BUCOLICA.

ECLOGA I.

TITYRUS.

MELIBOEUS. TITYRUS.

THIS Eclogue fixes its own date, shortly after B.C. 40 (713 A.U.C.), when, by an agreement of the Triumvirate, Octavianus distributed the country lands among the veterans, twenty-eight legions of whom had to be satisfied. The inhabitants of Cremona suffered first, then those of Mantua (‘nimium vicina' Ecl. ix. 28), and among them Virgil; though, as appears from Ecl. ix. 7-10, he had hoped that he might be allowed to keep it. He then went to Rome and obtained from Octavianus the restitution of his property, at the instance of Asinius Pollio (a strict disciplinarian and no friend to military licence), Alfenus Varus, and Gallus. This poem expresses his gratitude to Octavianus.

Meliboeus, a dispossessed and exiled shepherd, encounters Tityrus fortunate in the undisturbed possession of his homestead. Tityrus is represented as a farm-slave who has just worked out his freedom; and this symbolises the confirmation of Virgil in his property, the slave's master representing Octavianus, and the two ideas of the slave's emancipation and Virgil's restoration being so mixed up as to confuse the whole narrative; which is at one time allegorical, at another historical. [See Conington, General Introduction to the Eclogues, p. 15.]

On the relative date of this and Ecl. ix see Introd. to ix.

Bucolica (Bovкoλikά) are poems treating of pastoral subjects. Eclogae (EKλoyaí, selections) are short unconnected poems. Statius (Silv. iii. pref.) applies the title to one of his own poems; Ausonius (Idyll 11, pref.) to an ode of Horace. Pliny (Epist. iv. 14, 9) doubts whether to call a collection of short poems 'epigrammata,' ' idyllia,' ' eclogae,' or 'poematia.' See Bentley, Pref. to Horace, p. ix.

2. silvestrem musam, a woodland strain.' Cp. Lucr. iv. 589 'Fistula silvestrem ne cesset fundere Musam,' and 'silvae' Ecl. iv. 3. meditaris, 'compose,' 'practise;' cp. Hor. S. i. 9. 2 ‘Nescio quid meditans nugarum,' and Epp. ii. 2. 76 'versus meditare canoros.'

4. lentus, 'lounging,' 'at ease;' participial form, like 'sentus' (Aen. vi. 462), perhaps='lying (or laid) down,' whence the other uses of careless,'

'slow,' 'sluggish' ('lentum marmor' Aen. vii. 28), and then 'pliant' or 'hanging loosely:' though its uses are generally traced almost in the reverse order to this. For this passage cp. Martial, ii. 46. 7 'Tu spectas hiemem succincti lentus amici.'

6. deus. Virgil here strikes the first note of that worship of the Emperor which characterised the age and its poetical expression. See Sellar, Virgil, ch. i. pp. 14-21.

10. quae vellem, 'what I please.' The imperfects 'vellem,' ' nollem,' 'mallem' are as it were stereotyped formulae, and so independent of the ordinary 'sequence of tenses,' which here would naturally demand 'velim' ('permisit' being a perfect proper, i.e. a 'primary' tense). permisit ludere, cp. Aen. ix. 240 'permittitis uti,' and Cic. 2 Verr. v. 9. 22 'conjecturam facere permittam.' Here, however, the construction is = 'mihi permisit measboves-errare' (TÒ Tàs ẻμàs Boûs πλavâσ@ai); see Con. ad loc. ludere, as Gk. Taife, with cogn. accus. =‘to utter in sport,' 'compose light strains:' cp. G. iv. 565; Hor. Od. i. 32. 2.

12, 13. usque adeo; see on G. i. 24. turbatur, impersonal, 'there is tumult, or riot.' protenus, 'onward;' the original meaning in prose, almost superseded by the secondary temporal sense of 'forthwith.' Cp. Aen. iii. 416, vii. 514, x. 340.

