s report includes besides advice by the satirist Lucian (c1 CE) that a pantomimist know & be able to exploit
familiarity in the audience with a select literary tradition: “To sum it up, he will not be ignorant of anything that is told by
Homer and Hesiod and the best poets, and above all by tragedy.”
Lucian’s recipe – like many a list of required readings – may be wishful, biased from a satirist & a Greek. Yet
pantomime presented familiar myths in reduced form, which sounds rather like some riffs on myth in the Bucolics.
Pantomime also strove for extremes of voice & gesture – dramatic turns & highs often cued by the Bucolics though all
too rarely reached by the run of readers & translators. To be sure, Lucian’s emphasis on tragedy & heroic epos betrays a
bias, that writing about the highest classes (especially from ages past & places far) was worthiest in style & theme, while
comedy & mime with subjects nearer common folk & present times were low. By this criterion the Bucolics with their
cast of herdsmen, belong to the bottom of the social & literary scale, yet they are written in the meter of Homer &
Hesiod, hint frequently at heroic-tragic myth, & rise to tragic style with themes of fatal love.
Reference to “the best poets” betrays another Greek bias: the tendency to think of relationships as competing for
some unique prize (the so called “zero-sum game”) with the inevitable focus on superlatives – best & strongest, fairest,
foremost, first:636 gods in legend fought to be most powerful, sons brutalizing fathers; goddesses connived to be called
fairest. One to win a beauty contest – bad behavior but good story, therefore often told – bribed the judge (Paris –
shepherd-prince of Troy) by promising him the ‘the fairest of the fair’, though fair Helen was already married to the king
of Sparta, Menelaus. His war to get her back from Troy stocked memory with yarns – heroic & tragic.638 Again, in the
Bucolics Virgil shows knowledge not only of Homer, Hesiod & tragedy but of poets later canonized as best not least
because he picked them out to read.
The cultural focus on competition even generates an imaginary match between Hesiod & Homer639 – made to
represent contrasting styles & themes.640 Their fictive bout also provides another cultural pattern – that victory may
633
Not only orally to diverse audiences but also, like their Greek models, to various readers: “a charming, sometimes witty, surface accessible to a nonspecialist reader and deeper layers of allusion and learning recognizable to readers with expert knowledge,”Gutzwiller, Guide, 178-79, emphasizing recent warnings too that Alexandrian poets occasionally performed their works.
634
Beacham, Spectacle, 143, citing Lucian of Samosata (c2 CE), De Saltatione (‘On Dance’) 37-71: well worth revisiting for
its vivid sketch of histrionics not only on stage but performers even descending to interact with spectators in the front rows; cf. Design
p. xxvii. On Latin tragedy, comedy, indeed epic, in the theater, see Horsfall, Plebs, 58–59, & on the cultural level of pantomime, pp.
60-61.
635
Quintilian (c[irc]a, 'around', 35-ca 100 CE), Institutiones Oratoriae (‘On Rhetoric’).
636
“The competitive ethos penetrated almost every activity in ancient Greece, from war, to oratory, to poetry’ writes David
Konstan: Euripides, Cyclops, 9 ‘Best’ in Greek aristo-: emphasis on ‘old’ & ‘high’ & ‘best’ belongs to the propagandistic function of
literature as a means of creating & maintaining hegemony by an elite: theorized & documented for Roman literature by Habinek,
Politics of Latin Literature, 35, 45–46. On “canons” of “best poets,” Kathryn Gutzwiller, Guide, 169–70.
637
“The competitive ethos penetrated almost every activity in ancient Greece, from war, to oratory, to poetry’ writes David
Konstan: Euripides, Cyclops, 9 ‘Best’ in Greek aristo-: emphasis on ‘old’ & ‘high’ & ‘best’ belongs to the propagandistic function of
literature as a means of creating & maintaining hegemony by an elite: theorized & documented for Roman literature by Habinek,
Politics of Latin Literature, 35, 45–46.
638
Success for poetry serving power has ancient roots, e.g., Ford, Origins, 274–76: ‘Heroic Contests.”
639
Imagining dialogue that was literally impossible but figuratively representative exemplifies cognitive blending as theorized
by Fauconnier, Cognitive Blending. Such fictions are prevalent even fundamental in cultures not just of Greece & Rome.
640
Nagy, Homer & Hesiod as Prototypes.
CLUES IN SOCIAL MEMORY
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depend not on popular acclaim but on approval by the power that frames the contest.641
In the long run, but well before Virgil, “the poems of Hesiod and Homer ... provided a synthesis of values and
beliefs that created a ‘Panhellenic’ paradigm for archaic and classical Greek culture.”642 In retrospect, the differences
among the four complement each other & fill out a complex frame – a broad thematic web for memory shared in hexameter verse – Greek epos, hence epic tradition.
[In these charts, terms in brackets identify the thematic range or ranges in each work. Focus on the general
thematic pattern puts aside debate as to which texts took form first in time.]
OLDEST EPIC FRAME – GENERIC THREADS (HOMER, HESIOD)
Hesiod, Theogony (‘Genesis of Gods’)
First in theme, Hesiod projects cosmic origin from primordial Ge (Gaia, ‘Earth’) & Eros (‘Love’) in Chaos
(‘Gape, Maw’) until her grandson Zeus (in Latin Jupiter, Jove) defeats his father Kronos (Latin Saturn) founding the
regime on Mount Olympus that becomes the enduring mythic frame for Greek political order & hence a potential
paradigm for Rome. Zeus to defeat his father, relies on superior weaponry (lightning) & the craft of one of his father’s
Titan brothers, Prometheus.643
The latter’s craft also becomes in Hesiod’s story crucial for creating human culture: it.tricks Zeus to agree to
arrange animal sacrifice so that humans get the edible parts; & when Zeus resentful keeps from men the fire to cook the
meat, Prometheus steals it for them, enabling too their crafts & arts, but provoking his own punishment by Zeus, who
orders woman – Pandora – invented to punish men. Thematically Zeus’ regime sets the stage for both the heroic strife in
Homer’s epics & the regular life in Hesiod’s other work.
Hesiod frames the origin story as a hymn to the Muses. He describes them approaching him while he herded
sheep on Mount Helicon & reports their riddling claim to know how to produce fictions like the truth but, when they wish
to, also truth. They gave him a staff, he adds, of laurel (daphne) & voice to tell of future & past, ordering that he hymn
the gods & themselves ‘first & last’.644 By this self-reflexive preamble he claims authority for his art – its verisimilitude,
design & major themes – to create & regulate social memory empowered by the daughters of Memory & Zeus.
[range – cosmic-mythic; hints of heroic & civic, e.g., Heracles & sacrifice, woman]
[poetics – authorized by Muses as seer-bard while herding ≈ range – bucolic]
Homer, Iliad (Fate of Ilion = Troy)
Within the frame of Olympian myth, the themes of war at Troy produced a plethora of plots,645 only one of which
Homer develops in the Iliad. He focuses on the theme of prideful wrath in the best Greek fighter Achilles, who inflicts
pain (achos) on himself & his own people (Acheans) because of a quarrel – another contest – with the selfish king
Agamemnon – bad shepherd of people – over honor due to each.646 Homer frames & motivates the plot through the figure
of a seer (Chalcas) supposed to control social memory like that which the Muses promised Hesiod: knowledge of what
has been, what is, & what will come – in other words, how the conflict between heroes started, how it stands, & how it
likely will unfold: secrets of the poetic plot.
[range – mythic-heroic (bad shepherd anti-bucolic); plot & action tragic, no return home]
[poetics – ‘sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles’ ≈ range – mythic]
Homer, Odyssey (Odysseus getting home)
Competing with himself by envisioning a sequel, Homer shifts from tragic anger on the field at Troy to homecoming – the wily Odysseus (a story-teller like the poet) with his long & eventful journey to rejoin his loyal wife by
641
Ably contextualized by Rosen, “Contests,” 298–305.
Stephens, Poetics Ptolemaic, 195, citing Nagy, Mythology & Poetics, 36-82. On the “political myth of Pan-Hellenism”
Green, Argonautika, 33n112, with bibliography.
643
“The ordering of the world in Greek cosmogonies and theogonies was inseparabe from myths of sovreignty. Furthermore,
the myths of emergence while recounting the story of successive generations of the gods, foregrounded the determining role of a divine
king, triumphed over his enemies and once and for all established order in the cosmos... At this level the poetic function was above all
to ‘serve sovreignty’: by reciting the myth of emergence he collaborated directly in setting world in order.” M. Detienne, The Masters
of Truth in Archaic Greece, 1996 New York, pp. 44-45, cited by Stephens, Poetics Ptolemaic, 86.
644
Hymn metaphoric for ‘weave’ a song.
645
Proclus
646
Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry.
642
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contrast with Agamemnon’s brief journey & murder by his cousin, the lover of his unfaithful wife. Countering the Iliad,
Homer supposes Achilles now with Agamemnon in the underworld – heroic principles erased by knowing death – telling
Odysseus that life toiling on a poor farm would beat commanding all the dead. Not so at a turning point in the Iliad’s plot
Achilles had determined to avenge his dead friend though it cost his own death (Il. 18.96).
[range – mythic-heroic; plot & action mixed tragi-comic, return home but fight to reclaim]
[pœtics – ‘tell me, muse, of a man of many turns’]
Hesiod, Works & Days (Origins & Order – Calendar – of Georgic Work)
After claiming that the Muses sought him herding on the mountain & dictated the Theogony, Hesiod calls them to come
to him (at no specified place or task). He gives the order now, telling them to hymn their father Zeus whom he describes
in moralistic terms as lifting up the humble, humbling the proud, making men spoken or unspoken (arrētoi): he orders his
brother to pay heed, for he will tell true things.647
Continuing to sound like a preacher, he praises the ‘Strife’ – competitive spirit – that stirs farmer & craftsman alike to try
to outdo each other (W & D 11–24).648 He then returns to elaborate on the roots of the human need to strive, which he
traces to the escalating strife between Zeus & Prometheus – first the trick of sacrifice, then fire withheld & stolen, so
woman invented & imposed as punishment on man by Zeus (42-89).
From origin Hesiod moves to development, adapting to human kind the Theogony’s concept of generations – a
rudimentary history conceived as successive races, from a distant Golden Race when Kronos (Saturn) ruled, earth was
productive without georgic toil, & bucolic flocks thrived (109-20).649 Decline follows under the rule of Zeus through
races of Silver & Bronze, but then the better fourth, the Race of Heroes who fought at Thebes & Troy, where some died,
but others live on islands ruled by Cronus (Saturn) where earth bears sweet harvests thrice a year. Fifth come Hesiod’s
contemporaries – his own Race of Iron. Their evil will grow until might makes right & the ethical powers ‘Shame’
(Aidos) & ‘Fair Portion’ (Nemesis) will leave earth to join the gods (170-201).
[range – mythic (golden, heroic) & civic-georgic {ge+org, ‘earth working’}:
competition as root of culture]
[poetics – sweet song distilled from Zeus]
BUCOLIC THREADS IN HEROIC FRAME – ACHILLES’ SHIELD & ODYSSEUS’ CYCLOPS
Within the broad generic frame of epos, Homer focused in specific scenes on the bucolic range. In the Iliad he
represented the surrounding world by imagining the god of craft at work. He envisioned Hephaestus fabricating
(daidallon) for Achilles a great shield;650 & he made the god turn out five folds encompassing multiple thematic ranges
that together encapsulate the culture in which the Iliad’s plot unfolds.
Fold (verses) themes
[thematic range(s)]
I. (483-489) earth, sky, sea & constellations for summer harvest & fall plowing
[cosmic with georgic]651
II. (490-552) two cities of men
[civic & heroic-mythic]
II.a (490-508) a city in peacetime
[civic]
II.a.1 (490-96) by night celebrating marriages with much chanting, shout of pipes
& lyres, whirling dancers that spectators watch with amazement
II.a.2 (497-508) by day in market competition to set due penalty for murder652
II.b (509-52)a city in wartime – gods taking part in strife on field used for battle
[civic-heroic-mythic]
II.b.1 (509-19) citizens take defensive measures within walls
[civic]
II.b.2 (520-29) fighters go out to fields for ambush near river where herds get water;
cutting off sheep & cattle they kill herders taken unawares while blissfully
making music with pan-pipes
[bucolic – exposed to peril from civic-heroic]
II.b.3 (530-40) general fray egged on by gods
[mythic & civic-heroic]
III (541-589) country work
[georgic & bucolic]
III.a (541-72) farming in seasons (cf. agriculture)
[georgic]
647
For the bucolic-georgic orientation of the work, away from city control, see Edwards, Ascra.
Quotations adapted from H. G. Evelyn-White.
649
“The general idea of demarcations within past time ... from the very first Greek texts”: Feeney, Calendar, 70.
650
Scully, “Shield of Achilles.”
651
Hannah, “Constellations.”
652
Where the scene of competing arguments & difficult judgments maps to the general model of competition just described, n.
648
641.
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III.a.1 (541-49) plowing field
[autumn]
III.a.2 (550-60) harvesting field of grain for king
[early summer]
III.a.3 (561-72) picking grapes to music of lyre & singer’s voice ‘peeled, husked’ (leptale-, 571)
[late summer]
III.b (573-89) care of livestock (pastoral work, cf. pastor, pasture)
[bucolic]
III.b.1 (573-86) cattle at reedy riverbank attacked by lions, herdsmen helpless
[bucolic – cattle & lowland – exposed to peril from wild]
III.b.2 (587-89) sheep in mountain glens, sheepfolds & dwellings at peace
[bucolic – sheep in upland – closed off from peril]
IV (590-606) dance by elegant youths & ‘cattle feeding maids’ on a floor like one ‘embroidered’ for Ariádne by
Daídalus (‘Fabricator’, cf. ‘fabricating’ for the creative craft of Hephaistos) in old Knossos (Crete) –
orderly movement like crafting of pottery, with music & story sung before a throng.
[blend of civic, georgic, bucolic ≈ mythic-heroic-civic past: celebrating harvest & anticipating
marriage, performers entertain spectators (cf. II.a.1) prototype for theater, drama, pantomime];
V (607-08) the world’s rim of ocean.[cosmic, cf. Theogony]
{I/V} Hesiod’s hint that first & last count applies to this work in miniature, where Homer makes themes of nature
frame the whole: from a centered focus on earth, sea & intelligible sky (constellations never sinking into ocean) favoring
georgic work to the enclosing outer ocean rim.
{II/III} Within the frame Homer pairs off city & country as complementary ranges & subdivides each further.
{IIa/IIb} The civic range splits between peace & war. But even the range of peace divides between marriage with
music & spectacle that favors life {II.a.1} as opposed to murder that occasions competition over what is properly due
{II.a.2} – a competition unresolved in the image unlike the argument between Achilles & Agamememnon that runs full
course to its tragic finale in the poem as a whole.
{II.b}The range of war also divides but into three parts. Between defense {II.b.1} & full battle {II.b.3} it frames a
version of the bucolic range spelled out in terms of place, property, & music that add to the bucolic image made by
Hesiod, but show its vulnerability {II.b.2<bucolic>}.
{III} Country in turn divides into georgic & bucolic ranges, each further spelled out. The georgic features
seasonal work on the fields for the grain production that is basic to a culture that defines its members as ‘eaters of bread’
but also the basic gathering of grapes for wine in a space closed off from animals, perhaps on a sunny slope, with flirting
no doubt between boys & girls & delicate singing of old song. The bucolic then features the same animals as above: cattle
again on lowland pasture by a river, but imagined as vulnerable not only to human predators but also now to wild animals
from outside; sheep also as above, but tranquil (like Hesiod herding) on wooded uplands with buildings that hint at settled
life.
{IV} Neither simply city nor country, the fourth fold blends elements of both on a floor that might serve for
threshing the grain from a harvest to be celebrated by the singing & dance. The discipline of the movements & elegance
of the costumes, the simile of craft hint at the city as does likening this floor to one ‘embroidered’ by a mythic craftsman
for the city of Knossos in old Crete. The threads of social harmony, musical accompaniment & watching crowd heark
back to the scene of marriage at night, so that the two moments of spectacle & celebration frame the themes of strife &
toil.
Contrasts between thematic ranges also figure when Homer imagines Odysseus encountering the one-eyed
Polyphemus. By way of a general preface to the drama that pits brute cannibalism against heroic cunning, Homer makes
Odysseus categorize Cyclopes as the antithesis to Greek culture – overbearing, lawless, neither plowing nor planting, not
meeting in council or passing laws, dwelling on mountain peaks in caves (Od. 9.107-15). Balancing this lack of the
georgic & civic ranges, Homer endows cyclops culture with extremely developed bucolic discipline – discerning
differences between nurslings & weanlings, lambs & kids, cheeses, baskets, pails. At a later turning point in the story, the
bucolic range again comes into play, when the hero’s last surving companions suffer destruction for killing & eating
cattle Helios (‘Sun’, Od. 12). Homer too depicts his hero returning home to differentiated herdsmen – the swineherd
trusty (though less than bucolic!) but bucolic goatherd treacherous (less than a shepherd or cowherd & too involved with
uncivil conduct in the town).
OLD THREADS, NEW TWISTS – CYCLOPS, PHAEDRUS
Homer’s hold on social memory would be constantly reinforced from the sixth century down through the fifth &
end of fourth at Athens with recitations – sponsored by tyrants, continued under democracy, to be criticized from an
THREADS FROM TRAGEDY & EPOS
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aristocratic standpoint by Plato – at yearly festivals by rhapsodes (‘stitchers of songs’).653 His omnipresence stirred
competitive minds to critical distance in efforts to claim authority for themselves, whether in drama, history, or
philosophy.654 A catalogue of challenges to Homer would become a history of an exceptional time in Athens & western
culture, but one particular reprise strings epic threads into a unique bucolic web.
