1. The translations in this essay are from my The Eclogues of Virgil, translated with introduction and exegetic notes, forthcoming (1976) from The Hawthorn Press, MelbourneGoogle Scholar.

2. Lawall, Despite Gilbert, Theocritus’ Coan Pastorals: A Poetry Book (Washington D.C. 1967), esp. 14–33Google Scholar.

3. The phrase is that of Berg, W., Early Virgil (London 1974) 138Google Scholar.

4. For specific allusions to Id. 7 cf. E.9.1, 32–36, 41–42, 59–60 with Id. 7.21, 37–41, 7–9, 10–11 respectively.

5. See Putnam’s, Michael penetrating account, Virgil’s Pastoral Art: Studies in the Eclogues (Princeton N.J. 1970) 51–55Google Scholar. It is of course true that Tityrus’ final words to Meliboeus (179–83) are an invitation to the goatherd to share his pastoral pleasance for the night. The invitation, however, despite Coleman, R., ‘Pastoral Poetry’, in Higginbotham, J. (ed.), Greek and Latin Literature: A Comparative Study (London 1969) 120Google Scholar, Wormell, D. E. W., ‘The Originality of the Eclogues’, in Dudley, D. R. (ed.), Virgil (London 1969) 18Google Scholar, and Putnam, op. cit. 64ff., is singularly inept: a. It comes too late – Meliboeus has started to move off at 1.74, and poteras (1.79) seems naturally to have the sense, ‘you could have’ (cf. Cicero Fam. 1.7.7; Ovid Met. 1.621); b. It displays no appreciation of the total dislocation experienced by Meliboeus, but merely draws attention, as ever, to Tityrus’ own ‘fortunate’ situation. The judgment of Otis, B., Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford 1964) 132Google Scholar, that ‘in the end the natural spleen of Meliboeus is assuaged by the hospitality of Tityrus’ has no foundation in the text. Leach, E. W., Vergil’s Eclogues: Landscapes of Experience (Ithaca and London 1974) 117Google Scholar, rightly sees ‘no synthesis’, ‘no reconciliation’, at the end.

6. If E.1.6 and 42 are oblique references to Octavian, it would seem perverse to construe them as eulogistic, as has been the practice of commentators from Servius onwards. For recent examples see Otis (n.5 above) 13Iff., who takes ‘praise of Octavian’ to be the main point of E.1, the poem being a reaffirmation of Virgil’s ‘positive attitude toward the Julian gens’, and also Wormell (n.5 above) 17, who describes E.1 as ‘Virgil’s manifesto of allegiance to the new regime’.

7. See Segal, C. P., ‘Tamen Cantabitis, Arcades: Exile and Arcadia in Eclogues One and Nine’, Arion 4 (1965) 242–43Google Scholar.

8. Similarly the contrast between the experiential irony of this injunction and the georgic vision of 9.50 locates urban promises of rural fecundity and moral order as contrafactual verbal gesture.

9. For libertas as a major political catchword of the 40s B.C. see Syme, R., The Roman Revolution (2nd imp. Oxford 1952) 154–55Google Scholar. It was used by Caesar as the justification for his initial march on Rome in 49 B.C.: BC 1.22.5.

10. Cf. Leach’s interesting comment (n.5 above) 118: ‘The tenuis auena implies that music is a trivial occupation for such a critical time.’ Certainly Tityrus’ music is.

11. It is fine and telling irony that it is the ‘pliant’ (lentus, 1.4) Tityrus who compares the rise of Rome to that of the cypress (the tree of death) among ‘pliant’ (lenta, 1.25) osiers.

12. As Snell, Bruno would have it in The Discovery of the Mind (trans. Rosenmeyer, rep. New York 1960) 281–309Google Scholar.

