of his representation. The poem however, in many places, gives powerful expression to the feelings of a despairing lover. There are here, as in the Gallus, besides that vein of feeling which the Latin poet shares with Theocritus, some traces of that 'wayward modern mood' of longing to escape from the world and to return to some vague ideal of Nature, and to sacrifice all the gains of civilisation in exchange for the homeliest dwelling shared with the object of affection : : O tantum libeat mecum tibi sordida rura and again : Habitarunt di quoque silvas Dardaniusque Paris. Pallas quas condidit arces The third Eclogue, which is in dialogue, and reproduces two features of the Greek idyl, the natural banter of the shepherds and the more artificial contest in song, is still more imitative and composite in character. It shows several close imitations, especially of the fourth, fifth, and eighth Idyls of Theocritus1. In this poem only, Virgil, whose muse even in the Eclogues is almost always serious or plaintive, endeavours to reproduce the playfulness and vivacity of his original. Both in the bantering dialogue and in the more formal contest of the shepherds, the subjects introduced are for the most part of a conventional pastoral character, but with these topics are combined occasional references to the tastes and circumstances of the poet himself. Thus in lines 40-42, In medio duo signa . . . curvus arator haberet, allusion is made to the astronomical studies of which Virgil made fuller use in the Georgics. In the line and again, Pollio amat nostram quamvis est rustica Musa, Pollio et ipse facit nova carmina, he makes acknowledgment of the favour and pays honour 1 Dr. Kennedy refers to twenty-seven parallels from Theocritus, to the poetical tastes of his earliest patron, whom he celebrates also in the fourth and eighth Eclogues. The line Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina Maevi has condemned to everlasting notoriety the unfortunate pair, who have served modern satirists as types of spiteful critics and ineffectual authors. At lines 10-11 there is, as in Eclogue ii., an apparent blending of the occupations of the Italian vinedresser with those of the Sicilian shepherd. In the contest of song there is no sustained con- 2 nexion of thought, as indeed there is not in similar contests in Theocritus. These contests are supposed to reproduce the utterances of improvisatori, of whom the second speaker is called to say something, either in continuation of or in contrast to the thought of the first. The shepherds in these strains seek to glorify their own prowess, boast of their successes in love, or call attention to some picturesque aspect of their rustic life. The fifth Eclogue is also in dialogue. It brings before us a friendly interchange of song between two pastoral poets, Mopsus and Menalcas. Servius mentions that Menalcas (here, as in the ninth Eclogue) stands for Virgil himself, while Mopsus stands for his friend Aemilius Macer of Verona. Mopsus laments the cruel death of Daphnis, the legendary shepherd of Sicilian song, and Menalcas celebrates his apotheosis. Various accounts were given in antiquity of the meaning which was to be attached to this poem. One account was that Virgil here expressed his sorrow for the death of his brother Flaccus1. Though the time of his death may have coincided with that of the composition of this poem, the language of the lament and of the song celebrating the ascent of Daphnis to heaven is quite unlike the expression of a private or personal sorrow. There seems no reason to doubt another explanation which has come down from ancient times, that under 1 Menalcas Vergilius hic intelligitur, qui obitum fratris sui Flacci deflet, vel, ut alii volunt, interfectionem Caesaris.' Comment. in Verg. Serviani (H. A. Lion, 1826). this pastoral allegory Virgil laments the death and proclaims the apotheosis of Julius Caesar. It is probable1 that the poem was composed for his birthday, the 4th of July, which for the first time was celebrated with religious rites in the year 42 B.C., when the name of the month Quintilis was changed into that which it has retained ever since. The lines 25-26, Nulla neque amnem Libavit quadrupes nec graminis attigit herbam, are supposed to refer to a belief which had become traditional in the time of Suetonius, that the horses which had been consecrated after crossing the Rubicon had refused to feed immediately before the death of their master3. In the lines expressing the sorrow for his loss, and in those which mark out the divine office which he was destined to fulfil after death, Ut Baccho Cererique, tibi sic vota quotannis. as in the lines of the ninth, referring to the Julium Sidus,— allusion is made to the encouragement Caesar gave to the husbandman and vine-planter in his lifetime, and to the honour due to him as their tutelary god in heaven. And these allusions help us to understand the 'votis iam nunc adsuesce vocari' of the invocation in the first Georgic. Nothing illustrates more clearly the unreal conceptions of the pastoral allegory than a comparison of the language in the Lament for Daphnis,' with the strong Roman realism of the lines at the end of the first Georgic, in which the omens portending the death of Caesar are described. Nor can anything show more clearly the want of individuality with which Virgil uses the names of the 1 See Conington's Introduction to this Eclogue. 