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Tityrus and Meliboeus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Extract
The poem that stands first in Vergil's bucolic collection is a dialogue between two herdsmen. It begins with five of the most exquisite lines in Latin literature, and it is worth while examining them in some detail:
Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi siluestrem tenui musam meditaris auena: nos patriae finis et dulcia linquimus arua. nos patriam fugimus: tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra formosam resonare doces Amaryllida siluas. (1–5)
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1966
References
page 79 note 1 Idyll vii. 88–89Google Scholar, cf. Id. i. 1–3.Google Scholar
page 79 note 2 The subtle shifts in Vergil's relation to Theocritus throughout the Eclogues is one of the topics that the author hopes to explore in a forthcoming book on the Vergilian Pastoral.
page 79 note 3 caesura refers throughout to grammatical pause, not just to word-division.
page 80 note 1 The comparison with Theocritus' shady oak, σκιερὰν δ' ὑпὸ φαγόν in Id. xii.Google Scholar 8 is instructive, tegmen is normally used of protective coverings, especially clothing. The Vergilian use of the word was striking enough to be the subject of one of the parodies quoted by Donatus (Vita 43.174 Hardie): Tityre, si togacalda tibi est, quo tegmine fagi?
page 82 note 1 The complex attitudes of town and country towards each other are well exemplified in the scenes in the Forest of Arden in As You Like It, which are highly illuminating for the study of the pastoral genre.
page 84 note 1 e.g. Id. i. 132–6Google Scholar; [ps.-Theocr.] viii. 41–48; Ecl. v. 24–28, 36–39Google Scholar, and 62–64; vii. 53–60; x. 13–16.
page 85 note 1 For the technical sense see Georg. iii. 73 and 159.Google Scholar A parallel ambiguity occurs in depellere (21), meaning generally ‘to drive’ and technically ‘to wean’ (cf. Georg. iii. 187).Google Scholar
page 86 note 1 Id. vii. 132–46.Google Scholar
page 86 note 2 The music of the lines recalls Id. i. 1–3:
ἀδύ τι τό ψιθύρισμα καί ἁ пίτυς, αἴпολε, τήνα
ἀ пοτί ταῐς пαγαῑσι μελίσδεται, ἁδὺ δὲ καί τὺ συρίσδες.
page 86 note 3 Ecl. ii. 21.Google Scholar
page 87 note 1 Ecl. iv. iGoogle Scholar: Sicelides Musae, vi. iGoogle Scholar: Syracosio… uersu, x. IGoogle Scholar: Arethusa, the nymph whose legend links the Sicily of Theocritus to Vergil's Arcadia.
page 87 note 2 The work of the frondator in fact goes on through the summer and autumn. Servius on line 56 says: frondator, qui arbores amputat et qui frondibus manipulos facit hiemis tempore animalibus ad pastum offerendos et qui manibus uitium folia auellit quo ardor solis uuam maturiorem reddat; cf. Georg. ii. 397–419.Google Scholar For the dove's season of mating see Varro, , RR iii. 8Google Scholar and Pliny, , NH xviii. 267.Google Scholar
page 88 note 1 Oaxen is difficult. If it is not corrupt, it could be (i) reading Cretae, a river near the Cretan town of Axus (Fάξος, cf. Schwyzer, , Exempla 189.1)Google Scholar mentioned by Herodotus, iv. 154; (ii) a conflation of this name with Οἴαξις, the name given to Crete by Apollonius, Arg. i. 1131Google Scholar; (iii) a variant of Oxus, an unusually muddy river of Scythia or Mesopotamia mentioned by Q. Curtius, vii. 10 (cretae rapidum would then mean ‘carrying down chalk’); (iv) a conflation of Oxus and Araxes the famous river of Armenia. In any case the name seems to have been chosen or created for its exotic and remote sound.
page 88 note 2 The construction is of course uncertain, and post is often taken as a preposition (local or temporal in sense) with aliquot… aristas. The uncertainty may well be a deliberate reflexion of Meliboeus’ confusion of mind.
page 89 note 1 The impiety of civil war, seen as both fulfilment and expiation of the impiety of the fratricidal conflict between Romulus and Remus, is a commonplace of imperial poetry.
page 89 note 2 There is a significant echo of line 73 in Eclogue ix. 50Google Scholar: insere, Daphni, piros; carpent tua poma nepotes: full discussion of this, requiring as it would a close examination of the latter poem, is beyond the scope of the present essay.