Seeing potential for new import in old bucolic stuff, the tragic poet Euripides sometime late in Athens’ memorable
fifth century wrote a satyr drama called Cyclops.655 Satyrs & their drunken father Silenus did not figure with Homer’s
megabucolic monster, but Euripides blends the wildwood sexy prancers with the one-eyed herdsman on rough hills. He
turns talk between the monster & the hero into a parody of contemporary Athenian debate about issues such as civic order
& ‘universal law of men’ as opposed to hedonistic worship of one’s private pleasure & scorn for Zeus.656
The playwrite early & pointedly ties his plot to Homer’s by making an ill wind drive the satyrs off course at Cape
Malea where Odysseus too was blown away.657 But here Euripides changes the remembered point with a detail that might
well give Athenians pause: he makes wind drive the satyrs not just to Homer’s vaguely distant peaks but specifically to
Aetna (24), emphasized as ‘Sicilian Aetna’s fastness’ (pagon 95, after Kovacs), in Sicily (112), indeed its highest peak,
should anyone not know (120). Connecting Sicily so pointedly with bad sailing luck might well evoke the Athenians’
own disastrous expedition against the most powerful Greek city in the west, Sicilian Syracuse.658
Euripides also draws down threads that serve to color a place bucolic: ‘gentle breezes’ & ‘green grass’ & ‘water
of eddying rivers’ (45 Kovacs); ‘Shoo! This way, this way! Feed along the dewy slope’ (50-51 K) ; ‘Unloose your
swollen udders.’ (55 K); ‘curdled cheese’ (136 K); ‘rush buckets’ (210 K).659 ‘Earth brings forth grass willy-nilly to feed
my flock’ (334 K) ; also a bit of dialogue designed to keep the besotted monster from escaping the plot to blind his eye
(604-06 McHugh)
ODYSSEUS What’s more, the ground right here is flowery and soft’
SILENUS What’s more, the sun right here is perfect for a draft.
Why not lie down, and rest your bones.
The chosen threads bring to mind bucolic scenes in Homer with ‘tender bloom of the grass ... streams of the river’ (Od.
9.450-51), ‘watering place by the river’ (Il. 18.521), & ‘pasture by roaring river & flickering reeds’ (Il. 18.575-76) but
also ‘mountain glens’ (Il. 18.588) for sheep, like Cyclops’ flocks on Aetna.
Euripides fantasizes in this idealized setting a cosmic song – epiphany woven from philosophical & erotic
threads but fueled by excess wine, thus undercut: (648-53 McHugh)
CYCLOPS I see earth and heaven whirlpooling together.
There’s the throne of Zeus and all his wheeling retinues!
I think I’ll give them each a kiss. I’m feeling quite seduced.
But I’ll be damned if any of those Graces gets me – not a
chance! Instead I’ll take this charmer of a Ganymede to
bed. He suits me better. Boys are always more appealing.
SILENUS Who are you talking about? Not me, I hope?
Employing slapstick & outrageous paradox, Euripides makes the mythic monster misuse a mythic example, calling ugly
old Silenus a Ganymede – the fresh young prince of Troy snatched up by Zeus – & turning the tables on the inveterate
womanizer by threatening homoerotic rape.
Entertaining in itself, the version weaves significant twists into the epic frame – making Polyphemus truer to
653
Nagy, Plato’s Rhapsody and Homer’s Music: The Poetics of the Panathenaic Festival in Classical Athens.
In tragedy there would be supplements to the Iliad as sequels, like dramatizing Agamemnon’s murder by his wife & its consequences in three tragedies by Aeschylus, or other sequels like Ajax & Philoctetes of Sophocles, or a host of tragedies by Euripides.
Homer’s subject – Greek war on Troy – would be downgraded as poorly conducted & underfunded by the historian Thucydides in contrast with his own contemporary subject matter – the protracted struggle that wore out the free Greek cities towards the fifth century’s
close, leaving them prey to conquest by Macedon in the fourth.
655
This type of short play always followed with a lighter touch the weighty sequence of three tragedies in the annual dramatic
competitions; the genre featured – as the name implies – the half-beast, woodsy, sexed up troop of the god of wine & theater Dionysus.
See lucid introduction by Konstan, Euripides, Cyclops, 3–10. When Konstan asks why the only satyr play to have been selected by
scholars & repeatedly transcribed should be this one, a possible answer springs from the text & our present inquiry. Homer has always
been central to Greek scholarship & its successors: it is with one of his most famous episodes that this famous dramatist plays here –
enough repeatedly to attract scholars then & still, thus to assure survival to the text. For the fullest & most recent discussions, see
George W. M. (ed.) Harrison, Satyr Drama.
656
Fuller & helpful discussion from Konstan: Euripides, Cyclops, 10–17; also Kovacs, Euripides, Cyclops, 53–57.
657
Cycl. 24 ≈Od. 9.80. Easternmost of three spurs dangling like teats from the udder of the Peloponnese, considered to divide
the Aegean to its east from the westward Ionian sea – notoriously treacherous to navigate.
658
Euripides, Cyclops, 16–17. Konstan cites the failed armada of 415 BCE but also suggests the possibility of more generic
satire against the imperialistic hybris evident in Athens’ rise & fall, obliquely launched via the Cyclops’ scorn for war to get ‘one faithless woman’, also a dig at heroic epic, but then the Iliad includes sensible critiques of the Trojan campaign & the heroic code – by the
angry hero Achilles (Il. 1), the resentful commoner Thersites (Il. 2), & the anxious mother & wife Andromache (Il. 6) whose name
(‘manly battle’) suits her sage, but ignored, tactical counsel.
659
Cyclops scorns Zeus & north wind’s snow, wrapping himself in skins & piling up a fire in the cave (330 after K).
654
CLUES IN SOCIAL MEMORY
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his name, ‘many voiced’ (28-29 McHugh), imaginative in his own crude terms, a pretentious singer,660 a lover however
brutal, even a wanna-be symposiast, thus not the loner Homer portrayed, also an old-time denizen of Sicily. The thematic
turns might well tempt other tinkerers with epic memory to give the Cyclops even further play.
Before that, however, epic memory would provoke a long & sharp response from a wealthy Athenian, Plato, in
the medium of philsophic dialogue, meant to be read not performed. His Athens ended its famed fifth century by losing
its war with fellow Greeks; its master tragedian Euripides withdrew & died as a guest (if not an exile) in the Macedonian
kingdom that soon would conquer all the Greeks along with a great swathe eastward; the shaken Athenian democracy
began the tumultuous fourth century by silencing the critical voice of Socrates.
Retelling Socrates’ self-defense before a citizen jury launched Plato’s match with epos. Plato made this Socrates
identify moral courage in the civic range with honor in the heroic, citing Achilles’ resolve to die with honor (Apol. 28c).
Yet Plato ends the speech with the image of Socrates meeting after death Orpheus & Musaeus, Homer & Hesiod –
mythic & half-mythic poets – as well as Palmedes & Ajax – heroes unjustly judged before & after the Iliad’s action in the
cycle of epic stories around Troy (41a-41c) – a non-too subtle hint that philsophic discourse would out-match epos, since
Socrates had earlier reported showing up the whole class of poets (22b-22c) as he did the civic leaders & craftsmen.
Plato’s energetic campaign to promote philosophy over epos lies beyond our range here, but for one moment he
moves philosophic dialogue from the civic to the bucolic range with uncanny similarities to Euripides though reverse
effects. He imagines Socrates drawn into the country by a handsome boy, Phaidros (‘bright eyed’) who happens to have
a copy of a speech on love. Plato locates the man & boy by a river, in shade, on a slope, with blooming willow & grass
on which to sit or lie (Phaid. 229-230). He makes Socrates in a climactic oration praise love as a form of creative
madness & imagine the upward struggle of the soul toward cosmic vision (245-249): ‘but the place beyond the sky no
one yet of poets has hymned nor ever will hymn worthily’ (247c). The challenge to poetry is palpable & the vision far
outshines Euripides’ besotted Cyclops mumbling in humble iambics. Still the plot of visionary travel is the same.
NEW FRAMES FROM OLD THREADS: HELLENISTIC / ALEXANDRIAN
Plato’s disciple & corrector Aristotle, who set out to describe & order all of nature & culture, is remembered also
as tutor to the the Macedonian prince, then king & general, Alexander (356-323 BCE).661 Not unlike his tutor’s
intellectual range, Alexander’s military ambition was universal. He won the epithet ho megas (‘Mr Big’; ‘The Great’) by
reconquering the rebellious Greek states & pushing his empire eastwards as far as India, measuring himself by the mythic
standard of Achilles. Had he lived, he might have ranged westward where Rome was still an embattled local power competing with its Italian neighbors.
We call the century of Aristotle & Alexander Hellenistic since it reduced the heritage of the separate & distinctive
classical city states – Spartans, Corinthians, Athenians – to the cultural amalgam – Hellenes – ruled by Macedonia &
identified as Hellenic by contrast with cultures colonized beyond traditionally Greek lands.662 After Alexander’s
precocious death his generals carved up his empire & each other in four decades of mayhem matching Hesiod’s violent,
treacherous gods. Little wonder if a poet writing in one of the resulting kingdoms emphasized benignly ordering authority
as a merit of divine & by implication human rule.
A GEORGIC WEAVE – TIME BEYOND HESIOD & HOMER (Aratus)
Drawing on Hesiod’s preachy manner but correcting his ambivalence towards Zeus with philosophical
idealism,663 Aratus wove an epos in the georgic range – blending astronomy & astrology with practical & mythic lore
into the book called Phainomena (‘Things that can be seen’) – a bit of a misnomer since its recycled myths are read or
heard. – ‘what olden men say’ (archaioi phasin) although on the same theme, ‘men have another account’ (allos logos,
98/100). Unlike Hesiod, Aratus opens by urging his readers to join with him on a journey, ‘From Zeus let us set out; him
we never leave unspoken’ (arrēton). Full of Zeus are all streets & all mens’ market squares; full the sea & harbors.
Always we need Zeus; for even his race (genos) we are. But he kindly to men shows apt signs & mindful of livelihood
stirs folks to work – plowing, hoeing, setting plants & sowing seeds’ (1-9). Erased by unitarian theosophy is Hesiod’s
envious & resentful Zeus who took fire from mankind & sent as punishment labor & woman.664 Only after this self660
Euripides, Cyclops, 27 his efforts to compete in song mocked by Silenus, as aptly noted by translator Heather McHugh.
For an authoritative introduction to this period, its political & cultural developments, see Kathryn Gutzwiller,
Guide, passim.
662
Habinek, Politics of Latin, 35 remarks that the successsors to Alexander exploited ‘prexistent notions of panhellenic cultural
unity’, for which see n. 642.
663
Kathryn Gutzwiller, Guide, 97–103 – telling biographical, philosophical, & literary account.
664
This philosophical view of Zeus as a benign ruler may well be tailored to please his eventual royal patron in Macedonia –
661
95
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justifying preamble does Aratus invite the Muses to give him too a hand.665
Among other accounts, Aratus tells that the constellation Virgo (Parthenos, ‘Maiden’) mingled with the Golden
Race on earth as ‘Justice’, when men lived without battle or sailing, their needs met by oxen & the plow;666 but as the
Silver Race grew more wicked, she retreated to the hills; & when the Bronze Race invented swords she left earth &
became the constellation (100-136).
NEW WEAVES FOR EGYPT – (Alexandrian Court Poets)
In one of the four Hellenistic kingdoms, Ptolemy (367-283 BCE) – a henchman of Alexander – seized control of
Egypt. He sought to rule the ancient culture fostered by the Nile from the new city on the Mediterranean coast –
Alexandria – founded by Alexander. As one of his governing tools, Ptolemy exploiting his own bent for learning &
founded a library & museum as cultural & political tools.667 He cultivated poets, scholars, & scientists to consolidate Panhellenic memory & extend its scientific & literary range. His cultural program succeeded so well that within the
Hellenistic frame the specific culture of his library & court is known as Alexandrian.
To poets in the Alexandrian framework, Homer above all looked prestigious & authoritative – hard to match,
often inappropriate to a new political context & yet impossible to ignore.668 The new school of Homeric scholars could
seek to establish correct versions & explicate difficult language.669 Precisely because it too dealt with Homer, scholars
might well pick out & thus preserve a work like Cyclops, making it the sole surviving sample of satyr drama. Yet Alexandria posed other challenges. At the outer edge of Egypt, its new regime with all its Hellenic library, museum, poets, &
scholars depended on adroit exploitation of the old culture that prospered by ritualized administration of the Nile’s annual
flooding.670 Mutual interest inspired if not compelled poets & rulers alike to adapt the Hellenic legacy to the Egyptian
context.671
Given the novelty of the Greek regime & the famed antiquity of the Egyptian system, the poets frequently focus
on themes of origin, in stories called aitia or etiologies. Typically these make it possible to portray the new not as intruding but as return to an original – distant & nearly forgotten – ‘first’ state.672 In propaganda, ‘first, before, foremost’ join
‘best’ as mythic values serving to authorize & legitimize new power. At extremes that Stephens underlines, one court
poet projected a mythic time when an Egyptian general, like some primordial Alexander, founded cities across Europe, a
time portrayed as so early that the only Greeks were the Arcadians, described as eating acorns on the hills before the
moon.673 Another poet contrived to locate the birth of Zeus in either Crete or in an Arcadia reconfigured by the poets as
both primordial & bearing “an uncanny resemblance to the Nile.”674 This remote, mountainous Arcadia did duty also as a
hint of authorizing past for a new variant of the bucolic range. Typically the Alexandrian poets as they composed their
stories of origin constructed a “poetic itinerary that begins with earlier writers but always ends in the present with the
poet himself.”675 Moreover the new library – with its mission of gathering scattered texts to categorize & preserve in
———————————————
another poet as court image maker, cf. Stephens, Poetics Ptolemaic, 12.
665
Translated into Latin by Cicero (106-43 BCE) in times when the breakdown of traditional order created a longing for
enlightened statecraft & orderly rule.
666
Only a city dweller, unlike Hesiod, could so idealize farm labor: Feeney, Calendar, 270n118. But Aratus counts as evil sailing, which Homer valued (its lack mars Cyclops culture, Od.9); yet Aratus must have sailed from his remote coastal town, Soli (proverbial for defective Greek, hence our solecism), to seek teachers at Ephesus far up the coast, on Cos, an island, then at Athens across the
Aegean, only surely to sail to his court patronage in Macedonia.
667
Kathryn Gutzwiller, Guide, 16–25, “Ptolemaic Egypt.”.
668
Stephens, 252-57.
669
Kathryn Gutzwiller, Guide, 22–23.
670
“Holding Egypt and maintaining its prosperity were essential for any dynastic pretensions. Thus how to transform what was
a military occupation confined to the periphery into a kingship that effectively controlled the Two Lands was the paramount concern of
the early Ptolemies.” Stephens, Poetics Ptolemaic, 239–40.
671
Kathryn Gutzwiller, Guide, 188–96 again a useful survey.
672
“Foundation stories,”aitia, argues Dougherty, served to justify claims to new territories, “reconfigure them imaginatively in
Greek terms...: connect the new place with Greek myth, ... to efface the native and give the intruding Greek population (or colonizers)
continuous claim to the place, to create the illusion in other words not of intrusion, but of return.” in “Linguistic Colonialism,” 119–32,
cited by Stephens, Poetics Ptolemaic, 187–88 & 256–57; cf. the traces of Arcadian Greek settlement on Rome’s Palatine hill.
673
Phegon edontes (Arg. 4.263-65), Stephens, Poetics Ptolemaic, 189–90; other cases of the thread cited by Green,
Argonautika, 304. Phegon denotes a species of oak, hence by metonymy the seed of oak, ‘acorns’; the same word in Latin refers to
‘beech’ (Fagus sylvatica), which becomes an emblematic feature of Virgil’s bucolic range.
674
Stephens, 113.
675
Stephens, 257.
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scrolls – prompted Alexandrian poets to take a like approach to their own output.676 Poets began to compose short pieces
to be read together in single scrolls. Although they also continued to recite on occasions private & public, they clearly
considered that they were writing for readers. They thus created the first identifiable poetic sequences or poetry books in
western literature – seed bed for a richly various tradition on which Virgil would put a distinctive stamp.677
BUCOLIC EPOS – TIME BEFORE & BESIDE HOMER (Theocritus).
Theocritus created a singular blend of bucolic threads & others that – no less than the Ptolemaic regime – required
an authorizing past & legitimizing myth.678 He left his native Syracuse in Sicily to seek literary fortune in Alexandria,
drawn you may suppose by word of the new court with its library & museum.679 In that context, Theocritus wove features
of Sicilian mime together with threads of epos, creating like Euripides an epico-dramatic hybrid. He shifted epic verse
down from the heroic range of kings & heroes – Achilles & his kind – to herdsmen, even slaves, fantasized as skillful
singers & mostly awkward lovers in compositions called idylls, meaning ‘little scenes’ or ‘vignettes’.
In the idyll singled out as first by its position all collections, whether placed by the poet or some discerning
scholar as if to form a rudimentary poetic book,680 Theocritus supposes how a shepherd (Thrysis) requests sweet piping
from an unnamed goatherd in a place woven from rural threads like those remarked in Phaedrus (p. 94), Cyclops (p. 93)
& the Shield (p. 91). The goatherd demurs for fear of interrupting Pan’s noon nap, but offers to trade a goatherd-cup –
marvelous to see – so as to hear Thyrsis’ famous song. It depicts the final words of the Sicilian oxherd Daphnis – dying
from a tragic struggle to defeat Love: themes recalling Euripidean tragedy.681 At his last gasp Daphnis prays that Pan
come to Sicily from Arcadia to take back the pipe: an implied reproach that Pan’s bucolic music was useless against Love
but also hinting at the origin of bucolic music in Pan’s homeland with its aura as an ancient place of cultural origins.682
With respect to the authorizing past, Theocritus thus stakes three claims: he challenges the shield of Achilles with
the marvellous goatherd cup;683 endows his dying Daphnis with heroic-tragic features; & with the motifs of initial
deference & closing plea to Pan hints at a ancient Arcadian authority for his bucolic song.
