Eclogue 10

Eclogue 10 (Ecloga X; Bucolica X) is a pastoral poem by the Latin poet Virgil. The tenth Eclogue describes how a Roman officer on active service, having been jilted by an actress, imagines himself an Arcadian shepherd, and either bewails his lot or seeks distraction in hunting 'with the Nymphs' amid 'Parthenian glades' and 'hurling Cydonian arrows from a Parthian bow.'

The elegiac poet Cornelius Gallus, a friend of Virgil, had been despatched (apparently) to defend the Italian waters from the freebooting squadron of Sextus Pompey. In his absence, his mistress—here spoken of under the name Lycoris—had been unfaithful to him, and had followed a soldier of Agrippa's army into Gaul (BC 37); and he requested of Virgil a pastoral poem, which might have the good luck to win him back his love.

Context

File:Virgil translated by Dryden (1709)-volume 1-sheet 197.png

Engraving of Pastoral 10: Dryden's Virgil, 1709

C. Cornelius Callus, born at Forum Julii about 66 BC, was a partisan of Octavian, and was appointed by him one of the commissioners to distribute land among his veterans in the north of Italy: in that capacity he seems to have rendered Virgil service and to have become intimate with him. He was himself well known as an elegiac writer and is frequently praised by Ovid. He subsequently fought at Actium and was made prefect of Egypt, where however he incurred the displeasure of the Emperor and committed suicide in 26 BC.

Summary

This Eclogue describes the grief of Gallus for the loss of Lycoris. She was a celebrated actress and on the stage bore the name of Cytheris, being really called Volumnia, as being the freedwoman of Volumnius Eutrapelus. She seems to have deserted Gallus for some officer on the staff of Agrippa, who led an expedition into Gaul and across the Rhine in 37 BC (cf. lines 23, 46) while Gallus was on military service elsewhere (lines 44, 45). The poem is a free imitation of the first Idyll of Theocritus.

Analysis

According to T. E. Page, "Gallus is conventionally represented as surrounded by Arcadian shepherds, and the whole poem is highly artificial: it is none the less singularly beautiful". Lord Macaulay had an almost unbounded admiration for it. "The Georgics pleased me better [than the Aeneid]; the Eclogues best,—the second and tenth above all."

Sources

Attribution: This article incorporates text from these sources, which is in the public domain.