Eclogues notes

Eclogue 1 .1

• Conversation between Tityrus & Meliboeus, who has been kicked off of his land

• ‘You, Tityrus, lie under the canopy of a spreading beech, wooing the woodland Muse on a slender (tenui) reed, but we are leaving our country’s bounds and sweet fields’

  • ‘profound contrast between the restful ease of Tityrus and the grim departure of Meliboeus’

  • Tityrus suggests it is a god who have saved him (a god TO HIM) and allows his flock to roam and him to play his pipe

• Meliboeus is not angry, he just marvels (such unrest on all sides, and now he must drive his goats even when one now has just given birth)

  • This was omened however by the oaks that were struck by lightning

• Who is this god? Rome!

  • Tityrus speaks of Rome, not the country = suggestion that he used political favour to keep his land unlike Meliboeus (urbem quam dicunt Romam, Meliboee, putavi…)

    • = extraordinary extent to which Roma dominates Italy

    • + the lines where he talks of gaining freedom suggest that he may have been a slave (how he got to keep his farm)

    • Yet still find an interesting comparison of Rome to nature = ‘oh Meliboeus the city they call Rome I stupidly thought was like our own…that city holds its head above the others by as much as the cypresses stand above the supple osiers’

Other random notes:

• Theocritus includes the urban, mythological and panegyrical BUT Virgil is the first to distill the distinctly bucolic (turns a ‘partial mode into genre’)

  • He wrote 30~ idylls (and epigrams) but only first 11 are bucolic - 10

  • 14-17 are political and concerned with Ptolemy!!

• Servius suggests that the books alternate from mimetic to non-mimetic

  • And see odd-numbered poems as exploiting form to present exchanges (pomeical and competitive in 3 & 7, collaborative in 5)

  • 1 & 9 at the fringes show pastoral world disrupted by reality (soldiers & the city)

• Pastoral as oldest and newest form of poetry (tension between oral and written)

  • Seen in the idea of inscribing on the land

  • Callimachus’ Aetia - find Acontius writing his beloved’s name Cydippe on the φηγος

  • Also in Propertius 1.18.19-22 (beech and pine)

  • See Gallus writing his love into the tree and it growing with the trees (and Hesperides surrounded by bark)

• Shepherds as young men (preoccupied with love & competition)

Eclogue 1.2

• Tityrus saw his god who told him, ‘feed, swains, your oxen as of old; rear your bulls’

  • To which Meliboeus replies that he is a happy old man as now these lands will be his (‘though bare stones cover all, and the marsh chokes your pastures with slimy rushes’)

  • But no poison or disease will harm his flock and he will enjoy the shade among familiar streams and sacred springs

• Here, Hybla’s bees (confusing geography as the confiscations happened in central Italy)

  • And the cooing wood pigeons! Gallus

• Tityrus then awkwardly praises the ‘god’ by suggesting that sooner shall the Parthian in exile drink the Arar and Germany the Tigris than his face disappear from his heart

  • But now Meliboeus MUST go

  • Some to Africa, some to Scythia or Britians

  • ‘Is a godless soldier to hold these well-tilled fallows? a barbarian these crops?’

    • The mention of the impius miles and barbarus (what pius Aeneas is going to do at Latium)

      • Did Virgil know of the Aeneid at the time?

      • Is the constellation of Cancer a reference to Carthage?

• ‘No more songs shall I sing’

Eclogue 1 .3

• Tityrus’ name is a type of pipe according to Servius (tityrinus aulos) = song built into the character

• + the woods themselves sing (Tityre, lentus in umbra formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas) = like Virgil is imitating / echoing Theocritus

  • Furthermore, later when Meliboeus talks of how sadly Amaryllis called on the gods, it is because Tityrus had gone to the city

  • ‘But the very pines, Tityrus, the very springs, the very orchards here were calling for you!’