13. Most effective in this regard is the use of ‘joining’ imagery and phrases to suggest values which unite rather than separate – ‘community’, rural values as opposed to ‘individualistic’, urban ones: E.2.28–55: mecuni (‘with me’, 28), coinpellere (‘drive together’, 30), mecum una (‘with me beside you’, 31), coniungere (‘unite’, 32), disparibus septem compacta cicutis (‘constructed from seven unequal stalks’, 36), iungit (‘joins’, 48), intexens (‘weaving’, 49), addam (‘add’, 53), miscetis (‘mingle’, 55); E.3.55: consedbnus (‘sat together’); and esp. the opening of E.5:

Cur non, Mopse, boni quoniam conuenimus ambo,

tu calamos inflare leuis, ego dicere uersus,

hie corylis mixtas inter consedimus ulmos? (E.5.1–3)

Why not, Mopsus, since we have met, good men both,

You at sounding the light reeds, I at singing verses,

Sit together here where elm-trees mix with hazels?

Carlotta Griffith’s remarks in ‘Myricae’, PVS 9 (1969–70) 17, are worthy of attention: ‘I think that one of the reasons why Virgil chose to write pastoral was that the convention it provided was tied to no one place or time, to no one individual or story, but to the idea of a community, the community of shepherds. No other genre could offer such a thing.’ (My italics)

14. Cf. the fierce attack on ‘urban’ values in the finale to Georgics 2 (esp. 458–65, 495–512).

15. The Pyrrha myth is misinterpreted by Otis (n.5 above) 138 as representing a ‘Flood and Second Creation’ following the ‘Fall’. Such a view (a) ignores the fact that in that case there is no first creation of man, and (b) makes nonsense of the position of the myth immediately after the creation of the natural world and immediately before the Saturnia regna, after which comes man’s Promethean fall. Correctly, however, Otis is dissatisfied with the ‘neoteric catalogue’ interpretation of the myths: ‘None of these theories … accounts for the order and continuity of the Silenus song as a whole’ (137 n.l). Unfortunately neither does Otis’s own theory.

16. On Gallus’ poetic metamorphosis in E.6 see Putnam (n.5 above) 211–15.

17. The influence of this famous poem is not restricted to E.4 (for which see n.22 below). Catullus’ indictment of contemporary Rome (64.397ff.) is on two interrelated grounds: contempt for the gods and crimes against kin.

18. The contrast between ideal familial love at the end of E.4 (60–63) and the sexually motivated disregard of the laws of kin in the concluding part of Silenus’ song in E.6 (74–81) seems clearly intended. The latter clarifies the Virgilian ideal by illustrating the heinous consequences of its postlapsarian negation.

19. The fragile quality of the idealism of E.5 seems to be suggested within the poem itself: a. by the initial focus upon the venue for the songs – the protected environment of a cave as opposed to the ‘restless shadows’ (incertas umbras) outside it (5.1–7, 19); b. by the concluding focus upon the fragility of Menalcas’ (= Vergil’s) poetic pipe (fragili cicuta, ‘fragile stalk’, 5.85).

20. Some points of detail deserve mention: a. The bitterly ironic employment of the ‘golden age’ motif by the victim of ‘unworthy love’ (indignus amor) at 8.52ff.; b. The contrast in E.3 (i) between Palaemon’s idealising description of man-nature concord at 55–57 and the human discord of the opening dialogue, (ii) between the ‘golden age’ ideal associated with Pollio at 88–89 and the menace, sickness, evil and obscurity prevalent in the singers’ pastoral world (esp. 92–107); c. The contrast between the spiritual impoverishment of Tityrus’ ‘god-engendered peace’ in E.1 (6ff.) and the spiritual richness of the ‘god-engendered peace’ of E.5 (56ff.); d. The disparity between the rural ideal conjoined with Caesar and Daphnis at 9.46–50 and the suffering and dislocation experienced by Moeris in E.9 and by Meliboeus in E.1 (cf. esp. 9.50 with 1.73). As has often been noted, the death and apotheosis theme of E.5 could not have failed to remind the contemporary Roman reader of the recent death and apotheosis of Caesar. Contrary to what is habitually asserted (see, e.g., Otis [n.5 above] 140ff., Wormell [n.5 above] 16), this does not entail Caesarian panegyric on Virgil’s part. It simply means that the Daphnis ideal is intended to be a model against which Caesarian actuality is to be measured. E.9 calculates the distance between the two.

