CHAPTER IV. THE ECLOGUES. I. The Eclogues, examined in the order of their composition. THE name by which the earliest of Virgil's recognised works is known tells us nothing of the subject of which it treats. The word 'Eclogae' simply means selections. As applied to the poems of Virgil, it designates a collection of short unconnected poems. The other name by which these poems were known in antiquity, 'bucolica,' indicates the form of Greek art in which they were cast and the pastoral nature of their subjects. Neither word is used by Virgil himself; but the expressions by which he characterises his art, such as Sicelides Musae,' 'versus Syracosius,' 'Musa agrestis' and 'silvestris,' show that he writes in a pastoral strain, and that he considered the pastoral poetry of Greece as his model. He invokes not only the Sicilian Muses,' but the 'fountain of Arethusa.' He speaks too of Pan, and Arcadia, and the 'Song of Maenalus.' His shepherd-poets are described as 'Arcadians.' The poets whom he introduces as his prototypes are the 'sage of Ascra,' and the mythical Linus, Orpheus, and Amphion. He alludes also to Theocritus under the name of the [Syracusan shepherd.' The names of the shepherds who are introduced as contending in song or uttering their feelings in monologue -Corydon, Thyrsis, Menalcas, Meliboeus, Tityrus, &c.are Greek, and for the most part taken from the pastoral idyls of Theocritus. There is also frequent mention of the shepherd's pipe, and of the musical accompaniment to which some of the songs chanted by the shepherds are set. The general character of the poems is further indicated by the frequent use of the word 'ludere,' a word applied by Catullus, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, and others to the poems of youth, of a light and playful character, and, for the most part, expressive of various moods of the passion of love. Thus at the end of the Georgics Virgil speaks of himself thus: Carmina qui lusi pastorum, audaxque iuventa This reference shows further that the poem which stands first in order was placed there when the edition of the Eclogues was given to the world. But other references (at v. 86-87 and vi. 12) seem to imply that the separate poems were known either by distinct titles, such as Varus, the title of the sixth, or from their opening lines, as the 'Formosum Corydon ardebat Alexim,' and the 'Cuium pecus? an Meliboei?' It has been also suggested, from lines quoted in the ninth, which profess to be the opening lines of other pastoral poems, that the ten finally collected together were actual 'selections' from a larger number, commenced if not completed ('necdum perfecta canebat') by Virgil. But these passages seem more like the lines attributed to the contending poets in the third and seventh Eclogues, i. e. short unconnected specimens of pastoral song. Nearly all the poems afford indications of the time of their composition and of the order in which they followed one another; and that order is different from the order in which they now appear. It is said, on the authority of Asconius, that three years, from 42 B.C. to 39 B.C., were given to the composition of the Eclogues. But an allusion in the tenth (line 47) to the expedition of Agrippa across the Alps in the early part of 37 B.C. requires that a later date must be assigned to that poem. The probable explanation is that Virgil had intended to end the series with the eighth, which celebrated the triumph of Pollio over the Parthini in 39 B.C.,— A te principium, tibi desinet,— but that his friendship for Gallus induced him to add the tenth, two years later, either before the poems were finally collected for publication, or in preparing a new edition of them. They were written at various places and at various stages of the poet's fortunes. They appear to have obtained great success when first published, and some of them were recited with applause upon the stage. The earliest in point of time were the second and third, and these, along with the fifth, may be ascribed to the year 42 B.C. The seventh, which has no allusion to contemporary events and is a mere imitative reproduction of the Greek idyl, may also belong to this earlier period, although some editors rank it as one of the latest. The first, which is founded on the loss of the poet's farm, belongs to the next year, and the ninth and sixth probably may be assigned to the same year, or to the early part of the following year. The date of the fourth is fixed by the Consulship of Pollio to the year 40 B.C.; that of the eighth to the year 39 B.C. by the triumph of Pollio over the Parthini. The opening words of the tenth show that it was the last of the series; and the reference to the expedition of Agrippa implies that it could not have been written earlier than the end of 38 B.C. or the beginning of 37 B.C. The first, second, third, fifth, and perhaps the