Introduction

The Basics

Vergil’s Eclogues (Latin Eclogae, literally “selections,” the traditional title) or Bucolica (“shepherd songs,” apparently the original title) are a collection of ten poems set in the countryside, featuring shepherds and farmers singing of their day-to-day lives and wider events in the world. These poems have become a cornerstone of the western tradition of pastoral literature, a genre that explores the idealized beauty and romance of rural life. Pioneered by the Greek poet Theocritus (third century BCE), pastoral was popular in antiquity, revived in the literature, art, and music of the Renaissance, and continued to be important into the eighteenth century. The pastoral poem faded after the European Industrial Revolution, but its themes persist in the poems of Robert Frost, in Miklós Radnóti's pastoral lamenting what was lost during World War II in Hungary, and Seamus Heaney's celebrations of and meditations on Irish country life.

Publius Vergilius Maro (known in English as Vergil or Virgil – both spellings are common) wrote the Eclogues in the late 40s BCE, a tumultuous decade that saw the assassination of Julius Caesar, the victory of his supporters in a renewed civil war, and the establishment of a tense peace between Caesar’s successors: Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian (the future emperor Augustus), his former general Marc Antony (Marcus Antonius), and another former general, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. The period of their joint rule, 43–30 BCE, is known as the Second Triumvirate. Vergil was born near Mantua, Italy, in 70 BCE, and died in southern Italy in 19 BCE. In Rome Vergil secured the patronage of Gaius Maecenas, a friend and political advisor to Octavian. Maecenas is most famous for his support of young poets. Indeed, in most European languages, his name has become a synonym for "patron of arts." Vergil composed three main works: first the Eclogues; then (under Maecenas’s and by extension, Octavian’s sponsorship) the Georgics, a didactic poem on agriculture in four books; and finally, after peace had been restored under Octavian/Augustus, the Aeneid, an epic poem in twelve books about how the Trojan hero, Aeneas, fulfilled his destiny to found the Roman people.

Historical Context: The Triumviral Period

Caesar’s assassination by nearly sixty senators on March 15, 44 BCE reignited the Roman civil wars. The senators who assassinated Caesar saw themselves as “liberators” of the Republic and expected the people of Rome to rejoice. But when the citizens instead fled in fear, the assassins retreated to the temple on the Capitoline Hill (Appian, Civil Wars 2.7.119–120). Although the assassins controlled Rome briefly, during Caesar’s funeral, the people rioted, fueled by grief and anger over the murder of their beloved leader, and the assassins fled Rome (Appian, Civil Wars 2.20.147–148). 

Meanwhile, Caesar’s loyal followers became rivals, vying to lead his armies and the Roman state. Though initially opposed to each other, Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus entered an uneasy truce and agreed in 43 BCE to share rule over Rome in a formal legal commission for a period of five years. The climactic battle in the war that followed the assassination of Julius Caesar was the huge and brutal Battle of Philippi (42 BCE) in central Greece, which saw the victory of the triumviri and final destruction of those who favored the old Republican constitution of Rome. Afterward, the triumvirate was unstable and required regular diplomatic shoring up (see the Introduction to Eclogue 4 on the Treaty of Brundisium in 40), but technically it lasted throughout the 30s, until breaking down into a final bout of civil war in 32–31, during which Octavian emerged victorious at the Battle of Actium, September 2, 31 BCE.

It was during the early triumviral period that Vergil composed the Eclogues.Eclogues 1 and 9 presuppose the distribution of land in Italy following the battle of Philippi (42 BCE); Eclogue 4 was written on the occasion of the consulship of Asinius Pollio in 40 BCE, in the future tense, i.e., in 41 or early 40; Eclogue 8 also seems to have been dedicated to Pollio in reference to his triumphal return from his proconsulate in Macedonia in 39 BCE.

Throughout this time, while Octavian’s and Marc Antony’s negotiations brought a fragile political stability to the city of Rome, the Italian countryside was experiencing great unrest. Both Antony and Octavian needed to provide long-promised land to Caesar’s veterans, and as a result, the Roman government reclaimed and redistributed public lands in the Italian countryside that had been farmed by Roman citizens for generations. (See further the Introduction to Eclogue 1). 

