Eclogues

TheEclogues(/ˈɛklɒɡz/;Latin:Eclogae[ˈɛklɔɡae̯],lit. 'selections'), also called theBucolics,is the first of the three major works of theLatin poet Virgil.^[1]

Background

Taking as his generic model the Greekbucolicpoetry ofTheocritus,Virgil created a Roman version partly by offering a dramatic and mythic interpretation of revolutionary change at Rome in the turbulent period between roughly 44 and 38 BC. Virgil introduced political clamor largely absent from Theocritus' poems, calledidylls('little scenes' or 'vignettes'), even though erotic turbulence disturbs the "idyllic" landscapes of Theocritus.

Virgil's book contains ten pieces, each called not an idyll but aneclogue,from the Greekἐκλογή('selection', 'extract').^[2]The poems are populated by and large with herdsmen imagined conversing and performingamoebaean singingin rural settings, whether suffering or embracing revolutionary change or happy or unhappy love. Performed with great success on the Roman stage, they feature a mix of visionary politics and eroticism that made Virgil a celebrity in his own lifetime.

Like all of Virgil's works, theEcloguesare composed indactylic hexameters.

Structure and organization

Several scholars have attempted to identify the organizational principles underpinning the construction of the book.^[3]^[4]Most commonly the structure has been seen to be symmetrical, turning around eclogue 5, with a triadic pattern. The following scheme comes from Steenkamp (2011):^[5]

1 – Confiscation of land

2 – Love song

3 – Singing contest

4 – Religion and the world that will be

5 – The 'pastor' becomes a god

6 – Mythology and the world that was

7 – Singing contest

8 – Two love songs

9 – Confiscation of land

The tenth eclogue stands alone, summing up the whole collection.

Numerous verbal echoes between the corresponding poems in each half reinforce the symmetry: for example, the phrase "Plant pears, Daphnis" in 9.50 echoes "Plant pears, Meliboeus" in 1.73.^[6]Eclogue 10 has verbal echoes with all the earlier poems.^[7]^[8]Thomas K. Hubbard (1998) has noted, "The first half of the book has often been seen as a positive construction of a pastoral vision, whilst the second half dramatizes progressive alienation from that vision, as each poem of the first half is taken up and responded to in reverse order."^[9]

However, the arrangement of the eclogues into three groups of three does not prevent the collection also being seen as divided at the same time into two halves, with a second opening at the beginning of eclogue 6.^[10]

The average length of each eclogue is 83 lines, and long and short poems alternate. Thus the 3rd eclogue in each half is the longest, while the 2nd and 4th are the shortest:^[11]

1 – 83 lines

2 – 73

3 – 111

4 – 63

5 – 90

6 – 86 lines

7 – 70

8 – 108

9 – 67

10 – 77

Variety is also achieved by alternating dialogue eclogues (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) with monologues (2, 4, 6, 8, 10).

Some scholars have also observed numerical coincidences, when each eclogue in poems 1–9 is added to its pair: eclogues 2 + 8 = 3 + 7 = 181 lines, while eclogues 1 + 9 = 4 + 6 = 150/149 lines; 2 + 10 also = 150 lines. However, the significance of these findings is not clear.^[12]Similar numerical phenomena have been found in other authors. For example, in Tibullus book 2, poems 1 + 6 = 2 + 5 = 3 + 4 = 144 lines.^[13]

Eclogue 1

A dialogue between Tityrus and Meliboeus. In the turmoil of the era Meliboeus has been forced off his land and faces an uncertain future. Tityrus recounts his journey toRomeand the "god" he met there who answered his plea and allowed him to remain on his land. He offers to let Meliboeus spend the night with him. This text has been viewed as reflecting the infamous land-confiscations after the return ofMark Antonyand Octavian's joint forces from theBattle of Philippiof 42 BCE, in whichBrutusandCassius(the orchestrators ofCaesar's assassination in 44 BCE) were defeated.^[14]

Eclogue 2

A monologue by the herdsman Corydon bemoaning his unrequited love for the handsome boy Alexis (the boss's darling) in the height of summer. The poem is adapted from the eleventh Idyll of Theocritus, in which the Cyclops Polyphemus laments the cruelty of the sea-nymph Galatea.

Eclogue 3

Menalcas comes across a herdsman Damoetas, who is herding some animals on behalf of a friend. The two men exchange insults and then Damoetas challenges Menalcas to a singing competition. Menalcas accepts the challenge, offering some decorated cups as a prize, but Damoetas insists that the prize must be a calf, which is more valuable. A neighbour Palaemon agrees to judge the contest. The second half of the poem is the contest itself, ending with Palaemon pronouncing it a tie.

The eclogue is mostly based on Theocritus's Idyll 5, but with elements added from other idylls.

