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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
The pastoral tradition
Pastoral lyrics express the town persons' view of an alternative life that has never existed. From the lyrics of Theocritus (c. 310-250 bce), Moschus (fl. c. 150 bce) and Bion (fl. c. 100 bce) to the Restoration, the pastoral lyric offered an urbane and often wittily erotic representation of country life. The shepherd's life was depicted as an idyllic existence, barely at all laborious, and much occupied with love and composing verse. Virgil (70- 19 bce) set an indelible mark on the form with his ten eclogues (composed probably around 37 bce) which extended the range of the pastoral lyric to include politics, prophecy, and patronage. Since classical antiquity, the Eclogues have been understood in terms of the civil wars that followed the assassination of Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar's assumption of power. Virgil's shepherds, despite their pastoral location amidst fields and herds, and their concerns with love, do not exist in an entirely serene environment. The famous opening lines of Eclogue 1 set the contentment of Tityrus, who has his farm, against the anguish of Meliboeus, who has lost his – perhaps due to the redistribution of land following the civil wars:
Beneath the Shade which Beechen Boughs diffuse,
You, Tity’rus, entertain your Sylvan Muse.
Round the wide World in Banishment we rome,
Forc’d from our pleasing Fields and Native Home:
While stretch’d at Ease, you sing your happy loves,
And Amaryllis fills the shady Groves.
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