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

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THREE ECLOGUES<br />

— an allusion to Catullus 64, to the song the Parcae sang at the wedding of<br />

Peleus <strong>and</strong> Thetis, whose son was to be the great Achilles. 1 When, some five<br />

years later, Virgil decided to publish his 'epithalamium' as an 'eclogue', he<br />

prefixed a brief pastoral apologia (1—3); at the same time — hope having been<br />

disappointed, circumstances altered — it is likely that he made certain other<br />

adjustments. Hence something of the mystery, or mystification perhaps, which<br />

readers sense in the fourth Eclogue.<br />

The sixth<br />

cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem<br />

uellit et admonuit: 'pastorem, Tityre, pinguis<br />

pascere oportet ouis, deductum dicere carmen.'<br />

nunc ego (namque super tibi erunt qui dicere laudes,<br />

Vare, tuas cupiant et tristia condere bella)<br />

agrestem tenui meditabor harundine Musam. (3—8)<br />

When I was singing of kings <strong>and</strong> battles, Cynthian Apollo tweaked my ear <strong>and</strong><br />

warned: 'A shepherd, Tityrus, ought to feed fat sheep, but sing a fine-spun song.'<br />

Now I (.for there will be poets enough wanting to tell your praises, V^arus, <strong>and</strong> recount<br />

war's grim story), I will meditate the rural Muse on a slender reed.<br />

This passage can now be understood for what it is: not an autobiographical<br />

statement, as ancient scholiasts thought, but a literary allusion, Virgil's pastoral<br />

rendering of Callimachus' famous rejection of epic: 2<br />

KCil yap 6T6 Trp

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