page 90 note 1 Id. xi. 44.Google Scholar
page 90 note 2 Id. vii. 132–3.Google Scholar
page 90 note 3 If this detail is to be pressed, it must mean either that the houses are on hillsides or that the two herdsmen are on high ground looking across a plain towards the hills. But it may be, as Professor Mynors has observed, that like landscape painters of his own and later ages Vergil was himself looking at the scene from above and not from the place where he imagines his characters to be.
page 93 note 1 There is a parallel here with the two characters crossed in love in Ecl. viiiGoogle Scholar, one of whom abandons himself to a watery grave in despair at the loss of his beloved while the other responds to the situation with determination and by resorting to her magical arts is ultimately rewarded.
page 93 note 2 The ancient testimonia are confusing, since they make no distinction between the date of publication of the individual eclogues, almost certainly 43 B.c. or earlier in the case of Ecl. iiGoogle Scholar and iii, and that of the collected edition, which is unlikely to have appeared before 38 B.c.
page 93 note 3 The chief ancient authorities are Appian, BC v. 2. 12–13Google Scholar, Cassius Dio, xlviii. 6–12.
page 94 note 1 Meliboeus had noted the ripened fruit unpicked on the trees, but this need not mean that Tityrus’ journey was in the previous summer (for if so, where had Meliboeus been in the meantime ?). Tityrus in line 80 already has mitia poma in store this season.
page 94 note 2 His extreme youth at the time of his rise to power is constantly harped on by Cicero in his letters, e.g. ad Att. xvi. 11. 6Google Scholar (Nov. 44 B.c.), ad Fam. xii. 25. 4Google Scholar (Mar. 43 B.c.), and in the Philippics, e.g. iii. 2. 3Google Scholar; iv. 1. 3; cf. the jibe attributed to Antony, : puer qui omnia nomini debes.Google Scholar Octavian is iuuenis in Georg. i. 500Google Scholar and Horace, , Od. i. 2. 41.Google Scholar
page 94 note 3 See the epigraphic sources cited in Gow's note on Theocritus, , Id. xvii. 127.Google Scholar
page 94 note 4 Donatus, Vita 19. 66 ff.Google Scholar (Hardie); Servius, ad Buc. pp. 2. 27–3.Google Scholar 13 (Thilo-Hagen) and on Ecl. ix. 1, 7, 28Google Scholar; Probus, pp. 327. 30–329. 5 (Thilo-Hagen).
page 95 note 1 See Servius on Ecl. iv. 6 and ix. 27.Google Scholar
page 95 note 2 For the friendship of Gallus and Pollio see Cicero, , ad Fam. x. 32. 5Google Scholar (June, 43 B.c.). Servius on Ecl. ix. 10Google Scholar quotes from a speech which Gallus is said to have made protesting against the usurpation of Mantuan territory.
page 95 note 3 If Catalepton viii in the Appendix is really by Vergil, he already held property in the South, probably near Naples.
page 95 note 4 The identification seems to have been accepted already by Calpurnius, , Buc. v. 160–3Google Scholar and Martial, viii. 56. 8–11.
page 96 note 1 As Servius notes on line 27. See Theocritus, , Id. iii. 2Google Scholar; vii. 71, and Vergil, Ecl. viii. 55–56Google Scholar; x. 20. In Ecl. iii. 96, v. 12, and ix. 23–24 he seems to be subservient to Menalcas, and it is possible that the character of Tityrus in Ecl. i contains a reminiscence of one of the retainers Vergil knew personally on his father's estate. Meliboeus does not appear in Greek bucolic poetry, but there is no reason to think that Vergil invented the name.
page 96 note 2 In Ecl. v. 86–87 he is the author of the second and third Eclogues, in Ecl. ix he is the Latin Theocritus who sings of the troubles of Mantua and the portent of the Julian comet, and he has lost his farm in the confiscations.
page 96 note 3 On line 1 he makes the quaint qualification: et hoc loco Tityri sub persona Vergilium debemus accipere; non tamen ubique sed tantum ubi exigit ratio.
page 96 note 4 Expounded in the passages cited in note 4, p. 94.
page 97 note 1 Just such a protest is made explicitly by Menalcas, in Ecl. ix. 11–13.Google Scholar