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OBSERVATIONS.

Date. This eclogue was probably composed after the second, as the poet mentions it after that eclogue. See v. 86, 87. It was certainly composed after he had become known to Pollio.

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Subject. The subject is a contest in amœbæic song between two swains, after some previous sparring. He imitates, as in the second eclogue, some of the Idylls of Theocritus, particularly the fourth and fifth.

In the second eclogue Virgil gave an example of monœdic extempore verse. He here gives one of the amœbæic kind. The principle of these amœbæic contests was, that one of the parties, generally he who was challenged, should commence in any measure and with any number of verses he chose, and the other was bound to follow him in the same measure and with the same number of verses on the same or a similar subject. The first then, still keeping to the same measure and number of verses, either continued the same subject or changed to another, and his rival was bound to follow him; and they thus went on till they either stopped of themselves or were desired to stop by the person whom they had selected as judge.

It is not easy to say whether Theocritus, or the mimographers whom he followed, have given us in these compositions a transcript from nature, and that such rural contests were common among the shepherds of Sicily at that time. We believe that we may assert with confidence that no such practice prevails at the present day in either Greece or Italy; but Riedesel, a German traveller quoted by Voss (on v. 58), tells us that the Sicilian shepherds still, as in the days of Theocritus, contend with one another in improvised song, and that the prize is a scrip or a staff. A learned Italian friend, who was born and spent the greater part of his life in the kingdom of Naples, and who is himself a poet of no mean order, told us, when we consulted him on the subject, that he had often heard that the shepherds in Sicily, and even in Tuscany, did thus contend in extemporary strains, but that he had never witnessed any of these contests. He once, he says, was pre

sent on the Mole at Naples, at a contest in verse between two of the popular poets. They accompanied their strains with the guitar, and gave them out for improvised, but in his opinion they had previously arranged them. We are also told *, on the authority of an English traveller named Cleghorn, that these extemporary poetic contests might be witnessed among the peasantry of the island of Minorca. We must however confess that this evidence does not quite satisfy us. If the practice was so common, we should probably have heard more about it; and it is very remarkable that nothing of this kind occurs in the writings of Meli, the modern bucolic poet of Sicily, who, if such contests were of frequent occurrence among the shepherds of his native isle, could hardly have failed to give a specimen of them in his eclogues and idylls.

The custom of playing and singing together, as given by Theocritus and Virgil, may be illustrated by the following usage of the present day. In the cities of Rome and Naples, and other towns, may be seen, from the end of November till Christmas, persons who go about playing and singing before the images of the Virgin and Child.† These are peasants from the Apennines, who from motives of piety or profit make these annual descents. They always go in pairs: one plays on the zampogna or bagpipes, which resembles the Highland pipes, and is like them filled with the mouth, but does not scream, being of a graver tone; the other plays on the cennamella, a rustic clarionet of moderate compass. They stop before an image in the street, or sometimes in a house, and after a prelude on both instruments, the player on the cennamella stops and sings a devout stanza to the Virgin, accompanied by the zampogna. He then resumes his instrument, and the two perform the prelude to the next stanza, and so on. But their verses are not extemporary; they are all popular ones, which the singer has learned by heart. Setting aside the zampogna,

* Sulzer, Allgem. Theorie der Schönen Kunste, ii. 58; quoted by Harles on Theocr. v. 80.

Miss Taylor, in her very elegant "Letters from Italy" (i. 218), notices this practice.

we have here a parallel to the manner in which the shepherds in Theocritus and Virgil play and sing.

Characters.-The Lacon and Cometas of Theocritus' fifth idyll, which our poet here chiefly follows, are, as we are expressly informed, both slaves. We may therefore safely assume such to be the condition of the Damoetas and Menalcas of Virgil. The former, like the latter, stake members of their flocks on the issue of the contest, and this seems to be in unison with the usages of the ancients. In Longus' pastoral Lamon, the reputed father of Daphnis, is only a slave, and yet Daphnis appears to have unlimited power of making presents and offering sacrifices out of the flock of goats of which he has the charge. It seems only to have been required of the goatherd (and the same was of course the case with the shepherd), that his flock should increase at a reasonable rate. In making shepherds and goatherds lay calves for a wager, the poet we think errs against propriety. He was probably led into this error by keeping too close to his original, for we have a neatherd only in Theocritus' third, and a neatherd and shepherd in his eighth idyll. It may be here remarked that we meet with no neatherds in the Bucolics. The simple reason perhaps is, that armentarius, the Latin term answering to the Greek Bovkóλos, could only be used in the nominative in verse, as in Geor. iii. 344, and was besides too long and ponderous a word.

