Eclogue 7

Eclogue 7 (Ecloga VII; Bucolica VII) is a poem by the Latin poet Virgil, one of his book of ten pastoral poems known as the Eclogues. It is an amoebaean poem in which a herdsman Meliboeus recounts a contest between the shepherd Thyrsis and the goatherd Corydon.[1]

Invocation to Priapus: 19th-century engraving of a purported bas-relief from Pompeii (cf. ll. 33–6)

The poem is imitated from the sixth Idyll of Theocritus.[2] J. B. Greenough thinks the scene is apparently laid in the pastoral region of North Italy.[2] The date assigned to the poem is 38 BC.[2]

In the chiastic structure of the Eclogues, Eclogue 7 is paired with Eclogue 3, which also recounts an amoebaean contest between two herdsmen, Damoetas and Menalcas. The contest in Eclogue 3, however, ended in a draw, while in this one Corydon is declared the winner.

Summary
The Mincio at Peschiera del Garda

A herdsman Meliboeus recounts how, when following an errant goat, he came across Daphnis sitting beneath a tree, along with a goatherd Corydon and a shepherd Thyrsis, by the river Mincius.[3] The two young men are described as Arcades ambo 'both Arcadians'. Daphnis encourages him to sit down and listen to "great contest" (certamen magnum which is about to take place between the two young herdsmen. Meliboeus agrees despite the fact that Alcippe or Phyllis are not around to help him with his lambs.

Corydon starts by asking the "Libethridan nymphs"[4] (i.e. the Muses) to help him make a song as good as they gave to "Codrus"[5]

Thyrsis responds by boastfully asking the Arcadian herdsmen to crown their rising poet's head with ivy so that Codrus may split his sides with envy; or if Codrus praises his song excessively, they should wreathe his brow with cyclamen, to avert the evil eye from the future divinely inspired prophet.[6]

Ivy-leafed cyclamen

See also

References
  1. Page, ed. 1898, p. 148.
  2. Greenough, ed. 1883, p. 19.
  3. The Mincius flows near Virgil's home of Mantua.
  4. Virgil here echoes Euphorion of Chalcis's Greek poem on the origin of the Grynean grove, a poem imitated in Latin by Virgil's friend Cornelius Gallus. The phrase crescentem poetam "growing poet" comes from the same poem by Euphorion: see Kennedy (1987), pp. 54–55.
  5. Codrus is apparently a pseudonym for a real poet. Corydon refers to him as "my Codrus, (who) makes poems next to those of Phoebus himself"). According to a theory by Rostagni (1961), which Robin Nisbet judged "convincing", "Codrus" may have been a pseudonym for Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus: Nisbet (1995), p. 321.
  6. Page (1898), p. 151. The plant indicated by baccar is uncertain: see wikt:βάκκαρις.

Sources and further reading
  • Greenough, J. B., ed. (1883). Publi Vergili Maronis: Bucolica. Aeneis. Georgica. The Greater Poems of Virgil. Vol. 1. Boston, MA: Ginn, Heath, & Co. pp. 19–21. (Public domain)
  • Kennedy, D. F. (1987). "Arcades ambo: Virgil, Gallus and Arcadia". Hermathena, No. 143, In honor of D. E. W. Wormell (Winter 1987), pp. 47–59.
  • Nisbet, R. G. (1995). "Review of WV Clausen, A Commentary on Virgil, Eclogues". The Journal of Roman Studies, 85, 320–321.
  • Page, T. E., ed. (1898). P. Vergili Maronis: Bucolica et Georgica. Classical Series. London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd. pp. 148–55. {Public domain)
  • Starr, Raymond J. (1995). "Vergil's Seventh Eclogue and Its Readers: Biographical Allegory as an Interpretative Strategy in Antiquity and Late Antiquity". Classical Philology. 90 (2): 129–38.
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