• Epicurean ideal of the pastoral

  • otium as freedom from struggles of care (Tityrus embodies this)

  • Lucretius DRN 5 - ‘then little by little they learned the sweet plaintive sounds which the flute pours…through the lonely places of shepherds and otium in the open air’

• At the close, Tityrus asks if Meliboeus wishes to stay that night = implicit that he cannot help him anymore and in the morning, he will have to continue on

Eclogue 1 .4

• Gender dynamics:

  • Freedom is personified as a woman who casts her eyes on him (before then, many victims were sacrificed and many cheeses sold in vain)

  • Amaryllis held him (‘habet’) and Galatea abandoned him (‘relinquit’) = the woman as in control of the relationship

  • + Amaryllis as a beloved to Tityrus but also described by Corydon (‘fastidia’), Damoetas, Daphnis, Moeris, Lycidas (delicias … nostras) = sexual freedom?

  • Horace viewing the ancient past as more free from sexual promiscuity but here in full view

• Sacrifice

  • Lines 7-8, Tityrus exclaims that a lamb will often wet the ‘young man’s’ altar

  • = from the beginning of ‘time’ we find sacrifice

  • BUT in Ovid’s Fasti 1, he talks of spelt grain and the shining power of pure salt which was enough to reconcile with the gods

  • ‘But what did you do to deserve it, the ox and the peaceful sheep?’

Eclogue 2 .1

• Eclogue 2 shows Corydon addressing a non-present Alexis in the woods, lamenting that he does not love him in return

  • But begins with description of Corydon ‘aflame’ for Alexis

  • Who is his master’s pet! = Both slaves under same master

• Asks if it was better to brook Amaryllis’ sullen rage, or Menalcas though he was dark?

  • Most likely a slave from elsewhere

• But Alexis scorns him, even though he is ruch in cattle, and a thousand lambs of his roam over the Silician hills

• And they could play the pipe together in the woods (and rival Pan, who first taught man to make reeds with wax)

  • And he has a hemlock pipe that Damoetas gave him

• Asks him to come forth as the Nymphs bring lilies and the Naiads bring pale violets and poppies and he will gather quince and chestnuts (which Amaryllis loved)

• And as the poem ends, we see Corydon realise the day is ending too (retiring sun doubles the lengthening shadows)

• Interestingly, Corydon is the name to a crested lark (he is a song-bird)

  • But is throwing artless words around (incondita) & describes himself as rusticus = shepherds as not ‘proper’ gentlemen

  • And he compares his voice to that of ‘shrill cicadas’

  • Alexis scorns Corydon’s rustic tat and his scraggly eyebrows & unkempt beard (and to drive the flock with a green hibiscus switch)

  • Shepherds as representative of the ‘countryside’ in appearance

Eclogue 2. 2 (Theocritean parallels)

• Like in eclogue 10, Corydon is not consoled by his own singing (also like Idyll 11 which this poem is often compared to)

• Eclogue 2 also modelled on idyll 3,6,10 & 11

  • But Theocritus’ shepherd speaks to Amaryllis as a lover, whereas Corydon is alone in the woods

  • As in idyll 6, they both look in the water and cry that ‘I am not as ugly as they say / so ugly’ (Theocritus more grotesque description as Polyphemus)

  • In idyll 11, Polyphemus has finally given up on Galatea (a cyclops, cyclops / ah Corydon, Corydon)

    • + ‘cheese baskets’ become ‘something useful’

  • And idyll 10 - ‘goat goes after clover, wolf after goat, crane after plough and I am crazy for you’ is evened out to ‘fierce lioness follows the wolf, the wolf in turn the goat; the wanton goat follows the flowering clover; and Corydon you, oh Alexis…’ (loss of the frenzy)

Eclogue 3 .1

• Quite a heated discussion between Menalcas and Damoetas is turned into lyrical contest, to be judged by nearby Palaemon (neither wins - but both worthy of the heifer and both described as those who seek the bitter love and fear the sweet one)

• Interestingly, begins with an almost exact translation of the first idyll = ‘tell me, Damoetas, whose flock it is? Meliboeus? No, it’s Aegon’s He just gave it over to me’

  • And concludes with the merging of nature and poetry (‘close the rivers now, boys; the meadows have drunk enough’ = water as speech)

• Menalcas refers to Damoetas’ master (who fondles Neaera) and calls him a ‘hired keeper’

  • Damoetas responds that he has seen who he has been with and in what shrine = homoerotic affair in sanctuary!