Scenery.-The scene is laid in a region where there are beech-trees (v. 12), vineyards (10), marshes (20), streams and meads (111). It is probably ideal. We must observe, that the various rural objects mentioned in the amœbæic verses give no aid in determining the scene of the contest; for these verses are to be regarded as the spontaneous creations of the imagination of the contending swains. It may however be supposed that they took their images from the scenery with which they were surrounded.

49

ECLOGUE IV.-POLLIO.

ARGUMENT.

In this Eclogue the poet assumes a higher strain and sings the return of the Golden Age, which he makes to take place in his own days. See the Observations.

NOTES.

1-3. Sicelides Musae, i.e. pastoral or bucolic Muses, namely those who inspired the Sicilian Theocritus, or as Voss thinks the pastoral poets who preceded him in that island. Sicelides is a Greek form from Zikeλía, the Greek name answering to the Latin Sicilia.-paulo majora, sc. carmina, somewhat greater than those I have hitherto made.-2. Non omnes, etc. Pastoral poetry is not to the taste of every one. arbusta, simply trees: see on i. 40. Voss as usual would restrict this word to the trees that supported the vines.-myricae. The Greek myrica is the Latin tamarix, the tamarisk.-3. Si canimus, etc. if we do sing the woods (if we keep to pastoral poetry), let it be in such elevated strains as may be worthy of a consul's ear. Voss makes an over-refined distinction between the arbusta and myricae and the silvas, making the former signify the humble, the latter the elevated style of pastoral poetry. He therefore adopts the reading of sunt for sint in v. 3.—Consule, sc. Pollio, see v. 12.

4-7. Ultima, etc. The last age of the world (i. e. the Iron) sung in the verses of the Cumaean Sibyl has come and is drawing to its conclusion, and a new circuit of the ages of the world is about to commence. For the Sibyls and the Ages of the World see Excursus IV.-5. Magnus saeclorum ordo, i. e. the Magnus Annus. Saeclum answers to the yévos of Hesiod; Lucretius often uses it in this sense. -integro. The second syllable is long, as in juvat integros accedere fontes, Lucr. i. 926; integris opibus, Hor. S. ii. 2,

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113.-6. Jam redit, etc. when Saturn reigned, and the Virgin Justice abode among men.-7. Jam nova, etc. He has here perhaps in view the Platonic notion of the descent of souls from heaven to animate bodies on earth. In the Hesiodic narrative it is simply said that the gods made each successive generation.-demittitur, like redit, in the present tense to denote the immediate future.

The Golden Age is now returning,

8-10. nascenti puero, sc. the son of Pollio.-quo, with whom or in whom, that is, at whose birth.-primum, first, because, as we shall see, the renewed Golden Age was to come on gradually.-9. gens aurea, the golden race of men, the Xpúσeov yévos of Hesiod.-mundo. The Latin mundus, like our equivalent term world, sometimes signified the complex of earth, air and sky, (compare Milton, P. L. ii. 1052.) sometimes merely the earth, as here. See Hor. C. iii. 3, 53: Ov. Trist. iv. 4, 83; Lucan, i. 160.-10. Lucina. The Roman Juno Lucina, who presided over birth, was a totally distinct deity from the moon-goddess Diana, for the Italian religion does not seem to have held a connexion between the moon and birth. As the Greeks had united Artemis and Ilithyia, or rather perhaps as they were originally identical, the Latin poets gave to their Diana (i. e. Artemis) the office of Lucina. Apollo was the brother of Artemis, that is of Diana, and he was at this time held to be the same as the Sun. There is considerable difficulty about this reign of Apollo. As regnat is in the present tense, it should, like the preceding nascitur and redit, denote the immediate future, and refer to the Golden Age about to commence. But Saturn, according to Hesiod, was then to reign. Nigidius (De Diis), as quoted by Servius, says, "Quidam deos et eorum genera temporibus et aetatibus (sc.assignant), inter quos et Orpheus, primum regnum Saturni, deinde Jovis, tum Neptuni, inde Plutonis; nonnulli etiam, ut magi, aiunt Apollinis fore regnum." Servius then adds, that the Sibyl declared the last age to be that of the Sun. He also supposes an allusion to Augustus, whose likeness to and regard for Apollo is known, but which last he does not appear to have shown at the time when this eclogue was written.

11-14. Decus hoc aevi, i. q. hoc decorum (praeclarum)

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