In another idyll, Theocritus also applies Hesiod’s authorization myth to his own new hybrid epos-mime. He
imagines a city poet going to a harvest feast & meeting a picturesque goatherd – not the Muses but their familiar – like
some god in disguise. The two exchange songs – the city man claiming that while herding on the hills the Nymphs taught
him his. The goatherd calls him ‘sprig of Zeus fashioned all for truth’, thus more single minded than Hesiod’s Muses –
capable of fictions like it the truth, though also truth (id. 7.49).684 Theocritus’ narrator gets from the goatherd a stick (cf.
Hesiod’s daphne, laurel staff) & approval for ‘oxherdizing’ (‘making this new hybrid epos-mime’), then gets to the
harvest festival & settles down in language that recalls Odysseus getting home at last.685 He closes asking if it was nectar
like this that made Polyphemus dance by a Sicilian river (id. 7.151-53), which is what Euripides imagined the drunken
monster doing (p. 93).
Elsewhere Theocritus like Euripides treats the Cyclops not only as Sicilian but as a lover, not a vile & violent
rapist like ugly old Silenus but a younger singer-suitor of a sea nymph Galatea.686 He locates his Cyclops at a moment
prior to the episodes in Euripides & Homer, making what gets called in technical jargon a prequel – preceding, previous
in mythic time– to the familiar versions, where a sequel follows – second in mythic time, as the Odyssey & Aeneid follow
the Iliad.
By saying that not only oxherds but also shepherds & goatherds ‘oxherdize’ when exchanging songs, Theocritus
extends the meaning of ‘bucolic’ from specific reference to oxen & makes it serve as the generic term for his new hybrid
of mime with epos – Bucolics.687
676
Kathryn Gutzwiller, Guide, 179–80.
How such a book looked can now be seen in gathering of epigrams from the poet Posidippus: short poems organized by
themeatic groups, each with a caption for the group, & written in regular columns. In a similar format, the Bucolics would make a scroll
of about two meters in length, which could be unrolled on a large library table & studied as a whole.
678
Stephens, Poetics Ptolemaic, 290–91, s.v Theocritus: court poetry of – discussing two of his expressly public idylls.
679
Ca 270 BCE: authoritative recent account – Hunter, Theocritus A Selection, 1–5.
680
“A significant amount of evidence, then, points to a collection of Theocritus’ poetry produced by the author himself”:
Gutzwiller, Guide, 186.
681
Phaedra, a daughter of Helios, Hunter....
682
Id. 1.123-130, cf. n. 673.
683
Careful analysis of how Theocritus & his fellow poets take their distances from Homeric values, as no longer germane to the
new political context, in Stephens, Poetics Ptolemaic, 253.
684
Stephens, Poetics Ptolemaic, 86–87, discusses issues of 'truth' in Hesiod & Callimachus.
685
Hunter, Theocritus A Selection, 191: a prime instance of how his learning & literary acumen enhance the excitement of reading.
686
A fancy also in an older contemporary, Hermesianax, who also wrote of homerotic love between Daphnis & Menalkas
(fragments 1 & 2 Powell, cited by Kathryn Gutzwiller, Guide, 64).
677
THREADS FROM TRAGEDY & EPOS
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HEROIC PREQUEL – TIME BEFORE HOMER (Apollonius).
Only a librarian – the thought comes to mind looking back to the four books pieced together by Apollonius:688
seeking authority & legitimacy for yourself & the new state that employs you, for & from the library you draw down epic
threads – ‘beginning’ from a god, though not Zeus but his musical & prophetic son Phœbus.689 To fill the still
depopulated shelving you set out to restore & broaden social memory – ‘remember famed songs about men of olden race’
(Arg. 1.1-2).690 Then as poet & would-be story-teller you press on to a less generic scenario: heroic race, to be sure, but
‘who drove a ship’.691 This you spell out & specify with motifs of geography & intrigue that hint at a notorious tale –
through the Black Sea’s mouth, ordered by a usurping king,692 in order to get the legendary impossible prize – Golden
Fleece.693 The thematic blend piques: ‘wool’ blended with ‘gold’, bucolic value with heroic – highest & lowest ranges
melded. Finally you drawn the conclusive thread from Homer – ‘the good ship Argo’ as it has with irony been called.694
Framed within this heroic-bucolic blend, the plot will build to a climax envisioned in heroic but georgic terms –
the ordeal set for Jason to win the Golden Fleece – plowing with monster bulls, planting monster seeds, & reaping the
bitter harvest. Both bucolic & georgic similes also abound throughout – ‘as when a shepherd’ or ‘as farmers long’.695
Promising to recount an ‘ancient race’ lets the librarian fill out his scroll with heroes to follow Jason. By
including the fathers of Homer’s Achilles & Patroclus, he defines his story as a prequel to the Iliad.696 To head the roster,
though, the poet picks a poet – Orpheus, whom Plato imagined meeting Socrates after death – legendary for the powers
of song that Apollonius exploits for scenes that challenge first Hesiod & then Homer: Orpheus calming strife among the
crew by singing of cosmic origin from natural strife to birth of Zeus [1.496-511];697 drowning out the Sirens’ dangerous
singing with his lyre (4.885-921).698
In creating his own prequel to the Iliad, Apollonius exploits another prequel, which was hinted on Achilles’ shield
– dance floor like that of Ariádne in Cnossos (Il. 18.590-92).699 For Apollonius Ariadne serves as another case of a story
like Medea’s – local princess used by foreign hero. He makes Jason seek to persuade Medea to help him – a foreigner –
as Ariadne helped the foreigner Theseus: why, she even sailed away with him, & so the gods made her into a star (3.9751007). Lest readers fail to realize how tricky that argument is, Apollonius later briefly sketches the full tale: how after
———————————————
687
Meanings of ‘bucolic’ documented by Hunter, Theocritus A Selection, 5–12.
688
Called ‘Rhodian’ for reasons long since forgotten, since no one claimed that he was born on that island or agrees why it
would draw him from Alexandria & the perquisites of royal librarian; traces persist that his teacher was the scholar-poet Callimachus &
that they quarreled about poetics.
689
Sc. Apollo, the god in the poet’s name. For Apollo ≈ Horus as crucial to cross-cultural poetics, see Stephens, Poetics
Ptolemaic, 278, s.v.
690
A hint of the ‘races’ that degenerate through five stages in Hesiod without the focal plots implied by Homer’s ‘wrath’ or
single ‘man’: generic recipe for writing ‘all over the map’.
691
Likewise Homer used relative pronouns to develop specific themes: ‘which made myriad pains’ & ‘who suffered much’.
692
Pelias – son of Poseidon, exposed by mother Tyro, but reared by herdsman (bucolic theme also for heroes such as Amphion,
Romulus), seized control of Iolcus (Thessaly, northern Greece), forcing out own half-brother Aeson, whose son Jason survived, was
reared in the wild by centaur Chiron (also to be tutor to Achilles), & on return to Iolcus wearing one sandal was sent by Pelias to get
Golden Fleece.
693
Fabled fleece from a winged ram sent by cloud goddess Nephele to rescue her children Phrixus & Helle from jealous stepmother Ino (a daughter of Cadmus founder of Thebes). Helle fell into the strait before the Black Sea (Pontos) giving the name Hellespont; Phrixus arrived in Colchis, sacrificed the ram & hung the fleece on a tree guarded by a dragon.
694
The name means ‘bright, shining; swift’; ancient marginalia say that some call it ‘first ship’ while others point to story of
earlier Greek migration from Egypt to the peninsula of the Peloponnese by Danaus, descended from Io. Apollonius does not treat it as
first since he has it meet ‘ships’ from Colchis, where Argo heads [3.341): details in Green, Argonautika, 202, on Arg. 1.18-19.
695
Green, Argonautika, 473 s.v. similes.
696
Menoitius & Peleus: in all a crew of fifty heroes (not counting Hylas, the young boy friend of Heracles).Homer said that
Argo with Jason safely passed destructive shoals (Od. 12.61-72); cf. Green, Argonautika, 38.
697
Challenging Hesiod by digesting the whole Theogony into so few lines. But also drawing threads from Empedocles,
Pherecydes, & Egyptian cosmology: Stephens, Poetics Ptolemaic, 197–200; cf. Green, Argonautika, 208–09. Orpheus also imagined as
setting rhythm for rowing [1.540); naming a place & setting up an altar where the poet’s eponymous god Apollo showed himself
[2.686-93); with seer Mopsus honoring a dead hero, building another altar & dedicating a lyre [2.911-29); making music outside the
remarkable cave when Jason weds Medea [4.1159-60); & entreating the daughters of the Evening Star (Hesperus) to help the thirsty
heroes find water in the desert near the end of their travels [4.1420).
698
This challenging & outdoing Homer; Odysseus had to have himself tied to the mast to avoid the Sirens’ threat; for further
examples & discussion, Green, Argonautika, 329.
699
Earlier ApRh challenged the shield by describing a mantle woven by Athena & worn by Jason going to meet the Lemnian
queen Hypsipyle (elsewhere subject for a tragedy). Her female subjects have murdered their men & look to the Argonauts to help them
renew population. ApRh dispose seven scenes on the mantle, incorporating action into the work of art: ‘beyond adjudication there is
also pleasure’, Habinek, Politics of Latin Literature, 4–5.
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Ariádne followed Theseus, he left her stranded till Dionysus picked her up (4.421-44)700 – a background sketched while
describing a cloak given Jason by Hypsípylé whom he impregnated & on which Dionysus made love to Ariadne: now to
be offered Medea’s brother as a gift to lure him to death.701 In Apollonius’ imagination, the woven cloak (hyphos) serves
to represent his entire poem as product of woven craft, challenging Homer’s ‘Shield of Achilles’.702
Of course Apollonius pitches his whole poem as a prequel to Euripides’ tragedy of Medea, which focuses on
Jason’s final treachery & her destructive fury – working herself up to poison Jason’s Greek bride-to-be & her father, then
kill her own & Jason’s sons. The tragedy serves Apollonius as a counterpoint to his sensitive imagining of a passionate
girl falling into fatal love.703 But the ‘stranger/princess’ plot also serves to compare the tragic Medea/Jason with Homer’s
delicate interplay between the sea-tossed wanderer Odysseus & the Phaiakian princess Nausicaa. From the latter
Apollonius draws further, splendid threads by imagining that Nausicaa’s parents frame & indeed hasten the sexual union
of Medea & Jason in a grotto illuminated by the gleaming Fleece & serenaded by no less than Orpheus.
EMBROIDERING ORIGINS (Callimachus).
In the ideological context of Ptolemaic Alexandria, where recently usurped power sought authorizing pasts in
Greek & Egyptian lore, it might have been tactless if not risky for a son of the old Greek settlement at Cyrene just up the
coast to claim descent from an almost legendary line of former rulers.704 Be that as it may, Callimachus also helped to
shape & further the Ptolemaic cultural & political agenda. His Hymn to Zeus exemplifies his “ability to create new
theogonies that not only showcase the old but insert many elements of the new as a fitting tribute to the new king of the
Nile.”705 For the library he produced a catalogue in 120 books as well as numberless collections of lore, including rivers
& Arcadian themes; a short & idiosyncratic epos, Hecale; & in keeping with the Alexandrian penchant for origin stories,
Aitia, (‘Book of Origins’) – miscellaneous episodes told in elegiac couplets & arranged in four books with attention to
order of themes: within books (progressive variation), framing pairs of books, & bracketing the whole work with
structures sometimes called “ring composition” or “chiasmus” since they involve varying patterns of the type – ab...BA –
likened metaphorically to rings or to the Greek letter chi (X), because the elements involved (from words through motifs
or even whole poems) can be mapped to a criss-cross design.706
As an authorizing past for the Aitia, Callimachus too drew from Hesiod’s poetics, which he cited at the beginning
& at the end, bracketing the four books as a whole & implying a unitary design. As the Muses ‘first’ rebuked Hesiod
(Theog. 24), so Callimachus tells that when he ‘first’ sat down to write, Apollo told him to keep his work ‘thin’ & the
victim fat for the god, with the result that he ‘pushes’ or ‘pulls’ along his ‘epos’ just a bit (fr. 1 Pfeiffer).707 Callimachus
then recounts a dream in which the Muses came to him as they had to Hesiod (fr. 2 Pfeiffer).708 He frames books three &
four with honors to Queen Berenice: opening with a chariot victory (confirming the roots of her name, ‘Brings victory’)
& closing with the fate of a lock of her hair (fr. 110 Pfeiffer): the lock dedicated at a shrine, stolen, then identified as a
constellation by court astronomer, Conon, which was to inspire at Rome translation by Catullus & allusions by Virgil.709
Stephens reflects in closing that “I have characterized the use of aetia as a cognitive process of cultural
redefinition” & goes on to observe that a “writer, in orienting his work to his poetic predecessors necessarily constructs a
literary history of that past into which he inserts himself as its inevitable fulfillment.”710 In etiology she thus identifies a
theoretical dimension – referential to the poetry itself, hence metapoetic – embedded with the cultural politics she has so
ably brought to light & typical of Alexandrian, indeed Hellenistic, poetics. Poetic & political ambition authorize each
other as they will at Rome.
700
A picture of Ariadne left asleep on a lonely island while Theseus sailed away & Dionysus came to snatch her hung in a
shrine of the god’s next to his theater in Athens (Pausanias, Guide to Greece 1.20.3.
701
Green, Argonautika, 279–80: “Hypsípylé was the granddaughter of Ariadne and Dionysus [who of course had rescued
Ariadne on Naxos and, as the schol. reminds us, deflowered her ... and sired numerous children on her], and so Hypsípylé-Jason,
Medea-Jason, Ariadne-Theseus and Ariadne-Dionysus are all seen to be part of the same pattern and thus mutually illustrative,”citing
Hunter, Arg. III, 208.
702
Kathryn Gutzwiller, Guide, 212.
703
Illuminating account of role assigned to female psychology & sexuality by Apollonius in Gutzwiller, Guide, 80–84.
704
Stephens, 180n22.
705
Op. cit., 121.
706
For Callimachean structuring, M. A. Harder, “Aspects of the Structure of Callimachus’ Aitia,” in Harder, Callimachus, 99–
110; also in the book of six hymns, “balanced pairs at either end bracketing a balanced pair in the centre” so considered to be “our earliest surviving example of a poetic book”: Callimachus Frank Nisetich, The Poems of Callimachus, xxix.
707
Ink strokes in the papyrus suggest el] which scholars restore as el]isso, ‘draw’, or el]auno, ‘drive, push’; cf. ‘drive, push’ &
‘draw’ as two basic bucolic tasks], [1.13], n. 154.
708
Stephens, 86–87; Gutzwiller, Guide 63-65..
709
“All this must have been engineered by the court as a kind of foundational story for the third generation of the Ptolemaic
dynasty,” Gutzwiller, Guide, 67–68.
710
Stephens, 257.
THREADS FROM TRAGEDY & EPOS
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EPOS FOR ROME’S EMPIRE – HEROIC-MYTH TO FRAME NEW POWER
OLD THREADS WOVEN INTO NEW MYTH OF HEROIC ORIGIN
WEAVING VERSE OF SATURN – Vates (‘Bard’) & Camena (Odusea, Punic War).
While the Alexandrian elite in the third century was seeking models to govern the venerable culture of Egypt,
Rome in the century’s second half fought wars that swelled it from a local force to a Mediterranean empire, defeating &
replacing imperial Carthage.711 Military prowess could conquer, but to govern such diverse peoples, including the
culturally proud Greeks of Sicily & Syracuse, Rome found itself with a dilemma like that of the Ptolemies, needing a
cultural frame – ideological & linguistic – more elaborate than the traditional family lore of the Roman elite,712 which
included singing in brotherhoods & clans – oral & mediated by vates (‘seers, prophets, bards’).713 Thus the Roman elite
faced a political & cultural necessity like that which drove the Ptolemies to invest in cultural resources & operators.
The new Roman frame would need texts validated by older & broader cultural authority. First it enlisted the
native meter – linked in social memory with a Golden Age of Saturn’s rule in Italy – to turn the Odyssey of Greek epos
into an Odusea in Saturnian verse, blending two prestigious threads – Greek with Italic – for one new kind of authorizing
past.714 The new frame grew next with a still more ambitious blend – heroic narrative entitled ‘Punic War’ – that
stretched the Saturnian verses from the old heroic range – Aeneas fleeing defeat at Troy then his descendent Romulus
founding Rome – down through Rome’s first war with Carthage, in which the poet himself fought – a bold challenge to
older epos & to aristocratic cultural control.715 The search for authorization also drew down heroic threads for tragedies
such as Aegisthus, Andromache, Trojan Horse.716
GREEK EPOS FOR ROMAN ANNALS – Poet & Muses (Ennius).
Early in the next century, when a Roman consul conquered & looted the prosperous city of Ambracia near Delphi
in central Greece (189 BCE), he took along the poet Ennius (of Italic descent & native to southern Italy) & brought back
along with other booty statues of the Muses.717 Ennius invoked them to authorize his own capture of Greek epos for
Rome: ‘Muses, who with dancing feet strike great Olympus’;718 he trumped the authorization myths of Hesiod &
Callimachus by telling that Homer in a dream had described his soul’s migration into Ennius’ own body.719 Ennius
reinforced his authority too by contrasting his Greek hexameters with the Italic Saturnians – ‘verses that once long ago
vates (‘seers’, ‘bards’) & fauns used to sing’, which he thus distanced from his epos as ‘back there’, ‘out there’, & ‘down
there’, traced to figures fixed in social memory for prophetic utterance in wooded places & for ‘weaving verses’ –
711
The wars called ‘Punic’ with the Roman term for ‘Phoenician’. Feeney, Calendar, 52–59 argues that Rome absorbed a
Sicilian view of the Mediterranean world, taking over the Sicilian sense of placement between barbarian west (Carthage) & culturally
superior east (Athens).
