VERGIL ECLOGUES EDITEDB Y ROBERTC OLEMAN FellEomwm aofn Cuoelll ege, Cambridge CAMBRIDGUEN IVERSIPTRYE SS CAMBRIDGE LONDON ·N EW YORK · MELBOURNE Publibsyht ehSde dicosft hCea mbriUdngiev ePrrsesist y CONTENTS yn TheP iBtuti ldTirnugm,p inSgttroeCnea tm,b riCBd2g reR P BentHloeuys 2e0,E0 u stRoona dL,o ndNoWnI2 DB 32E as5t7 tSht reNeetwY, o rNkY,1 002U2S,A Preface pagvei i 29B6e aconPsafirealMddie d,d Plaer Mke,l bou3rn2e0A 6u,s tralia Introduction I © CambriUdngiev ePrrsesi1st9 y7 7 1 Thpea stboefroaVerlre g il I LibroafCr oyn grceastsa lcoagrnudue m be7r6:- 16917 2 Thceh ronaonlador gyr angoeftm hEeecn lto gues 14 3 Vergsia lc'h ieavseap m aesnttpo oreatl 21 ISBoN 5 212 00822 h arcdo vers 4 Thtee xt 36 ISBoN 5 212 910o7 p aperback Notoeno rthography 37 Firpsutb li1s9h7ed7 P.V ERGILIM ARONISB VCOLICA 41 PrinitnGe rde Barti taatti hne Commentary 71 University Press, Cambridge Bibliognroatpeh ical 298 Index 301 [v] PREFACE Although the Eclogues have received a good deal of scholarly and critical attention in recent years, no Euglish commentary has been produced in this century nor - more surprisingly - does there exist in any language an edition as extensive as the present one. There is thus a real need, and I hope that I have been able to meet it. In the introduction I have confined my attention to general questions concerning the poems and their place in the history of the genre, the chronology and arrangement of the collection and the establishment of the text. The commentary is intended to cover everything that seemed to me relevant to the under standing and appreciation of the poet's words. Hence I have in many places preferred to summarize and adapt, sometimes tacitly correcting, information provided in standard lexicons and handbooks, rather than to cite the appropriate pages of such works and, with suitable caveats, leave the reader to hunt out for himself what he requires. The notes on each Eclogue include a brief final discussion of the poem as a whole. Autolycus is the patron of commentators, and I have seldom acknowledged explicitly my obligations to the writings of others, even when I have remembered what they are; nor have I indicated precisely whose opinions were being refuted in any given place. The reading list at the end of the volume does, however, include all the books and articles on Vergil and the pastoral to which I am aware of being most indebted. It also contains a representative sample of recent work on the subject, not all of which, I am bound to confess, is sympathetic to my own approach to the poems. Among personal debts my first is to the generations of students who have attended my lectures and classes on the Eclogues and on classical pastoral during the last seventeen years. Most of what is to be found in the following pages will [vii] viii PREFACE bef amitloit ahrei mn o nfoer mo ra not;hm eurcohf i th as INTRODUCTION benefifrtoemdt hecihra lleqnugeisnt,gei notnhsusainads m sympathetic Csaumgbgreiisdsatg niee o nnvsi.ap bllafeco er r.THE PASTORABLE FOREV ERGIL thset udoefnVte rtgodi ohl i wso rakn dIh avlee arnmeudc h Thep astmoyrtaihlts h cer eaotfia ho ing hcliyv iulribzsaeencln si­ ovetrhy ee afrrsoc mo nverswaittMihroL n.Ps .W ilkiannsdo n bil'iItii:ys· . ar ·e acatgiaoincn esrtt aasipneo cftt hsce u lta..u,rcel MrA .G .L eneo otn layb oVuetr gbiulat b oLuatt pione tirny geneMryaw lif.eD rD orotGh.Cy o lemhaanes n courmaeged mmoa:dtueoeiu eripnmis�a ailrr roz'uonerftmtb hercieeniiam fttm Mo yur:(smi aQil urdliuaransto ett .pt.ira c .Isa5nfh 5o nilr)osfoa.n onl' rgis u imn g inp erioofdd ess pondae.nnhcdey l pmeedb yc rititchiez ing foars imipnlneo caenncclca er esfproenet atnhehaietht ayls o usrtb an introducbtyis ohna rtaihnnbedgu rdofep nr oof-rOenaldyi ng. manl ootkots h ceo unatnriclyt w sa yo fl iwfhei,hc ehk noownsl ays thowsheoh avceo ntritbotu htsieesdr ciaeansp preciate hoawn o utsaindfder ro amd istaanncdce r,e aotueotsfi tam ytehm ­ mucIho wet ot hgee neral editoEr.Js K.,e nPnraeonyfd e ssor bodytihniegd ealhse s teheTakhtsii .sd ealiozfta l:t_treiu.os ln!i iifcse MrsP .E .E asterBleitnwget.eh net mh ehya vree moved many welplo rtrbaySy headk esipnthe eaD ruek es'pse eicnAh sY oLui kIet infeliocfip trieesse ntpartuinmoeundc, oh f m yv erbiage and2 .a1n tdh Kei ngs'osli lionHq euntyryh Sei xptt3h2 ,. T5h.et endency corremcotrfaeecd t ual ertrhoeoryus g ehtvthet arohn a vbee en oft huep pcelra stsoie dse acleirzteaa sipneo cfut rsb parno letarian expotsoeS.do mdee feacrbteos u ntdoh avees caepveedtn h eir liwfhei,ic nmh o detrinm heasos c casitoankoaelvnlea syr i mirloalre , scholvairgliyl- aacn ocmem entcaathnoa rr delxyp eoctth ers wanso utn knoewvnei nna ntiq(usiAetteyh ena1e2u.s5 36e). tod oa llh iwso rfko hri -ma ndI s hanlold ,o u,bc tomteo Thep astcoornacle pltiitkoherne o, m an'triectt uonr anrt uew'i th whiicithos f tceonn traisistn efodr,mte hdr ougbhyto huseto phisti­ regmryes tt ubborninnne osatsc ceptthienaigdr v ifcamero re catseedn sitbhipalrtio tdyui ctIe.tid sl lucsoinos'nii esnxt pso osnilnyg ofteni ntf haacIhnt a vdeo ne. thbee ssti doefa s hephleirafdne'id sn c onceiatlmsii nsge' 1r.I ite s Writaic nogm menitbsaor tyah c hasteannidan nig n struc­ conjuupra pe rs etty, fiicntwtihooi nocanhlme a wyeo srclfadrp oem tievxep eriOennctcehe we.o rikfs i nisohnfeeed ev,le srn ye arly three waolr nlodwa ntdh einni maginiaittsn i ooatnp ;r ogramme equiptpobe edg tihnte a spkr opeIrftl hyte.h intghsaI th ave fotrh ree foorrcm o nveorfst ihoawnto rld. itTshh uelsri etr toloem gorti gchatan s soitshtet roas m orceo mplreetaed oiftn hge se fotrh ree alpiosrttirocafc y oaulnl tirFfyoe tr.h wiesm uslto onkot to grepaote masn,dw haIth avgeo wtr oncga snt imutlhaetme thpea stoorTfah leso corriP toupbseu ttot hpeo etofrt yr uceou ntry­ top rogfruerststh heaIrhn a vbee eanb lteot ,h etnhl ea boaunrd menl iHkees ioorGd e orCgrea bwbheo,Vis lel aignfe a ccotn taani ns thdeo ubtthsah ta vgeo nwei tihtw ilnloh ta ve ibnev eani n. explpircoitateg satit nhspeta sttorraadli tion. Althotuhgeahrr ere e ferteosn hceepsh meursdisc'- maasek airnlgy EmmanuCeoll lege R.G.G.C. asH ome(rI l1ia8d. 52t5h-ee6a )r,l piaessttpo oreatlir nGy r eek October 15 1976 literiastt huwero er okf t hteh ird-cSeynrtaucrTuyhs eaonc ritus. Theo nlpyr edecmeesnstoirbosyna endc iaeunttha �rres m tyhteh ical SiciDliioamnau;ns Dd a ph2nT ihsTe.h eocrsictheoalnai cacsotusn't s ofi: hoer igoiftn hsge e nirnpe o pucluahlryt m ntsoA rte-mciosrn - 1A lexaPnodpDeeisr c oounpr asset poorae(lt 1ry7 §059r,)e prodtuhcei ng vieowFf o nteanneodlt lhceeo rn titnheenotrails ts. ·2 Athe1n4..9 -6ab1a nDdi od. 4.V8.4H1,.0 .A1e8l.i an [ I ] 2 INTRODUCTION 1. THE PASTORAL BEFORE VERGIL 3 plete with aetiological fables1 - are highly implausible when one motifs. The only attested parallels are with Theocritus' urban idylls: a: considers the predombantly secular character of much of the earliest th~ m~gic rites of Id. 2. and frarpnen t of Sophrori CP,age.G reek literary pastoral and the very mbor part played by the chaste goddess of the papyri1 .328ff.), th~ Siacusan wo~en at the Adonis~festival in Id. hunt in the devotional life of Arcady 2 in comparison with Pan, Apollo, and Herodas Mim. 4. • Hermes and Priapus, the patrons of country life and music, and the The singing competition, which is one of the recur~ent forms in the nymphs and muses, who inspire country song. Some modern scholars ' genre, seems to be a stylized derivative of actual country music-making. have detected in the epigrams ofTheocritus' contemporary Anyte of The test of wits involved in the amoebaean contest (Idd. 5, 6, 8, g), Tegea hints of an earlier Peloponnesian school of pastoral writing. with its requirement that the second singer must match the themes or But such pastoral motifs as appear occasionally in her poetry ( e.g. figures employed by the first, is widely paralleled in folk culture. The A.P. 9.313, Plan. 228) are a common feature of Hellenistic epigram use of refrains (ldd. r, 2), a familiar device in folk song, is probably ( e.g. A.P. 9.823, Plan. I 2). also popular in origin. While Theocritus may be credited with inventing the pastoral, it is The language of the herdsmen's conversation, though vivid and only in the work of his successors Moschus and Bion that it emerges animated, is on the whole refined, reflecting the urbanity of their as a distinctive genre, to become established iri:Latiri in the work of creator. They even show, occasionally, some surprising pieces of V e_rgil, Calp~nius, tge anon 1mous author of the two E~i~eln literary erudition; e.g. Id. 3.40-51, where the goatherd is admittedly Ec.logues and Nemesianus. The pastorals ofTheocritus in fact form a showing off, and 5.150, where Morson dearly is not. There are loosely knit group within the collection of thirty Id ylls3 that have been colloquial touches, it is true, notably in Idd. 4, 5 and I o, though not on traditionally attributed to him. Nevertheless they established defini the scale of the urban mime Id. 14 or of the l•Aimiamboi of Herodas, tively much of the formal and thematic character of the later pastoral where the sustained colloquialism brings a coarse verisimilitude to the tradition. low urban world that he patronizingly depicts. Even so the coarse The short dramatic form - sometimes a dialogue, complete in itself language of Id. 4 was explicitly condemned by the seventeenth-century (4) or combined with a singing display (5, 10, also 7, where it is given critics, Rapin and Fontenelle. 