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THEOCRITUS AND VIRGIL
Virgil's imitation of Theocritus is restricted mainly, and not surprisingly, to
the pastoral Idylls (i, 3-11), with the notable exception of Idyll 2, Simaetha's
incantation, a most unpastoral song which Virgil managed to translate into a
pastoral setting {Eel. 8.64—109). Virgil may be thought of as a Roman poet
appropriating a province of Greek poetry, formed late and not, as he gracefully
insinuates, highly prized. Indications of a Theocritean presence in Latin poetry,
or what remains of it, before Virgil are meagre and elusive. So erudite a poet
as Parthenius could hardly have been ignorant of Theocritus, a famous Alexandrian
who had, moreover, sided with Callimachus against his critics. 1 (Parthenius
nowhere uses Theocritus in his ITepi IpcoTiKoov Trcc6T|U(4Tcov, but that instructive
booklet had a very limited purpose. 2 ) Catullus apparently modelled the refrain
in his epyllion (64) on that in Idyll 1, and adapted, perhaps after Cinna, a single
verse from Idyll 15. 3 And there is the curious remark of Pliny the Elder (N.H.
28.19) to the effect that Catullus, like Virgil, imitated Simaetha's song; the
imitation has not survived. Perhaps Parthenius possessed only a few of the
idylls; perhaps his first pupils were not interested in pastoral poetry.
For Catullus and his friends, young poets concerned to be fashionable, to
be urbane, 'of the city', the country had no charm; it represented rather the
very qualities they despised, in poetry as in manners, the inept, the uncouth,
the out-of-date. So the ultimate dispraise of Suffenus, witty and delightful
fellow that he is, is this: let him but touch poetry and he becomes country
clumsy, clumsier (Catull. 22.14 idem infaceto est infacetior rare); and of the
superannuated Annals by the disgusting Volusius: that they are a mass of
country clumsiness (Catull. 36.19 pleni ruris et inficetiaruni). Not for such
poets idealized peasants and pastoral sentiment — even had they read Theocritus.
Virgil was different, as, somehow, Virgil always is. He was born in a rural
district not far from Mantua; his father was a farmer, though hardly so poor
as the ancient Life {Vita Donatt) would have him be; more likely a country
entrepreneur (a type not uncommon in Italy today) with ambition and money
enough to send a gifted son away to school, first to Cremona, where Virgil
assumed the toga uirilis, the garb of manhood, then to Milan and shortly thereafter
to Rome. In later years Virgil owned a house in Rome, on the Esquiline
near the gardens of his patron Maecenas. (Why does Maecenas not figure in the
Eclogues? For it is now clear that Virgil became a member of his 'circle' several
years before the Book of Eclogues was published.) Most of the time, however,
Virgil lived in peaceful retirement at Naples or in Sicily. Unlike Catullus,
miserable in Verona (Catull. 68.1—40), Virgil did not long for Rome; he very
rarely went there, and when he did he shunned public notice. So far from seeming
urbane, he had the look of a countryman about him (Vita Don. 8 facie
1
Id. 7.45-8; cf. Gow (1951) II ad loc.
3
See above, p. 19J.
304
2 See above, pp. 184—6.
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