712
For an account of the need to project power through culture that engendered literature at Rome, Habinek, Politics of Latin
Literature, 34–68, 88–102, essential background for the following sketch, to integrate with Feeney, Calendar, 95–100. For the shift
from Saturnian to epos, Sciarrino, “Epic Thefts,” 455–57; & the importation of epos, Wiseman, “Fauns, Prophets,” 513.
713
Habinek, Politics of Latin Literature, 182n11; links between Saturnian (representing ‘back then’ & ‘off there’) & ‘dominant
members of Roman society’ discussed by Sciarrino, “Epic Thefts,” 456–57; on the convivial (banquet) texture of elite culture, Thomas
N Habinek, “Wisdom,” 487–88.
714
By Livius Andronicus: his blend of Homer’s plot with old Saturnian verse – both threads of ‘back then’ & ‘out there’ –
making a powerful cultural innovation, as discussed by Sciarrino, “Epic Thefts,” 458..
715
Sciarrino, “Epic Thefts,” 458–60 Tension between the desire to maintain long-standing notions tracing Rome’s origins to
the (Greek) heroic-mythic range & efforts to construct a frame of historical time documented by Feeney, Calendar, 95–100.
716
Gruen, Culture & Identity, 222; Habinek, Politics of Latin Literature, 34–68 on aristocratic invention of literature as a
political tool.
717
Fulvius Nobilior installed his statues in a new portico to a temple of Hercules near a shrine of the old Camenae: Rüpke,
“Temple Tradition,” 489–90; Goldberg, “Ennius Banquet,” 437.
718
Epic threading from Homer & Hesiod’s Muses dancing on Mount Helicon; ‘but there is also an allegorical meaning, ‘Muses,
you who make the great sky vibrate with your steps’, an allusion to the theory of the harmony of the spheres’, Gratwick, “Ennius,” 74:
‘steps’ or ‘feet’ (pedes), also used metaphorically to label the measures in a meter.
719
Sciarrino, ‘Epic Thefts,” 462–63 – so-called met-em-psych-osis (mid or twixt-into-soul-process of), an idea drawn from the
semi-mythical Pythagoras, also associated with belief that number orders the cosmos.
100
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assimilated in short to the bucolic range.720
Ennius continued the tradition of stretching epos threads from Troy down to contemporary history – his patron’s
Greek campaign & beyond;721 but he varied in the manner of Apollonius by focusing on the psychology of the passionate
virgin, Ilia – mother to Remus & Romulus. Elsewhere he implied that his epos would outdo the Saturnian Odusea by
changing the subject from the shifty Greek Odysseus to a Roman consul’s prowess (Sciarrino, 464).
In other works now lost Ennius showed the lingering impact of Sicilian tradition;722 his eposharmus evoked the
creator of mimes & forebear to Theocritus:723 in an imagined dream (remember his mythic authorization by Homer), he
envisioned himself dying & learning about ‘the theory of the four elements’ as well as other ideas related too in his
tragedies & the Annals – themes linked also to another Sicilian, Empedocles, who wrote epos on cosmic process, not to
mention Plato, both his Republic ending with a report from the other world about cosmic process, & the soul’s upward
journey & cosmic vision in Phaedrus.724
ROMAN ANNALS VS TIMELESS PHILOSOPHIC HEROISM (Lucretius)
Not long after Ennius’ death Rome signaled its mastery of the Mediterranean by erasing two emblematic cities in
the same year – 146 BCE: Carthage for the West & Corinth, doomed to stand for the Greeks – “removing from the map
the only power that had presented a mortal threat to the Romans, and accelerating irreversibly their movement toward the
corruption of unthreatened power”.725
Midway in the next century growing corruption & civil strife provoked Lucretius to write six books in the line of
Hesiod’s Works & Days – a sermon in the georgic range – On matters’ getting born (De rerum natura, often translated
more flatly, ‘On the nature of things’).726 Like Hesiod, Lucretius opens with a hymn to a divinity, only to Venus Mother
of Aeneas’ sons, accepting the Roman claim to mythic origin, but deploying Ennian language to shift emphasis from war
to divine pleasure that drives all bucolic, georgic, & wild nature to reproduce (1.1-20). Indeed he prays Venus to seduce
Mars so as to free Rome & his audience from constant war to hear philosophic verses (1.21-49). His vision comes, he
says, from a philosophic campaign by the philosopher eposurus out along the cosmos’ flaming walls & back in cognitive
triumph (metaphors Roman & military, Ennian style). The mind’s envisioned venture counters not only Ennius’
triumphing generals but his dream vision even as it resonates with Plato & with cognitive exploration by Pythagoras in
Empedocles.
Lucretius goes on to argue that everything gets born when hard & indivisible particles (atoms) coalesce by chance
& that they scatter & recirculate at death, freeing humans from superstititous fears, like those that let a seer force the
sacrifice of Agamemnon’s virgin daughter, Iphigeneia so Greeks could sail to Troy (1.50-101).727 Hence Lucretius
denounces all seers (vates), which Ennius too dismissed. He praises Ennius as first to make a triumphant return of his
own, not from cosmic vision but from Helicon. Lucretius also boasts that he himself ‘goes through pathless places of the
Pierians’ drinking from untouched springs & picking fresh flowers – bucolic threads of authorizing myth like those
observed in Theocritus, Plato, & Hesiod (1.102-126). But Lucretius rejects Ennius’ claim to Homer’s soul, for souls like
everything else give up their atoms at death.728
Lucretius later singles out the bucolic range for a critique: his philosophy of nature explains that echoes result
when atoms stirred by our own voices bounce back from hills, yet hill people hearing echoes suppose a god Pan is out
there making a ‘wildwood muse’ (silvestris musa, 4.589); so bucolic myth is self-deceptive fiction. Yet Lucretius also
draws threads from the bucolic & georgic ranges to envision the origin of music: early men first imitated birds & breezes
through reeds’ hollows taught first to puff on hollow stalks, from which little by little humans learned sweet plaints that
720
Wiseman, “Fauns, Prophets,” 516, quoting Varro, On the Latin Language 7.36.
Lucid overview at Gratwick, “Ennius,” 60–70. See also Skutsch, Ennius-Annals.
722
Feeney, 57
723
Gratwick, “Ennius,” 157, basic for what follows.
724
Feeney, Calendar, 275n44 remarks Ennius' interest in numerological doctrines of Pythagoras; cf. n.718. Gratwick, 157n4,
‘the ideas of ‘Epicharmus’ and Empedocles of Acragas are not to nicely distinguished in this connexion.”
725
Feeney, 54–59.
726
His title recalled epos by the Sicilian Empedocles (ca 490-430] & he drew threads too from Ennius, setting out in an elaborate introductory frame to credit yet contradict both: Sedley, Lucretius Greek, 10–34, arguing for close intertext with Empedocles; S. J.
Harrison, “Ennius & Lucretius” arguing for dialogue with Ennius: their cases – potentially complementary yet contradictory as thus far
presented – seem to demand explanation as a layered conceptual blend.
727
Threads from two tragedies: Euripides & – in Roman social memory – Ennius: Harrison, ‘Ennius & Lucretius,” 4–6.
728
Lucretius thus dismisses fear of eternal punishments (like those envisioned, e.g., by Plato & Homer). Lucretius may well use
a form of ring composition or chiasmus, as Harrison would have it (p. 7], but comparison ought to be made with the structure of
Achilles’ Shield (see above) & with numerous structures in Catullus, for which see Claes, Catullan Chains.
721
THREADS FROM TRAGEDY & EPOS
101
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
the pipe pours forth when struck by singers’ fingers through pathless groves & woods & glens & bright ‘repose’ (5.137987). Embroidering, he imagines early folk stretched out on grass by water in shade when a ‘fieldland’ muse thrived
(5.1390-98) – threads familiar from the bucolic range as observed above, but that Lucretius elsewhere equates also with
life lived according to the philosophy of eposurus (2.29-31).
ROME MINUS ANNALS OR HEROIC ORIGIN (Catullus)
Although Lucretius offered an alternative favoring love over war, he kept within the mythic frame that tied Rome
to Troy – Romans as ‘sons of Aeneas’ & Aeneas’ mother, Venus, invoked to curb the arms of Mars. However, a
contemporary took a radically different tack: Catullus recalls the myth of heroic origins with bitter satire: the Julian clan
claimed mythic descent from Venus & Aeneas via Romulus, Rome’s founder: Catullus satirized Julius Caesar as a
‘buggered Romulus’ (c. 16). In neither Caesar nor Pompey did Catullus find any ordering authority to hail – no hint of a
present philosophical Zeus (nor implied benevolent ruler) as in Aratus (p.94 ). Nor did he share Lucretius’ faith in a
philosophical leader & godlike benefactor triumphing over fear (p. 100). When Catullus did translate an authorizing
political myth from the Ptolemaic court,729 he used it to express literary friendship within the coterie & his private grief at
the death of his brother – buried on the distant shore of Troy, with only the slightest hint that he himself would wander far
like Odysseus getting there to mourn.
When Catullus turned to epos, he signaled from the first that he would flout memory – social & literary – defying
tradition & putting a new spin on heroism.730 He writes repeatedly of ‘amazing’ narrative art, as if to advertise his own
novelty, since he twists old threads in ways that must surprise an alert reader. He erases the myths of Rome’s heroic
ancestry, ruling out any claim by Rome to heroism except egregious passion – passionate greed. Like Hesiod (p. 91) he
denounces his own time as degenerate – alienated from heroes & gods. He downgrades heroism by weaving a new web
of causes stretched from craving for the Golden Fleece through war at Troy – seen as brutality by Achilles – down to his
own corrupt society – unredeemed by any authorizing mythic past.
His new chain of causes, paradoxical etiology, contradicts Apollonius on two main matters: Catullus declares
Argo the ‘first’ ship to sail, then piles on another radical new ‘first’, making the voyage occasion love at first sight
between Peleus & Thetis.731. About the actual voyage – Apollonius’ subject – nothing.732 Catullus skips to the wedding,
which he portrays as rest for farmers from georgic work, but toil for the Parcae drawing wooly filaments down &
spinning threads while singing how the son of the newly wedded couple, Achilles, will terrify mothers & force virgin
sacrifice at Troy – Trojan Polyxena, as pitiful as the Iphigeneia of tragedy & Lucretius. After this brutal climax, Catullus
closes the song with conventional marriage cheers, that ring doubly ironic: not just for the fearsome offspring but for the
usual tradition – asocial memory – of the couple’s immediate divorce.733 Their wedding, he writes, was the last time gods
mingled with mortals, visiting heroes’ chaste homes, accepting sacrifice, leading bacchic revels, stirring battle (382-94).
Afterwards humans became corrupt & gods turned away (395-406).
If that did not amaze enough, Catullus envisions a coverlet on the wedding couch & embroiders it with the story
that Apollonius employed for a brief ironic counterpoint to his main plot – Ariadne used & betrayed by Theseus, like
Medea by Jason.734 Catullus expands Ariadne into a full blown passionate woman betrayed, drawing & elaborating
threads from the figure of Medea both in tragedy & Apollonius. The result, like the Greeks that it transformed, no doubt
intrigued the Palatine coterie with a “charming, sometimes witty surface accessible to a nonspecialist reader and deeper
layers of allusion and learning recognizable to readers with expert knowledge.”735 Yet neither Catullus nor any others
associated with the new Greek wave ever achieved public impact like that reported for Virgil in his lifetime & its
repercussions for later reception down through time to our own.
729
Catullus 66, “Lock of Berenice,” cf. p. 98.
Feeney, Calendar, 124–27, missing the differentiated strains of epos, for which see Van Sickle, Design, 133n23.
731
Apollonius imagined their infant son Achilles in the arms of his tutor, the Centaur Chiron seeing off the boat. Catullus
invites the centaur to the wedding after the Argo gets back home.
732
The whole Argonautica story lurks like a huge subtext between 1-30 & 31-406.
733
Documented by Green, Argonautika, 328.
734
Cf. n. 701.
735
Gutzwiller, Guide, 178.
730
102
THEMATIC WARP & WEFT
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
THE WARP & WEFT OF VARYING MOTIFS – A CHART
Ranges march across the page as headers for vertical columns like the loom’s vertical threads (warp, ordo in
Latin, cf. ‘order’). From eclogue to eclogue the motifs vary – growing or dwindling – drawn up or down as the frames &
characters in the first column.
{Curved brackets enclose motifs that identify basic frames.}
+ or – after a causal motif (e.g., ROMA+ or AMOR–) mark value (positive or negative) assigned this cause within the particular frame.
≈ posits some linkage – relatedness through similarity & difference – between two figures.
cf. (Latin confer, bring together with) serves to suggest RELATEDNESS between elements & to get the reader to compare & contrast.
FIRST ECLOGUE: in his opening drama, Virgil represents the clash of conflicting frames in his own mind. With the figure
& plot of Melibœ́us he dramatizes his original set of values & its disruption by forces that he begins to weigh & frame by
means of the plot & figures of Títyrus & his God. Reflecting his concern for the state of poetry, he represents the old
frame’s shattering as the end of song & makes the power to secure song a positive sign of the new frame.
Range ⇒
{Frames}⇓
mythic & hero
ic
civic
georgic
bucolic
beyond
Melibœ́us
(re)moved by
new power
signs from
old deity
{Jove}
not read
aright
by failed
seer-bard
{vates–
16-17}
New God
{ROMA+}
oracle:
“as before
but more”
[45]
{secures old
place: installs
new mythic
frame}
fatherland
lost (4),
citizens
drawn down
[72]:
liberty
fields lost
(2) &
‘kingdom’
& arts of
farming
[70-73]
goats:
song no
more in
bower
[74-78]
Godless
soldier
expropriates
property
[70-71]
{new power:
ROMA–}
Far farms at
peace, shado
s
w
close day
(82-93]
Cattle, sheep:
old slavery [41]
versus new
liberty? [27]
authorized
by oracle
read aright
by successful
seer-bard
{vates+41-44}
Echoing happy
love song (2)
{AMOR+}
Pipe, shade
of single beech
[1-2, 4-5]
Oaxes,
Tigris
rivers
{far east}
German
{far west}
{old Roman
frame negated
by new power:
ROMA–}
Títyrus:
slave moved
to city
by hope of
new liberty
but
sent back by
oracle
{new frame
authorized by
new power:
ROMA+}.
SECOND ECLOGUE: moving to fill the new frame, Virgil deposts an urbane Framer reporting bucolic song that gets
depicted with mild disdain as motivated by love – not for a complaisant woman [1] but for the darling boy of the master,
hence a challenge for the bucolic range to grow to reach such a distant goal.
On pretext of reaching the haughty boy, Virgil richly stocks bucolic song with motifs of property, natural setting,
& crafts. He also stocks up on accounts of bucolic origin: not only generic – Pan, first maker of the pipe – but also
particular – Virgil’s own tradition, what he owes Theocritus: figured in Damœ́tas as the source imagined for Córydon’s
pipe. In counterpoint, he also enlarges the georgic range with motifs of regular work.
Restocking, too, the higher ranges, Virgil adds traditional gods & myths of origin: Pallas, dismissed as originator
of cities; Apollo, implied as once a grazer; Amphíon & Actéon, Theban heroes of tragedy; & Paris cited as a grazer,
although his love gave rise to the heroic range of epic song through the Trojan war.
Range ⇒
{Frame} ⇓
mythic &
heroic
civic
georgic
bucolic
beyond
Framer
from city
disdains
range of
bucolic
Pallas
{city
goddess}
Other gods
in woods
Master of
Córydon &
Aléxis – boy
beloved by
both,
Théstylis &
farmers
doing
regular
day’s work,
Córydon’s
Sea reflects
beauty,
wild fawns
kept.
sheep, goats:
song moved
by love
A CHART OF VARYING MOTIFS
103
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
{Tityrus+
& ROMA+}
{Apollo
grazer}
Paris
{epic hero}
Amphíon
& Actéon
{tragic}
Pan made
first pipe
{myth of
bucolic
origin}
disdains
bucolic
range
{AMOR-}
rest at
end of day
while bucolic
lover still
burns
for master’s
boy generates
rich & varied
praise of beauty,
properties, nature,
arts
{singer ≈
Melibœ́us
but moved
by AMOR –
not by ROMA –}
Damœ́tas
bequeathed
pipe
{sc. tradition
from Theocr.}
Dense beeches,
hills echo [3-5]
THIRD ECLOGUE: on a pretext of uneasiness about control & novelty, Virgil constructs a comedy that further augments
the stock of bucolic song. He multiplies terms of property, nature, craft & now variety in love & work. He reaches the
civic range through Pollio; & he returns to issues of boundaries & control.
Authorizing & confirming growth, Virgil adds motifs of active divine presence: Jove described as the origin of
song, as filling “all things,” & caring for “lands;” also Apollo – both gods linked to Caesar Octavian.
Further framing & favoring the growth of song, Virgil imagines a neighbor-judge from the georgic range,
Palǽmon , who projects motifs of universal spring in woods (bucolic) & fields (georgic) reinforced by love of song from
Latin Muses – the Camenae with a shrine outside a gate of Rome on the road to southern Italy & the Greek settlements
where Theocritus placed some of his idylls.
Range ⇒
{Frame} ⇓
mythic & hero
ic
civic
georgic
bucolic
Menálcas:
moved by
new herder
to contest
change
{cf [1:
Melibœ́us –
vs Títyrus +}.
Apollo
authorizes
Pollio loves
bucolic muse.