seventh', 1 The lines of Propertius— Tu canis umbrosi subter pineta Galaesi Thyrsin et attritis Daphnin arundinibus, might suggest the inference that the seventh was composed at the time when Virgil was residing in the neighbourhood of Tarentum. But, at the time when Propertius wrote, Virgil was engaged in the composition of the Aeneid, not of the Eclogues. The present 'canis' seems rather to mean that Virgil, while engaged with his Aeneid, was still conning over his old Eclogues. Yet he must have strayed subter pineta Galaesi' some time before the composition of the last Georgic. The 'memini' in the line Namque sub Oebaliae memini me turribus arcis looks like the memory of a somewhat distant past. Could the villa of Siron have been in the neighbourhood of Tarentum? (a question originally suggested by Mr. Munro); may it have passed by gift or inheritance into the possession were in all probability written by the poet in his native district, the sixth and ninth at the villa which had formerly belonged to Siron ('villula quae Sironis eras'), the rest at Rome. The principle on which the poems are arranged seems to be that of alternating dialogue with monologue. The eighth, though not in dialogue, yet resembles the latter part of the fifth, in presenting two continuous songs, chanted by different shepherds. The poem first in order may have occupied its place from its greater interest in connexion with the poet's fortunes, or from the honour which it assigns to Octavianus, whose pre-eminence over the other competitors for supreme power had sufficiently declared itself before the first collected edition of the poems was published. In the earliest poems of the series the art of Virgil, like the lyrical art of Horace in his earlier Odes, is more imitative and conventional than in those written later. He seems satisfied with reproducing the form, rhythm, and diction of Theocritus, and mingling some vague expression of personal or national feeling with the sentiment of the Greek idyl. That the fifth was written after the second and third appears from the lines v. 86-87, in which Menalcas, under which name Virgil introduces himself in the Eclogues, presents his pipe to Mopsus: Haec nos Formosum Corydon ardebat Alexin,' Haec eadem docuit 'Cuium pecus? an Meliboei ?' From these lines also it may be inferred as probable that the second poem, 'Formosum pastor Corydon,' was written before the third, 'Dic mihi, Damoeta, cuium pecus? an Meliboei ?' A tradition, quoted by Servius and referred to (though inaccurately) by Martial', attributes the composition of the second Eclogue to the admiration excited in Virgil by the beauty of a young slave, Alexander, who was of Virgil, and was he in later life in the habit of going to it from time to time? or was the distance too great from Mantua for him to have transferred his family thither? 1 viii. 56. 12. presented to him by Pollio and carefully educated by him. A similar story is told of his having received from Maecenas another slave, named Cebes, who also obtained from him a liberal education and acquired some distinction as a poet. It is not improbable that Virgil may have been warmly attached to these youths, and that there was nothing blameable in his attachment. Even Cicero, a man as far removed as possible from any sentimental weakness, writes to Atticus of the death of a favourite slave, a young Greek, and evidently, from the position he filled in Cicero's household, a boy of liberal accomplishments, in these words: 'Et mehercule eram conturbatior. Nam puer festivus, anagnostes noster, Sositheus decesserat, meque plus, quam servi mors debere videbatur, commoverat1.' It remains true however that in one or two of those Eclogues in which he most closely imitates Theocritus, Virgil uses the language of serious sentiment, and once of bantering raillery, in a way which justly offends modern feeling. And this is all that can be said against him. There are more imitations of the Greek in this and in the next poem than in any of the other Eclogues2. The scenery of the piece, in so far as it is at all definite, combines the mountains and the sea-landscape of Sicily with Italian woods and vineyards. Corydon seems to combine the features of an Italian vinedresser with the conventional character of a Sicilian shepherd. The line Aspice aratra iugo referunt suspensa iuvenci applies rather to an Italian scene than to the pastoral district of Sicily; and this reference to ploughing seems inconsistent with the description of the fierce midsummer heat, and with the introduction of the 'fessi messores' in the opening lines of the poem. These inconsistencies show how little thought Virgil had for the objective consistency 1 Ep. ad Att. i. 12. 2 Dr. Kennedy refers to no less than seventeen parallel passages from Theocritus, many of them being almost literal translations from the Greek poet. |