1 a narrative framework), sometimes a reported monologue (3, 1 r) - is The Doric dialect, which Theocritus established for Greek pastoral, also found in the urban idylls (2, 15). It clearly owes much to that is often praised for its naturalness and simplicity. Dryden in his other specifically Sicilian invention, the mime, which is represented Dedication to the Pastorals (Works ed. Scott-Saintsbury 12, 323-4) even for us by the meagre fragments of the fifth-century Epicharmus and declares that 'the boorish dialect of Theocritus has a secret charm in Sophron and by the Mimiamboi ofTheocritus' contemporary Herodas. it which the Roman language cannot imitate'. But that dialect is in The. ancient references to the mime however give no hint of pastoral fact .a highly artificial synthesis of Doric forms belonging to different districts and periods with occasional Ionic ·and even Aeolic usages. In 1 See Scholia in Theocritum Vetera (Wendel) I-I3 and for the corresponding this · respect it is like all Greek literary dialects, including Herodas' Latin accounts r3-22. Ionic. Its affinities are not primarily with any spoken dialect but with 2 'Arcady' is used for the setting of the pastoral myth throughout this literary Doric, as exemplified in choral lyric poetry from Aleman and introduction, though it is not found in this sense before Vergil. See Eel. Stesichorus onwards. 2 To the stylized evocation of Sicilian or Coan 7·4Jl· 3 The Greek wordeidullion 'a little scene' 'a miniature form (of poetry)' - 1 Cf. Boileau's censure of the pastoral idiom of Ronsard who 'abject en the precise meaning is obscure- does not occur before Pliny (Ep. 4.r4.9). son langage I fait parler ses bergers comme on parle au village' (L' Art Of the twelve pastoral Idylls (1, 3-I r, 20, 27) only the first ten were included poetique2 .r7-r8) a judgement which Theocritus would not perhaps have in the Pastoral canon known to Servius (Buc.prooem. 3.21). Two of the ten been much inclined to dissent from. (8, 9) together with 20 and 27 are nowadays generally ack.;owledged to be 2 Elsewhere in the Idylls it is used for the mime of The fishermen (21), post-Theocritean. urban mimes (2, 14, 15), heroic and mythological pieces (18, 19, 26) and 4 INTRODUCTION 1. THE PASTORAL BEFORE VERGIL 5 rusticity is thus added a lyric dimension appropriate to the dream-like Hellenistic erotic poetry than with pastoral. The poem is in fact a world of the pastoral. The association of literary genres with distinct literary manifesto. Indeed the Idylls as a whole can be seen as another dialects of the language - usually those of their earliest exponents manifestation of the development of literary forms kata lepton 'on a was a notable, perhaps unique, feature of classical Greek literature. 1 small scale' to use Callimachus' own phrase (Aet. fr. I. rr P£) in Attempts to recapture something of the effect of the Doric of Greek conscious reaction against full-scale epic writing. The pastoral was pastoral in other languages - whether by translators or imitators - '7) always kata lepton: Theocritus' longest pastoral (Id. has r57 lines, have for the most part proved disastrous. SamuelJohnson's censure Vergil's (Eel. 3) III lines, Calpurnius' (Eel. 4) r69 lines. The hexa (/?.amblern o. 37, 1750) on Spenser's Shepheardesc alendarf or its medley meter became the regular metre of Greek and Latin pastoral, 1 and in of 'obsolete terms and rustic words', 'a mangled dialect which no the Bian( anonymous Lament for 7 r .:_84) not only is Bion accorded a human being could have spoken', could equally well be applied to status equal to Homer but the themes of pastoral are extolled in Theocritus. Indeed Dryden (op.c it. 325) believed Spenser to have rivalry to those of traditional epic: 'exactly imitated the Doric of Theocritus'. Johnson's comment 'Both poets were the favourites of fountains; one drank from the illustrates the great difference between the linguistic conventions that spring of Pegasus, the other took his drink fwm Arethusa. The were acceptable within the two literary traditions. former sang of Tyndareus' fair daughter and the mighty son of More surprisingly, Theocritus adopted for both_ his pastoral and other Idyfls2 notth e ia;;,.bic metre traditionally associated with dia Thetis and