14, 15. namque, unusually late in the sentence; cp. Aen. v. 733, and (on one interpretation) x. 614. Livy and later prose writers sometimes place it second in a clause; 'nam' always comes first. conixa, i.q. ‘enixa,' ‘having brought forth,' Aen. iii. 327. silice in nuda, 'on the bare hard road' (which was paved with silex). 'Silex' in prose always masc.; in poetry common. 16, 17. Often, I mind, this mischief was foretold me, had I but had sense to see it, by lightning striking an oak.' si... fuisset may be called technically the protasis to a suppressed apodosis (et nunc intellexissem); but neither Latin nor English requires the expression of this further thought: cp. Aen. vi. 359. non laeva go together = 'not stupid,' (Gk. oraιós): cp. Aen. ii. 54; Hor. A. P. 301' O ego laevus'='fool that I am!' For de caelo tactas cp. Tac. Ann. xiii. 24; Liv. xxvi. 23; for the idea of ill omen, Cic. Div. i. 10-12.

18. This verse is wanting in all but two late MSS. (the Oblongus' and 'Longobardicus' of Pierius, v. Ribb. Prol. xiii. 16, p. 354), and has obviously got in from Ecl. ix. 15. Modern editors retain it only for the sake of the accepted numeration.

19. iste deus, 'your god,' referring to 1. 6. da = dic; cp. Hor. Sat. ii. 8. 5 'da . . . quae ventrem placaverit esca;' Ter. Haut. prol. 10 ‘quam ob rem has partes didicerim, paucis dabo.' It was perhaps a colloquial idiom. So 'accipe'='audi' Aen. ii. 65. Cp. 'habere'=' to know,' Ecl. ii. 2.

22. depellere, 'drive in' (to the city), 'de' denoting the destination, as 'deducere' (coloniam, consulem, etc.), 'demittere' (naves in portum). For another sense cp. Ecl. iii. 82, G. iii. 187.

25, 26. extulit, 'has raised' (perf.) or 'rears' (aorist, cp. G. i. 49); either of which senses is agreeable to Latin idiom. viburna, 'shrubs;' acc. to some, guelder-roses; but possibly connected with 'viere,' denoting any tough ('lenta') or pliant shrub used for binding fagots.

28-31. Tityrus, having saved enough (see below on 'peculi ' 1. 33), went

to Rome to buy his freedom from his master. On the symbolism of this see introduction to this Eclogue. inertem, 'indolent,' 'unambitious;' 'quod peculii rationem antea non habebat' Forbiger. candidior, 'somewhat grey:' Tityrus obtains his freedom late in life. cadebat, 'began to fall;' habet, because Amaryllis is now his partner; reliquit, because Galatea has ceased once for all to be so. For postquam with imperf. of something begun in past time cp. Sall. Jug. xiii. 5 ‘postquam omnis Numidiae potiebatur,' and other examples cited by Kritz ad loc.; Jug. xxviii. 2, liii. 7, etc.; Tac. Ann. i. 4. 39, ii. 23, vi. 15.

33. peculi, the private property ('savings') of slaves—see Dict. Ant. s. v. 'Servus;' also of property in general, ‘aerugo et cura peculi' Hor. A. P. 330, and in legal terminology of the private purse of a wife, a son, or daughter, etc.: cp. Liv. ii. 41 'peculium filii.'

36. gravis aere, with a golden burden ;' lit. 'laden with money.'

38. sua arbore, 'their native tree:' cp. vii. 54, G. ii. 82, Aen. vi. 206. 'Suus' passes from the purely reflexive sense into that of one's own,' and so nearly='proprius.'

39. aberat. For this lengthening before a vowel of -ǎt' of 3 sing. impf. cp. G. iv. 137, Aen. v. 853, vii. 174, x. 383, xii. 772; and for the whole question of such lengthening of short final syllables in Virgil see Prof. Nettleship's Excursus to Aen. xii. in Conington's edition, showing (1) that Virgil never allows himself these licences except in arsis (i. e. in the emphatic syllable of a foot), and but seldom where there is not (as here) a slight break in the sentence; (2) that he deliberately introduced them as antiquarian ornaments. The '-at' of imperfect was originally long, and is so frequently in Plautus and Ennius: see Corssen, ‘Aussprache,' ii. p. 489; Wordsworth, 'Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin,' Introd. xviii. 5; Wagner, Aulularia, Introd. p. xix; and my Introd. to Terence, Andria (2nd edition), pp. xxiv-xxvi ('Catena Classicorum' series).