21. Note especially the hortatory tone of the ending of E.4 with its ‘five teaching, parainetic imperatives: adgredere! [‘enter!’, 48], aspice! [‘look!’, 50], aspice! [‘look!’, 52], incipe! [‘begin!’, 60], incipe! [‘begin!’, 62]’ (J. Van Sickle, ‘The Unnamed Child: A Reading of Virgil’s Messianic Eclogue’, HSCP 71 [1966] 350).

22. Catullus 64 is by far the dominant literary influence on E.4. With E.4.6, 10, 13, 15f., 26f., 31, 32–36, 40f., 46f., 63, cf. respectively Catullus 64.397ff., 299f., 397, 348–86, 51, 294f., passim but esp. 1–30 and 343–70, 38–42, 327 et al, passim but esp. 407f. Whereas the birth of Achilles in Catullus’ poem betokens the end of the state of concord between gods and men (symbolised by the marriage of Peleus and Thetis) and the beginning of postlapsarian violence and suffering, the birth of the child in E.4 betokens the imminent return of man’s primal state of harmony with nature and god and – eventually – the cessation of avarice, greed and ambition, and the attendant passion for war. Virgil’s ideal age is not, however, to be identified with that of Catullus’ poem. The forthcoming era of E.4 is portrayed as an improvement on Catullus’ lost ‘heroic’ age (see esp. E.4.31–39), which is converted by Virgil into a golden age proper.

23. Cf. the relationship between prologue and ensuing song in E.4. Certain specific connections between the prologue of E.6 and Silenus’ song are noteworthy: Apollo (3, 11, 29, 66, 73, 82); deduction carmen (‘lean-spun song’, 5) and deducere (‘lead in lean-spun song’, 71); meditabor (‘I shall study’, 8) and meditante (‘studying’, 82); non iniussa (‘not unordered’, 9) and iussit (‘ordered’, 83 and 86).

24. The reference, as has often been observed, is to Callimachus’ ‘thin’ or ‘slender’ Muse (fr. 1.24), a finely crafted, low-key, non-expansive style, the antithesis of epic bombast (the ‘high’, ‘full’, ‘fat’ style).

25. Cf. Segal, C., ‘Vergil’s Sixth Eclogue and the Problem of Evil’, TAP A 100 (1969) 420Google Scholar, and Putnam (n.5 above) 201–3, 217–18, esp.: ‘The poem as a whole is a fluctuation between – and ultimately a combination of – Dionysiac emotionality and Apolline order’ (218). The significance of the binding-scene (6.18–26) is transparent: Silenus’ Bacchic inspiration and poetic energy have to be fettered, i.e., controlled, before he can produce the ideal deductum carmen. Not accidentally in the last line of the preceding eclogue (5.90) the description of the shepherd’s crook given to Menalcas as a reward for his song focusses on it, as even Servius ad loc. sees, as a construct of nature and artifice: formosum paribus nodis atque aere (‘beautiful with its even knots and brass’).

26. The location of Hesiod at the centre of Virgil’s poetic ideal continues of course into the Qeorgics, which is modelled closely and professedly on the poetry of the Ascraean bard: Ascraeumque cano Romana per oppida carmen (‘And I sing through Roman towns an Ascraean song’, G.2.176).

27. Segal’s suggestion (n.25 above) 421, that deducere has the connotation of ‘removing them [the trees] from their natural setting’, misses the connection with deductum carmen (6.5) and seems curiously inappropriate.

28. Divinus (‘divine’) is used only four times in the Eclogues and each time of a poet or artist: Alcimedon (3.57), Mopsus (5.45), Linus (6.67), Gallus (10.17). The sense is that of ‘divinely inspired’ (cf. the ‘divine voice’, auden thespin, breathed into Hesiod by the Muses), ‘possessing divine truth and skill’ – and thus able to serve as a spiritual bridge between man and god. It is an epithet suggestive of Virgil’s poetic ideal, and not, as Cartault, A., Etudes sur les Bucoliques de Vergile (Paris 1897) 133Google Scholar maintains, simply ‘un motif de rhétorique’.