Eclogue 4

Eclogue 4,also called the Messianic Eclogue,^[15]imagines a golden age ushered in by the birth of a boy heralded as "great increase of Jove" (magnum Iovis incrementum). The poet makes this notional scion ofJovethe occasion to predict his ownmetabasisup the scale inepos,rising from the humblebucolicto the lofty range of theheroic,potentially rivalingHomer:he thus signals his own ambition to make Roman epic that will culminate in theAeneid.In the surge of ambition, Virgil also predicts defeating the legendary poetOrpheusand his mother, the epic museCalliope,as well asPan,the inventor of the bucolic pipe, even in Pan's homeland ofArcadia,which Virgil will claim as his own at the climax of his book in the tenth eclogue.

Identification of the fourth eclogue's child has proved elusive, but one common solution is that it refers to the predicted child of the sister ofOctavian,Octavia the Younger,who had marriedMark Antonyin 40 BC.^[16]The poem is dated to 40 BC by the reference to the consulship ofGaius Asinius Pollio,Virgil's patron at the time, to whom the eclogue is addressed.

In later years, it was often assumed that the boy predicted in the poem was Christ. The connection is first made in theOration of Constantine^[17]appended to the Life of Constantine byEusebius of Caesarea(a reading to whichDantemakes fleeting reference in hisPurgatorio). Some scholars have also noted similarities between the eclogue's prophetic themes and the words ofIsaiah 11:6:"a little child shall lead".

Eclogue 5

In Eclogue 5, Menalcas, meeting the young goatherd Mopsus, flatters him and begs him to sing one of his songs. Mopsus is persuaded, and sings a song he has made mourning the death of the fabled herdsman Daphnis. After praising the song, Menalcas responds by singing a song of equal length describing the reception of Daphnis in heaven as a god. Mopsus praises Menalcas in turn, and the two exchange gifts.

Eclogue 5 articulates another significant pastoral theme, the shepherd-poet's concern with achieving worldly fame through poetry. Ensuring poetic fame is a fundamental interest of the shepherds in classical pastoral elegies, including the speaker inMilton's "Lycidas".^[18]

Eclogue 6

This eclogue tells the story of how two boys, Chromis and Mnasyllos, and aNaiadpersuadedSilenusto sing to them, and how he sang to them of the world's beginning, the Flood, the Golden Age, Prometheus,Hylas,Pasiphaë,AtalantaandPhaëthon's sisters; after which he described how theMusesgaveGallus(a close personal friend of Virgil's)Hesiod's reed pipe and commissioned him to write a didactic poem; after which he told ofScylla(whom Virgil identifies as both the sea monster and the daughter ofNisoswho was transmuted into a seabird) and ofTereusandPhilomela,and then we learn that he has in fact been singing a song composed byApolloon the banks of theEurotas.

Eclogue 7

The goatherd Meliboeus, a recurring character, soliloquizing remembers how he happened to be present at a great singing match between Corydon and Thyrsis. He then quotes from memory their actual songs (six rounds of matching quatrains) and recalls thatDaphnisas judge declared Corydon the winner. This eclogue is based on pseudo-TheocritusIdyllVIII, though there the quatrains are not in hexameters but in elegiac couplets. Scholars argue about why Thyrsis loses. The reader may feel that despite the very close parallelism of his quatrains with Corydon's, they are less musical and sometimes cruder in content.

Eclogue 8

This eclogue is also known asPharmaceutria( "Sorceress" ). The poet reports the contrasting songs of two herdsmen whose music is as powerful as that of Orpheus. Both songs are dramatic (the character in the first being a man and in the second a woman), both have almost the same pattern of three-to-five-line stanzas, with a refrain after each one. In one song the singer complains that his girlfriend is marrying another man; in the second a woman performs a magic spell to get her lover back.

Eclogue 9

Young Lycidas meets old Moeris on his way to town and learns that Moeris's master, the poet Menalcas, has been evicted from his small farm and nearly killed. They proceed to recall snatches of Menalcas's poetry, two translated from Theocritus and two relating to contemporary events. Lycidas is anxious for a singing-match, while admitting that he is no match for two contemporary Roman poets whom he mentions by name, but Moeris pleads for forgetfulness and loss of voice. They walk on towards the city, postponing the competition until Menalcas arrives.

Eclogue 10

In Eclogue 10, Virgil replaces Theocritus'Sicilyand old bucolic hero, the impassioned oxherdDaphnis,with the impassioned voice of his contemporary Roman friend, the elegiac poetGaius Cornelius Gallus,imagined dying of love inArcadia.Virgil transforms this remote, mountainous, and myth-ridden region of Greece, homeland of Pan, into the original and ideal place of pastoral song, thus founding a richly resonant tradition in western literature and the arts.

This eclogue is the origin of the phraseomnia vincit amor( "love conquers all" ).