  • Menalcas is shocked that Damoetas apparently plays the pipe (and won contest with Damon!)

Eclogue 3. 2

• Thus Damoetas suggests they have a contest themselves

  • Dam is the one who offers the cow (with two calves)

  • M has father and step-mother who count flock so will offer the beech-wood cups (Alcimedon’s work, with vine & ivy)

  • D has two by Alcimedon too (acanthus, Orpheus etc)

• And then we move into their song

  • Damoetas opens that his son begins with Jove

  • And that Galatea, saucy girl, pelts him with an apple (female lover as active participant)

  • And Menalcas talks of his boyfriend Amyntas (nothing is sweet to him save Amyntas)

  • They both also end in riddles eg. where do flowers show the names of kings?

    • Sparta (Hyacinthus) or Troy (Ajax) from whose blood grew hyacinths (Y, AI formed the shape)

Eclogue 3 .3 (tensions?)

• Is this poem a more pessimistic view on pastoral?

  • Palaemon sees the soft grass as somewhere to sit whereas both Damoetas and Menalcas fear the snake that might lurk

  • vitula (actual rural) is contrasted to the cups (art of rural)

    • ‘If you took one look at the cow, there’s no way you would praise the cups’

    • If a pair of cups, should be used together as comrades, not as rivals

    • Contrast this dynamic to the exchange of gifts in ecl 5 and no prizes at all in ecl 7

  • Insolubility of tensions (never provided context for the origin)

  • Damoetas called the alienus custos (which recalls the impius miles / barbarus of ecl 1)

  • + we see them both engaging in damaging acts against symbols of pastoral (D overmilking sheep, D cutting vines, M breaking Daphnis’ hunting equipment, D stealing Damon’s goat)

  • Both suspicious of world around them (Damoetas does not believe his woman, danger of the high nest, bull grown thin despite the vetch, evil eye directed at lambs, warning the sheep and nanny goats from riverbank)

    • Opp to the source of water as a symbol of poetic inspiration

  • While Palaemon calls the heat ‘formossimus annus’, they fear it will dry out the udders of their sheep)

  • The contest labelled as a ‘tantas lites’ (legal dispute! World of civilisation)

Eclogue 4 .1

• The eclogue that moves into a higher register, from the plain pastoral to the ‘golden age’ where the land will not be tilled. Virgil suggests a baby born will bring about this day

• Begins boldly - ‘let us sing something grander. Not everyone is delighted by shrubs and humble tamarisks, if we sing woods, let them be woods worthy of a consul’

  • Woods as poetry (nature & art colliding)

  • Humble tamarisks = uses the word myricae for the first time which is the Greek form (Greek name & used in idyll 1 = rejection of Theocritean pastoral?)

  • But also describes his Muses as Sicilian = Theocritus was from Syracuse!

• The baby → golden ahe

  • ‘Now the Virgin (Justice) returns, the reign of Saturn returns and Lucina should smile on the birth of a child (iron age X, golden race begin)

  • Influenced by idyll 16 which merely foresees victory for Hieron of Syracuse over the Carthaginians SO Virgil is improving on this

• Who is the baby? Most likely Mark Antony’s but no name provided just in case

Eclogue 4. 2

• And it is in Pollio’s consulship that this glorious age begins (the lingering traces of guilt shall become void, and he shall rule the world ‘to which his father’s prowess brought peace’ !!)

  • And this child will bring an ae that has no need for human intervention (unbidden, goats will bring milk, and Assyrian spice spring up in every soil) = a movement even further back in time where the land lived on its own

  • And when the boy can read of his father’s deeds, corn and grapes and honey (from oak) will grow

• BUT, still some traces of old-time sin will survive and thus men will try the sea, gird towns with walls and cleave the earth with furrows (thus a second Argo and a second Achilles at Troy)

  • BUT when he is a man, no trader will try the sea, and the oxen will be loosened from yoke

  • The ram can even change his fleece to purple, saffron and scarlet

• ‘Mighty seed of Jupiter to be!’ - completely not on Pollio anymore

Eclogue 5 .1

• Eclogue discusses the meeting of Menalcas and Mopsus who decide to have singing contest (collaborative amoebaea) where both sing of Daphnis and in the end swap gifts

