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A Forgotten Latin Eclogue
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
Of all the forms of Latin hexameter verse cultivated during the European Renaissance none, perhaps, had so long and so vigorous a history as the bucolic eclogue or pastoral. From early in the fourteenth century to late in the eighteenth there was a constant stream of pastoral verse, some of it written by triflers, some by many of Europe's foremost poets: it is enough to mention Milton's Epitaphium Damonis. Most such poems were literary and derivative, some were attempts to develop a new class of pastoral, some were attempts to put the pastoral form to entirely new uses.
A common variety of eclogue in Renaissance Latin literature is the pastoral lament on the death of a friend or patron. We may instance that of Marco Girolamo Vida (1485-1566) on Pope Julius II (d. 1513), that of Cinzio Giambattista Giraldi (1504-73) on Ludovicus Bonactiolus and Joannes Manardus (both doctors who had taught the poet), that of Giano Anisio (ca. 1475-ca. 1540) on Giovanni Pontano (1422?-1503) of Naples, or Pontano's on his wife Adriana Sassone (d. 1491).
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1956
References
1 On the various forms of Latin eclogue evolved during the Renaissance v. Phoenix ix (1955), p. 19 and n. 5.
2 Of course the formal elegy and elegiac or hexameter epicedion also appeared in vast numbers; an example is Cinzio Giraldi's first Latin poem, 237 florid hexameters stiff with classical allusion.
3 Mustard, W. P., The Piscatory Eclogues of Jacopo Sannazaro (Baltimore, 1914), Introd., pp. 26–53.Google Scholar
4 This is not an outstanding work of art by any means; but it is not a mere cento.
5 Cf. Sarin. Pise. Ed. ii, 1-2: ‘Lycon, a fisher-youth, with love distressed,/A hollow cave had sought, to ease his breast.’
6 Probably only a literary flourish intended to recall the title of Bembo's seventh Latin poem (Vol. III, pp. 135-137). If Alessandro Ferrajoli is correct in assuming that Morosina, Bembo's mistress, was the daughter of Antonio della Torre, the name cannot be taken as referring to her, for she died at Padua in 1513: v. Toffanin, G. Il Cinquecento (Milan, 1950), pp. 87 and 101, n. 8.Google Scholar
7 This, of course, is Virgilian; cf. the song of Silenus in Ed. vi, 31-40.
8 The various topics are listed with far less art, far less verbal dexterity than Sannazaro would have employed.
9 Intended to recall the title of Bembo's 17th Latin poem (Vol. III, pp. 157-163).
10 With this, compare Antony and Cleopatra III, ii, 17-19; Apollinaris, Sidonius Carmina ii, 171–172 Google Scholar; vii, 79-82; xv, 174-176; Diehl, E. Anthologia Lyrica Graeca (Leipzig, 1925), II, 115, No. 149Google Scholar; Sidney's An Excellent Sonnet of a Nimph, in England's Helicon; Stewart of Baldynnis, quoted in Gray, M. M., Scottish Poetry from Barbour to James VI (London, 1935), p. 347 Google Scholar; the same curiosity of arrangement appears in Spenser, and in many French, Italian, and Spanish poets of the Renaissance.