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Virgil's First Eclogue: Poetics of Enclosure
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
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Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi silvestrem tenui Musam meditaris avena; nos patriae finis et dulcia linquimus arva. nos patriam fugimus; tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas.
Tityrus, you reclining under the protection of a spreading beech, you ponder the sylvan muse on slender reed. We are leaving the bounds of our fatherland and our sweet fields, we are in flight from our fatherland. You, Tityrus, at ease in the shade, teach the woods to resound ‘beautiful Amaryllis’.
The literary historian must value the opening lines of the first eclogue for many reasons but their role in the development of the rhetoric of pastoralism is especially significant. For the first time in ancient pastoral poetry two intellectual worlds are in collision, seen in the characterizations of two shepherds only one of whom is finally settled in a landscape of permanence and continuity. Tityrus remains and Meliboeus is forced to depart. It is the elaboration and significance of Tityrus' setting that I wish to consider here. In a few deft strokes Virgil's Meliboeus creates a landscape of the mind, intellectualizing what Theocritus had left as enticing framework for song and establishing a stylistic principle that proves a powerful influence on all the poet's subsequent creative efforts.
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References
1. The first eclogue has been most recently analyzed by Leach, E. W.Vergil’s Eclogues: Landscapes of Experience (Cornell, 1974Google Scholar), ch. 4 (‘Roman Realities and Poetic Symbolism in Eclogue 1’) who, as her title intimates, lays particular stress on the Roman specifics of the poem. I am particularly indebted to John Van Sickle for many conversations on pastoralism over many years and above all for the opportunity to read in manuscript those portions devoted to the first eclogue in his general critique of Vergil Arcadia and Orpheus in the Poetics of Virgil. It is to be hoped that his detailed analysis of the dialectic of the poem’s opening lines, the most percipient yet to be written, will soon be published.
2. On the importance of shade see Smith, P. L. ‘Lentus in umbra’, Phoenix 19 (1965), 298–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On echo as a fulfilling motif see Damon, P. ‘Modes of Analogy in Ancient and Medieval Verse’, UCalPCIPh 15 (1961), 261–334Google Scholar, esp. 281ff., for Virgil’s differences with Theocritus. Ancient concepts of shade are surveyed by Nováková, J.Umbra: Ein Beitrag zür dichterischen Semantik (Berlin, 1964Google Scholar). She deals with the end of eel. 1 on p. 35 (‘der alteste sichere Beleg’ of a mountain’s shadow in western literature).
3. Barrell, J., The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place (Cambridge, 1972), 17ff.Google Scholar, discusses in detail poetic techniques used to ‘compose’ landscape. Especially important for readers of the first eclogue is his treatment of the ‘high viewpoint’ which Thomson purposefully takes in The Seasons (pp. 15f., 24ff.). Differing landscapes are treated as metaphors for modes of thought by Wasserman, E.The Subtler Language (Baltimore, 1959Google Scholar), passim (esp. ch. 3 and 4 on Cooper’s Hill and Windsor Forest).
4. Perret, J.Virgile: Les Bucoliques (Paris, 1961), p. 23Google Scholarad loc.
5. John Van Sickle has called to my attention the time-honored association noted by Servius of beech trees and soft primitivism, a quasi-pastoral existence wherein nature’s productiveness fosters more leisure than labor for mankind. It is thus particularly apt that Tityrus, otiosus, should be shaded by a beech while Meliboeus, laboriosus in every sense, exposed to life’s glare, sees dulcia arva (‘sweet fields’) as his representative in landscape.
6. The second five line group, 6–10, also is based on a chiastic structure. Fecit (‘created’, 6) anticipates permisit (‘allowed’, 10) and ille mihi (‘he … for me’, 7) looks to ille meas (‘he … my’, 9). The center of this narcissism is the tender lamb often staining the altar dedicated to Tityrus’ young god, paralleling (ironically?) the position of exiled Meliboeus in the first lines.
7. Cf. Moschus 5. llff., Anyte A.P. 9. 313 = Anyte 16 (Gow-Page Hellenistic Epigrams), A.Pl. 228 = Anyte 18 (Gow-Page) as well as details of A.P. 9. 314 (= 17 Gow-Page) and A.PI. 291 (= 3 Gow-Page).
8. The Hesiod passage is imitated with curious directness by Alcaeus (frag. 347 L-P = 162P), as Page, D., Sappho and Alcaeus (Oxford, 1955), 303ff.Google Scholar, has shown. Didactic is absorbed into lyric by the translation of georgic labor into symposiastic relaxation, but much remains the same.
9. On the Phaedrus and pastoral landscape see Putnam, M.Virgil’s Pastoral Art (Princeton, 1970), p. 10Google Scholar and n. 11, for further bibliography.
10. The only use of recubo in the Eclogues and Georgics is at eel. 1. 1. The unique instance in Lucretius is 1. 38 where Mars is ‘reclining’, surrounded by calming Venus, a ‘mythical’ conjunction personifying those abstractions which govern the relationship of the Epicurean ‘garden’ to the world at large.
11. It is possible to adduce other examples in Latin letters of escape into the locus amoenus placed centrally. Perhaps the most á propos is found at lines 19–22 of Horace Odes 1. 1: est qui nee veteris pocula Massici nee partem solido demere de die spernit, nunc viridi membra sub arbuto stratus, nunc ad aquae lene caput sacrae. There is one who does not scorn goblets of old Massic nor to take a portion from the whole day, now with his limbs stretched under a green arbute, now at the gentle source of a holy fountain. Here too a stance of literal leisure is ideologically surrounded by more activist, competitive styles of life. There are verbal echoes of Lucretius 2. 29–33, though the presence of wine harks back to the Hesiodic tradition while sacredness is Theocritean and Virgilian as well. Stylistically the doublets ‘break up’ the poem as much as does the content, offering a choice of alternatives by contrast with the surrounding oppressively unidirectional existences. The passage shares much in tone and expression with georgic 3. 322–38 to be examined below.