  • Menalcas asks Mopsus to sit, and Mopsus listens as Menalcas is older

  • Menalcas then asks Mopsus to begin, if he has any love songs for Phyllis, or praise of Alcon or gibes for Codrus (Tityrus will tend the kids)

• Mopsus then suggests these verses ‘which the other day I carved on the green beech-bark and set to music’

  • Mopsus then begins and talks of Daphnis’ death and how the mother wept

  • Now no shepherds worked, no animal drank or ate, and even the African lions moaned

    • In Theocritus 1, we see Daphnis’ death and there forest lions groan too

  • Here suggested that it was Daphnis who taught men to yoke Armenian tigers and to lead the dances of Bacchus

    • = Daphnis viewed as Bacchic figure

    • In Plutarch’s Antony (24) Antony enters Ephesus as it is filled with ivy

    • But in eclogue 9, when Daphnis is deified, the star of Venus’ Caesar passes over (which also makes the grapes colour on the sunny hillsides) = Caesar as Bacchic…

Eclogue 5 .2

• Continued:

• And now in the furrows where barley grains were planted, we see luckless darnel and barren oat straws

  • Agriculture! Already in the world of Georgics

• And ends by asking the shepherds to build a tomb for Daphnis and inscribe this verse: ‘Daphnis was I amid the woods, known from here even to the stars. Fair was my flock, but fairer I, their shepherd’

• Menalcas responds that the song was like sleep on grass to the weary, and he will now respond and exalt Daphnis too (as Daphnis loved him too)

  • Daphnis marvels at Heaven’s unfamiliar threshold = deified

  • Thus the world celebrates as the wolf plans no ambush, and no snare for the stag

  • Thus Menalcas will set up four altars (two for Daphnis, and two for Phoebus)

  • Milk, oil and Chian wine

  • ‘And as to Bacchus and Ceres, year after year, the husbandmen shall pay their vows’

• Mopsus believes this to be sweeter than the sound of the South Wind or the thundering waves or splashing of rivers

  • And Menalcas hands him a delicate reed that taught him ‘Corydon was afflame for the fair Alexis’ and ‘Who owns the flock? Is it Meliboeus?’

  • = Menalcas as Virgil? And see titles as first line of the song

  • Mopsus gives Menlacas a shepherd’s crook

Eclogue 6 .1

• Opens with typical Callimachean divine interruption, but realise that it is Tityrus speaking (Tityrus as Virgil?) → his own tale of Silenus’ song

  • Is the beginning an admonition for the poems prior (mainly four…) = ‘when I began to sing of kings and battles, Cynthian Apollo tweaked my ear and advised: ‘A shepherd, Tityrus, should feed sheep that are fat, but sing a lay fine-spun’

    • Seen in Callimachus’ aetia!

  • And then addresses Varus that other men will sing his praises, as he ‘will woo the rustic Muse on slender verse’ (as in 1)

    • ‘No page is more welcome than that which bears on its front the name of Varus’

    • And says that the myrtle and grove will sing of him !

• ‘Proceed, Pierian maids…’ into narrative of Chromis and Mnasyllos capturing Silenus asleep in the cave (not really pastoral…)

  • Narrative is seen also in Herodotus, Aristotle and Theopompus

  • And aiding them is Aegle, fairest of the Naiads (joins the timid pair)

    • She is the bravest one! But she will be given another kind of reward… (erotic?)

• And then move into Silenus’ speech, which much like the Metamorphoses begins from the origin of the universe and through myth

  • How earth began to harden and shut off the sea god in the deep, and sun shone and rain fell and woods arose and living creatures too

Eclogue 6 .2

• Now into stones Pyrrha threw (new age of man) and Saturn’s reign and Caucasian eagles and Prometheus

• And he consoles Pasiphae, and then into daughters of Proteus (contrasted as one who wishes to be a cow and those who don’t)

  • And she even speaks herself asking the nymphs to close the glades

• And then encircles Phaethon’s sisters in bark! (his speech is creating the mythology)

• This myth is only in Theocritean scholia = very researchful reader

• And then onto Gallus!

