I struggle with rating classics. It forces me to confront how sometimes arbitrary my ratings really are even as I pretend there are clear lines.

I think the impact of the Eclogues would be hard to deny. There’s almost certainly an argument to be made (by someone with more background knowledge in Greek lit than me) that we might not even know what pastoral literature is if Virgil hadn’t read Theocritus’s Idylls and thought, “I can do better than that!”

And no question, there are beautiful phrases here. The imagery is rich, there’s a deftness to the social commentary subtext, and some sharp wit, especially in David Ferry’s translation - there’s a great intro and the appendices are very helpful in making the book more accessible to a wider audience than, say, The Aeneid (which I loathed). It shows particularly well in Eclogue III, the song duel between Damoetus and Menalcus*, which I very eruditely summarized in my notes as “two dudes ripping on each other” and “this is a dick-measuring contest”, but has the kind of ripostes you find in, say, Romeo & Juliet’s thumb-biting scene.

Song contests are a big thing in these. The Eclogues are basically Ancient Greek Eurovision, but with more namedropping, which would probably be very effective if I didn’t have to look up whatever new name appears in each line.

So I appreciate it on an intellectual, historical, and scholarly level. But did I *like* it? Did I find it an enjoyable reading experience? Would I be content if it were the only book on an island? Nope. But I am glad I read it and I’m looking forward to seeing how it influenced Edmund Spenser’s work.


*class theory supports Menalcus as being the “main character,” competing with Tityrus as Virgil’s avatar. What do you think?

Arcadia (friendship, music, myth, and love) feels the effects of politics and events but stretches beyond them.

“Not to the deaf we sing; the forests answer all.”

i’ll admit i don’t totally get the appeal of pastoral poetry, but i have to hype my boyfriend publius by saying that the latin here is excellent. delightful. the guy has a way with words <3 in fact, he (probably) coined the phrase “omnia vincit amor,” or “love conquers all,” which serves as one of the overarching themes of the collection. beyond the language, i appreciate the hints of political commentary (lots about land confiscations and julius caesar)—vergil has a fascinating tendency toward ambiguity of language that lets him say two completely different things at once; he does this with the aeneid in its entirety and i think about it NOT INFREQUENTLY! i also liked the homoeroticism.

favorite poem was definitely Eclogue II, where corydon bemoans that his love alexis doesn’t even CARE that he has so many SHEEP, man, and he has milk all year LONG! (no, seriously, the lines go, “You scorn me, Alexis, never asking who I am, / How rich in flocks, how affluent in snowy milk. / My thousand ewe-lambs range the hills of Sicily; / Come frost, come summer, never do I lack fresh milk.”)

i also really enjoyed this specific edition, because it has the latin on the left-hand-page and the english on the right! i am not nearly good enough at latin to actually read the poems in latin, but i had fun skimming over it and looking up the words i didn’t know and making clumsy guesses at what it said. this translation, as a result, deliberately sticks very close to the original text, which is awesome if you’re doing what i did, but makes the english stiffer than it might have been; for a more musical english translation, i recommend the other edition i am also reading because i put “vergil books” on my birthday list and two different friends got me two different editions. my reputation as #1 vergil stan in the friend group endures

“Love conquers all; we also must submit to Love.”

Guy Lee edition with facing Latin.

Good intro and brief summary’s and footnotes for each eclogue.

Not Virgil’s best work of course and heavily indebted to Theocritus’s idylls this is nonetheless an interesting look at the early poems of the master written at the breakup on the republic

In reading the Eclogues ("selections"), more usefully also known as the Bucolica, I've finally read all of Virgil's three extant works. The Eclogues was apparently the earliest of the three, and though it may seem a trifle compared to the Aeneid, it all but established the genre of pastoral poetry and has had an enormous influence on that genre's form and development.

We see here, not merely the obvious technical and thematic elements (shepherds, farm labor, flora and fauna, and country courtships), but the subtle politics of pastoral in full display. The shepherds of the Eclogues come together to discourse through song. And these songs, though rustic and naive in sentiment, also draw heavily on Virgil's mythic literacy and vision, not to mention some gentle allusion to the uneven justice of Roman land policies.

