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Vergil's Pastoral Modes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Robert Coleman
Robert Coleman*
Affiliation:
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
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Although there can be little doubt that Theocritus invented the pastoral genre, it is not at all clear that he regarded the pastoral poems as distinct from the rest of his idylls in anything but their rural setting. The narrative-dramatic form kata lepton (‘on a small scale’), the Doric dialect and the hexameter metre, which characterize the eight authentic Pastorals — I, III-VII, X and XI — are also exhibited in the urban mimes II, XIV and XV and in the mythological pieces XVIII and XXVI.

Nor is it easy to see the emergence of a distinct pastoral genre in the work of his Hellenistic successors. For although the pseudo-Theocritean Idylls VIII, IX, XX and XXVII are clearly in the tradition and the fragments of Moschus and Bion, whatever their context may have been, are markedly pastoral in style and content, the boundaries of the genre remain indeterminate. There is for instance Id. XXIII, an isolated precedent for the Renaissance piscatory Eclogues, and the mythological pieces like Moschus' Europa and Aphrodite in search of Eros, Bion's Lament of Aphrodite for Adonis and the anonymous Bucolic fragment (Page Greek Literary Papyri no. 123). Affinities between the Pastoral and erotic poetry of other genres are confirmed by the non-pastoral Id. XXIII. Finally there are two poems that point forward to subsequent developments within the Pastoral itself. In Bion's Myrson and Lycotas the pastoral setting is but a pretty frame for the tale of Achilles on Scyros and the anonymous Lament for Bion shows the first certain instance (since the precise circumstances of Id. VII are obscure) of the use of the pastoral myth for the treatment of a topical subject, the death of an actual poet. The attribution in this poem of a distinctly pastoral poesy to the dead poet is the one firm testimony we have that a specific pastoral genre was recognized in the Hellenistic world.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , 1975 , pp. 140 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1975

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References

1. The contents of this essay are based on a course of lectures delivered in Cambridge in 1966, parts of which have been repeated in lectures and classes there and in other places in the course of the intervening nine years. The arguments and documentation in support of some of the statements somewhat dogmatically asserted here will appear in my forthcoming commentary on the Eclogues.

2. Throughout this essay it is assumed that II, III, V, IV, VII and VIII were composed in that order in the period 42–39 B.C. and that IX, I, VI and X belong to a later date, within the period 38–36 B.C. The arguments for this view will appear in my forthcoming edition but are not important for the present discussion.

3. The point of the objection to tegmine in 1.1 is uncertain, but the parody on it is also notably colloquial in tone: Tityre, si toga calda tibi est, quo tegmine fagi? (‘If you find a toga hot, Tityrus, why cover yourself with a beech tree?’)

4. See the discussions of these poems which follow. Menalcas raises the question posed in the preceding paragraph in a particularly acute form. Can we avoid associating the Menalcas of V and IX, when Vergil has given us clear clues as to his identity, with the Menalcas of III, 11.15 and X.20, where he has not? Ought we to do so?

5. Whether the homosexuality of Corydon’s present affection is due to the epigram or to some more personal motivation in the poet does not in any way affect our assessment of the poem itself. Corydon like many of the pastoral lovers is bisexual (cf. 14–15, 52). So were many of the great love poets of Europe, from Sappho and Catullus to Shakespeare: so too according to Donatus ( Vita 28, 32) was Vergil himself. The tradition that this Eclogue has some autobiographical significance is as old as Martial (VI.68.5–6, etc.) and Apuleius (Apol. 10), though the details given by Donatus (Vita 28–31) and Servius (on line 15) can hardly be authentic.

6. The dedication to Pollio (6–13), which gives a notional date of publication in the late summer of 39 B.C., is not organic to the poem, which may belong substantially to the earliest period of Vergil’s pastoral oeuvre, viz. 42–41 B.C.

7. The fact that Corydon and Thyrsis are Arcadians singing beside the Mincio in VII confirms the mythical status of Vergil’s Arcady. The idealization of this remote region of Southern Greece was presented in earlier literature largely in terms of hard primitivism – an acorn-eating culture (Hdt. 1.66–2) without the barriers of social class (Theop. ap. Athen. IV.149d), noted for the toughness of its emigrant soldiers (Xen. H. VII.1.23). Even Polybius who pays tribute to the Arcadians’ devotion to music sees this as the one civilizing antidote to an otherwise grim and rugged existence. But there are traces of an idealization of Pan’s native land in ways more relevant to Pastoral in h.Hom. XIX.30: ‘Arcadia with her many springs, the mother of sheep’, cf. Theocr. Id. XXII.157. The dedication of the present poem to Arethusa alludes to a mythological link between Arcadia and Theocritus’ Sicily.

8. The point of the allusion is now irrecoverable. The resultant incompleteneses in our understanding and appreciation of the Eclogue is a good counter-instance to the egregious doctrine that all that we require to understand a poem is contained within it. Few poems that allude to the external circumstances of their composition spell out those allusions in explicit detail.

9. For the details see Gow’s commentary on Id. I, pp. 1–2.

10. A comet in itself might well portend national disaster: cf. Georg. 1.488, Plin. Nat. II.91–4.

11. Hesiod himself hoped that the Iron Age would eventually be ended (Op. 175, 180), but his faith in the restoration of a juster order (Op. 225–37), while it is presented in context with a number of Golden Age images, is not given an explicit chronological setting.

12. Unlike Aratus (Ph. 114–32) and Ovid (Met. 1.89–150) Vergil omits the Silver and Bronze from the Hesiodic list, leaving only Golden and Iron (6–9) with the intervening Age of Heroes (16, 35). The contrast between Gold and Iron is thus more effectively portrayed.

13. Not only the mass of Sibyllina in private circulation (Suet. Aug. 31.1) but also the recently reconstituted official collection, drawn from various Mediterranean sources (Tac. Ann. VI.12) must have contained oriental material. But a doctus poeta may well have read widely for himself in Hellenistic religious literature and perhaps even the Hebrew prophets in the Septuagint version.

14. If 32–6 with its powerful echo of Id. VII is also a Menalcan piece, then Lycidas has an extra quotation. But this would not be inappropriate, since he is throughout the eager pace-maker.

15. It was already accepted by Quintilian (VIII. 6.46) and by Donatus and Servius, whose biographical reconstructions (Vita 262–80) and Buc. prooem. 2.25ff., not. ad IX.l etc.) are however bedevilled by attempts to reconcile this with their quite unjustified identification of Tityrus in I with Vergil as well.

16. The details of 47–8 are so unprepossessing as to make one wonder whether the land-commissioners would in fact have deigned to include the farm in their confiscations; cf. Frontin. Contr.Agr. p. 41.20 (Lachm.), where land that was ‘either in stony and barren places … or in marshes’ is reckoned to be in soluto, viz. outside the area for which official survey was required.

17. Its importance in Horace’s moralizing themes is well illustrated by e.g. C. 111.29 and Ep. 1.10. Horace’s evocation of the simple country life, like Tibullus’, though it has elements in common with the Eclogues, is distinctly outside the pastoral tradition proper.