Vineyard
to secure
(10-11]
Beechen cups:
Conon:
plowing,
harvest
{georgic
epic
range}
Goats [7],
cattle [32],
sheep [94].
Boy loved
{AMOR+}.
Spring song.
Damœ́tas
new herder
risks another’s
property
{Títyrus: +}.
Jove
authorizes:
fills
‘all things’
& cares
for songs
Pollio makes
new songs.
Vineyard
vandal
[10-11].
Sheep not
his [3]
Goat [21]
Pipe? [25]
old beeches
[12]
Push for
match fills
out bucolic
Spring [5]:
every
field
burgeons
Spring [57]:
every
woodland
burgeons
‘flowers with
names of
kings’
[28]
Palǽmon
neighbor &
judge
{Títyrus +}
Latin muses
love shifts in
{bucolciheroic}
songs [59]
{Camenae:
shrine at
Roman
gate to
Greek
south
promote
‘as before
but more’ }
beyond
Beechen cups:
Orpheus
{poetic power}
104
THEMATIC WARP & WEFT
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
FOURTH ECLOGUE pushing for still “greater songs” (1] Virgil augments the frame of Títyrus to the furthest imaginable
degree, extending every range with emphatic motifs. For himself he stakes out the role of public & prophetic poet – in old
Roman terms a vates (“bard-seer”).
To the heroic-mythic range he adds motifs of the return of Saturn’s reign (6: the Golden Age), of the present reign
of Saturn’s grandson Apollo (10), & of the apparent birth of Saturn’s great-grandson – infant boy described as “great
increment of Jove” [4.49] – the youngest son of Saturn who drove his father out by guile & force, waging the divine
equivalent of civil war.
The motifs risk nonsense if you try to piece them together into a mythistorical narrative. Does return of Saturn’s
reign imply universal power reverting to him from Jove – the civil war of gods undone? How would reign by either
Saturn or Jove square with the announced reign by Apollo, or the promised “great increase of Jove” – the boy described
as destined to rule a world reduced to peace by paternal manliness? The motifs make sense, not as mythistorical narrative,
but as separate facets flattering to Caesar Octavian & filling out the framing myth of Títyrus.
Pushing the bucolic & georgic ranges to new extremes, Virgil adds that miracles will obviate the need for toil. He
also thinks of overshadowing & outdoing poetic tradition – challenging even Pan even in Arcadia his home.
Range ⇒
{Frame} ⇓
mythic – heroic
civic
georgic
bucolic
beyond
Framer {vates,
‘bard-seer’}
disdains range
of bucolic
from city
frame
[1-30]
{ROMA++ &
Tityrus+ &
co-opted
power of
Melibœ́us}.
New Boy –
Jove’s great
increase
[7, 49].
Apollo reigns
[10]
Saturn’s
kingdoms
come back [6.]
Pan
challenged
in Arcadia
{new bucolicepos
origin myth}.
Pollio as
consul
{ROMA +}
& leader
for new
growth}
Traces of
civil war
nullified [14]
All the world
will bear
all things
[39]
Farmers not
need to work
nor shippers
to ship
[38-42]
Goats go home
unherded [21].
Sheep grow
wool already
dyed [42].
Singer moved
by love
{AMOR+} for
New boy &
by hope
of new power
in song to best
Orpheus,
Apollo,
Linus, Calliope,
Pan {new
epos to
outdo ALL
tradition}.
Fates declare
new
universal
song
to be
for poet
[45-46]
FIFTH ECLOGUE: having expanded the frame of Títyrus to universal scope, embracing Roman history & nature in one
epic vision, Virgil draws back from explicitly Roman & civic motifs to produce instead a generous version of the bucolic
& georgic ranges in two songs: farms & woods devastated by the death but then enriched for all future time by the
apotheosis of Daphnis, the archetypal bucolic hero. Withdrawal from the civic range, however, is only apparent, since the
plot of death & deification maps to Julius Caesar – murdered & made a god. Framing the entire half-book, Virgil makes
Daphnis like the God of Títyrus. provide “repose” & prompt song.
Closing, Virgil makes the singers swap gifts. He leaves the bumptious Mopsus – linked to the vatic push of the
fourth eclogue – holding the pipe that ordered eclogues three & two – a pointed hint of design in the book.
Range ⇒
Frame ⇓
mythic – heroic
civic
georgic
bucolic
beyond
Menálcas:
moved from
shade by new
herder to sing
in bower,
will see
Damœ́tas,
Ægon dance
[cf. ecl.3]
{Menálcas2 =
vates ‘bard-seer’ ≈
Menálcas]
[ecl. 3]}
Daphnis
New God
[64], cf. [1.6]
will share
honors with
Apollo,
Bacchus,
Ceres [66, 79].
{Deified
Julius Caesar ≈
Daphnis as
New God}.
Farmers
prosper
with help
of
New God
[70, 80].
New God
loves repose
[61],
cf. [1.6] &
delights
Pan [59].
Milk flows
[67].
Wolves held
at bay &
hunting
stopped
[60-61].
A CHART OF VARYING MOTIFS
105
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Mopsus
new herder
pushes to sing
in bower
{Títyrus + &
power of
Melibœ́us,
cf. lost bower
[1.77}
Daphnis
performed
miracles
like Bacchus
[29-31].
{Dead Julius
Caesar ≈
Daphnis
dead}.
Death drove Ap
l
o
& Pales fromield
sf
[34-35]
& made
weeds grow.
Ox-herds
did not drive
herd to drink
nor oxen sip
[24-26].
Lions roared,
wild hills &
woods
re-echoed.
Exchange
of gifts
{Títyrus + &
Menálcas +}
Mopsus’
new song
on beech bark
{liber ‘bark’
& ‘book’}
Mopsus gives
staff {of vates
‘bard-seer’}.
Menálcas’
old song
long praised.
Menálcas
gives pipe
that made
[ecll. 3 & 2]
Menálcas +
staff vs
Mopsus +
pan-pipe
SIXTH ECLOGUE: looking to revise & redirect the expansive energies of the first half book, Virgil brings back Títyrus &
draws his song down from the mythic-heroic-civic range of the God at Rome to a still expansive mythic-georgic range
described as dictated by Apollo. Virgil dramatizes this recursive & revisionary sequel to the first half book as song
coerced & seduced after a binge.
Hinting at the direction his ambition will take in the second half book, he imagines that Apollo’s singing was
remembered & preserved by a river that was believed to trace its source to the homeland of Pan in Arcadia.
Range ⇒
{Frame} ⇓
mythic – heroic
civic
georgic
bucolic
beyond
Framer =
Títyrus2
recounts threerange history:
bucolic first
& lowest;
heroic-civic
next &
highest
{ROMA +};
now middle
range {ROMA+
reverts to
AMOR–:
drawn from
Tityrus+&
power of
Melibœ́us}
Apollo: gives
oracle [1.45]
imposing
program
for new
middle range
of song –
‘drawn from
or down’
from
higher
previous
range [3-5].
Apollo still
challenged by
new song
[29] &
praised [73].
Apollo
revealed
as origin of
ALL the song
[82].
Varus denied
song in
highest
range
{ROMA+}
leaving as
main cause
for song
unhappy love
{AMOR–}
More than
bucolic,
less than
heroic,
so middle
range:
all nature
seeded [31];
Prometheus’
theft of fire =
origin of all
{& agri}
culture [42];
love poet
{AMOR–}
moved to sing
origin of
Apollo’s grove
{Muses
hand on pipe –
symbol of
georgic
tradition:
Hesiod }.
Muses report
Silenus
drunk singer
moved
by Love
{AMOR+}
of song & sex
[25-6].
Challenge to
Apollo &
Orpheus
[29-30].
Queen leaves
city for love
of bull
{AMOR–
moves from
high to low
[52]}.
Singing
preserved
by river
from Arcadia
[83].
Wild nature
comes to
exist.
Monster
harmed
Ulysses’ men
{heroic epos}.
Monstrous
king becomes
wild bird
{tragic}.
S EVENTH ECLOGUE : the process of recursive reduction & revision continues as Virgil brings back his original
protagonist Melibœ́us to a scene composed of altered motifs from the previous eclogues & bucolic tradition: a Daphnis
reduced to bucolic focus; a contest imagined no longer as expansive but recollective & representing difference, with
defeat for the expansive – vatic – vein that triumphed in the first half book; both singers imagined as Arcadians, although
situated in Virgil’s home territory imagined as undisturbed by civil war (hence still framed by the mythology of Títyrus).
Range ⇒
{Frame} ⇓
mythic – heroci
civic
georgic
bucolic
Melibœ́us2
drawn down
by stray goat
(títyrus) &
kept by
shifts in verses
Muses wish
to recall shifts
(bucolicheroic)
in verse
{Greek
Mincius
peaceful
near Mantua
{ROMA
suspended}
Winter work
left behind
at home
in background
[10-11]
Goats [7]
cattle [11]
sheep [15]
Daphnis
seated
in rustling
yonder
106
THEMATIC WARP & WEFT
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
{≈ Menálcas2
[ecl. 5]}
goddesses ≈
Latin
goddesses
[3.59]:
recursive
(re)reading
to sift
diverse
strains}
Córydon2
Arcadian –
‘rustling pipe’
[24]
Meek prayer
to approach
Codrus
[22-23] ≈
‘Disputes of
Codrus’ [5.11]
{drawn from
Córydon [ecl.]}2
Humble prayer
to Nymphs
for song
like Codrus
near Apollo
[21-24]
Hunting
trophies
to Diana [29]
Thyrsis
Arcadian –
growing poet &
future bard
[vates, 25-28]
prays that
envy
burst Codrus
≈ Títyrus2
[ecl. 6]
≈ Mopsus1
[5]
≈ [vates,
ecl.4]
≈ Palǽmon.
[ecl. 3]
≈ Damœ́tas
[ecl. 3]
≈ Cór.
[ecl. 2]
≈ Tít.1
[ecl. 1]}
Boastful order
to phallic god
Priápus [33]
shade
Contest
‘great
sifting out’
apples [54]
vineyard [48]
Cattle [39]
Loves
Galatéa [37]
Aléxis [55] &
Phyllis [63]
Hunt boar,
stag
[29-30]
springs, grass,
arbute: shade
[45-47]
cites Hercules,
Bacchus,
Venus [61-62]
paltry garden
[34]
farm field
dries [57]
vines wither
[58]
Jove’s ‘very
most’ rain
[60]
Cattle [44]
Loves ‘you’
[41:
Galatéa?],
Phyllis &
Lycidas [47]
hearth, soot,
chill winds
[49-51]
EIGHTH ECLOGUE: Virgil moves from the recovered viewpoint of Melibœ́us to a nameless Framer that serves him to
recall the book’s opening & project its close. In a last hurrah for the mythic frame of the first half book, he amplifies the
bucolic range with tragic & then contrasting magical motifs – love as cause of suicide by a singer trusting to Arcadian
verses vs love motivating songs as magical – vatic – spells that force yet a further reduction of the figure of Daphnis.
Range ⇒
{Frame} ⇓
mythic – heroci
civic
georgic
bucolic
beyond
Framer –
sense of book
grows:
recursive to
its start &
procursive to
its close
{≈ Melibœ́us2 ≈
Córydon2
Arcadian
≈ Títyrus2
≈ Menálcas2}
projects song
of ‘deeds’
worth
tragic style
{high style;
cf. epic ‘deeds’
4.54}
patron away
from city:
from him
‘first take’
& for him
close
songs stun
nature into
silence:
no echoes
book as
structure:
‘from you
first take,
for you
turn off’ [12]
cf. [3.60]
Timavus’
rocks
Illyrian
coast
{Caesar
Octavian
afield}
Damon –
Love for
Nysa wed
by Mopsus2:
Pan first pipe2
]; [
4
cf. [2.32];
Orpheus, Arion
Goats [33]
Tragic love
{Medea, 47}
Tmaros
Rhodópe
Garamántes
A CHART OF VARYING MOTIFS
107
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Dewy dawn
suicide
{Arcadian
verses: tragic
denouement}
Alphesibœus:
Pierian Muses
≈ Thyrsis
[7.28]
≈ Títyrus2
[ecl. 6]
≈ Mopsus1
[ecl. 5]
≈ bard
[vates, ecl. 4]
≈ Palǽmon
[ecl. 3]
≈ Damœ́tas
[ecl. 3]
≈ Cór.1[ecl. 2]
≈ Títyrus.1
[ecl. 1]
Circe’s
magical
spells turned
into pigs
Ulysses’
crew [70]
from city
spells draw
home Daphnis
Mœris draws
planted crops
from fields,
raises dead;
turns into
wolf;
gets poisons
from Pontus
{vates as
sorcerer;
cf. Medea}
Pontus
{Medea’s
home}
Magical spells
draw Daphnis
from city
home
{vates as
sorcerer}
NINTH ECLOGUE: final reduction of the vatic vein that triumphed in the first half book – dramatized as exile from the
Italian landscape there associated with Títyrus & Menálcas. Elements of the original mythic frame represented now as
dissociated fragments.
Range ⇒
{Frame} ⇓
mythic – heroic
Lycidas –
pushes
for song:
oblivious to
circumstances
that bar song
[snatches only
of song recalled:
charted below]
Mœris – evicted
& aged vates
[33]
≈ Mœris sorcerer
vates], [8.95-9]
≈ Thyrsis [7.28]
≈ Títyrus2 [6]
≈ Mopsus1
[ecl. 5]
≈ seer-bard –
vates], [ecl. 4]
≈ Palǽmon [ecl.]3
≈ Damœ́tas [ecl.]3
≈ Córydon1 [ecl.]2
≈ Títyrus1 [ecl. 1]
Jove at Dodóna
Range ⇒
Voice ⇓
mythic – heroic
georgic
bucolic
Varius & Cinna
seer-bards
[vates, 33]:
rank that
Lycidas does
not pretend
Winter work
under way:
farmers strip
foliage for
fodder [60-61]
Lost by Menálcas
power of song
to shape & save
bucolic range –
vates: ≈ Mœris
[8.95-99]
Love for
Amarýllis [22]
‘little field’
taken by
new owner,
cf. godless,
barbarian
soldier [1.70-71]
{ROMA –}
Goats (6]
Cattle (31]
“beeches old –
now broken tops”
≈ [1.1]; [2.3];
[3.12, 37]; [5.14]
georgic
bucolic
civic
by Lýcidas (46-50]:
Daphnis to look
not to old signs
but to star of Caesar
Flats silent,
rain coming,
tomb looms
[57-59]
by Lýcidas
[23-25]:
tells Títyrus
to graze goats
till he returns,
cf. Títyrus
goatherd,
[5.12] & [3.96];
but [8.55]
by Mœris
[27-29]: prays
Varus to save
Mantua
Menálcas –
snatches of song
recalled:
Mœris –
snatches of song
recalled:
civic
by Lýcidas [46-50]:
Daphnis to look
to star of Caesar
for crop lands,
vineyards, pears
by himself:
praying Galatéa
to come ashore
in spring season
(39-43]
108
THEMATIC WARP & WEFT
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
TENTH ECLOGUE: fulfills the ambition implicit from the start of reaching the originary place & time of song – Arcadia.