2 Compare M. Benoist's note on the passage. 3 Proximis diebus equorum greges, quos in traiciendo Rubicone flumine consecrarat ac vagos et sine custode dimiserat, comperit pertinacissime pabulo abstinere ubertimque flere.' Sueton. lib. i. c. 81. Theocritean shepherds/than the fact that while the Daphnis of the fifth Eclogue represents the departed and deified soldier and statesman, the Daphnis of the ninth is a living husbandman, whose fortunes were secured by the protecting star of Caesar, Insere, Daphni, piros, carpent tua poma nepotes. The peace and tranquillity restored to the land under this protecting influence are foreshadowed in the lines 58–61— Ergo alacris. . . . amat bonus otia Daphnis; and the earliest reference to the divine honours assigned in life and death to the later representatives of the name of Caesar, is heard in the jubilant shout of wild mountains, rocks, and groves to the poet Deus, deus ille, Menalca. Although the treatment of the subject may be vague and conventional, yet this poem possesses the interest of being Virgil's earliest effort, directed to a subject of living and national interest; and many of the lines in the poem are unsurpassed for grace and sweetness of musical cadence by anything in Latin poetry. There is no allusion to contemporary events by which the date of the seventh can be determined; but the absence of such allusion and the 'purely Theocritean" character of the poem suggest the inference that it is a specimen of Virgil's earlier manner. Two shepherds, Corydon and Thyrsis, are introduced as joining Daphnis, who is seated under a whispering ilex; they engage in a friendly contest of song, which is listened to also by the poet himself, who here calls himself Meliboeus. They assert in alternate strains their claims to poetic honours, offer prayers and vows to Diana as the goddess of the chase and to Priapus as the god of gardens, draw rival pictures of cool retreat from the heat of summer and of cheerfulness by the winter fire, and connect the story of their loves with the varying aspect of the seasons, and with the beauty of trees sacred 1 Kennedy. to different deities or native to different localities. Though the shepherds are Arcadian, the scenery is Mantuan : Hic virides tenera praetexit harundine ripas Meliboeus decides the contest in favour of Corydon : Haec memini, et victum frustra contendere Thyrsin. Ex illo Corydon Corydon est tempore nobis. These poems, in which the conventional shepherds of pastoral poetry sing of their loves, their flocks and herds, of the beauty of the seasons and of outward nature, in tones caught from Theocritus, or revive and give a new meaning to the old Sicilian dirge over the woes of Daphnis,' may be assigned to the eventful year in which the forces of the Republic finally shattered themselves against the forces of the new Empire. There is a strange contrast between these peaceful and somewhat unreal strains of Virgil and the drama which was at the same time enacted on the real stage of human affairs. No sound of the 'storms that raged outside his happy ground' disturbs the security with which Virgil cultivates his art. But the following year brought the trouble and unhappiness of the times home to the peaceful dwellers around Mantua, and to Virgil among the rest. Of the misery caused by the confiscations and allotments of land to the soldiers of Octavianus, the first Eclogue is a lasting record. Yet even in this poem, based as it is on genuine feeling and a real experience, Virgil seems to care only for the subjective truth with which Tityrus and Meliboeus express themselves, without regard for consistency in the conception of the situation, the scenery, or the personages of the poem. Tityrus is at once. the slave who goes to Rome to purchase his freedom, and the owner of the land and of the flocks and herds belonging to it'. He is advanced in years 2, and at the same time a 1 Cf. Ergo tua rura manebunt— Ille meas errare boves Multa meis exiret victima saeptis. 2 Candidior postquam tondenti barba cadebat Fortunate senex. |