Eclogue 8

The introduction to the poem narrates how at the beginning of the day Damon and Alphesiboeus sang in competition with each other, while cows, lynxes, and even rivers listened in amazement. In the middle of this narrative is an eight-line address to an unnamed person, who is identified only by various indications. First, Virgil imagines him sailing past the "rocks of Timavus" (a river at the very north of the Adriatic sea) and the Illyrian coast. He looks forward to celebrating the addressee's achievements and poems, which alone are worthy of the Sophoclean stage. Virgil asks him to accept the poems which he has begun on the addressee's command as ivy to be wreathed round the addressee's head along with the laurels of victory.

Woodcut by Aristide Maillol, 1926, illustrating Eclogue 8: "Now know I what Love is; it is among savage rocks that he is produced by Tmarus, or Rhodope, or the Garamantes at earth's end; no child of lineage or blood like ours." (43–5)

From early times these indications have been taken as describing Virgil's patron Gaius Asinius Pollio. He is mentioned by name in Eclogue 3 for his liking for bucolic poetry, and again, as consul in 40 BC, in Eclogue 4. Pollio is also known to have written tragedies.[3]

Some scholars, however, such as Bowersock (1971), have proposed that the addressee is not Pollio but Octavian, who fought a campaign in Illyricum beginning in 35 BC; he is also said to have composed a tragedy on the subject of Ajax.[4] But since Bowersock's article, several other scholars have argued against this view. For example, Thibodeau (2006) points that Virgil's description seems to describe not a voyage from Pollio's province to Rome (as some scholars have thought), but one going to his province, and he shows that it is perfectly plausible for Pollio to have set off for his province in 39 BC from Aquileia near the Timavus river. To suppose that the addressee is Octavian, on the other hand, creates considerable difficulties in chronology. There is therefore no need to doubt that Pollio is meant here and that the date of Eclogue 8 is 39 BC.

The words in the 7th line of the dedication (line 11) (a te principium, tibi desinam 'from you was/is my beginning, with you I shall end') go back to Homer's Iliad 9.97 (flattering words spoken by Nestor to Agamemnon).[5] They also recall line 60 of Eclogue 3 (ab Iove principium 'from Jupiter (is) the beginning'). According to Greenough, this poem has every appearance of an epilogue, and perhaps was originally intended to stand at the end of the book.[6]

The so-called Neptune Plate, part of the Mildenhall Treasure, 4th century AD. According to E. V. Rieu, "[T]he artist might almost have had the Eighth Eclogue in mind."[7]

The 16-line introduction is followed by two songs, one sung by Damon and the other by Alphesiboeus. The two songs in the eclogue are loosely based on Theocritus's Idyll 2. In this idyll a woman called Simaetha makes a magic spell to attract her lover Delphis to return to her. At the end of the spell, after dismissing her maid Thestylis, Simaetha sings a second song of 12 slightly longer stanzas, telling the Moon about how she had fallen in love with Delphis when she saw him one day coming from the gymnasium, how they became lovers, and how she had learnt that he had now fallen in love with someone else. Both songs in Idyll 2 are broken up by refrains. The order of the songs is reversed in Eclogue 8, and the complaint is put into the mouth of a man; the content is also changed. Another change made by Virgil is to set the songs in the countryside, whereas Theocritus's Idyll 2 is set in a city.[8]

The two songs in Eclogue 8 are clearly designed to match each other, and thus like the songs in Eclogues 3, 5, 7 and 9 are amoebaean. Both have have the same number of lines (if line 76 is omitted) and almost exactly the same pattern and number of stanzas. Both songs start with a command (nascere 'be born!' and effer 'take out!'); both have the word coniugis 'of my spouse, of my partner' at the beginning of line 2 or 3. The second stanza of each song speaks of the power of Arcadia and the power of songs respectively. The last two lines of the third stanza of both songs consist of commands. Stanzas 3 and 8 of the first song speak of impossible things that will happen in consequence of Nysa's marriage, while stanza 3 and 7 of the second song speak of impossible things that magic can do. One song references the story of Medea (47–49), the other the story of her aunt Circe (70). In both songs, the central stanza has a vivid picture describing the emotion of falling in love.