Range ⇒
{Frame} ⇓
mythic – hero
ic
Framer
bringing book
to close
{cf. Framer
[ecl. 8]
≈ Melibœ́us2
[ecl. 7] &
Menálcas2 ]
[5}
Naïads [9]
Arcadians
Arethussa (1]
Apollo (20],
Siluánus [24],
Pan [26]
Gallus –
{drawn down
from Gallus
[ecl. 6]:
from songs
in verse
of Chalcis
via Sicilian
grazer’s oat [50
]}
compared to
Adonis [18]
cruel Love
civic
georgic
bucolic
shade heavy
for crops
Goats [8]
shade heavy
for singers
Winter work
left behind –
acorn
gathering
by Menálcas
[20]
vintner of ripe
grapes [36]
uniquely
skilled
at song [32]
Phyllis,
Amýn-tas
Pierian
Muses [70]
Mount Mad
[Mǽnalus,
15],
Mount Wolf
[Lycǽus, 15]
sheep [16]
beyond
Lycóris
Alpine snow,
Rhine ice,
camps
Hebrus,
Thracian winters,
Ethiopian sun
109
ARTICLES & BOOKS CITED IN NOTES
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INDEX OF AUTHORS, CHARACTERS, & THEMES
111
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
INDEX
Achilles 1n4, 8n63, 9, 15, 17, 29n146, 31n171, 41n254,
44, 45n289, 46, 47n311, 54n373, 55n395, 65n473,
72n513, 79n569, 87n627, 90–92, 93n658, 94, 96–98,
100n728, 101, 109–11
Amarýllis 13, 28–29n148, 31, 33, 35, 37, 39, 42, 55n386,
66, 70–71, 74, 82n591, 84n610, 87n623, 107
ambition 2, 3n22, 9, 14, 18–20, 21n120, 22–23, 28,
31n174, 33n192, 53, 61n455, 62n457, 63n460, 66,
67n480, 74n534, 75nn536–37, 81n583, 88n632, 94,
98, 105, 108
ambitious 4, 12–13, 15, 17–20, 22, 24–26, 41n247,
47n314, 48, 54n383, 59, 62n457, 63n460, 68n491,
71, 75n537, 99
Apollo 3n15, 9, 12–19, 23n127, 26, 38, 43–45n289, 52–
53, 55nn392–93, 57n413, 58, 59nn433–34, 60n436,
61n450, 65n472, 67n485, 73n522, 78, 79n566,
80nn576–77, 81, 82n589, 84nn606–7, 85n615,
86n623, 87n627, 97nn689, 697, 98, 102–6, 108
Apollonius 9, 13, 14nn89–90, 19, 23, 24n130, 41n247,
43n280, 44, 97–98n703, 100–101n731, 109–11
Arcadia 2–4, 11, 14–15, 17, 19, 20n118, 24, 26–27,
29n144, 36n213, 47, 53, 56n408, 57nn415–16,
58n429, 60n439, 61n450, 64n468, 65n473, 66,
68n490, 76n543, 78, 79nn565, 568, 570, 80nn573,
580, 81, 82nn589–92, 594, 83nn601–2, 84nn606–7,
85n614, 88n632, 95–96, 104–5, 108
Arcadian 2–3, 10, 16–17, 19–20, 22–23n126, 25–26, 44,
50n343, 58nn430–31, 59, 61n453, 62n457, 65nn473,
475, 66, 67nn489–90, 71, 72nn512, 515, 75n537, 78,
79nn566, 570, 80n578, 81n583, 82nn589, 592, 594–
95, 83n602, 84n611, 88n632, 95n672, 96, 98, 106–7
Arcadians 2, 14, 20–21, 26, 59–60n439, 62, 67n489, 78,
81nn584–85, 82, 95, 105, 108
authority 4–5, 8, 14, 22–25, 30n158, 31nn168, 170, 33,
47n311, 49n328, 66, 67nn483–84, 72n515, 74n532,
78, 90, 93–94, 96–97, 99, 101
authorizing 3, 5, 8–9, 11, 25, 30n163, 31nn170–71,
36n213, 45n285, 47n311, 60n436, 65n473, 75n537,
80n577, 81n582, 95–96, 98–101, 103
bard 7, 18, 20–21, 24–25, 28, 30n156, 44, 47n316, 48, 53,
58n420, 59, 62, 66, 70n508, 71, 75, 87n625, 88n631,
90, 99, 102, 104–7
beech 6–7, 15, 24–25, 28–29n144, 33, 35, 38–39, 40n235,
48–49n335, 60n436, 64n466, 72n513, 73n523,
81n585, 86n621, 95n673, 102, 105
book 1–2, 4–5n47, 8n63, 13–27, 29n148, 32n175, 41n247,
44n282, 47n315, 48, 49nn324–25, 335, 52,
53nn369–70, 60nn436, 442, 61n454, 62nn456–57,
63nn460, 462, 65nn470, 472–73, 66, 67nn483, 486,
488, 68n490, 71n510, 73nn518–19, 523, 526,
74nn526, 529–33, 75nn535, 538–42, 76n543,
77n551, 78, 79nn566–67, 570–71, 80nn572, 574,
578, 81nn583, 585, 82nn589, 595, 84nn606, 610,
85nn611–12, 617, 86, 87nn624, 626–27, 629–30,
88n632, 94, 96, 98, 104–9, 111, vii
bower 6–7, 14n86, 15, 16n97, 28, 33, 48–49n331, 53–
54n382, 55n386, 76, 77n563, 87n629, 102, 104–5
Bucolics 1–3, 4n42, 5, 7nn54–55, 8, 65n473, 84nn605–6,
89, 96, 110–11, vii
Caesar 2nn11, 14, 3–7n54, 12, 14, 16–18, 23–25, 28–
29n144, 30n156, 31n164, 32nn181, 183, 185, 38, 44,
45nn289, 292, 47n313, 48, 51nn352, 355, 52,
67n478, 70n506, 71–72, 75n537, 76, 83n604,
84n605, 88n631, 101, 103–7, 109–10
Callimachus 9, 13, 15–16, 19, 29n143, 31n170, 40n243,
57n419, 96n684, 97n688, 98–99, 109–11
cattle 1, 7, 11, 17–18, 19n110, 21, 28, 30nn153, 159,
31n166, 35n195, 38–39, 43n273, 45n283, 52,
56n408, 57n413, 59, 60n444, 64n468, 66n477,
81n584, 86n618, 87n626, 91–92, 102–3, 106–7
Catullus 2–3, 5, 8, 11, 15, 19, 44, 46n303, 84n606, 98,
100n728, 101, 110–11
cf 1, 2nn5, 14, 3nn17, 20, 4n42, 5nn44, 50, 8n64, 9, 11,
12nn79–81, 13n85, 14–16n101, 17nn103–4, 18,
19nn112–13, 20–21n121, 22n122, 23–25n138,
26nn139, 142, 27, 29nn144–49, 30nn150, 152–56,
158, 161–63, 31nn165, 167, 169–71, 173–74,
32nn175–76, 179–80, 183, 33, 35nn195–97, 199–
201, 203, 36nn205–6, 208, 210–14, 37nn216, 218,
221–26, 38nn228–29, 39, 40nn235–39, 241–43,
41nn244–45, 247–48, 251–56, 42nn256–58, 260–62,
265, 267, 43nn268–70, 272–73, 275–77, 279, 44,
45nn283, 285–91, 293–95, 46nn298–99, 301–3,
305–6, 308–9, 47nn311–14, 316–18, 321, 48,
49nn323, 326, 328, 330–32, 334–36, 50nn339–43,
345–46, 51nn348, 351–54, 356, 360–62, 52nn364–
68, 53, 54nn373–74, 376–80, 382–83, 385, 55nn386,
388–89, 391–93, 395–97, 56nn399–400, 402–8,
57nn410, 412–19, 58nn420–21, 423–26, 428, 430–
31, 59, 60nn436–46, 61nn446, 448–50, 453–56,
62nn456–57, 459, 63nn460, 462–65, 64nn465–66,
468–70, 65nn470, 472–73, 66, 67nn482–83, 486,
488–90, 68nn490–95, 69nn496–97, 499, 501–3,
70nn504–8, 71nn509–10, 72, 73nn516, 518–19,
522–24, 74nn528–32, 535, 75nn535–37, 539–42,
76nn543, 545–49, 77nn552, 554–60, 563, 78,
79 nn 56 5 –7 0, 80 n n5 71 –7 2 , 5 74 –7 7 , 5 7 9 – 8 0 ,
81nn581, 583–85, 587–89, 82nn589, 591–96,
83nn597–604, 84nn605–8, 610–11, 85nn611–12,
614–15, 617, 86nn618–23, 87nn623, 625–28, 630,
88nn631–32, 89n634, 91–92, 95nn664, 672, 96,
97nn696–97, 98n707, 100n724, 101nn729, 734,
102–8
challenge 3–4, 14, 20n118, 22–23, 27, 30n153, 33,
36n206, 37, 40, 47–49n336, 53, 55n392, 61, 62n456,
66, 69, 75n535, 77n560, 94, 97, 99, 102, 105
city 5, 7–11, 12n81, 13, 20, 22–25, 30–31, 33n192, 39,
45n289, 52n368, 53n370, 57n415, 66, 68n493, 69–
72n515, 73n519, 74n530, 76n546, 77, 88n632, 91–
96, 99, 102–7, vii
civic 1n4, 5, 7–11, 16, 17n102, 29nn143, 146, 33, 36n210,
37n219, 40n236, 47n312, 49nn325, 333, 53n372,
61n446, 67n480, 69n502, 72nn512–13, 74n532, 90–
94, 102–8
112
INDEX OF AUTHORS, CHARACTERS, & THEMES
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
91–92, 102–3, 105, 107
close 6, 7n54, 8–9, 12, 14–19, 22–27, 33, 35n196, 38–39,
figure 2, 4n40, 5–7, 9–10n71, 12–13, 15–29n144,
42n263, 43, 45n283, 53, 57, 58n429, 59, 61, 66,
30nn156, 158, 31nn169, 173, 32n179, 33n188, 38–
67n488, 74, 75n539, 79n567, 81n585, 85n612,
39, 41n247, 53, 59, 64n469, 66, 68n493, 69n502,
86n623, 87nn624, 626–28, 88nn631–32, 93n654,
73nn520, 526, 74n527, 76nn546, 550, 77nn550, 552,
100n726, 102, 106, 108
78n563, 81nn583, 585, 84n607, 85n614, 88n632, 90,
clues 1–2, 9n70, 28, 33, 38, 44, 48, 52–53, 89, vii
92–93, 101–2, 106
country 5, 8–9, 20, 22, 24–26, 30n163, 32n179, 37, 51,
force 4, 6–9, 11–12, 14, 21–22, 24–25, 28, 29n146,
52n368, 57n419, 61n456, 64n470, 72, 73n519,
33n187, 35nn197, 200, 36n208, 51n349, 54n379,
75n537, 82n589, 85n617, 87n623, 91–92, 94
61n453, 65nn470, 473, 475, 71, 73n519, 74nn527,
Córydon 4, 9–12, 14, 17–18, 20–23, 33, 35, 37–39, 52,
530, 75n535, 78n564, 79n567, 81nn587, 589,
60–61, 63, 65–66, 80n571, 81n587, 85nn612, 617,
85n617, 88n631, 99–101, 104, 106, vii
86nn617, 621, 623, 87nn623, 626, 88nn631–32,
form 1–2n9, 9, 11–13, 15–19, 22–25, 29n148, 32n183,
102–3, 106
36nn206, 214, 38, 39n232, 41n255, 42nn257, 265,
craft 8–9, 28, 33n188, 38, 40n243, 44, 48, 52, 55n395, 59,
48, 55n386, 57nn409, 417, 61nn453, 455, 62n457,
60n445, 61n453, 66, 71, 76n543, 78, 83n599,
63n463, 64n467, 69n499, 70n508, 71n510, 72n516,
88n632, 90–92, 98, 103, vii
79 n5 68 , 82 n5 89 , 86 n6 23 , 87 , 8 9– 9 0, 9 4 , 9 6 ,
Cyclops 2, 11, 31n165, 33n188, 38, 53n370, 67nn486,
100n728, vii
489, 68nn492–93, 75n541, 76n543, 91–96, 109–10
Damon 22–23, 26, 39–40, 66–67n487, 69, 72, 78, 80n571, formed 3, 29, 30n152, 33, 35–37n216, 41–42, 47, 50, 52,
60n442, 63–65n473, 81, 84n610
86n621, 106
Damœ́tas 2, 4, 10–16, 18, 24, 26, 33, 36, 38–39, 41, 48, Frame 2–3, 26, 29n143, 45n285, 47n310, 90–91, 99, 102–
8
51, 75n537, 80n571, 102–4, 106–7
Daphnis 2, 15–16, 18, 20–23, 25–28, 29n145, 31nn167, Framer 2, 10, 14, 18, 22–24, 35n194, 38n228, 39, 41n249,
43n278, 44, 45n285, 47n320, 49, 53n369, 59nn435–
171, 33, 36, 39–40n239, 48, 50–51n352, 52n367,
36, 60n440, 61n454, 65–66n478, 69nn498–99,
55n393, 59–60n444, 61n456, 62n456, 63n460,
71n510, 78, 80nn571, 577, 87n624, 102, 104–6, 108
64nn468–69, 66, 67nn489–90, 69–72, 74n529, 76,
framing 4, 9–10, 12n82, 13–14, 17, 19–24, 26, 36n214,
77n557, 78, 79nn565, 567–68, 570, 80nn572, 574–
44n282, 45n288, 51n362, 65nn472, 475, 67n483,
80, 81nn581, 583–84, 82n590, 85nn611–12, 614,
69n502, 71n510, 74n533, 80nn572, 577, 81n583,
86n623, 87n626, 96, 104–7
88n632, 98, 103–4
declare 18, 30, 39–41n250, 43, 47, 50, 54, 66–67n480,
fresh 6, 25–26, 36, 39–40, 42, 43nn268–69, 45, 48, 51, 68,
69–70, 73, 75, 79, 84n610, 104
74, 79n569, 84n606, 87, 88n632, 93, 100
drama 1–3, 6–8, 10, 12–13, 22, 30n152, 32n179, 72n512,
full 2, 6, 11–14, 18, 19n111, 21–22, 23n127, 29n148,
92–93, 95, 102, 109, 111
35n201, 41, 46, 50, 52, 58n424, 60n438, 63, 69n497,
draw 4, 17, 22–23, 26, 30, 32, 45n292, 49–50, 52n367,
75n542, 76n543, 81n588, 85nn614, 617, 88n632, 92,
53n369, 54n373, 57–58, 66, 69–74n529, 76–77,
94, 97, 101
82nn589, 595, 88n632, 97, 98n707, 107
Gallus 3, 13, 16–17, 26–27, 44n280, 48, 53, 57, 58nn419,
drawn 2, 8–9, 11–14, 16, 18–27, 29n143, 30n151, 33, 39,
423, 62n456, 68n491, 75n536, 78–82n595, 83n597,
43n280, 48, 52, 54, 55n396, 56n397, 59, 60n441,
84nn606–8, 611, 85nn611, 614–15, 86n623, 87,
61n455, 63n460, 66, 68, 69n502, 72, 75n540,
88n632, 108
76n546, 78, 80n579, 83n599, 84nn606–8, 87nn623,
georgic 1n4, 2, 5, 7–16, 25, 27, 29nn143, 145–46, 30n158,
625, 630, 94, 96–97, 99n719, 102, 105–6, 108
32nn179, 184, 33, 35n201, 37nn217, 226, 38nn227,
Ennius 8, 23, 31n170, 41n254, 49n326, 56n404, 65n473,
229, 39, 40n239, 41nn245, 251, 42n267, 43nn272,
68n495, 71n510, 99–100n727, 109–11
280, 44, 47nn313–14, 48, 49nn325–27, 50n344,
epic 2, 4, 6n53, 7n55, 8–9, 13–16, 19n110, 21, 23, 26,
51nn353, 362, 52nn363–64, 54nn376, 379,
33nn188–89, 37n223, 41n254, 42n267, 45n283,
55nn395–96, 60n440, 61nn447, 451, 64nn465, 468–
49n335, 53n372, 56n404, 58nn423–24, 61n454,
70, 65n470, 67n488, 72, 73nn516–18, 521–22, 524,
69n499, 70n506, 73n526, 88n632, 89n634, 90, 93–
526, 74nn532, 534, 75n542, 76nn543, 546, 77n550,
94, 96–97, 99nn718–19, 102–4, 106, 110–11, vii
81n583, 82n596, 83nn600–601, 85nn612, 614,
epos 1n4, 2–3n15, 5–6, 8–14, 16–17, 19, 22–23, 26, 28,
86n623, 87nn626, 629, 88n631, 91–92, 94, 97, 100–
29nn144, 146, 30nn157–58, 32nn178, 184, 33nn188,
108
190–92, 35nn197, 199, 36n212, 38, 41n254, 42n257,
goatherd 5, 8–9, 20–21, 24–26, 28, 29n146, 30nn151, 153,
43n280, 44, 47nn310, 315, 318–19, 48, 49n326,
163, 31nn168, 171, 33nn188–89, 40n242, 43n273,
5 2 n 3 6 8 , 53 , 5 4n n 37 5, 37 8 , 3 80 –8 1 , 5 5n 39 0 ,
48, 65n473, 66, 67n486, 68nn493–94, 69n497, 71,
57nn418–19, 58n419, 61n452, 67nn480, 483,
72nn513, 515, 73n521, 74n530, 75n537, 78, 80n571,
75n537, 78, 79n567, 80nn577, 579, 81n582, 83n600,
81n584, 88n632, 92, 96, 107
84nn607–8, 611, 85nn614–15, 88n632, 89–91, 94,
goats 6–7, 10–11, 18, 21, 26, 28, 30, 33, 38–39n232, 43,
96, 98–101n730, 104–5
46, 48, 59, 60nn438, 444, 68, 74, 76n550, 79,
Euripides 23, 53n370, 54n374, 56n404, 93–94, 96, 98,
80nn571–72, 81nn584, 589, 82n595, 84n606, 88,
100n727, 109–10
102–4, 106–8
fields 6, 12, 14, 16, 19n110, 30, 33, 39, 40n240, 41,
God 1n2, 17–18, 22–24, 28, 30n163, 31n169, 32n185, 33,
42n259, 50, 52, 56, 72n513, 73nn516, 519, 87n629,
113
INDEX OF AUTHORS, CHARACTERS, & THEMES
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
36nn213–14, 47n313, 48, 51nn357, 362, 60n436,
63n460, 64n470, 73n519, 86n623, 102, 104–5