Significant migration and disruption in rural Italy resulted not only from these veteran resettlements, but also from the eruption of armed conflict between the factions. For example, in 41, Marc Antony’s younger brother Lucius Antonius assembled eight legions in Italy and briefly captured the city of Rome itself, before Octavian’s forces, under the leadership of Marcus Agrippa, forced their retreat to Perusia (modern Perugia) in Umbria. The Umbrians were sympathetic to Lucius Antonius’s rebellion because they had lost much property to the land expropriations by the triumviri. In 40, Octavian’s forces quelled the rebellion in what is known as the Perusine War. There is evidence for other, smaller regional rebellions throughout the Italian peninsula during and after Lucius Antonius’s defeat. These rebellions, the land expropriations, increased taxation by the triumviri, as well as forced resettlements of rebellious populations, resulted in mass migrations throughout the peninsula and in Sicily.

The two poems included in this commentary give us a glimpse into the impact of these events on Italian Romans: in Eclogue 1, we encounter cautious optimism and despair at the loss of livelihood and land, and in Eclogue 4, excitement at the prospect of the coming of a new era after years of civil war.

Literary Context

Like all Latin poets of this period, Vergil shows acute awareness of earlier Greek literature, from the epics of Homer and the didactic poetry of Hesiod in the eight and seventh centuries BCE, to the classical tragic drama of the fifth century, and beyond. The most significant literary influence on the Eclogues comes from Greek poets of the third and second centuries. These authors wrote in Alexandria, the vibrant capital of Ptolemaic Egypt, one of the most powerful Greek kingdoms during the so-called “Hellenistic” era that stretched from the death of Alexander the Great to the Roman conquest (323 BCE – 30 BCE). Hellenistic or Alexandrian poets, especially Callimachus (c. 310 – c. 240 BCE) and Theocritus (c. 300 BCE, died after 260 BCE), challenged traditional literary genres through playful experimentation with language and poetic form and learned allusion to literary predecessors. 

Callimachus composed Aetia (“Causes”), a collection of shorter poems in four books that deal with the foundation of cities, unusual religious ceremonies, and unique local traditions from around the Greek world. Callimachus’s style favored small-scale topics over large and prominent ones, and refinement over long works of poetry. Like Callimachus’s Aetia, Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics explored new topics and unfamiliar stories, rather than attempting epic on a Homeric scale using well-known myths.

This Callimachean approach exerted great influence over Roman poets of Vergil’s generation and the generation just before, such as Catullus (c. 84–54 BCE) and Helvius Cinna (died 20 March 44 BCE), who is referred to by name in Eclogue 9.35. Cicero disparagingly labeled these poets “neoteric,” that is, “newer,” or “too new”(Letters to Atticus 7.2.1). For Cicero, the neoteric poets represented a strong break with Roman literary tradition, writers like Ennius (c. 239 – c. 169 BCE), who wrote on grander historical and patriotic themes. Over his career Vergil drew on the entire tradition: older Greek works, classical tragic drama, Hellenistic writers, the Latin neoteric poets, and older Roman poets like Ennius. Vergil’s first published book of poems, the ten poems of the Eclogues, is Hellenistic and Callimachean in that it centers the poetic process, that is, the act of composing and performing poetry, and the role that both innovation and tradition play in the poetic art.

Theocritus and Vergil’s Style

Theocritus is considered the inventor of pastoral or bucolic poetry. His Idylls (“little poems”) are the closest model for Vergil’s Eclogues. Theocritus’s Idylls were self-contained vignettes of country life featuring singing shepherds who describe themselves as inheritors of a long tradition of pastoral song. Their songs, whether improvised or handed down, focused on love, playful back-and-forth jests, and vivid, onomatopoetic descriptions of the natural world.