12. For a detailed look at the changes see Bailey, C., ed., Titi Lucreti Cari de Rerum Natura (Oxford, 1947Google Scholar), ad loc.
13. I am grateful to Mr John Tulp for sharing with me his insights into Lucretius’ fifth book.
14. The context of this line also deals with Epicurean aloofness. Life is taken from enormous difficulties into quiet (5. 11–12): fluctibus e tantis vitam tantisque tenebris in tarn tranquillo et tarn clara luce locavit. From such great floods and such darkness he placed life in so untroubled and clear a light.
15. If we accept Lachmann’s emendation of dicta to docta, there may also be a direct influence of Lucr. 4. 579 (verba … docta referre) on ecl. 1. 5 (formosam resonare doces). See P. Damon ‘Modes of Analogy’, 286.
16. On Epicureanism as the philosophy which most complements and reflects ancient notions of pastoralism, see Rosenmeyer, T.The Green Cabinet (Berkeley, 1969Google Scholar), passim (e.g. llf., 42ff.). Traina, A. has treated in general the Epicureanism of the Eclogues (‘Si numquam fallit imago: Reflessioni sulle Bucoliche e l’epicureismo’, Atene e Roma 10 (1965), 72–78Google Scholar. For different and differing views on the specific philosophy behind the first eclogue cf. Pöschl, V.Die Hinendichtung Virgils (Heidelberg, 1964), 29fGoogle Scholar,; Galinsky, G. K. ‘Vergil’s second Eclogue’, C & M 26 (1965), 172ff.Google Scholar; E. W. Leach, op. cit., 126f., 139 and n. 37.
17. Is the young god at Rome, when he addresses Tityrus (45) – pascite ut ante boves, pueri; summittite tauros. Feed your cattle as before, youths; breed your bulls – being unobservant, ironic, or, stranger still, deliberately anachronistic? Certainly the reader is forced to question Meliboeus’ apostrophe, fortunate senex, which immediately follows.
18. ‘… the penalty of Adam / the seasons‘ difference’ (As You Like It 2.1.5–6).
19. In dealing with the notion of sacrifice Tityrus visualizes only one side of an ambiguous situation. For him sacrifice confirms the continuity of a new historical dispensation. His new stability reflects an ideal ordering, the result of the young god’s actions. Occasional loss of animal nature is facile counterbalance for grander societal ease and restructuring. But Virgil elsewhere marks banqueting on slaughtered cattle as a symbol of decline from a peaceful Saturnian to a bellicose Jovian age (caesis iuvencis, geo. 2. 537). It is no mischance that caesi invenci (‘slaughtered bullocks’) figure in the ceremony for Octavian that opens the third book of the Georgics (3. 23), and that Virgil likewise sees them as an essential concomitant of the festivities for Octavian’s triple triumph of 29 (Aen. 8. 719). And while Rome’s conquered world passes in detail before the triumphator the poet makes his own easy transition from animal sacrifice to human slavery.
20. The passage has much in common with Varro De re rustica 2. 2. 10–11 and comparison offers instructive illustration of Virgil’s originality. Re. Wilkinson, L. P.The Georgics of Virgil (Cambridge, 1969), llffGoogle Scholar.
21. The cicada supplies its vital music in the middle part of this tuneful day (328). On the beauty of its song see Theo. id. 1. 148; 5. 29 et al., and for its importance to the pastoral setting see Rosenmeyer, op cit., 134f.
22. One of the other rare mentions of the acalanthis is at Theo. id. 7. 141 quoted above, a passage Virgil may well have had again in mind.
23. I do not wish to imply that there is no difficulty, much less practicality, in Virgil’s view of nature here, but the voices are only gently disturbing. We are offered a realistic, georgic idyll rather than a more idealistic, pastoral sequestered vale. The most disruptive elements are the poet’s regular need to command, the occasional violence (rumpent arbusta cicadae, ‘cicadas rend the thickets’), the personification of mid-morning ‘collecting’ thirst, the implied presence of effort (ilignis canalibus, ‘oaken channels’). The last three are clustered as if to focus the day’s chief difficulties between dawn and noon.
24. For recent definitions of pastoral, see Lindenberger, A. ‘The Idyllic Moment: On Pastoral and Romanticism’, College English 34 (1972), 335–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 338, and Marx, Leo ‘Susan Sontag’s “New Left” Pastoral: notes on revolutionary pastoralism in America’, TriQuarterly 23/24 (1972), 552–75Google Scholar, esp. 562ff. From his title on I am indebted to the study of aspects of Renaissance pastoralism by Cody, R.The Landscape of the Mind (Oxford, 1969Google Scholar).
25. Alpers, P. develops the notion of contingency in the Eclogues in ‘The Eclogue Tradition and the Nature of Pastoralism’, College English 34 (1972), 355ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26. The lines in which Meliboeus describes himself have much in common with geo. 2. 510ff. save that there exile is chosen, not imposed. Servius comments on exsilio (511): ‘Voluntary, doubtlessly because of avarice’.
27. The interrelationship of these endings is sensitively discussed by Traina, A. ‘La chiusa de la prima egloga virgiliana,’ Lingua e Stile 3 (1968), 45–53Google Scholar, esp. 52f.
28. Those viewing with dispassion the negative side of Aeneas’ final act of killing Turnus could see him in part as impius and barbarus, impius because, in substituting private hatred for a broader clementia, he forgets his father’s behest to beat down the proud but spare the suppliant, barbarus because, whatever the fates propose, he is still the foreigner displacing or upsetting the native element.