29. The triadic structure of the Eclogues book merits more attention than it has received. The idealising triad at the centre of the book (E.4: ideal world, E.5: ideal hero, E.6: ideal song) is framed by two realistic triads: E.l-3, E.7–9. E.10 brings the issues of the triadic sequence to climactic conclusion. The triadic structure is of course not the only structure evident in the Eclogues book. Other structural principles are: bipartite, recessed panel, alternating and linear. See the introduction to my forthcoming translation (n.l above).

30. The contention of Galinsky, G. K., ‘Vergil’s Second Eclogue: Its Theme and Relation to the Eclogue Book’, C&M 26 (1965) 175Google Scholar, that Eclogue 1 ‘leaves no doubt about the might of poetry: it can heal, it can overcome reality’, is the precise opposite of what is the case.

31. Cf. the description of the pictures on Dido’s temple at Aeneid 1.464 as a pictura inanis (‘futile picture’): see n. 34 below.

32. Galinsky (n.30 above) 164 makes the same observation; not so Putnam (n.5 above) 114–16, and Otis (n.5 above) 120–24. L. P. Wilkinson’s view of E.2 and 3 as ‘literary jeux d’esprit’ astonishes (The Georgics of Virgil: A Critical Survey [Cambridge 1969] 42). Berg (n.3 above) 114 comments sensitively: ‘Corydon is no rustic mime, no character type. We cannot laugh at his awkwardness, for there is no distance between him and us. To listen to him is to feel his pain. Who can miss in him the foreshadowing of love’s helplessness in Dido?’

33. Cf. Leach (n. 5 above) 175: ‘the cups symbolize all that is lacking in these rustics whose conversation makes disorder its theme and takes no account of the beauty of the natural world’. For a different approach to the symbolism of the cups see Segal, C. P., ‘Vergil’s Caelatum Opus: An Interpretation of the Third Eclogue’, AJP 88 (1967) 279–308Google Scholar, esp. 283–92.

34. Similarly in the Aeneid works of art and the perceptions they embody have no lasting effect on human behaviour. The pictures on Dido’s temple in Book 1, the Daedalus reliefs of Book 6, the embossed shield of Book 8 are all picturae inanes (‘futile pictures’). See Boyle, A. J., ‘The Meaning of the Aeneid: A Critical Inquiry’, Ramus 1 (1972) 74–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 116–19, 141–43, and H. Pope, ‘Vergil’s Picturae Inanes: A Study of the Ekphraseis of the Aeneid’, Ph.D. Diss. Monash (1974).

35. At 8.108 Virgil expressly raises a doubt in the reader’s mind whether the carmina have in fact brought Daphnis back from the city: credimus? an, qui amant, ipsi sibi somnia fingunt? (‘Do I trust it [the sign]? Or do lovers forge dreams for themselves?’). Contrast Galinsky (n.30 above) 179, and Putnam (n.5 above) 290: ‘Yet, in spite of her misgivings, the carmina do work.’

36. Note the idealising description of Caesar as ‘Dionaean’ (Dionaei, 9.47), i.e., descended from Venus, in the song at 9.46ff. The contrast between the georgic optimism of the song and the rural chaos and devastation of Eclogues 1 and 9 (see n.20 above) underline the gap between the Venus-ideal and the Mars-reality.

37. There is a movement towards ‘personalisation’ discernible in the Eclogues book. Note especially the prologue to E.6, the dedication to Pollio in E.8, the references to Mincius and Mantua in E.7 and 9 (6.1–12, 8.6–13, 7.13, 9.27–28). The identification with Menalcas at the end of E.5 (85ff.) and his invisible presence throughout E.9 also deserve mention in this regard.

38. See n.28 above.

39. This conjunction is brilliantly encapsulated in Gallus’ final words (omnia uincit Amor: et nos cedamus Amori, ‘Love conquers all: let us too surrender to Love’, 10.69), where love (sexual passion) and war become indistinguishable. It is a feature of E.10’s climactic role in the Eclogues book that the work’s major paradigms of spiritual dislocation, previously kept separate, are here conjoined and presented as analogous.

40. Cf. Segal (n.25 above) 432.

41. See Boyle (n.34 above) 139–43.