Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

THEOCRITUS AND VIRGIL
Lines 3—4: the iteration is extremely pathetic, nos patriae finis. . . | nos patriam. . .
The contrasting arrangement of the personal pronouns, tu. . .nos, nos. . .tu, adds to
the intensity of the effect.
Line 5: the two last words echo (resonate) to the sense, Amaryllida siluas. 1
No Roman reader had ever heard music quite like this before.
The first Eclogue is, in several ways, a strange poem, recognizably Theocritean
in manner and yet very different from anything Theocritus wrote: Theocritus
excludes the profanity of war and politics from his pastoral demesne. It is
a beautiful poem, however, about a harsh and ugly experience that Virgil had
suffered with his fellow-countrymen, but only as may be surmised: the first
Eclogue is not, in any useful sense, autobiography. Virgil's paternal farm, not
quite fact and not quite fiction, bears no resemblance to Horace's Sabine villa.
' O Meliboeus', Tityrus answers (the tone deepening):
O Meliboee, deus nobis haec otia fecit,
namque erit ille mihi semper deus, illius aram
saepe tener nostris ab ouilibus imbuet agnus. (6-8)
O Meliboeus, a god has given me this ease. For he will ever be a god to me, often will
a tender lamb from my fold stain his altar.
"Who is the benevolent young god to whom Tityrus owes his pastoral ease?
sed tamen iste deus qui sit da, Tityre, nobis. (18)
But tell me, Tityrus, who is this god of yours.
Meliboeus is not told; Tityrus changes the subject: urbem quam dicunt Romam,
Meliboee. . .'The city they call Rome, Meliboeus.. .' (19). Ancient readers
noticed, and were puzzled: ' The question is why does he, on being asked about
Octavian, describe Rome' (Servius). Virgil's poetic tact is here most politic. 2
The first Eclogue cannot have been written, as generally supposed, about
40 B.C. In that year Octavian was a young man of twenty-three, but a young
man hated and feared for the depredations in the Po valley and the massacre
of Perugia, and more or less openly despised in comparison with Antony.
Furthermore, in that year, as may be inferred from the fourth Eclogue, Pollio
was Virgil's patron (perhaps they met when Pollio was governing Cisalpine
Gaul for Antony); and Pollio and Octavian were not then, nor were they ever
to be, friends.
The first in an ancient book of poems was usually the last or one of the last
written, and served to introduce those which followed. 3 Only on the assump-
1
Cf. Catull. 11.3—4; a similar effect can be heard in Ceo. 1.486.
1
See Clausen (1972) 204-5.
3
Eel. 1 appears to have been designed so as to conform with the design, of the book itself: Meliboeus
begins with 5 lines, Tityrus answers with 5 = TO; then M. 8, T. 7 = 15; M. 1, T. 9 = 10;
M. 4, T. 6 = 10; M. 13, T. S =• 18 (a slight variation characteristic of Virgil's mature style); M. 1J,
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