Menelaus son of Atreus; but the theme of this poet's th~ music was not wars and tears but Pan. With the clear voice of the logue in drama and the mime but the dactylic hexameter, which herdsman he sang as he pastured his herds, he fashioned pipes and was long established in the higher literary genres of epic, cult-hymn milked the placid cows; he .taught the delights of boys' kisses, and didactic poetry, as represented among Theocritus' contemporaries nursed Eros in his arms and roused Aphrodite herself.' by Apollonius' Argonautica, Callimachus' llymns and Aratus' Phaeno mena respectively. Indeed Id. 22 is in the form of a cult-hymn and r 3, The attractions of the countryside to disillusioned urban man were 24, 25 are short occasional narrative poems on subjects from heroic of course recognized in earlier Greek literature, e.g. Eur. Hipp. 73-87, mythology of the kind favoured by Callimachus and his associates. Plato Phdr. ·23od, where Socrates expressly rejects them. The Bac That Theocritus belonged to this circle is indicated by Id. 7, where chants' cult represented a temporary periodic revolt against the con Lycidas after praising Philitas and 'Sicelidas' expresses some very straints of civilization, but its orgiastic flights were to wild nature, not Callimachean sentiments on poetry (39-48), and the songs of both to the inhabited countryside. Nevertheless their thiasosd id confer upon Lycidas and Simichidas (52-89, 96-127) have more in common with initiates a sense of belonging for a time to a community set apart and erotic narrative (23). Of these 19, 2r, 23 are post-Theocritean. The use of when the rites were over - a serene and joyous feeling of being in Doric in 18 and 26 may be intended to relate these poems to the treatment sympathetic communion with nature, which have much in common of such themes in choral lyric. Both Moschus (Europa) and Bion (Adonis) with. the mood of the herdsmen in Arcady. But in the classical city employed Doric in mythological poems. 1 Hence the choice of dialects in the non-pastoral Idylls is not whimsical. state town and country were closely in contact, and it is not till the The Ionic of the two heroic poems (22, 25) relates them to the tradition of growth of the large metropolitan complexes of the Hellenistic period epic narrative and the 'Homeric' hymn. In Id. 12 the same dialect places that they were sufficiently dissociated to admit the idealization of the theme in the tradition of Ionian elegy and epigram. In Id. 13 the Doricized Ionic may be intended to give pastoral colour to the myth; in Id. 1 Quintilian, while noting the distinctively pastoral mood ofTheocritus' 24 and the two patronage poems (r6, 17) it contributes an appropriate verses, places him among the Hellenistic epic and didactic poets (ro.1.55; Pindaric colour to the 'epic' contexts. The Aeolic of Idd. 28-30 evokes the cf. 'Longinus' Sublim. 33). S~iµs however assigns the pastoral to the personal and especially erotic character of Aeolian lyric. humile genus (Bue.p rooem. I. 16-2.5; cf. Hermog. Id. 2.3), clearly distinguishing ill • Ex_c~:r!.§,w hich is part!~ el~i::s, and 23:-30, in Aeolic. metres. the Eclogues from the grandiloquusc haractero f the Aeneid. 6 INTRODUCTION 1. THE PASTORAL BEFORE VERGIL 7 rustic life that characterizes the pastoral. In the generations im bucolicum carmen originem ducere a priscis temporibus, quibus uita pastoralis mediately preceding Theocritus tc'i.el onging for a lost simplicity and exercita est et idea uelut aurei saeculi speciem in huiusmodi personarum simpli naturalness had found expression in the Cynic philosophy. Although citate cognosci (Vit. Verg. 240-4). 1 Cynicism has at first sight little in common- with-pastoral, they both But the myth of the pastoral is brought close to the present day. For share a rejection of civilized constraints on natural behaviour and an although the poems are often set in the past, it always! seems a recent acceptance of anarchy in human society. An even closer affinity with past, so that we have the persistent illusion of a world that is per pastoral can be found in the philosophy of Theocritus' older contem manently 'there', timeless and unchanging. Moreover, it is often porary Epicurus, who preached 'tranquillity' and ataraxia, 'freedom given a geographical location - Sicily, South Italy, or Cos in Greek from disturbance', and with his disciples withdrew from the world pastoral, Arcadia in Vergil's later pastorals and in much of the subse into the idyllic seclusion and frugal simplicity of 'the garden~. In quent history of the genre. In this