Beneath the simple pleasures of Virgil's pastoral, there is a vision of simple shepherds as a kind of cloistered monks for urbanizing society. It is a nostalgic vision rooted in a malaise that may properly be described as modern. The shepherds are the bucolic others through whom we know urban Rome to be modern-- civilized, yes, and yet severed from that primordial experience that can already, in the 1st century BCE, be imagined as a national tradition.

virgilio te amo sos lo mejor que me pasó en la vida

These poems provide the foundation for a definition of pastoral. Virgil's book contains ten pieces, each called not an idyll but an eclogue, populated by and large with herdsmen imagined conversing and singing in largely rural settings, whether suffering or embracing revolutionary change or happy or unhappy love. They are inviting and easy to like, both attractive and intelligent. This was from early in Virgil's career and he is already an accomplished poet. The eclogues, written under the patronage of Maecenas, are called the Bucolics or country poems even though they are really highly civilized set pieces. Like much of Roman literature they look back to Greek examples, in this case that of Theocritus, the Greek poet of the third century B.C.
They highlight individual characters like Meliboeus and Tityrus in Eclogue 1. Here Virgil uses the two herdsmen to convey issues of power and its opposite. In Eclogue 2 Corydon and Alexis demonstrate the power of passion. Corydon coaxes Alexis saying, "O come and live with me in the countryside among the humble farms." (p 13) Virgil is able to consider the result of erotic passion with some detachment through his use of homosexual passion in this country setting. Perhaps the best known of the Eclogues is number four which foretells of a son to be born to Antony and Octavia. Alas this event was not fated to happen and the birth prophesied would later be interpreted as one of a completely different boy, one who would have a career that outlived both the poet Virgil and Rome's empire if not her culture.
Through the eclogues as a whole there is the exploration of the idea of the nature of the pastoral, its innocence and seeming edenic being in comparison with the urban life of Virgil and most of his audience. In David Ferry's beautiful translation these verses come alive in a contemporary idiom. As Michael Dirda has said, this is a "volume to buy, read , and treasure."

La poesía bucólica de Virgilio es excelente. Existen infinitas ediciones y traducciones. Yo leí una versión en prosa (de la Biblioteca Clásica Gredos), otra en verso (de Imprenta de Ignacio Escalante, de 1903, edición bilingüe, con traducción en verso de Joaquín Casasus) y, finalmente, los versos originales en latín de esa misma edición. Las Églogas que más me gustaron fueron la primera, la cuarta (obviamente), la sexta y la octava. Comparto algunas líneas y consideraciones sobre cada una de las diez Églogas.

En la Égloga I se da un diálogo entre Títiro y Melibeo, dos pastores, en un ambiente pastoril. La base histórica de esta Égloga es la repartición de las tierras hecha en favor de los veteranos por los triunviros en el año 41 a.C. Era necesario encontrar lugar sin tardanza para más de 170.000 hombres y de ahí resultó una confiscación general. La lealtad al partido de César no fue parte a evitar estos daños: la fiel Mantua compartió la suerte de su vecina, la desafecta Cremona. La leyenda es que Virgilio fue a Roma con motivo del despojo de su propiedad y que obtuvo de Octavio una orden para que le fuera restituida, la cual resultó ineficaz, debido a la violencia de un nuevo ocupante (Égloga IX), que lo obligó a pedir protección por segunda vez.

En la Égloga II un pastor llamado Coridón habla de su amor por un bello joven, de nombre Alexis, se queja de su indiferencia, urgiéndole a ir a vivir con él en el campo, y finalmente se lamenta de su triste suerte.

La Égloga III es una muestra de un certamen pastoril, en el que participan los pastores Menalcas, Dametas y Palemón.

La famosa y reconocida Égloga IV, de invocación y presagio, con un canto un poco más elevado, dedicada al cónsul Polión, augura la llegada de la última Edad de Oro, época de paz y abundancia de todas las cosas sin necesidad de trabajo para obtenerlas. El héroe del poema es un niño recién nacido, o a punto de nacer, llamado a perfeccionar gradualmente la restauración, entonces en sus comienzos. Surge una interpretación: las esperanzas vinculadas a la venida de un Mesías. Hay una sorprendente coincidencia entre el lenguaje de Virgilio y el de los profetas del Antiguo Testamento.