40. arbusta, orchards' or 'vineyards,' i. e. places planted with trees at due intervals on which vines could be trained; whence adjj. 'arbustivae vites' (Columella), 'arbustus ager' Cic. Rep. v. 2. 3; Pliny, x. 29. The meaning 'trees' or 'shrubs' is frequent in Lucretius with nom. 'arbusta,' because arbores' cannot come into hexameter verse: but 'arboribus' can, and so in the only example of 'arbustis' in Lucr. (v. 1378) the word has its proper meaning (Munro, vol. i. 187). 'Arbustum' 'arbos-tum' (cp. ' virgul-tum, salictum'), and 'arbor-e-tum' is another form of the same derivative.

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41-43. quid facerem? Deliberative conj. 'what was I to do?' praesentes, ‘ready to help.' So G. i. 10, Aen. ix. 404; Hor. Od. i. 35. 2: cp. Cic. Tusc. i. 12. 28 Hercules tantus et tam praesens habetur deus.' For slightly different uses see G. ii. 127, Aen. v. 363. divos; see above on 1. 6. iuvenem; see on G. i. 500.

45, 46. primus, in sense adverbial='primum.' Cp. G. i. 13, Aen. vii. 117 and see note to Aen. i. 8. submittite, rear,' as in G. iii. 78, 159; a sense established by passages in Varro and the Scriptores Rei Rusticae ' (see Forcellini), but eminently by one in Columella (vii. 3. 13) ‘Suburbanae (regionis opilio) teneros agnos, dum adhuc herbae sunt expertes, lanio tradit; ... submitti tamen etiam in vicinia urbis quintum quemque oportebit.'

See also Varro, R. R. ii. 18, iii. 4. 8. Servius, Wagner, etc. explain it as= 'yoke' ('submittite iugo'); but there seems no mention of agriculture here: and the other explanation that it='breed' ('submittite tauros vaccis') seems unlikely, for the phrase would rather be submittite vaccas tauris.' Forb. objects to the meaning 'rear,' as inappropriate to full-grown bulls (‘tauri'); but it seems natural to speak of rearing a bull (from its birth to maturity). 47-49. tua acc. to Con. is a predicate, shall continue yours;' cp. Ecl. ix. 4. But manebunt contains a predicate (='shall be lasting'); 'tua' naturally goes with 'rura.' et tibi magna satis is then in apposition, 'large enough, too, for you' (et = 'et quidem'). quamvis, etc., 'Though all your land is choked with barren stones or covered with marsh and sedge.' que is disjunctive, cp. Aen. vi. 616. palus probably refers to the overflowing of the Mincio; cp. Ecl. vii. 13. limoso iunco, rushes which grow in mud, 'sedge.' It seems better to take omnia pascua as used loosely of the whole farm, than (with Con.) to separate the two words, omnia' = the whole farm, and 'pascua' the pastures by the river.

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50. temptabunt, 'poison;' so of disease, etc., G. iii. 441; Hor. Sat. i. 1. So ("temptatum frigore corpus'). graves fetas 'the pregnant ewes ;' the two words conveying much the same idea. For 'graves' cp. Aen. i. 13, Aen. iii. 630; Hor. Od. iii. 27. 4.

274; for 'fetas,' Ecl. iii. 52, 53. flumina nota, Mincio and Po, if we are to be precise' (Con.). But need we be precise? The scenery of the Eclogues is too vague and too much mixed up with conventionalities. nota caritatis notionem continet' (Forb.); cp. G. i. 363, Aen. ii. 256, iii. 657, etc. fontes sacros. A regular epithet, embodying the belief that every fountain and stream had its divinity. So lepòv údop Theocr. vii. 136: cp. Hor. Od. i. 1. 22, and iii. 13 (addressed to the 'fons Bandusiae'); Milton, ‘Ode to the Nativity,' 184: 'From haunted spring and dale,

Edged with the poplar pale.'

54-56. quae semper (i. e. 'suasit,' etc.), 'as hitherto.' vicino ab limite is generally regarded as a repetition and explanation of 'hinc;' cp. Ecl. iii. 12, Aen. ii. 18, vi. 305, vii. 209. Both expressions illustrate the idiom, common to Greek and Latin, of expressing direction as from a particular point, where English says at or towards: cp. 'a dextra,' 'a tergo,' è ἀριστερᾶς, ἐκ πασσαλόφιν (on the peg), etc. Dr. Kennedy takes vicino