god 3–11, 14–19, 20nn115, 117, 24, 26–27, 29–30,
31n172, 32n180, 33, 42n258, 44, 47n319, 48, 50–53,
54nn377, 382, 55n395, 60n436, 63n460, 64n466, 65,
68, 69n501, 70, 72, 73nn517–18, 74n532, 75nn535,
537, 76nn546, 548, 550, 81, 82n589, 85n617, 86,
87n627, 91, 93n655, 96–98n700, 100, 104, 106
gods 1n4, 4, 8–9, 12–13, 19, 29n148, 31, 37–38, 41n256,
42, 44–45n294, 47, 49n323, 50, 53, 55n391, 58n430,
59nn432, 434, 60n446, 65n472, 67, 71, 80n572,
85n617, 86nn618, 621, 89–91, 94, 97, 101–4
grazer 9–10, 18, 28, 33, 35, 39, 52–53, 58–59, 84, 102–3,
108
great 1, 2n14, 3, 9, 18, 23, 25, 30–31n174, 40n235, 43,
45–47n313, 51, 55, 57, 59, 61, 67n483, 74, 75n535,
76n547, 84n605, 87, 88n632, 91, 94, 99, 104, 106,
vii
Greek 1–4, 6, 9, 12, 16–17, 19n111, 20–21, 26, 28,
29nn144, 148, 30n157, 35nn195, 202, 37n223, 38–
39, 41nn251, 254, 42nn261, 267, 43n280, 45nn285,
287, 47nn310, 316, 48, 49n326, 53, 54n376, 56n405,
58nn421, 425, 59, 60n446, 61n453, 62n459, 63n462,
64nn468, 470, 65n473, 66, 67n489, 70n505, 75n535,
78, 79n566, 80n577, 84n610, 85nn611, 616, 87n627,
89–90n646, 91n649, 92–95n672, 97n694, 98–101,
103, 106, 109–11, vii
growth 4, 14–15, 18–19, 23, 25, 31n171, 32n178, 36n214,
39n234, 40n238, 41nn249, 251, 253, 44n282,
45nn296–97, 46nn300–301, 307, 47, 51n362, 52,
53n369, 54n383, 60n436, 62n457, 63n460, 67n483,
85n611, 87n628, 103–4
Habinek 2n9, 36n205, 94n662, 109–10
Hellenistic 2, 16, 48, 94–95, 98, 109–11
hero 1n4, 8n63, 9–10, 16, 25–27, 29n145, 31n167,
44n281, 45n294, 46n307, 48, 54n373, 69n501,
76n546, 77n557, 78, 79n567, 80nn573–74, 82n589,
84n606, 85nn615, 617, 86n623, 88n632, 90n646,
92–93n658, 97, 103–4
heroic 1n4, 2, 4–5, 7–8n63, 10–11, 13–16, 17n102, 19,
21–23n127, 26, 29nn143, 145, 30n158, 32n184, 33,
36nn206, 210, 37nn219, 223, 38, 40n236, 41nn247,
254, 42n261, 43nn269, 280, 44, 45nn288, 294,
46nn301, 303, 307, 47n315, 49nn333, 335, 52,
53n372, 54nn375, 380, 56n403, 61nn446, 452,
62n459, 63n460, 65n473, 66, 67nn480, 482–83,
69n502, 72n515, 74n532, 75n536, 84n605, 85n614,
89–92, 93n658, 94, 96–97, 99, 101–8
Hesiod 2, 5, 8–9, 13n84, 15, 19, 31n170, 42nn261, 267,
43nn272, 280, 44, 45n287, 46nn298, 308, 52n368,
53, 54nn380–81, 57nn418–19, 58n422, 61n453, 78,
81n583, 89–92, 94, 95n666, 96–101, 105, 109–11
highest 6, 13–14, 16, 18–19, 21, 23, 26, 30n153, 31n171,
32n184, 35nn195, 198–99, 37n223, 43nn269, 277,
45nn286–87, 47n312, 52–53n372, 54nn376–77,
63n460, 66, 67n480, 89, 93, 97, 105
hills 9, 14, 17, 28, 33, 35–36n207, 49–51, 52n364, 56–58,
60n439, 61n456, 64–65, 69n502, 72, 73n521,
80n575, 81n583, 82, 84n608, 85nn612–14, 93, 95–
96, 100, 103, 105
home 2, 6–7, 9, 14, 19–20, 22–23, 26–28, 31, 32n179, 33,
36n208, 40, 46, 47n319, 54n379, 57n415, 58n422,
59, 60nn439, 444–46, 61, 63, 69–71, 78, 79nn565,
570, 80n577, 81n589, 88, 90–92, 96, 101n731, 104–
7, vii
Homer 1n4, 2, 5, 8nn60, 63, 9, 11, 13, 17, 19, 29n143,
30n153, 33, 44, 46n309, 47n315, 48, 55n395,
56n406, 57n415, 58n425, 75n538, 87n627, 88n632,
89–100n728, 109–11
idy ll 1, 5, 12, 16 , 20n11 5, 21, 25 –27, 64n 470, 78 ,
79nn567, 570, 84n608, 86n623, 88nn631–32, 96
II 2, 5n50, 9, 63n460, 91–92
infer 2, 5, 7, 10, 12, 15–19, 24
Jove 2, 4, 5n47, 7, 11–14, 16, 18, 25, 29n144, 30n156, 38,
40n235, 41, 42n256, 44, 45n287, 46n308, 47n313,
52n367, 64n466, 65, 67n483, 69n497, 72–73n525,
76n547, 83n604, 87nn627–28, 90, 102–4, 106–7
Julius 2nn11, 14, 3–4n31, 7n54, 16, 18, 22, 25, 31n164,
32nn181, 183, 48, 51nn352, 355, 52n367, 71–72,
76n547, 83n604, 101, 104–5, 109, 111
last 9, 24, 26–27, 31, 36n214, 43, 45–46, 55, 57, 58n424,
63n465, 65n470, 67–69n497, 73n517, 77–78n565,
79nn565–67, 86nn619, 622–23, 88n632, 90, 92, 96,
101, 106, vii
Latin 1–4n40, 8–9n70, 12–13n84, 16, 19n111, 21, 23,
25n136, 26, 28, 29nn144, 147–48, 30n161, 32n184,
33n187, 35n202, 38–39, 41n254, 42n267, 43n275,
44, 45nn292, 295, 48, 49n326, 53, 54n376, 58n426,
59, 60nn445–46, 61n453, 62n457, 66, 70n505,
74n532, 75n535, 78, 79n566, 81n584, 82n589,
83n599, 85nn611, 616, 87n629, 89n634, 90, 94n662,
95nn665, 673, 100n720, 102–3, 106, 109–10, vii
like 1–2, 4, 6, 7n54, 8–9, 12, 14, 16–17, 19–22, 25–26,
29nn145, 148–49, 30, 31n167, 33, 35nn195, 202,
38–39, 41nn254–56, 44, 45n292, 46, 47n314, 48,
49nn333–34, 50, 51n352, 52n367, 53, 55nn387–88,
391, 56nn397, 399, 405, 57nn409, 418, 58n424, 59,
61n453, 62n457, 63n463, 65–66n477, 67n488,
68n495, 69n499, 72, 73nn522–23, 526, 74–75n539,
80n579, 81nn581, 583, 84n607, 85nn611–12, 614,
617, 86, 88n632, 89–93n657, 95–97, 99–102, 104–6,
vii
linked 1, 3, 7, 9n70, 13, 15, 24, 28, 29n144, 30n156,
35n195, 38, 42n267, 44, 45nn289–90, 50n345,
51n355, 52–53, 61n450, 62nn456–57, 64nn466–67,
65n473, 67n485, 71n510, 76n545, 79n566, 80n572,
83n599, 85n616, 87n630, 99–100, 103–4
literary 1–3, 5, 9, 13, 18–19, 27, 79n567, 80n577, 88n632,
89, 94n663, 95–96n685, 98, 101, 109–10, vii
Literature 109–11
little 3, 10, 16, 29n146, 30, 36, 41, 45, 47–48, 57n416, 62,
68, 72, 73nn516, 519, 76n543, 83n604, 85n614,
87nn625–26, 94, 96, 100, 107
long 1, 3, 6, 13, 31–32, 37, 42, 47–48, 51, 52n367, 62, 66,
67nn478, 489, 77, 87n630, 90, 94, 97, 99–100, 105,
vii
look 4n40, 9, 11–12n79, 15n96, 16–17, 19, 21–22, 25–26,
30–33, 37, 41, 47, 49, 51, 52n367, 54n383, 58, 60,
63, 68, 71, 76–77n552, 80n572, 97n699, 107
lost 2, 6–8, 11, 13n84, 14, 17n104, 21, 24–25, 32nn179,
114
INDEX OF AUTHORS, CHARACTERS, & THEMES
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
53, 54nn374, 376, 380–81, 55n390, 57n419, 60n446,
182, 184, 33nn187–88, 37, 39, 40n234, 41n245,
61nn451, 454, 81n583, 105
45n287, 46n299, 48, 49nn324, 331, 51n357, 53,
mind 1, 2n8, 6–7, 9–10, 13–14, 16, 18–19, 21–28, 29n149,
54n382, 58n423, 63n465, 70, 72, 73nn516, 518,
30, 32n185, 33n191, 39, 41, 43n279, 49n331,
74n527, 76n543, 77n563, 82n596, 83n603, 85n612,
58n429, 60nn441–42, 66n477, 68n493, 71n510,
86n621, 87nn625, 629, 100, 102, 105, 107
72n515, 73nn521, 526, 74n530, 75n539, 76n545, 77,
Love 2, 11, 42n259, 68, 82, 86, 87n623, 90, 96, 105–10
83nn602, 604, 86n623, 93, 97, 100, 102, 109–10
love 1n2, 6, 9–14, 16, 21–24, 26–28, 29nn144, 147, 33,
Mopsus 2, 13n84, 15–18, 22, 25–26, 48–49, 53, 58nn421,
35, 37–39, 41–43, 46n303, 49n332, 52, 53n371, 54,
423, 59, 62n457, 64n466, 66, 68, 76n543, 77nn557,
56, 57nn416, 418, 58nn424, 429, 59, 61, 63nn460–
563, 78, 81n582, 84n607, 86n621, 87n625, 97n697,
63, 64nn466–69, 66–67n489, 68nn493–95, 69nn501,
104–5
503, 70–71n510, 72n513, 74n529, 76nn543, 546,
mother 3n23, 13–15, 36n206, 44, 47, 50, 56n402, 64n468,
77n554, 78, 79nn565–67, 570, 80–81n589, 82nn589,
65n470, 68–69, 72, 79n569, 85n614, 93n658,
591, 593, 595, 83, 84nn606–7, 85nn616–17, 86n623,
97nn692–93, 100–101
87, 89, 94, 96n686, 98, 101–7
lover 6, 9–12, 22–24, 26–27, 33, 35n198, 38–39, 42n267, motifs 2, 12n78, 16, 20n118, 21–22, 23n126, 25, 27,
32n177, 33n192, 37n226, 40n235, 41nn251, 254,
43n278, 45n284, 56n403, 59, 62n459, 65nn470–71,
49n323, 51n356, 54n383, 60nn443–45, 63n460,
67n489, 68n491, 69n500, 71n510, 72nn513, 515,
67n489, 68n490, 72, 73n526, 74n532, 76n543,
74n530, 77n552, 78, 79n567, 80nn577–78, 81n583,
77nn551, 563, 82nn589, 595, 83n600, 84n606,
82nn590, 595, 83n604, 84nn606–7, 610, 85nn611–
85n614, 86n623, 88n632, 96–98, 102–6, vii
12, 617, 86n623, 88n632, 91, 94, 96, 103
Mœris 24–26, 62n457, 66, 70–72n513, 73n518, 74,
loves 3n15, 11–12, 21, 27, 31n173, 42–43, 51, 65, 68, 77,
75nn537–38, 76n546, 77–78, 80n571, 82n591,
79, 82, 83n604, 84, 85nn611–12, 86n621, 87n628,
86n623, 87n625, 107
103–4, 106
Lucretius 5, 8–9, 15–16, 19, 29nn143, 148, 55n396, Muses 5, 8–9, 17, 21–23, 29n148, 31n170, 38–39, 41n254,
42, 43n270, 44, 52n368, 53, 54nn380–81, 55n391,
56n399, 65n473, 71n510, 73n516, 83n601, 88n631,
57nn411, 418–19, 58–59n434, 61, 62nn456–57,
100–101, 109–11
63n462, 65n473, 66, 67nn483, 489, 69, 71, 75nn535,
made 2n8, 3, 5–7, 10–11, 14–20n117, 23, 26, 29, 35n195,
537, 78, 80n577, 81n582, 84n608, 85nn612, 617,
38n230, 39–41n247, 46n302, 49, 50n345, 51n355,
87nn624, 629, 90–91, 95–96, 98–99n718, 103, 105–
57n415, 62n457, 63, 67n489, 68n495, 71, 74,
8
75n535, 76n543, 77n563, 79n570, 80, 81n583,
music 6, 20n115, 22, 25, 29nn145–46, 148, 30n150,
82n589, 85nn611, 616, 87nn623, 625, 627, 88n632,
32n179, 40, 44, 49, 53, 58nn429–30, 61n451, 66,
89, 91–92, 94, 96–98, 100n728, 103–5, vii
71n510, 91–92, 96, 97n697, 100, 109, 111, vii
make 6–7, 9–12, 14, 16–20, 23–25, 29n144, 31, 32n179,
41, 47n320, 50, 60n441, 61, 66, 67n484, 70n505, myth 1n4, 2–5, 8–10, 14–15, 17–18, 20n118, 22–23, 25–
28, 29n145, 33n192, 37n226, 39, 45nn283, 285,
73n516, 79n567, 80n575, 82, 87, 88n632, 95,
288–89, 47nn311, 314–15, 51nn352, 362, 54n374,
96n677, 99n718, 100, 104
61n453, 62n457, 63n460, 65n475, 67n483, 69n502,
makes 3n15, 5–15, 18, 20–21, 26, 30n159, 31n166, 33,
71nn510–11, 72nn512, 515, 74nn527, 530–33,
36n213, 39n232, 42, 46, 54n378, 57n417, 62,
75n538, 76nn545, 547, 82nn589, 591–92, 88n632,
65n473, 67n483, 69n496, 71n510, 74n532, 75n537,
89–90n643, 95n672, 96, 99–101, 103–4, vii
76n543, 78n563, 79n567, 80n577, 81n583, 84n607,
name 1–4, 6, 10, 12, 18, 20–21, 23–24, 28, 35nn195, 202,
85nn611, 614, 86n623, 87nn623, 627, 91–94, 96–97,
36n214, 38–39n232, 43n277, 48, 49n332, 52–
102–4
54n382, 56nn398, 405, 58n426, 61n448, 62nn457,
making 2n11, 6–7, 9n69, 10n70, 14, 18, 25–27, 32n183,
459, 63n462, 64n470, 65nn472–73, 66, 67n489,
38–40n236, 41n247, 43n269, 46n303, 51n362,
70n508, 71–72n515, 74, 77n557, 78, 79n566,
55n395, 60nn436, 441, 62n457, 63n465, 66, 70n507,
85nn611, 614, 87n628, 93nn655, 658, 94, 97nn689,
72n513, 75n535, 76n543, 78, 85n611, 87nn624, 630,
693–94, 98
88n632, 91, 93, 95–96, 97n697, 99n714, 100–101,
nature 14–16, 18, 22, 24, 29nn147–48, 30n150, 31n167,
vii
35n196, 39, 41nn246, 251, 43n270, 45n297, 46n301,
master 10–11, 12n79, 16, 20, 33, 35n195, 36n214, 38, 43,
51n352, 54n382, 55nn390, 394, 56n401, 60nn436,
50, 66, 71, 94, 102–3
441, 444, 446, 61nn446, 451, 63n465, 64nn466,
Melibœ́us 2, 6–14n86, 16n97, 17n104, 20–24, 28–31, 33,
468–69, 65nn470, 473, 66, 69nn496–97, 73n519,
39, 48, 52–53, 57n419, 59–60n442, 65–66, 72,
74n529, 75n542, 79n566, 80nn572, 578–79, 81n583,
77n550, 80n571, 82n596, 83n603, 84n607, 85n611,
85n615, 86n618, 87nn629–30, 92, 94, 100, 103–6,
86nn620–21, 623, 87nn625, 629, 88n632, 102–6
109–10, vii
memory 2, 4–5n47, 8–9, 11, 19, 23–24, 44, 48, 59n435,
New 2–3, 13, 29n143, 45n294, 47nn310, 315, 71, 90n643,
88n632, 89–90, 92, 94–95, 97, 99, 100n727, 101
92, 94–95, 99, 102, 104, 109–11
Menálcas 11–13, 15–18, 20, 24–26, 33, 35, 38–41, 49, 51–
Octavian 2n13, 3–5n47, 7–8, 12, 13n85, 14, 17–18n109,
53, 59, 64n466, 73–74n527, 76n543, 77–78, 80n571,
22, 24, 28–29n144, 30n156, 31nn164, 171, 32n185,
81, 82nn589, 591, 85n612, 86nn621, 623, 87nn625,
38, 42n256, 44, 45n289, 47n313, 48, 51n355, 52,
627, 103–5, 107–8
67nn483, 485, 76n547, 103–4, 106
middle 1n4, 2n10, 12–13, 16–19, 30n153, 39, 41n253, 52–
115
INDEX OF AUTHORS, CHARACTERS, & THEMES
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
old 2, 4–14, 16–20, 22, 24–26, 28, 29nn144, 146, 149,
30nn157, 161, 31n171, 32nn178, 184, 33, 38–
39n232, 43n275, 44, 45nn285, 289, 46nn301–3,
47n316, 48–49n333, 51n349, 53, 54nn373, 382, 385,
56n402, 57n417, 60nn439, 441, 62n457, 63n465,
64n470, 66, 71, 72nn513, 515, 73, 74n530, 75nn538,
541, 76n546, 77n557, 78, 80nn573, 577, 81n585,
82nn589–91, 83n601, 84n605, 86n621, 87n623,
88n632, 89nn636–37, 92–96, 98–99n717, 101–5,
107
opening 5–6, 8–9, 13, 15, 17, 21, 23–26, 33nn187–89,
191, 41n256, 60n440, 79n567, 80n577, 85n611,
86n618, 87n625, 98, 102, 106
oracle 6–8, 14, 18–19, 25, 28, 31nn170–71, 32n178,
51n362, 52, 53n369, 55n392, 60n436, 69n499,
73nn517, 519, 522, 74n526, 80n576, 102, 105
order 3–5, 8, 14, 17, 21, 23, 28, 31n171, 33n192, 35n201,