While Theocritus’s poems dealt with a wide range of experiences for his rustic inhabitants—such as going into town, participating in festivals, city life, and grazing their flocks—Vergil’s Eclogues are staged entirely within the rustic landscape. This landscape is closely modeled on the landscape described by Theocritus in Idylls 1 and 7: buzzing insects, a shady tree, a nearby cave, all on the banks of a sonorous stream. Through the conceit of humble shepherds singing rustic songs, pastoral poetry employs highly artful syntax and literary allusions in service to experimenting with the poetic form itself. Vergil selected certain of Theocritus’s Idylls and focused on certain features of those Idylls he chose, and in so doing he established the template for all subsequent pastoral poetry

The opening verses of Vergil’s first Eclogue provide a good example of how Vergil creatively adapts Theocritus’s style. Vergil opens with two alliterative lines spoken by the goatherd Meliboeus when he encounters the cowherd Tityrus sitting under a tree: 

Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmina fagi 

silvestrem tenui Musam meditaris avena.

Tityrus, you, relaxing under the cover of a broad beech tree, 

play the woodsy Muse on your delicate pipe. 

The alliterative “t” sounds in the opening verse, along with its metrical rhythm of dactylic hexameter, create a musical quality that evokes the song Meliboeus himself hears Tityrus play. The first poem in Theocritus’s Idylls likewise uses meter and alliteration to evoke the soundscape heard by the speaking character (Idyll 1.1–3): 

῾Αδύ τι τὸ ψιθύρισμα καὶ ἁ πίτυς, αἰπόλε, τήνα, 

ἃ ποτὶ ταῖς παγαῖσι, μελίσδεται, ἁδὺ δὲ καὶ τὺ 

συρίσδες.

A sweet thing is the whispered music of that pine by the springs, goatherd, and sweet is your piping, too. (trans. Hopkinson)

The alliterative “t” and “p” sounds along with the onomatopoetic psithurisma (“whispering”) immerse the reader in the internal character’s soundscape, an effect imitated by Vergil through his own use of alliterative lines.

Vergil adds another layer of signaling Theocritus as a literary model through shared names, themes, imagery, and word choice. Vergil’s opening word, “Tityre,” is evidently taken from Theocritus, Idyll 3, in which a Tityrus is asked to watch the goats of another goatherd while that goatherd goes off to serenade his beloved Amaryllis. In Theocritus’s opening verses, the name Tityrus appears first in verse 2 in the fourth metrical foot, once again in the first metrical foot of verse 3, and again in the fourth metrical foot of verse 4. This quick repetition of the name suggests rustic simplicity and heightened emotion as the goatherd nervously prepares to woo his Amaryllis. Vergil inverts Theocritus’s metrical arrangement of the name by first placing the name Tityrus in the first metrical foot in verse 1 and then putting it in the fourth metrical foot in verse 4, elegantly imitating the metrical position of Tityros in verse 2 and Tityre in Theocritus Idyll 3, verse 4. Vergil echoes Theocritus’s use of repetition to create a sense of the poem as a sung song, the repeated phrases, names, and rhythms bringing to life his singing shepherds.

A key feature of pastoral poetry is this sense of spontaneous performance, the impression that songs are bubbling up out of the shepherds, whether in response to their surroundings, to each other, or while recalling a familiar tune. By drawing attention to the process of producing these songs, both Vergil and Theocritus explore the nature of poetry and song. In Idyll 1 Theocritus’s whispering pine tree and the music the goatherd plays on the pipes are described as “sweet” (hādu), showing the connection between landscape and pastoral song. Likewise, Vergil’s opening Eclogue 1 describes Tityrus playing music on his pipes under a shady beech tree, thereby making a connection between music and the landscape. The pastoral landscape and song are inextricably entwined — a theme explored throughout the Eclogues. 

The tradition of song is another theme that runs throughout the Eclogues. Theocritus’s Idylls often mention the tradition of pastoral song; in his first Idyll the shepherd Thyrsis sings a song about the founder of pastoral poetry, Daphnis. Vergil signals his own interest in the tradition of song by closing out the first stanza with Tityrus teaching the woods to sing the song “beautiful Amaryllis.” This recalls Theocritus’s Idyll 3, in which a goatherd asks Tityrus to watch his goats so he can woo Amaryllis. The opening words of his song are “o beautiful Amaryllis.” Tityrus playing this song in Vergil’s first Eclogue suggests he learned the song from the goatherd and is himself passing it along to the woods. In this same passage from the opening of Eclogue 1, Vergil points to two key components of Tityrus’s song — its rustic nature that is intimately linked to the landscape, and the subject matter of unrequited or lost love. His song is first called silvestrem … Musam (“woodsy Muse,” E. 1.2) and is played on a tenuis avena (“a delicate reed,” 1.2). The Muse, the inspiration of his song, is of the woods and the instrument is a rustic pipe made of reeds. 