ab limite' with saepes, 'the hedge upon your neighbour's boundary;' which perhaps is simpler. Forbiger and others, by taking 'quae semper' with depasta (est) as a relative clause, have found needless difficulty in the sentence: and the conjectures 'serpit' or 'superat' for 'semper' are equally needless. Translate: On one side, as hitherto, the hedge upon your neighbour's boundary, where bees of Hybla suck the willows' blossoms, shall oftentime woo sleep to your eyes with its murmuring hum.' A good illustration of the use made of Virgil by later Roman poets may be seen in Ausonius, Ep. xxv. 12 Hyblaeis apibus saepes depasta susurret.' Hyblaeis possibly an artificial epithet, like 'Poenos leones' and 'Armenias tigres' (Ecl. v. 27, 29), 'Cyrnaeos taxos' (ix. 30), 'Amyclaeum canem Cretamque pharetram' (G. iii. 345): but as Hybla was in Sicily, it is probably one of the confusions of Italian and Sicilian scenery which abound in the Eclogues.

57, 58. frondator. Servius distinguishes three kinds of the 'frondator's' work: (1) lopping boughs, etc; (2) stripping off leaves of elm or other trees for fodder; (3) clearing away the leaves of vines to let the sun on to the grapes ('pampinatio'): cp. Ecl. ix. 60, G. ii. 397-419; and Catull. lxiv. 41 'Non falx attenuat frondatorum arboris umbram.' 'deliciae tuae,' 'your delight,' 'your pets ;' cp. x. 22.

tua cura=

60. leves, 'on the wing;' cp. G. iv. 55 (of bees); Aen. vi. 17 (of Daedalus); and sublimis' Aen. i. 415. ergo resumes a previous thought'Yes, sooner shall....' For the idea cp. Aen. i. 607-9, v. 76; and the speech of the Corinthian Sosicles in Herod. v. 92—ĥ dǹ ő te oúpavòs čoтai ἔνερθε τῆς γῆς, καὶ ἡ γῆ μετέωρος ὑπὲρ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, καὶ οἱ ἄνθρωποι νόμον ἐν θαλάσσῃ ἕξουσι, καὶ οἱ ἰχθύες τὸν πρότερον ἄνθρωποι, ὅτε γε ὑμεῖς, ὦ Λακεδαιμόνιοι . . . τυραννίδας κατάγειν παρασκευάζεσθε. This latter passage may (as Keightley and Conington) have suggested Virgil's language here: but such impassioned appeals for the reversal of nature's laws, sooner than that something unlikely or undesirable should happen, rise naturally to the lips of any orator or poet. Thus in Sir Walter Scott's 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' Canto I. stanza xviii, the Ladye of Branksome

Raised her stately head

And her heart throbbed high with pride; "Your mountains shall bend,

And your streams ascend,

Ere Margaret be our foeman's bride!"'

62. pererratis amborum finibus, 'both having wandered over their bounds.' The Araris (Saône) is a river of Gaul, but rises in Alsace, then (as now) German. But Virgil's geographical ideas and expressions are often vague.

66. Oaxen is generally explained to be the river which flows by Axus or Oaxus, a town in Crete, mentioned by Herodotus, iv. 154. The O seems to represent the digamma of an original Faços, just as ov (and sometimes o) represents the corresponding V sound in Greek transliteration of Roman names; see Roby, Lat. Gr. Preface, pp. xxxv. sqq. But for Cretae (Heyne, Forb., Wagn., and Con.) Ribbeck and others print 'cretae,' explaining 'rapidum cretae Oaxen' as the chalk-rolling Oaxes,' i. e. the Oxus, or Jihun, of Central Asia. The two would of course be undistinguishable in uncial MSS. Servius' note (Hoc est, lutulentum, quod rapit cretam ') is the earliest suggestion that Virgil wrote 'cretae,' the gen. of ' f 'creta,' chalk. This interpretation is defended by Dr. Kennedy, in an Excursus to his notes on Ecl. I, on the grounds (1) of want of evidence for a Cretan river Oaxes, (2) the appropriateness of the wilds of Asia to complete the picture suggested by Afros,' 'Scythiam,' and 'Britannos,' and (3) that the idea of 'chalk-rolling' agrees with epithets elsewhere applied to the Oxus. The fact that rapidus' with genitive (= rapax, ȧряактƖкós) is not elsewhere found, is perhaps not a conclusive argument against this view, for the genitive with adjectives is very freely and boldly used by Latin poets: but the balance of authority among scholars is at present in favour of the other interpretation.

67. penitus, utterly;' cp. Aen. ix. 141. toto divisos orbe is variously