35 pages • 1 hour read
VirgilThe Eclogues
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Eclogue 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Eclogue 3 Summary
Like Eclogue 1 (and Eclogue 9), Eclogue 3 is a dialogue between two shepherds, Menalcas and Damoetas. Unlike some of their fellow shepherds, these men are less than amicable. Soon after they meet, Menalcas accuses Damoetas of stealing milk from the flocks he is shepherding for his master, Aegon (Lines 3-6). Menalcas is not innocent; he slashed fellow shepherd Micon’s plants with a knife and broke Daphnis’s flute and bow (Lines 9-14). Menalcas is certain that Damoetas stole Damon’s goat, but Damoetas counters that he won the goat in a singing contest (Lines 15-23).
This accusation shifts the conversation to singing contests. Both men are eager to compete, but are uncertain what to wager. Damoetas offers his cow, but Menalcas is worried to bet any of his family’s animals (Lines 31-33); he proceeds to offer two finely made beech wood cups decorated in ivy (Lines 33-41). Damoetas also has two cups made by the same craftsmen; his are decorated with the mythological singer Orpheus (Lines 42-47). The men recruit passerby Palaemon to judge the contest.
Each man offers a couplet (a set of two lines). Menalcas and Damoetas sing about topics typical of pastoral singing competitions: piety for the gods (Lines 59-61), country love (Lines 69-70), and the overall health of their farms and flocks (Lines 93-94). In the end, Palaemon declares a tie (Lines 107-10).
Eclogue 3 Analysis
Eclogue 3 features a common set piece in pastoral poetry: a singing contest. Menalcas and Damoetas’s contest is heavily modelled (as are many of the Eclogues) after Theocritus’s Idylls. Compared to Theocritus’s shepherds, Virgil’s Menalcas and Damoetas speak more informally. Virgil uses archaic forms and rustic vocabulary to make his speakers sound more like “country bumpkins” than their eloquent counterparts—though the singing contest itself, a poetic battle of wits, is highly educated and literary. This contrast is at the heart of the Eclogues: Country people engage in idealized urbane activities like flute-playing and poetry.
Virgil portrays Menalcas and Damoetas as countrymen with charming country troubles: stealing milk from flocks and slashing vines. Unlike the heroes of epic poetry who would bet valuable armor and slaves in a contest, the shepherds wager simple drinking cups, fitting vessels for humble country people. Menalcas’s cups are decorated with ivy, linking them to the wine god Bacchus and revelry suitable for a drinking contest (Lines 35-38). Damoetas’s cups are decorated with Orpheus, a mythological singer so skilled that even animals, rocks, and trees fall under the spell of his song (Lines 45-46). These items fit both the setting of the eclogue (the country) and its plot (a singing contest).
Eclogue 3’s conflict—emphasized by Menalcas and Damoetas’s alleged crimes—fits into a broader theme of chaos in the countryside. Again, Virgil hints that this lawlessness is connected to the Roman civil wars—country paradises like Arcadia being just as susceptible to “urban” crimes.