  • Who wandered the streams of Permessus and all the choir of Phoebus rose to give him honour (and how Linus gives him the reeds of Hesiod - the old Ascraean, and tells him to sing of the Grynean grove)

  • Line 68 - aMARO !

• And ends with Scylla, Tereus, Philomela, and then we find out that all these songs Phoebus rehearsed

• And as most do, we end as day does (‘till Vesper gave the word to fold the flocks and tell their tale, as he set forth over an unwilling sky’)

Eclogue 7 .2

• A typical amoebaean dialogue which is narrated by Meliboeus who passes by and is called by Daphnis to sit and watch

  • Corydon and Thyrsis driving their flocks together to here (where Meliboeus’ he-goat had led them)

  • Daphnis urges him that his steers will be safe as the Mincius fringes his green banks with reeds and the oak swarms with bees (Mincius is in Northern Italy)

  • Daphnis is now alive! Characters do not have stable identities or lives in these poems = cannot trust anything we hear in one poem to apply elsewhere

• Daphnis calling Meliboeus over = song as something to be performed and admired by audience (spectacle)

  • Internal and external audience

  • + Meliboeus reveals his anxiety about sitting instead of looking after sheep but he gives in since ‘posthabui tamen illorum mea seria ludo’ (his work is less important than their contest)

  • + ludo = poetry as otium

  • Seen in Theocritus 1 (the old fisherman is kkept engraved in the cup)

  • ‘strenuous work is only accepted when it has been stylised and frozen into a work of art’

Eclogue 7. 2

• Thus Corydon goes first, beginning with the nymphs of Libethra (Euphorion!)

  • And Thyrsis responds by asking for foxglove wreath as this would protect him from curses

• Corydon offers a statue of Diana with purple buskins, and Thyrsis a bowl of milk for Priapus (continues in similar vein)

  • If fair Alexis should quit these hills, rivers would dry ! (con to 2)

  • But also Phyllis loves hazels so they are the best tree

  • And Thyrsis talks of Lycidas

• Ends with Meliboeus recalling that Corydon won and was the one and only Corydon

Eclogue 8 .1

• 8 is the narration of a song contest (winner not chosen) between Damon and Alphesiboeus (which is so powerful that rivers halt and cattle stand in their tracks)

  • Was for the sake of exchange, not material success

  • HE (whoever) will sing of pastoram musam = genre clear!

  • Suddenly turn to ‘you whether you are already sailing past the rocks of great Timavus or coasting the shore of the Illyrian sea’ and wishes to tell of his deeds (and his songs alone worthy of Sophocles’ buskins…)

  • ‘From you is my beginning; in your honour shall I end’

  • And amid the conqueror’s laurels, this ivy may creep over your brow

  • Quite invasive section here…

• And back to Damon who leans on his olive staff and speaks

  • He is heartbroken as his promised Nysa spurns him = death (taking on a character, much like Virgil)

  • And has a refrain - ‘begin with me, my flute, a song of Maenalus’

  • And Nysa is given to Mopsus thus he asks him to cut new torches and scatter nuts (epithalamic allusions involved into bucolic!)

  • Nysa hates his pipe and goats, shaggy eyebrows and unkempt beard

Eclogue 8 .2

• But he had seen her when he was turning 12 and he then lost his heart

  • And then begins to reproach love who taught a mother (Medea) to stain her hands with blood of children

  • And ends my suggesting he will throw himself off the mountain peak

• And now Alphesiboeus responds!

  • Begins with ritual (bring out water and burn rich herbs and male frankincense) which we find out is to make Daphnis fall in love with her

  • ‘Bring Daphnis home from town, bring him, my songs’ (in the city??)

  • = from Theocritus idyll 2 where Simaetha is abandoned by Delphis (Apolline!) and thus addresses her magic wheel → carmina!

  • Only voice of a woman we hear and from a man

  • ‘Weave, Amaryllis, three hues in three knots’ = addressing herself?

  • Has herbs and poisons from Pontus = Medea!

• And ends ‘tis something surely, and Hylax is barking at the gate. Can I trust my eyes? Or do lovers fashion their own dreams?’

  • Songs as successful?