Vergil thus uses repetition, word-choice, and literary allusions to signal the Eclogues’ central themes of composing song, love, and loss. While Theocritus’s shepherds are concerned with love and loss of the heart, Vergil’s shepherds expand upon this type of love and loss to include their love for the land itself and its role as a source of livelihood and poetic inspiration. 

Vergil employs the Theocritean technique of repeating a phrase to heighten a central theme’s emotional tenor. In verses 3 and 4, Meliboeus exclaims: nos patriae finis et dulcia linquimus arva. / nos patriam fugimus (“We abandon the borders of our fatherland and sweet fields. We flee our fatherland”). Sandwiched between verses describing Tityrus relaxing under a shady beech and playing a traditional pastoral song about unrequited love, Meliboeus laments his personal loss, that of his fatherland, emphasized by the repeated nos. 

An important Theocritean quality is recalled here: Theocritus’s hādu, “sweetness,” the defining quality of both the landscape and pastoral poetry in his Idyll 1. Vergil’s Meliboeus nostalgically attributes this same quality to his now-lost fields (dulcia … arva, “sweet fields,” 1.3), suggesting through this allusion to Theocritus Idyll 1 that in leaving his land, Meliboeus leaves behind the sweetness of pastoral poetry as well. Vergil thus expands the range of pastoral poetry to include room for meditating on what it means to make poetry during times of civil unrest. Because the land is the source of poetic inspiration for pastoral song and the venue in which the songs are performed and passed on, its loss is as devastating to Vergil’s shepherds as the loss of a romantic love in Theocritus. When one has lost everything, how can one make meaning? In the words widely attributed to the Palestinian poet Marwan Makhoul, “In order for me to write poetry that isn't political, I must listen to the birds, and in order to hear to the birds / the warplanes must be silent.” (trans. Raphael Cohen.) Without the land, no songs can be sung. This mode of love and loss is introduced in the opening of Eclogue 1 and is present throughout all 10 poems, most poignantly in Eclogue 9.

The Arrangement of the Eclogues 

Vergil carefully arranged the ten Eclogues to put them in conversation with each other, with each poem expanding upon themes and imagery of earlier poems. While each poem develops its own themes, the book of poems develops and complicates themes through pairings among the poems. Eclogues 1 and 9 focus on the land confiscations; Eclogues 2 and 8 feature love-sick shepherds pining for their beloveds; Eclogues 3 and 7 depict pastoral singing contests; Eclogues 4 and 6 are elevated in tone and focus on cosmic origins and rebirths; Eclogues 5 and 10 recount the suffering of a singer (Daphnis) and a poet Gallus). This is just one possible interpretative structure. The poems could also be arranged in groups of 3, with Eclogue 1 serving as an introduction, or Eclogue 10 as a coda — or paired in different combinations. Thus, reading (and re-reading) the entire collection of poems in order brings Vergil’s poetic interplay to the fore and illuminates various themes across the collection.

Reading Eclogues 1 and 4 Together

While Eclogues 1 and 4 are not usually considered a pair, they reward being read together. First, they are the most famous and influential of the Eclogues in the later literary tradition: Eclogue 1 serves as a literary model for generations of poets who imagine the adventures of rustic travelers and shepherds in the local landscape. Eclogue 4 was celebrated by early Christian readers and writers as heralding the coming of the messiah through recounting his miraculous birth and the celebrations of the earth and heavens. 

In addition to being the most influential of Vergil’s Eclogues in the later literary tradition, these two poems also showcase the emotional power of pastoral poetry. From the melancholy of Eclogue 1 and the joy of Eclogue 4 we gain insight into the relationship between man and nature. We are humbled by Vergil’s exploration of how the natural world, when attended to, can amplify the emotional experience of its human occupants and provide comfort through its beauty and poetry.