References

^Davis, Gregson (2010). "Introduction".Virgil'sEclogues, trans. Len Krisak. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. p. vii.ISBN 978-0-8122-4225-6
^Liddell, Scott, Jones,Greek Lexiconέκλογή
^Rudd, Niall(1976).Lines of Enquiry: Studies in Latin Poetry.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 119.
^Clausen, Wendell (1994).Virgil: Eclogues.Clarendon, Oxford University Press. p. xxi.ISBN 0-19-815035-0.
^Steenkamp, J. (2011)."The structure of Vergil's Eclogues".InActa Classica: Proceedings of the Classical Association of South Africa(Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 101-124). Classical Association of South Africa (CASA); p. 113.
^Steenkamp (2011), pp. 104–110.
^Steenkamp (2011), p. 114.
^Brooks Otis (1964) also detects a symmetry, in that eclogues 2, 3, 7 and 8 are particularly based on Theocritan models: Otis B. (1964),Vergil: A Study in Civilized Poetry(Oxford), pp. 128–31.
^Hubbard, Thomas K. (1998).The Pipes of Pan: Intertextuality and Literary Filiation in the Pastoral Tradition from Theocritus to Milton.Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. p. 46.ISBN 978-0-472-10855-8
^Steenkamp (2011), p. 112.
^Van Sickle, J. (1980)."The book-roll and some conventions of the poetic book".Arethusa,13(1), 5–42; p. 20.
^Steenkamp (2011), p. 113.
^Dettmer, H. (1980). "The arrangement of Tibullus Books 1 and 2".Philologus,124(1–2), 68–82; page 78.
^Meban, David (2009)."Virgil's" Eclogues "and Social Memory".The American Journal of Philology.130(1): 99–130.ISSN 0002-9475.JSTOR 20616169.
^Edward Carpenter(1920)Pagan and Christian Creeds.p. 137.
^Nisbet, R. G. M. (1995).Review of W V Clausen,A Commentary on Virgil, Eclogues.The Journal of Roman Studies,85, 320-321; p. 320.
^Oration of Constantine
^Lee, Guy, trans. (1984). "Eclogue 5". In Virgil,The Eclogues.New York: Penguin. pp. 29–35.

External links

In English

The Eclogues,translated by John DrydenatStandard Ebooks
The Ecloguespublic domain audiobook atLibriVox
The Bucolics and Eclogues by VirgilatProject Gutenberg(in English)
TheEclogues(translated by H.R. Fairclough for the Loeb Classical Library)

In Latin

TheEclogues(Internet Classics Archive)
The Bucolics and Eclogues by VirgilatProject Gutenberg(in Latin)

Other translations

Other links

An appreciation by Samuel Johnson

[1] Davis, Gregson (2010). "Introduction".Virgil'sEclogues, trans. Len Krisak. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. p. vii.ISBN 978-0-8122-4225-6

[2] Liddell, Scott, Jones,Greek Lexiconέκλογή

[3] Rudd, Niall(1976).Lines of Enquiry: Studies in Latin Poetry.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 119.

[4] Clausen, Wendell (1994).Virgil: Eclogues.Clarendon, Oxford University Press. p. xxi.ISBN 0-19-815035-0.

[5] Steenkamp, J. (2011)."The structure of Vergil's Eclogues".InActa Classica: Proceedings of the Classical Association of South Africa(Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 101-124). Classical Association of South Africa (CASA); p. 113.

[6] Steenkamp (2011), pp. 104–110.

[7] Steenkamp (2011), p. 114.

[8] Brooks Otis (1964) also detects a symmetry, in that eclogues 2, 3, 7 and 8 are particularly based on Theocritan models: Otis B. (1964),Vergil: A Study in Civilized Poetry(Oxford), pp. 128–31.

[9] Hubbard, Thomas K. (1998).The Pipes of Pan: Intertextuality and Literary Filiation in the Pastoral Tradition from Theocritus to Milton.Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. p. 46.ISBN 978-0-472-10855-8

[10] Steenkamp (2011), p. 112.

[11] Van Sickle, J. (1980)."The book-roll and some conventions of the poetic book".Arethusa,13(1), 5–42; p. 20.

[12] Steenkamp (2011), p. 113.

[13] Dettmer, H. (1980). "The arrangement of Tibullus Books 1 and 2".Philologus,124(1–2), 68–82; page 78.

[14] Meban, David (2009)."Virgil's" Eclogues "and Social Memory".The American Journal of Philology.130(1): 99–130.ISSN 0002-9475.JSTOR 20616169.

[15] Edward Carpenter(1920)Pagan and Christian Creeds.p. 137.

[16] Nisbet, R. G. M. (1995).Review of W V Clausen,A Commentary on Virgil, Eclogues.The Journal of Roman Studies,85, 320-321; p. 320.

[17] Oration of Constantine

[18] Lee, Guy, trans. (1984). "Eclogue 5". In Virgil,The Eclogues.New York: Penguin. pp. 29–35.

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v t e Virgil
Works	Eclogues(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10) Georgics Aeneid Appendix Vergiliana(spurious)
Manuscripts	Vergilius Augusteus Vergilius Romanus Vergilius Vaticanus
Miscellaneous	Christian interpretations ofEclogue4 Sortes Vergilianae The Virgilian Progression Virgil's tomb
Portrayals	Dante and Virgil in Hell(1822 painting) Dante, led by Virgil, Consoles the Souls of the Envious(1835 painting) Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta Appraised by Dante and Virgil(1835 painting) Dante and Virgil(1850 painting) The Barque of Dante(1858 painting)
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