Damon's song, like Simaetha's first song, has 9 stanzas, each followed by a refrain, but the stanzas are of varying lengths: 4, 3, 5, 4, 5, 3, 4, 5, 3 lines respectively. Alphesiboeus's song has almost exactly the same pattern, except that in the manuscript tradition it contains an extra refrain (line 76), dividing the 3rd stanza, making ten stanzas of 4, 3, 3, 2, 4, 5, 3, 5, 3, 4 lines. To make Virgil's two songs match each other more exactly some editors, such as Mynors in the Oxford Classical Text of 1969, add an extra refrain in the first song (line 28a); however, other editors, so that the number of stanzas should match the number in Theocritus's first song, remove line 76 instead.[9][10] Another argument for removing line 76 is that if it is deleted, then when Eclogue 8 is added to its pair (Eclogue 2), it makes 181 lines, the same number as when Eclogue 3 is added to its pair (Eclogue 7).[11]

Damon's song

pinifer ... Maenalus "pine-bearing Maenalus" (Eclogue 10.14–15)

Damon's song is the complaint of a young man whose beloved, Nysa, is marrying another man, Mopsus. At the end of the song in his despair he declares that he is going to throw himself off a high cliff into the sea. The refrain in the first eight stanzas is "Begin the Maenalian verses with me, my pipes".[12] The adjective "Maenalian" refers to the mountain Maenalus in Arcadia, the fabled region in Greece which Virgil chose to make the scene of his bucolic poems.

• In the first stanza the singer calls on the Morning Star (Lucifer) to rise, and complains of the betrayal by Nysa, whom he refers to as his coniunx 'mate, spouse'. In the second, he describes Maenalus and the god Pan. In the third[13] he declares that now that Nysa is marrying Mopsus nothing is impossible: griffins will be yoked with horses; deer and dogs will drink together. He tells Mopsus to cut torches for the wedding and scatter nuts, since the Evening Star (Hesperus) is leaving Mount Oeta (a mountain in central Greece).

• In the next three stanzas the singer reproaches Nysa for preferring another man over himself; he reminds her how he has been in love with her ever since he helped her to pick apples in the garden when he was eleven years old. Now he knows the cruelty of the god Love.

• It was because of Love that Medea killed her own children. Now let wolves flee from lambs, oak trees bear apples, alders produce narcissus flowers, and myrtle bark sweat amber, let owls compete with swans, and let Tityrus[14] be Orpheus or Arion![15] Let everything become the middle of the sea![16] The singer says farewell to the woods and declares that he is going to fling himself from the top of a cliff into the waves.

• In the last stanza the refrain changes to: "End the Maenalian verses now, end the verses."

The historian Thomas Babington Macaulay thought that the five lines in the central stanza of this song were "the finest lines in the Latin language"; and he noted that Voltaire had said that they were the finest in all of Virgil's poetry.[17][18] They have been translated as follows:

"I saw you, a little child, with my mother in our garden,

picking dew-wet apples (I was guide to you both).

The year beyond my eleventh had just greeted me,

now I could reach the frail branches from the ground.

As I saw you, I was lost! How a fatal madness took me!"[19]

The song has been put together from lines of several Theocritus Idylls. Stanzas 2, 3, and 8 come from Idyll 1, stanza 1 and part of 5 from Idyll 2; stanzas 6 and 9 from Idyll 3; and part of stanza 5 from Idyll 11. Stanzas 4 and 7 are Virgil's.[20] Virgil, however, has made modifications to the Theocritean original. For example, in the stanza quoted above, the first two lines are adapted from Theocritus 11.25–29, where the giant Polyphemus recounts leading the nymph Galatea and his mother to gather hyacinths on a hillside. By introducing a garden and apples, Virgil calls to mind the story of Acontius as told in a poem by Callimachus. The word legentem in line 38 has two potential meanings: 'picking' and 'reading', which further recalls how Cydippe in that story read the words Acontius had written on the apple.[21] Callimachus's poem has influenced this eclogue in other ways too.[22]