  • But the ending suggests it may be false (and we never see)

  • In Theocritus, the lover kills herself…

Eclogue 9 .1

• Moeris & Lycidas are wandering as both have been expelled from their land (more commentary on the confiscations)

  • ‘whither afoot, Moeris? Is it, where the path leads, to town?’ = towards civilisation

  • Moeris responds that he has finally lived to see the day where a stranger holds his farm and tells him to leave

  • Lycidas responds that he had believed Menalcas to save it all (but old beeches with shattered tops…)

• So the story ran, ‘but amid the weapons of war, Lycidas, our songs avail as much as they say, Dodona’s doves when the eagles come’

  • Dodona’s doves = the oracle! And the eagle could represent the Roman army (standards) who do destroy the oracle

  • Lycidas is shocked and asks who would sing the Nymphs, ‘who would strew the turf with flowery herbage, or curtain the springs with green shade?’ = poetry as Nymph, flowers and shade!

    • Similar to Lucretius in DRN - ‘it is a joy to approach untouched fountains and drink and a joy to pluck fresh flowers and find from there a remarkable garland for my head, from where the Muses have covered nobody’s temples before’

    • And book 5 of Fasti - ‘so that the song of Naso might flower for all time, scatter, I pray, your gifts upon my breast’

Eclogue 9 .2

And then they begin to exchange verses

• Moeris takes part too, with lines that HE (Menalcas) sung to Varus - ‘Varus, your name, let but Mantua be spared - Mantua alas! too near ill-fated Cremona - singing swans shall bear aloft to the stars’ but unfinished…

• Lycidas was also made a poet and he too has songs, the shepherds call him a bard but he doesn’t trust them (sings nothing worthy of a Varius of Cinna, and cackles like a goose among swans)

  • diere digna = Gallus! But there for Cato & Viscus

• Moeris turns over words ‘in case I can recall it’ & Lycidas tries to recall the lines Moeris sung (remembers tune, but not the words)

  • ‘See the star of Caesar, seed of Dione, has gone forth’

  • ‘Graft your pears, Daphnis; your children’s children shall gather the fruits you have sown’ = like eclogue 1 (insere nunc, Melibooe, piros, pone ordine vites!) = circular

  • Idea that we should sacrifice now for the future generations to enjoy the ‘fruits of labour’

• ‘Time robs us of all, even of memory’ (can no longer recall songs as he could as a boy)

• Lycidas ends by wishing he could hear Moeris sing, but now points to Bianor’s tomb (past it = nearing end…)

  • Bianor’s tomb = Brasilas’ tomb from Theocritus 7

    • And Bianor is described as shepherd of people in the Iliad (and epigram where mother has to bury son)

  • Says they should lie in the leaves that the farmers are lopping off = might be viniculture (Georgics!), but also labour as comfort

  • Or could along the way, but Moeris says they will sing better when the master has come (actual master or Augustus…)

Eclogue 10 .1

• A focused piece on Gallus which soon turns into a monologue on his wretched state in heartbreak

  • ‘My last task - vouchsafe me it, Arethusa! A few verses I must sing for my Gallus, yet such as Lycoris herself may read!’ (Gallus’ lover)

• Let us tell of Gallus’ anxious loves

  • And ‘we sing to no deaf ears; the woods echo every note’ = the woods as interacting

• Gallus wanders through Parnassus (central Greece), Pindus (North Greece) & even the laurels and tamarisks wept

  • Like Daphnis in Theocritus 1 ! But more pastoral gods as Apollo, Silvanus (Roman) and Pan address him (before Hermes and Priapus)

  • Apollo tells him that his fair Lycoris follows another through the snow and Pan that Love is not sated by tears (as goats with leaves)

• Thus, Gallus addressses the Arcadians and asks them to sing his tale (as Virgil does) and even wishes he could have been one of them (shepherd or dresser of grapes - but imperfect subj = won’t happen)

  • Then his darling, Phyllis and ‘dark’ Amyntas !! , would lie with him plucking flowers and singing songs

  • But since his Lycoris wanders through foreign lands (Alpine snow and frozen Rhine) he now has a mad passion for war!

  • ‘An may the jagged ice not cut your tender feet!’ = Propertius laments a similar thing in 1.8