The Eclogues

“Oh, will I ever in any time to come, look / with wonder at a land I can at last call / my own […] Is some rough soldier to have these furrowed fields? / Some foreigner these crops? What misery civil strife / has brought to us Romans! For such as these have we sown this land!”

Land appropriations saw free-born Roman property owners lose their farms to people of “lesser” status in Roman society—soldiers and foreigners. Ironically, the slogan of Octavian’s political party was “Libertas,” the Latin word for “freedom.” Virgil plays on this slogan, with the ex-slave Tityrus maintaining his property and the “free” Roman farmer, Meliboeus, losing his.

“Don’t trust / O, beautiful boy, too much in lovely hue. The pale / privet falls. The dusky hyacinth is plucked.”

This quote comprises a common sentiment across ancient genres, especially in elegiac and pastoral poetry, where youthful beauty is often compared to flowers (i.e., flowers withering or being plucked).

“O lovely boy, come, see: / the nymphs bring backets of lilies for you. The glowing naiad, / plucking pale violets for you and poppy-heads, / binds narcissus to fragrant bud of anise plant, / then plaits the cassia with other sweet-smelling herbs, and tints / the tender hyacinth with tawny marigold.”

This quote exemplifies a floral pastoral catalogue. Virgil describes the flowers’ physical beauty (their delicate colors and shapes) as well as other sensory aspects like their smell (“fragrant) and feel (“tender”).

“Gods too have lived in the woods […] Let Pallas Athene dwell / inside the citadels she builds. Let us enjoy / the woods.”

This quote highlights the crucial dichotomy between city life and life in the woods. Pallas Athene (or Athena) is the goddess of wisdom, handicrafts, and civilized arts; here, she is placed in direct opposition to the lawless woodland gods beloved by shepherds—like Bacchus, Pan, and Silenus.

“Why don’t you do instead a useful piece of work? / Plait a basket with pliant reeds and osier twigs? / If he despises you, you’ll find another Alexis.”

As part of his pastoral program, Virgil rarely depicts his shepherds engaging in the hard labor required of a real farmer. Work is usually brought up in the context of it being shirked for more pleasant pursuits.

“Sing on, now that we are seated in the soft grass / and all the field and every tree is burgeoning. / Now the woods are in leaf, the year at its loveliest.”

The singing contest between Menalcas and Damoetas takes place in a locus amoenus. Sensory details like the “soft” grass and the woods being “in leaf” encourage the reader to imagine lounging in the field alongside the men, enjoying the pleasant rustling of trees.

“With you whatever traces of our guilt remain / will vanish and loose the world from its perpetual fear.”

For the Romans, the internecine nature of civil war was a constant source of guilt and shame. Like in the American Civil War, “brother against brother” was a common literary trope, and the Romans knew the immorality of killing their own countrymen all too well. (The later Roman epicist Lucan would concentrate on this guilt in his epic poem, Civil War).

This language also had natural appeal to Christians who sought to read Eclogue 4 through a religious lens. Virgil’s “traces of guilt” could be interpreted as the Christian concept of original sin, which Christ erased with his death on the cross.

“He will consort with the gods and see heroes mingling / with them and he himself will appear to heroes and gods / and rule a world which his father’s virtues have brought to peace.”

In Greek and Roman myth, heroes and gods were said to comingle freely in early times, before men’s iniquities caused them to retreat. Similarly, in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, God Himself wandered the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve before their sin drove them from paradise.

“Now will wool learn to deceive with this hue and that, / but in the meadows the ram himself will change his fleece, now to a soft sea-purple, now to the yellow of saffron. / Crimson coats will naturally clothe the pasturing lambs.”

In Eclogue 4, Virgil imagines a world in which agricultural labor of any kind will no longer be necessary, as each land will produce enough for its inhabitants. In this charming couplet, he underlines that even the wool dyers will be out of work; the sheep will color themselves.

“You’re the elder. It’s right that I do what you say, Menalcas, / whether beneath the flickering shadows that western breezes / chase or in the grotto we take our rest.”

One of the more charming aspects of Eclogue 5 is the relationship between the elder shepherd Menalcas and his younger companion, Mopsus. Mopsus seems somewhat nervous to be with Menalcas, whose songs he admires, and readily agrees to his requests. Young people, he believes, should respect their elders. For his part, Menalcas is a supportive mentor, treading carefully around Mopsus’s insecurities and praising his song.