In the chiastic structure of the Eclogues, where Eclogue 1 is paired with 9 (both about the confiscations), 2 with 8 (both songs of unrequited love), 3 with 7 (both amoebaean contests), 4 with 6 (about the future and the past of the world), and 5 with itself (the death and deification of Daphnis), Eclogue 8 is paired with Eclogue 2. Steenkamp draws attention to the very similar openings of the two poems:[25]

formosum pastor Corydon ardebat Alexin (Ec. 2.1)

"the herdsman Corydon was burning for the handsome Alexis"

and

pastorum Musam Damonis et Alphesiboei (Ec. 8.1)

"(we will sing of) the Muse of the herdsmen Damon and Alphesiboeus"

The similarity of sound and rhythm in the first two words, and the inclusion of two names in the second half of the line shows that they clearly echo each other.

Thematically, both poems are based on Theocritus, but with changes of gender: Eclogue 2, where Corydon is in love with the boy Alexis, is adapted from Theocritus Idyll 11, where Polyphemus is in love with the nymph Galatea. Damon's song in Eclogue 9, telling of a young man's love for the girl he had hoped to marry, is based on the second half of Theocritus Idyll 2, where a woman, Simaetha, is in love with a young man. Only in Alphesiboeus's song are the genders unchanged.[25]

All three songs tell of unrequited love, but the treatment is different in each case. In Eclogue 2, Corydon consoles himself that he will find another boy; in Damon's song, the speaker decides to commit suicide; in Alphesiboeus's song, the speaker solves her problem using a magic spell.[25]

Some names are also common to both poems, such as Amaryllis and Daphnis (albeit playing different roles), and the god Pan, who in both poems is said to have been the first to teach men to play the panpipes (Ec. 2.32–33; Ec. 8.24). In both poems also the beloved is said to "despise" the lover (despectus Ec. 2.19; despicis Ec. 8.32).

• Bowersock, G. W. (1971). "A Date in the Eighth Eclogue". Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. 75: 73–80.
• Greenough, J. B., ed. (1883). Publi Vergili Maronis: Bucolica. Aeneis. Georgica. The Greater Poems of Virgil. Vol. 1. Boston, MA: Ginn, Heath, & Co. pp. 21–5. (Public domain)
• Henkel, J. H. (2009). Writing Poems on Trees: Genre and Metapoetics in Vergil's Eclogues and Georgics (Doctoral dissertation thesis). University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
• Katz, J. T.; Volk, K. (May 2006). "Erotic Hardening and Softening in Vergil's Eighth Eclogue". The Classical Quarterly. New Series. 56 (1): 169–74.
• Kenney, E. J. (1983). "Virgil and the Elegiac Sensibility". Illinois Classical Studies. 8 (1): 44–59.
• Levi, Peter (1966). "The Dedication to Pollio in Virgil's Eighth Eclogue". Hermes. 94 (1): 73–9.
• Macdonald, Jennifer (2005). "Structure and Allusion in Idyll 2 and Eclogue 8". Vergilius (1959–). 51: 12–31.
• Mankin, David (1988). "The Addressee of Virgil's Eighth Eclogue: A Reconsideration". Hermes. 116 (1): 63–76.
• Page, T. E., ed. (1898). P. Vergili Maronis: Bucolica et Georgica. Classical Series. London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd. pp. 155–65. (Public domain)
• Rieu, E. V. (1949). Virgil: The Pastoral Poems (A Translation of the Eclogues). Great Britain: Penguin Books Ltd. pp. 7–17.
• Skutsch, O. (1969). "Symmetry and Sense in the Eclogues". Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. 73: 153–169.
• Steenkamp, J. (2011). "The Structure of Vergil's Eclogues". Acta Classica: Proceedings of the Classical Association of South Africa. Classical Association of South Africa (CASA). 54 (1): 101–124.
• Tarrant, R. J. (1978). "The Addressee of Virgil's Eighth Eclogue". Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. 82: 197–9.
• Thibodeau, P. (December 2006). "The Addressee of Vergil's Eighth Eclogue". The Classical Quarterly. New Series. 56 (2): 618–623.

• Magic in the Graeco-Roman world