way it is related to the real world Seneca's definition of Epicurean uoluptas (Ben. 4.13.r) the phrases but in a way that is so vague in its specification and so remote from the sub densa umbra latitare and intra hortorum latebram recall the secluded environment of the reading public as to be immune to the intrusion of otium of the pastoral 'green shade'. It may not be coincidental that grimmer realities from the more accessible countryside. In more when Vergil forsook philosophy for literature, he passed from recent times U topias have generally been situated in the world but at a the idyllic world of Siro's Epicurean hortus to that of pastoral safe distance: the Indies or Ceylon in sixteenth- and seventeenth poetry. century European literature, the South Sea Islands in the eighteenth The literary tradition provides evidence for the survival of an older, and nineteenth. Sicily and South Italy were often disrupted by war in mythological concept that is important in the formation of the Theocritus' own time ( cf. Id. r 6. 76-97), but they were a long way from 704- pastoral. In Euripides' description ofthe.Maenads in repose (Ba. readers in Cos or Alexandria. r r) and in Lucretius' setting for the Epicurean life of primitive man The pastoral landscape is always idyllic. The herdsmen may some (5.1379-96) there are details that belong to traditional accounts of timet~peak of the excesses of summer heat and winter cold but the the Golden Age. Many mythological traditions preserve a belief that prevailing season seems always to be early summer or spring 'the in the remote past, before the invention of agriculture, the use of fairest season of the year' (Eel. 3.57), and the immediate setting always metals and the building of cities and ships, men lived in an age of a locus amoenus with shady rocks and leafy trees rustling in the breeze, peaceful anarchy and innocent ease, sustained by the spontaneous the sound of cicadas and bees among the shrubs, a cool spring and a fruits of the earth. The Golden_Age first appears in Greek literature in stream flowing through lush flowery meadows. The delights of shade , Hesiod's Works and days 169-r g. Most of its characteristic features are in summer heat were familiar enough to ordinary countrymen; familiar to English readers from Gonzaio's commonwealth in Shake circiter meridianos aestus, says Varro (R. 2.2.r r) in his account of the speare Tempest 2.r. Varro R. 2.r.4-5 cites Dicaearchus for the view herdsman's day, dum deferuescant, sub umbriferas rupes et arbores patulas that the Golden Age was succeeded by a pastoral culture, when men subigunt [ sc. greges] quoad refrigeratur. The locus amoenus itself as a literary first tamed animals but had not yet learnt the corrupting habits of them(c _has a long history from Homer onwards. It is always an in commerce and city life.1 Hence the idealized picture of the herdsman's habited landscape, 2 a setting for the activity or repose of gods and life in the pastoral easily incorporated features of the Golden Age 1 Cf. Pope's definition of the pastoral (Discourse§ 5), 'an image of what myth, and Donatus could justly assert that illud erit probabilissimum they call the Golden Age; so that we are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this day really are, but as they may be conceived then to have 1 In Hebrew mythology similarly tlie pastoral stage intervenes between been; when the best of men follow'd the employment'. the expulsion from the Garden and the building of cities: Abel 'tlie feeder of 2 Praise of the countryside ultimately became a poetic common-place (c f. sheep' is murdered by his brother Cain 'the tiller of the ground', who subse Persius Sat; r.70--1) and its ingredients codified in the rhetorical schools (see quently builds tlie first city (Genesis 2 and 4.2, 8, 17). Libanius 1.517, §200). However the description of natural beauty as an 8 INTRODUCTION 1. THE PASTORAL BEFORE VERGIL 9 men, but one which like the Golden Age has a dream-like quality that the beauties and comforts of the countryside, the pleasures of music sets it apart from the ordinary world of experience. Three instances and the joys and sorrows of love. All three are brought together in will suffice to illustrate its functional range. H:omer's idyllic account various combinations in the singing contest of Id. 8. of Calypso's island ( Od. 5.63-84) is contrasted with the picture of the The representation of a sympathetic correspondence between ex hoinesick Odysseus alone on the shore, weeping as he gazes out over ternal nature and the events for which it provides the setting is of the sea. In O.C. 668-92 the Sophoclean chorus extol the serene beauty course widespread in ancient literature; e.g. the opening scene of of Colonus, where the wandering Oedipus is destined at last to find [Aesch.] P. V., Soph. Phil. 1453-68, and Vergil A. 4.r60-72. The peace and a refuge from the world. Ovid's exquisite account of sympathetic bond that links the Arcadian landscape, its inhabitants Diana's bathing-place (M. 3.r55-64) serves to heighten the subse and their music is often noted: quent pathos of Actaeon's unwitting intrusion. 