44n281, 45nn285, 296, 47n313, 51nn352, 362, 52,
54n377, 60n436, 62n457, 72nn512–13, 73nn517,
519, 81n584, 87n623, 88n632, 90–91, 93–94,
95n665, 97–98, 102, 106, vii
origin 4–5, 9–10, 15, 19, 31n170, 38, 40n238, 44n282,
45n283, 46n302, 56n402, 58nn421, 430, 72n515,
90–91, 95–105
Orpheus 14, 38–39, 41, 44, 47, 54n382, 55, 62nn456–57,
65n472, 66n477, 69, 79n569, 85n612, 86nn620, 623,
94, 97–98, 103–5, 107, 110–11
Pan 3, 9–11, 14–17, 19, 20nn115, 118, 23–24, 26–27,
29nn144–45, 33, 36, 40n239, 44, 47, 50n343, 51,
58n421, 60n439, 61n450, 62n456, 65n473, 66,
67nn489–90, 68, 71n510, 78, 79nn565–66, 570,
80n580, 81, 82nn589, 594, 86nn620, 622–23,
87n625, 88n632, 90n642, 95–96, 100, 102–5, 107–8
past 3, 7, 11, 15, 19, 21, 26, 31n171, 32nn178, 182,
45n285, 46n309, 47n311, 51n362, 52, 58n430,
60n436, 61nn453, 456, 72, 87n625, 89–90, 91n649,
92, 95–96, 98–99, 101, 109–10
pastoral 1–3, 8–9, 12n79, 16, 18–19, 33n186, 61n446,
73n526, 85n611, 86n623, 92
Phœbus 2, 11, 21, 38, 42, 44, 47–51, 54–55, 58, 62, 65,
79n567, 87n625, 97
Phyllis 21, 39, 42–43, 49, 59, 61, 64n470, 65, 70n505, 82–
83n597, 106, 108
pipe 7, 9–11, 14, 16–19, 20nn115, 118, 21, 23, 29n145,
33, 36, 39–40n239, 44, 50n344, 52–53, 55n391,
58n421, 62, 65n473, 66, 67nn489–90, 68, 75n537,
79nn565, 570, 80n580, 82, 85n611, 96, 101–7
place 1n3, 2–3n16, 7–8, 10, 14, 16–17, 20, 24–27, 30n161,
32nn177–79, 33, 35, 39, 42, 48, 49nn324, 331,
53n370, 54n382, 55n395, 57n416, 58, 60nn437, 439,
61nn455–56, 62n456, 64n466, 66, 75nn541–42,
76n543, 77nn555, 557, 563, 79n570, 83n601,
86n621, 87nn625–27, 630, 91–94, 95n672, 96,
97n697, 102, 108
Plato 9, 11, 13, 29nn143–45, 51n352, 54n382, 58n430,
77n552, 93–94, 97, 100, 109–11
play 4–7, 9, 11–13, 15–17, 19–23, 25–27, 30, 39, 53,
54n376, 55, 59, 60n436, 61, 72n513, 75, 78n565,
81n581, 92, 93n655, 94, 109–11, vii
plot 5–6, 9, 26, 39–40, 46n299, 54, 71n510, 72n513,
75n539, 84n605, 85n615, 88n632, 89–91, 93–94,
97–98, 99n714, 101–2, 104
poet 2–3, 5, 9–10n72, 12–14, 16–17, 18n105, 19–21, 25–
27, 39, 44, 50, 53, 59, 61n453, 62, 71, 72nn513, 515,
75, 78, 79nn567, 569, 81, 84n608, 87, 88n632, 90,
93–97n697, 99, 104–6, vii
poetic 3–5n48, 7n55, 8–9n70, 11, 13–15, 18–21, 23, 25–
27, 38, 40n243, 41n247, 43n270, 44n282, 47n316,
52–53, 54nn376, 383, 56n397, 62n457, 67n483,
73n526, 75nn535, 539, 76n543, 79n566, 80nn573,
577, 81n584, 82nn592, 594, 84n607, 86n619, 90,
95–96, 98, 103–4, 109–10, vii
Poetics 57n415, 84n607, 95n672, 109–11
poetry 1–3n15, 12, 16n100, 17, 19nn110–11, 27, 29n146,
30n156, 31n171, 43n275, 51n354, 53n371, 59,
61n453, 68n493, 75n539, 78n565, 81n586, 87n626,
89nn636–38, 90n646, 94, 96, 98, 102, 109–10, vii
poets 1–2n13, 5nn44, 50, 8, 11, 13, 26, 38–39, 60n437,
75n535, 78n565, 79nn566–67, 86n623, 89, 94–
96n683, vii
political 1–8, 10, 14, 17n104, 18–19, 23–24, 26, 30n164,
31n171, 45n290, 52, 58n423, 61n453, 69nn501–2,
74nn527, 531–32, 87n623, 90, 94n661, 95, 96n683,
98–99n716, 101, vii
power 1n3, 2–11, 12n78, 14–18, 20, 22, 24–28, 29n144,
30n152, 31n167, 36nn206, 213, 39, 41n247, 42n267,
44, 48, 49n325, 55n390, 57n417, 66, 69n499,
71 n5 11 , 72 , 7 3n n 51 9, 52 6 , 7 4n 52 7 , 7 5 n 5 3 5 ,
76nn543, 548, 84n605, 88n632, 89n638, 90, 94–95,
98–100, 102–5, 107, 110–11
praise 5, 7–8, 11–12, 14, 17, 22–23, 29n146, 41, 46, 48,
51n349, 52n365, 62, 65n471, 71, 75n541, 79n566,
83n601, 94, 103
property 5–8, 12, 17n102, 18, 21, 28, 30n153, 32n185,
33n186, 39n231, 60n444, 61n449, 68n492, 72,
73n519, 74n532, 92, 102–3
Ptolemaic 4, 57n415, 95n672, 96, 98, 101, 110–11
push 12, 14–15, 16n97, 17–19, 24, 26, 30n154, 35–
36n211, 40–41n255, 43, 48, 50, 53–54n382, 61n446,
62nn456–57, 63n465, 67, 74–75n539, 77, 87n625,
98n707, 103–4
ranges 1n4, 5, 6n53, 7, 9–11, 13–14, 16, 29nn143, 145–46,
32n184, 35n198, 36n210, 38n228, 40n238, 42n261,
44n282, 45n283, 47n319, 48, 52, 54nn376, 380,
61nn450, 452, 67n483, 73n519, 80n572, 83n600,
90–92, 97, 100, 102, 104
Roman 1–9, 12–14, 16, 18–19, 20n118, 21–28, 29nn144,
146, 30nn156–57, 164, 31nn166, 170, 32nn178, 181,
33, 35n196, 37n226, 38n229, 39, 44, 46nn302, 309,
47nn310, 315–16, 51n352, 52–53, 54n373, 68n491,
69n502, 70nn507–8, 73nn519, 525–26, 74n530,
75n535, 76nn543, 550, 77n550, 79nn566–67,
80nn573, 577, 81n583, 83n604, 84n606, 85n617,
86n623, 89nn636–37, 99–100n727, 102–4, 109–11
Rome 1–9, 12n81, 14–18, 22–23, 25, 28, 29n144, 30,
31nn168, 171, 32n178, 33n191, 35n195, 39, 41n254,
44, 45n285, 47n312, 48, 50n343, 51n362, 52n368,
60n436, 61n448, 66, 72n513, 73nn518–19, 75n537,
77nn554, 563, 86n623, 87nn623, 627, 89n639, 90,
94, 95n672, 98–101, 103, 105, 109–11, vii
116
INDEX OF AUTHORS, CHARACTERS, & THEMES
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
47n311, 52n367, 55nn396–97, 56n397, 61nn453,
seer 7–8, 13n84, 14, 16, 18–21, 24, 28, 30nn151–52, 156,
455, 63n460, 64n469, 71n510, 73n526, 75nn538,
38, 44, 45n285, 48, 49n331, 53, 59, 62n457, 66,
540–41, 77nn550–51, 80n574, 84nn606–7, 92–93,
68n491, 71, 73n526, 75n535, 77n557, 90, 97n697,
96–102, vii
100, 102, 104–5, 107
shade 7, 9, 15, 16n97, 17n104, 20, 28–29n147, 30n162, Thyrsis 20–21, 26, 59–61n455, 62n457, 65–66, 71,
75n537, 79n565, 80nn574, 577, 81nn582–83,
35, 46n309, 48, 51, 60, 63n465, 64–65, 67, 72n513,
86nn621, 623, 87nn625, 628, 88nn631–32, 96, 106–
74, 76, 77n563, 78n563, 83n601, 87–88n632, 94,
7
101–2, 104, 106, 108
sheep 1n2, 5n51, 7, 10–11, 18–21, 28, 30, 31n170, 35–36, time 1, 3, 8, 12–14, 16–17, 19–20, 25–27, 30n161, 31–
33n191, 38–39n232, 41n251, 43, 45, 47–48, 49n334,
38–39n232, 43, 52, 54, 55n391, 59–60, 61n449, 69,
51, 54n374, 56n402, 57n416, 58n430, 60nn436, 439,
78, 81, 86, 88n632, 90–93, 102–4, 106, 108
442, 61n454, 62n457, 63, 65–66n477, 68, 69n497,
shifts 9, 12, 15, 17, 21, 33, 39, 41, 44, 49, 59, 61, 65n473,
70–71, 74nn529–30, 77nn552, 563, 78, 79n570,
73n519, 80n577, 90, 103, 105–6
81n585, 82–83n601, 84nn605–6, 88n632, 90,
sing 5n47, 6, 13, 15, 17, 28, 32–33n189, 36n205, 44, 48,
91n649, 93–97, 99n715, 101, 104, 108–10, vii
51–54, 58, 67n486, 74, 76n543, 77, 79n567, 80,
Títyrus 2, 4, 6–10n71, 12–20n118, 23–25, 28–31, 39–40,
82n591, 87nn625, 627, 629, 88n632, 90, 99, 104–5
43, 48–49n334, 52–53, 58n429, 59, 60n441, 66, 69,
singer 8–12, 17, 19–21, 24, 28, 29n144, 30n151, 32n182,
74, 75n542, 76n543, 77n563, 80nn571, 579, 81n583,
33, 35n195, 44, 48, 49nn324–25, 53, 55n395, 59,
82n594, 83n601, 85n611, 86nn621, 623, 87nn625,
65nn472–73, 66, 68n491, 71–72, 78, 88n632, 92, 94,
627, 629–30, 102–5, 107
96, 103–6
tradition 1–2, 5n47, 9–10, 13–14, 16, 18–20, 23, 26–27,
singers 2, 11–13, 17, 20, 38, 43n278, 44, 45n284, 59,
29n143, 36n214, 38, 40n242, 42n267, 47n318,
65n470, 87n626, 96, 101, 104–5, 108
50n347, 61n453, 70n507, 73n519, 74n530, 75n537,
singing 2, 10–14n89, 18–20, 22, 24, 29nn145, 148,
77n563, 79nn567, 570, 84n608, 85nn611, 616,
33nn188–89, 191, 36, 38, 40n238, 44–45, 52–53, 55,
87n626, 89–90, 96, 100–105, 109–11
57n417, 58n429, 61n453, 66, 74n530, 75n542, 76,
77nn553, 560, 79n567, 80n572, 82n595, 84nn605, traditional 3–9, 11, 13–14, 18–19, 29nn144, 147, 30n164,
31nn171, 174, 32n183, 33nn188, 191, 43nn270, 274,
610, 87n629, 92, 97, 99, 101, 105
45n283, 49n335, 52, 55n389, 60n444, 77n555,
social 2–6, 8–9, 28, 86n623, 87n623, 89–90, 92, 97, 99,
86n621, 95n665, 99, 102
100n727, 101, 110–11, vii
songs 5, 12–13, 15, 21, 23–26, 33, 35, 39–44n282, 47– tragedy 2, 4, 7n55, 8n62, 9, 11–12, 13n84, 22–23, 26, 38,
40n238, 56n404, 58n426, 67n482, 69n499, 85n614,
51n348, 55, 59, 62, 66–67, 69–75n536, 77–79n570,
86n623, 88n632, 89, 93n654, 96, 97n699, 98, 101–2,
80nn572, 575, 82, 83n600, 84, 86–87n629, 88n632,
109, 111
93, 96–97, 103–4, 106, 108
spring 12, 15, 21, 26, 33, 37, 39, 41nn251, 254, 53, 55–56, tragic 2, 7n55, 13, 17, 21–23, 26–28, 33, 36nn206–7,
37n222, 41n247, 42n266, 43n269, 44, 53, 54n380,
63n462, 64nn466, 468, 75, 78, 79nn565, 569, 80, 87,
56nn404, 406–7, 57n416, 58nn424, 426, 61n453, 62,
103, 107
66–67n487, 68n495, 70n508, 71nn510–11, 80nn571,
stage 1–2, 8, 11n75, 19, 22–23, 25–26, 29, 33, 39, 45n289,
575, 82n590, 83nn598, 600, 84nn606–7, 85nn611,
49, 59, 62, 72, 78, 85n617, 89–90, vii
614, 616–17, 87n624, 88n632, 89–90, 92–93, 96, 98,
story 8, 11, 18–20, 26, 28, 30n163, 31n166, 38, 44, 48,
103, 105–7
49n332, 52–53, 54n374, 56n402, 57n416, 58n426,
Troy 1n4, 10, 13n84, 15, 37n223, 42n261, 44, 45n289, 46,
59, 64n470, 66, 67n487, 71, 72n513, 78, 88n632,
47n311, 48, 58n423, 89–91, 93–94, 99–101
89–90n643, 92, 97, 98n709, 101
Th 17, 19, 22, 25, 28, 29nn144–46, 149, 30nn152, 163, vates 4, 7–9, 14, 20, 24, 28, 30nn152, 156, 38, 39n232,
45n285, 47n316, 48, 49nn326, 331, 59, 62n457, 66,
31nn166–68, 170, 32nn177, 179, 33, 35n202,
70n508, 71, 72n513, 73nn518, 524, 526, 75n535,
36nn208–9, 213–14, 38, 40n236, 41n251, 42n262,
99–100, 102, 104–7
44, 47n319, 48, 52n368, 62–65, 67nn489–90,
68n495, 70n508, 73n521, 74nn530, 532, 75n537, vatic 2, 4–6, 8–9, 11, 13–17, 20, 22, 24–27, 41nn254–56,
42n261, 43nn269, 271, 274–75, 44, 57n418, 58n423,
76n543, 78n563, 79nn565, 567–68, 570, 81nn583–
62nn456–57, 64n466, 65n475, 66, 68n495, 69n499,
84, 82n589, 85n614, 86n623
70n503, 71n511, 73nn518–19, 524, 74nn532–34,
theater 1–5, 10–11, 14, 16–17, 22–23, 31n169, 48,
75nn535, 537, 77nn550–52, 563, 81n583, 84n607,
58n426, 79n566, 89, 92, 93n655, 98n700
104–7
themes 1, 5n47, 6–7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17–18, 22–24, 31n171,
verse 1–2, 13, 22, 26, 36n209, 41n254, 44, 53, 59, 61–62,
37n225, 42n265, 43n272, 52, 54n377, 58n424,
66n477, 67n489, 69, 71n510, 74n531, 79nn565, 570,
61n455, 63nn460, 464, 64n467, 71n510, 75n537,
84, 86n623, 90, 96, 99, 106, 108
79n568, 83n604, 89–92, 95–96, 97n691, 98, 100
Theocritus 2, 5, 8–13, 15–16, 20n115, 21, 24–27, 29n143, verses 2nn11, 14, 4, 13, 21, 23–24, 29n143, 30n161,
43n271, 45n287, 49, 50n337, 51n350, 59, 61, 66–
53n370, 73n523, 75n538, 78, 84n608, 85n614, 96,
69n498, 71n511, 75nn537, 539, 84nn606, 608,
100, 102–3, 109–11
87n627, 91, 99–100, 105–7, vii
Threads 2, 8, 11–12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 89–92, 94,
vision 2, 4–6, 14, 19, 20n118, 21, 23, 26–27, 41n256,
99, 100n727
44n281, 50n345, 51nn352, 356, 61n454, 77n550,
threads 2n8, 4–5, 8, 16, 18–21, 43n280, 45nn286, 289,
117
INDEX OF AUTHORS, CHARACTERS, & THEMES
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
82n595, 94, 100, 104
voice 2, 3n15, 4, 6, 8–18, 20–22, 24–27, 31n171, 32n179,
36n212, 44, 49n331, 50, 51n362, 60n441, 61n454,
62n457, 69n499, 72n512, 74nn532, 534, 75n538, 77,
79n567, 80nn572, 577, 82n595, 84n607, 88n632,
89–90, 92, 94, 107
war 3, 6, 8, 14, 37n223, 38n228, 40n236, 42n261, 44,
45n293, 46, 48, 61n450, 69n502, 74n528, 81n583,
89–90, 92, 93nn654, 658, 94, 99–102, 104–5
whole 1, 5n49, 11, 14, 17–19n110, 23–24, 26, 29n147,
30n150, 32nn175, 183, 41n252, 43n275, 44, 47n318,
53, 58n429, 60nn438, 441, 62, 66n478, 72n513,
73n519, 78, 83n601, 84n605, 85n611, 89, 92, 94,
96n677, 97n697, 98, 101n732
woods 12, 14, 17, 21n120, 23, 25–26, 29, 35–37n224, 39,
40n240, 41, 42n263, 44–45, 50–51, 53, 60n446,
61n446, 65, 68n494, 69–70, 73n516, 78, 79n571, 80,
81nn583, 588, 82nn589–90, 592, 84, 85n611, 86,
87nn629–30, 101, 103–5
work 1–3n18, 5–6n53, 8–13, 19–21, 28, 29nn143, 145,
147, 30n150, 33nn188–89, 191, 35n201, 36n209,
38n227, 40, 41n245, 42n259, 43n279, 51, 54, 59,
61nn446–48, 451, 453, 64n465, 66, 67n488, 69n502,
71n511, 72nn513, 515, 75n539, 76nn543, 549,
78n565, 79n565, 82n596, 84n607, 85n617, 86n623,
90–92, 94–95, 97n699, 98, 101–4, 106–8, vii
world 2, 8, 10, 14, 16–17, 19, 32n183, 44–45n294, 47, 55,
61n450, 69nn496–97, 77n552, 86n623, 87nn626,
629, 90n643, 91–92, 99n711, 100, 104, 109–11, vii
Zeus 5, 8, 15, 36n206, 41n256, 42n262, 45n287, 56n402,
57n409, 61n456, 67n483, 68n493, 80n572, 90–91,
93–98, 101