La Égloga V contiene diálogos y cantos entre dos pastores, Menalcas, el mayor, y Mopso, el menor, que giran en torno a la figura de Dafnis. Menalcas invita a Mopso, un joven pastor, a tocar y a cantar. Mopso satisface su deseo y canta la canción fúnebre de Dafnis, el pastor ideal. Menalcas compite con él, cantando a su vez la apoteosis de Dafnis. Al final se elogian mutuamente y cambian recíprocamente presentes.

El asunto de la Égloga VI es una canción cosmogónica y mitológica, cantada por Sileno, debido a una estratagema de dos jóvenes pastores. En esta cosmogonía, del vacío se combinan los gérmenes de la tierra, el aire, el mar y el fuego puro; de ahí surgen todas las cosas y el mundo adquiere consistencia; aparecen las tierras, el sol, las nubes, lluvias, las selvas y los animales.

En la Égloga VII se produce un certamen entre Coridón y Tirsis, en el cual funge Dafnis como tercero en discordia. Esta Égloga termina con la derrota de Tirsis. La narración la hace Melibeo, que estuvo presente cuando se concertaron las condiciones, de manera que nada sabemos directamente de los combatientes.

La Égloga VIII contiene las canciones de dos pastores: Damón, quien, como amante desilusionado, lamenta la ingratitud de su infiel Nisa, la cual ha tomado otro amante menos digno; y Alfesibeo, quien, como una mujer, olvidada también por su amante, intenta recobrar su amor por medio de encantamientos, que al final surten un efecto favorable.

En la Égloga IX se produce un diálogo entre Lícidas y Meris, dos pastores (y citan a Menalcas). Meris, uno de los esclavos, está yendo a la ciudad, tal vez a Mantua, con parte de los productos de la finca que lleva al propietario usurpador, cuando es detenido por Lícidas, su vecino; relata sus penas y las de su amo, y en cambio recibe una calurosa expresión de simpatía por la pérdida que hubiera sufrido el distrito con la muerte de su ilustre compatriota.

El asunto de la Égloga X es la pasión absorbente y sin esperanza de Galo. Se le representa como si fuera al mismo tiempo soldado y pastor, sirviendo en los campamentos de Italia, o recostado bajo una roca en Arcadia. Se supone que Virgilio cuenta la historia cantando, mientras cuida sus cabras, y que al levantarse, para volver a su casa en la tarde, cierra graciosamente el capítulo de la poesía pastoril.

Virgil’s ‘The Eclogues’ is a beautiful collection it has love, mythology, prophecy and much more. If you are an Ancient Greece fanatic like myself this is a must read for any fan of anything Ancient Greece as Virgil is a great source for that, but it is best not to take everything as face value, as that is good advice for life in general as one should always make one’s own opinion of the matter.

Complejo, curioso, particular e interesante. Es breve, bastante complicado y denso, toca temas como muy pocas veces leí (ya que se basa en la visión de personas de vida rural) y mucho mas particular de este modo poético tan calculado y milimétrico. No me ha enamorado ni convenció del todo, pero a logrado sorprenderme mas de lo que creí

PD: Me hubiera servido bastante para mi reseña de "Prometeo mal encadenado" de Andre Gide ( LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEX6K... )

Read Ecologue 1, 2, 9, 10
I accidentally bought a wonky translation (not this exact book, this was the book I should have purchased) that made the Eclogues even more confusing than they really were.

Deze verzameling van tien pastorale gedichten is het eerste uitgegeven werk van een nog jonge Vergilius. Zijn kracht in het dichten is al duidelijk te zien in deze afwisselende en mooie liederen. Het meest interessant is dit werk echter door zijn implicaties voor de toekomst van Vergilius. Het geeft alvast inzichten in zijn latere werken zoals de Aeneis én het heeft ook een interessant eigen nachleben. Dit geldt met name voor gedicht 4, waarin de komst van een kind wordt aangekondigd dat gouden tijden zal inluiden. Vergilius als protochristen is een bizar maar ook vermakelijk idee, dat in latere tijden veel bijval heeft gekregen. Erg interessant allemaal dus, maar nog niet zo meesterlijk als het latere werk van Vergilius.