1 'Pleasant is the whisper of the pine tree over there beside the spring, In the pastoral there are few passages of extended landscape des friend goatherd, and pleasant too is your piping' (Id. 1.r-3). scription: the picture is built up gradually from details scattered incidentally in the course of the poem. But the evocation of the locus It gives added point to a characteristic pastoral figure, the rustic amoenus here too is never gratuitous. It provides the appropriate analogy: setting for making music, e.g. Idd. r.r2-r4, 5.3r-4. Even the most 'Cicada is dear to cicada, ant to ant and hawk to hawk, but to me ela_borate Theocritean landscape (Id. 7.r35-46), though it forms the it is the Muse and Song' (Id. 9.31-2). setting for a harvest celebration, comes at the end of a singing con test. 2 We are often made aware - at the beginning or end of a poem, Nature-comparisons are of course common in Greek literature from in the incidental dialogue, even (as in Id. 5) within the formal songs Homer onwards; but ti':tea ccumulation of parallels and the homeliness themselves - of the workaday world of the herdsmen apart from their of some of the detail - both illustrated in this example - suggest that music-making. Nevertheless music occupies a central place in the figure may have affiliations with popular poetry. Much more im Arcadian life; it is the social activity to which the herdsmen instinc portant: the Arcadian symbiosis provides an appropriate context for tively turn whenever they gather together with their flocks in the cool the sympathy figure, in which surrounding nature is portrayed as re shade; it is their chief, almost their only, artistic pursuit. For the flecting the emotions and moods of its human inhabitants: carved cup in Id. I is an import (56-8), the cups in Eel. 3 the work of 'Everywhere that Nais roams there is spring and pastures, every Alcimedon (37, 44), whose name is otherwise unknown to pastoral. where milk flows forth from the udders and the young are nourished. The pastoral herdsman in his ideal landscape is ex officio a poet and the But if ever she departs, the cattle and the cattle-herd alike waste traditional image of the poet as shepherd (Res. Th. 22-3) is now away' (Id. 8.45-8). reversed. It is very un-Arcadian of Meliboeus in Calpurnius Eel. 4.19-28 to reprimand Corydon for neglecting his rustic tasks in order The 'fallacy' of the figure, which is explicitly remarked in Nemesia to make music. nus' Eel. 2 (44-52, after 27-36), may be intended to show the naivety The formal songs of the herdsmen are dominated by three themes - of the herdsmen. But it is found in other poetic genres. In erotic independent self-contained poetic subject is perhaps not found before poetry a complex version of it appears as early as Ibycus (fr. 286P ap. Tiberianus' Amnis and Asmenius' Adeste Musae. Athen. r3.601b). The 'Where'er you walk' variant ofit, illustrated 1 To these may be added Plato Phdr. 229-30 and Luer. 5.1379-96 just now, recalls a motif traditionally associated with the blessings referred to earlier. conferred by a god or goddess (e.g. Callim. H. 3.129-35). In the 2 Music-making in the country is a common theme in Hellenistic epigram; e.g. Plato App. Plan. 13, Nicaenetus ap. Athen. 15.673b, Meleager A.P. pastoral itself it becomes so stylized as to rule out any suggestion of the 9.363. singers' naivety. INTRODUCTION 1. THE PASTORAL BEFORE VERGIL 11 10 The consolations of music in Arcady were to become a permanent The concept oflove in the pastoral seems at times crude and super theme of later pastoral. So too was the alienation of the lover, which ficial: a relationship that is almost wholly sensual, casually entered is the antithesis of the sympathetic relation between man and idyllic into with partners of both sexes (for like the lyric and elegiac traditions nature in Arcady. It is hinted at here in the Cyclops? neglect of the of erotic poetry the pastoral accepted bisexuality as no~al a~d flocks in which he takes such pride, and more fully