“Such is your song to us, divine poet, as / sleep to the weary upon the grass, as in the heat / the quenching of thirst by the sweet drink from a leaping stream.”

In antiquity, song was believed to have restorative qualities. The enjoyment of art was just as necessary to human life as access to rest and water.

“Now [Silenus’s] eyes are open, [the nymph] paints his temples and brow / with mulberries, blood red.”

Even in the context of a prank, Silenus’s darker side is hinted at—the berry juice the youths and nymph smear on his face resembles blood.

“For [Silenus] sang how throughout the immense void had been gathered / the seeds of the lands, the air, and the sea, and together with these / those of liquid fire and how from these beginnings / all origins and the young orb of the earth coalesced.”

The Greek poet Hesiod famously depicted the origins of the universe in his eighth century BCE poem the Theogony, which Virgil likely had in mind here.

“Fortunate had been that girl had herds never / existed! Unhappy maid, what a madness seized you!”

The speaker directly addresses Pasiphae, a Cretan queen who fell madly in love with a bull (their future child being the half-bull, half-human Minotaur of myth). Ancient writers often framed love as a physical malady, a contagious sickness which infects its victim regardless of intent, and progressively drives them insane.

“Fountains covered with moss and grass softer than sleep / and verdant arbutus that covers you with sparse shade / protect the flocks from the solstice. Parching summer comes, / and now the buds swell on the pliant shoots of the vine.”

Pastoral poems are often set during spring or early summer. The weather is always warm, even hot, but cool shade and water are always available in abundance for shepherds at midday.

“Mopsus wins Nysa. What can lovers not expect? / Now will gryphons mate with horses. In after time / the trembling fallow deer will come with hounds to drink.”

Damon finds his girlfriend Nysa’s betrayal so shocking and unexpected that nature itself can no longer be trusted; gryphons and horses might intermate, or deer and hounds might drink together. Alphesiboeus observes inversions of nature as well, but she herself is an agent of change: With the power of her love spells, she will force her ex-boyfriend to return.

“Let ocean cover everything. Farewell woods: / from my lofty lookout on the hills I’ll plunge headlong / into the waves; let Nysa have this, my gift at death.”

In Theocritus’s Idylls, the primary dichotomy was between the land and sea; the land-bound cyclops Polyphemus longs for a sea nymph, Galataea. While Virgil’s dichotomy is between the country and the big city, he may be evoking Theocritus in Damon’s longing for a watery death.

“These poisons, these herbs, gathered in Pontus, Moeris himself / gave to me. In Pontus they grow abundantly.”

Virgil showcases his literary knowledge: Pontus was near Colchis, the home of antiquity’s most infamous witch, Medea. Alphesiboeus claims some of Medea’s power by emphasizing the herbs’ origins.

“Dare I believe it? Or do lovers create their own dreams?”

Alphesiboeus’s rhetorical questions reflect both the madness and power of love. Her spells might have drawn Daphnis back from the city—that through sheer force of will, she created her own reality—or she simply fabricated a hopeful fantasy, a “dream,” which will never come true.

“[…] Lycidas, / our songs are worth as much among the weapons of Mars [god of war] / as Chaonian doves, they say, before the eagle’s flight.”

In antiquity, arts and culture were often the first casualties of war.

“We can sing as we go, I’ll take this bundle from you. / No more, my boy. Let us do the task at hand.”

This seemingly innocuous exchange between Lycidas and Moeris has tragic implications in the pastoral genre. Work is usually set aside for pleasant pursuits like singing, but the world has left Moeris cynical. He doesn’t want to delay and make music, even if singing would lift his spirits; he wants to continue his work.

“Enough! Love cares not for such. Cruel, / neither is he sated with tears nor grass with brooks / nor bees with clover nor nanny goats with leafy sprays.”

The god Pan details how inhuman the god Love is, as the latter is unmoved by the lovely scenes in nature crucial to pastoral characters (and readers).

“But sadly he said, ‘Still, Arcadians you will sing / these songs to your hills. Arcadians alone are skilled enough to sing.’”

Virgil solidifies the connection between the pastoral genre and Arcadia, a province in Greece which became shorthand for the idyllic, imaginary world which pastoral characters inhabit. English poets sometimes refer to it as “Arcady.”