ell!,borated in the natural) and no less casually terminated. In Id. 4.38-44 Battus 1s easily consoled for the death of his Amaryllis, and the easy promiscuity dis preceding Idyll. For in Id. IO Bucaeus' alienation is two-fold: his played in the coarse exchanges of Id. 5 recurs even in the charming 'starveling love' (57) for Bombyca has distracted him from the work of the harvest, and the love-song that he sings to cure the affiiction is, Id. 27, whose form and mood, if not its outcome, has much in common incidentally with the mediaeval pastourelle. Where a lover's constancy as his friend points out, a high-flown piece quite unfitted for his station. is depicted, it is usually in terms of the pain and sorrow that it causes: The homely edifying verses that Milon offers as a model, reminiscent of the closing pages of Hesiod's Works and Days, come dangerously a discordant note in the idyllic world of Arcady. The rejected goatherd of Id. 3 is a ludicrous and comic figure, as he close, like old Canthus' song in Galp. Eel. 5, to exploding the fragile sings his futile serenade outside Amaryllis' cave. The poem is a parody illusion of Arcady. It may however be no accident that the context of the paraklausithuron 'the address to the closed door', which belongs here is agricultural, not pastoral, and Bucaeus' status as 'a working to the comic and elegiac tradition (e .g. Aristoph. Eccl. 952ff., Plaut. man who toils in the sun', stressed at the beginning and end, mark Cure. 147ff., Callim. A.P. 5.23, Tib. 1.2.5-14), and exposes the him off from the Arcadian herdsmen. The lover's dissociation from essential absurdity of the slighted suitor's predicament. In Id. 20 by the normal pattern oflife and the inspiration to music that his passion contrast the rejected goatherd is vaunting and vindictive. In Id. 7 brings him certainly provide a link with the elegiac tradition; cf. Lycidas' address to Ageanax is in the form of a propemptik6n or 'fare Prop. 1.r.6, 2.r.4. w~li poem' familiar from the elegiac and lyric genres; e.g. Callim. fr. Erotic themes are even more prominent in the fragments of Theo- 400 Pf., Prop. 1.8, Hor. C. 1.3. It is lightened by thoughts of the boy's critus' successors, and Bion proclaims explicitly (fr. g) J"oyous home-coming but the good wishes are strictly conditional. The 'if ever a man sings who has not love in his soul, the Muses slink competing song from Simichidas is about Aratus' unrequited love for away and refuse to instruct him; but if anyone whose mind is the boy Philinus. stirred by Eros makes sweet music, then they all come thronging The most famous of Theocritus' love-poems is Id. I 1, an exquisite to him in a great rush'. blend of the comic and pathetic. Polyphemus' playful affair with Galatea was the subject of the singing competition in Id. 6, but now This is the voice of Hellenistic epigram rather than pastoral, and a the Cyclops' emotions are far more deeply engaged; the monster number of the fragments find their closest parallels in the Anthology: shepherd is mellowed, his grosser physical and mental characteristics the poet's encounter with Eros (Bion fr. 3 and ro) and the character purged away; he has become an Arcadian and love has inspired him sketches of the malicious young god (Masch. Id. 1, and his epigram, to undreamt-of powers of Arcadian song. His serenade to the sea Plan. 200, Bionfr. 13 and 14), though they have their precedent in the nymph is offered by Theocritus to his physician-friend as a model of fable of Cupid and the Bees, [Th.] Id. 1g , have much more in common the 'medicine of the Muses', by which the disappointed lover can ' with the sequence of epigrams in A.P. 5 beginning with Meleager's r 76 soothe his sorrow. Theocritus' finest study of rejected love, Id. 2, is not and 177.1 The address to Hesperus in Bion fr. II belongs with the in the pastoral genre. So it is the singing Cyclops, already portrayed 'nocturnal serenade' - or komos-epigrams, in particular Meleager in a dithyramb of Philoxenus (Plut. Mor. 622c), who now becomes the 1 The relative chronology of the =amples here, as elsewhere, is less im pastoral exemplar of the rejected lover; as in Bion fr. 16, [Bion] 2.1-3 portant for our purpose than the occurrence of the theme in the two separate (cf. Callim. A.P. 12.150). genres. 12 INTRODUCTION l. THE PASTORAL BEFORE VERGIL 13 a subject from traditional mythology; but, characteristically, atten A.P. 5.191. Unless the surviving extracts are wholly untypical, it seems tion is concentrated less on the image of the dead shephertl, pathetically that both Moschus and Bion intensified the Theocritean bias towards drawn though it is, than on the grief of the love-stritken goddess. the exploration of the pains and sorrows of love, a universal literary Bion fr. r suggests that the death of Hyacinthus mky have been theme to be sure but one that finds an especially poignant context in treated si."ID.larlyi n that poem. In the anonymous LamJntfor Bion the the idyllic world of Arcady. theme finds yet a further dimension, applied as it is to rie death of a The other melancholy note in the pastoral is that of untimely death. real person. A long tradition was thus initiated, which lasted into the The extinction of youthful promise like the sorrows of love is a peren nineteenth century, with Shelley's Adonais and Arnold;s Tkyrsis; but nial motif of folk-literature. In the traditional mythology it is linked in the Hellenistic exemplar the fact that the dead poet is a pastoralist symbolically with the cycle of nature's brief season of fertile beauty enables the pastoral colour and the imagery of nature in mourning, through such figures as Attis, Linus and Adonis. The link is already elaborated superbly from hints in Id. r, to be sustained with a homo implicit in Homer's comparison of the dying Gorgythion to a poppy geneity that is uniquely appropriate. The analogy between the bent by the spring winds (Il. 8.306-7). But in the pastoral this theme brevity of nature's beauty and the fragility of human life is here broken, finds an appropriately pathetic setting. The pastoral landscape is once and for all: depicted at its fairest season and peopled by herdsmen and women in the flower of their youth. In fact older characters rarely intrude and 'Alas, when the mallows die away in our gardens and the green are never in the foreground: e.g. the absent Aegon (Id. 4.4), the old parsley and exuberant dill with its curly leaves, they live and grow fisherman on the cup (Id. r .39). Moreover traditional mythology had again for another year; but we men, tall and strong as we are and filled the countryside with monuments to the pathos of love and the wise too, once we are dead, lie there in the hollowed earth un extinction of youth in the metamorphoses of Daphne, Syrinx, Hyacin hearing, in a long sleep that ha~ no end and no awakening' (99- thus, Adonis ... These are seldom explicitly alluded to in pastoral; e.g. 104). Mosch. fr. 3 (Alpheus andArethusa), Bionfr. r, Lamentfor Bion 37-43; Pastoral consolation is thus darkened by a note of sombre pessimism but they provided for the reader brought up in the mythological tradi that was to have its definitive utterance in Horace's spring Odes tion of literature resonances that the pastoral poet could tacitly (C. r.4, 4.7). exploit. With Theocritus the range of pure pastoral had been defined in its The two themes of the sorrows of love and untimely death come form, figures and subject matter. The melancholy vein that has together in one ofTheocritus' finest poems, Id. r, where Thyrsis sings characterized the whole European tradition is already there in the a dirge for the master poet and herdsman Daphnis. The precise cir sorrows of love - most finely depicted in Idd. r o and r r - and of un cumstances ofDaphnis' suffering are not made explicit. (In Id. 7. 72-7 timely death - in Id. r. In Id. r o the setting is already subtly widened it is the love ofXenea that causes his death.) But his status as a pastoral beyond the strictly pastoral way of life in a manner that Vergil was to hero1 is underlined by his Promethean silence at the advent of the three exploit far more boldly. In Id. 7 the genre is brought into relation with deities, the Hippolytan defiance of his final taunts to Aphrodite and other modes of poetic creation and the literary controversies in which the fact that all nature mourns for him. In Bion's Lament for Adonis the pastoral colour and some of its Theocritus and his friends were involved, but in a manner that risks turning the pastoral setting into a mere framework for other forms of characteristic figures are employed, as in Theocritus' Hylas (Id. r 3), on poetry - as it has already become in the fragment of 'M yrson and 1 For his prowess as musician and cattleherd see Idd. 5.80, 8.81-7 and Lycidas' ([Bion] 2: The Epithalamium ef Achilles and Deidameia). The A.P. 9.433. In ldd. 6, 8, 9, 27 he appears as a typical Arcadian. Both Diodorus extension of the genre to traditional mythological subjects, as in Bion's and Aelian (see p. r n. 2) make him the inventor of pastoral. See Eel. Adonis and Moschus' Europa, whose opening is rich in pastoral colour, 5.20n.