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Virgil and Arcadia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Richard Jenkyns
Richard Jenkyns
Affiliation:
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford
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Extract

There is an obstacle to our natural appreciation of Virgil's Eclogues which looms as large in their case as in that of any poetry whatever. The Eclogues form probably the most influential group of short poems ever written: though they themselves take Theocritus as a model, they were to become the fountainhead from which the vast and diverse tradition of pastoral in many European literatures was to spring. To use them as a model was in itself to distort their character: it is one of the greatest ironies of literary history that these elusive, various, eccentric poems should have become the pattern for hundreds of later writers. Moreover, the growth of the later pastoral tradition meant that many things were attributed to Virgil which are not in Virgil. Sometimes they were derived from interpretations which were put upon Virgil in late antiquity but which we now believe to be mistaken; sometimes they are misinterpretations of a much later date; sometimes they originated from new developments in pastoral literature which their inventors had not meant to seem Virgilian, but which in the course of time got foisted back on to Virgil nevertheless. It is hard, therefore, to approach the Eclogues openly and without preconceptions about what they contain, and even scholars who have devoted much time and learning to them have sometimes continued to hold views about them for which there are upon a dispassionate observation no good grounds at all. No poems perhaps have become so encrusted by the barnacles of later tradition and interpretation as these, and we need to scrape these away if we are to see them in their true shape. My aim here is to do some of this scraping by examining the use of Arcadians and the name of Arcadia in Virgil's work.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 79 , November 1989 , pp. 26 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Richard Jenkyns 1989. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Snell, B., The Discovery of the Mind, tr. Rosenmeyer, T. G. (1953), ch. 13Google Scholar.

2 ‘Spiritual’ translates the German geistig, which includes the connotations ‘mental’, ‘imaginative’. The German title of Snell's book is Die Entdeckung des Geistes.

3 The simplicity of this claim should perhaps be stressed. Because the Eclogues are pre-eminently poetry for which the lazy words—‘ambiguous, multivalent, polysemous’—work so well, it is easy to slip into supposing that nothing can be said of them which is plainly right or plainly wrong; but this is not so. Cf. Conte, G. B., The Rhetoric of Imitation (1986), 103Google Scholar (in an essay on Ecl. 10): ‘We need a method that is internally coherent and also devises a critical discourse that is consistent with the text, not an undisciplined surrender to arbitrary inferences sanctioned by supposed ambiguity.’

4 Panofsky, E. in Klibansky, R., Paton, H. J. (eds), Philosophy and History: Essays presented to Ernest Cassirer (1936), 223–54Google Scholar; reprinted in , Panofsky, Meaning and the Visual Arts (1955), 295–320Google Scholar.

5 Highet, G., The Classical Tradition (1949), 163Google Scholar; Perret, J., Virgile: l'homme et l'oeuvre (1952), 32Google Scholar; Klingner, F., Virgil (1967), 14Google Scholar; Rosenmeyer, T. G., The Green Cabinet: Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric (1969), 232Google Scholar.

6 Coleman, R. (ed.), Vergil: Eclogues (1977), 32, 22, 209Google Scholar; Clausen, , Virgil's Aeneid and the Tradition of Hellenistic Poetry (1987), 66.Google Scholar

7 ‘Henceforth Arcady became the pastoral setting’ (Coleman on Ecl. 7. 4); this, the conventional view, ignores later classical poetry and the pastorals of the Carolingian period, the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. On this extensive literature see e.g. Cooper, H., Pastoral: Mediaeval into Renaissance (1977)Google Scholar, Lambert, E., Placing Sorrow: A Study of the Pastoral Elegy Convention from Theocritus to Milton (1976)Google Scholar.

8 Ecl. 4. 58 f.

9 Servius, Buc. prooem. (Thilo-Hagen III, p. 3) (‘sane sciendum, VII. eclogas esse meras rusticas …').

10 Ecl. 8. 22–4.

11 First at Ecl. 8. 21 and repeated eight times before its final appearance, in altered form, at 1. 61.

12 Ecl. 8. 37–41. (Pinney, T. (ed.), The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay III (1976), 62;Google Scholar E. J. Kenney, ICS VIII (1983), 44–59, at 53).

13 Theocritus, Id. 11. 26 f.

14 For examples see Jenkyns, R., Three Classical Poets (1982), 33, 42 f., 50 f.Google Scholar

15 Despite the uncertainty voiced by Servius, the plurally possessive adjective ‘vester’ makes it certain that the mother in the scene is the girl's, not the boy's. Here too Virgil has departed from his model: at Id. 11. 26 the mother is explicitly the male's.

16 The constant repetition of ‘iam’ in the fourth Eclogue also has a ‘focusing’ effect, as Virgil watches the gradual process by which man will move in stages towards a return of the golden age. At Aen. 7. 643, 8. 349 and 8. 350 ‘iam turn’ has an impressive but slightly different effect, as the poet studies the combination of change and continuity in the operations of history. Virgil is a master of the monosyllable.

17 This seems the natural interpretation of the Latin. Servius, however, maintains that ‘alter ab undecimo … annus’ means that the boy is two years past his eleventh year; in other words, that he is, as we should say, twelve years old.

18 Ecl. 8. 30.

19 Catullus at 62. 7 associates Oeta with the rising of the Evening Star, to be followed by Virgil, Statius and the author of the Culex (Ellis, R., A Commentary on Catullus (2nd ed., 1889), ad loc.)Google Scholar; Servius alleges a cult of Hesperus on Oeta. Whether Virgil simply echoes Catullus or alludes to some older convention is unclear. Coleman on Ecl. 8. 30 (‘So this could be a clue to the notional setting of the singing contest’) wrongly conflates the world of the singer with the world of his song.

20 Geo. 3. 13–15.

21 Geo. 2. 156 f.

22 The four names are Thybris, Tiberinus, Tiberis and Albula. Tiberinus' welcome: Aen. 8. 36 ff.

23 It is only 65 m above sea level; compare Maggiore 193 m), Como (199 m), Lugano (270 m). (The more northerly Alpine lakes—Geneva, Lucerne, Constance, etc.—lie much higher still.)

24 Aen. 10. 205 f.

25 Prop. 4. 1. 65 f. and 121–6.

26 The data held on computer by the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (which does not yet comprise the whole Greek world) indicate no other Έρύκιος or Έρούκιοϛ except in places where Roman nomenclature is being used. I am grateful to Mrs Elaine Matthews for help with this.

27 Anth. Pal. 6. 96. 2.

28 Gow, A. S. F. and Page, D. L. (eds), The Greek Anthology: the Garland of Philip and some contemporary epigrams (1968), II, p. 279Google Scholar.

29 Though not impossible; Williams, G., Change and Decline (1978), 124–36Google Scholar, argues (not altogether convincingly) for echoes of Augustan poetry in some Greek epigrams. On p. 126 he suggests that Erucius imitated Virgil, ‘since it was Virgil who first set pastoral in Arcadia (that fact rules out both the possibility of the opposite (that Virgil imitated Erucius) and of a common source)’. On the contrary: the likelihood of a common source is an argument against the belief that Virgil ‘set pastoral in Arcadia’.

30 Gow-Page, loc. cit. (n. 28).

31 Fourteen epigrams are attributed to him; in one place the Palatine Anthology describes him as being from Cyzicus, in another as Thessalian. It is not even certain whether we are dealing with one man or two (Gow-Page, p. 278).

32 Ecl. 2. 24.

33 A common original was already the conclusion of Reitzenstein, R., Epigramm und Skolion (1893), 132Google Scholar n. E. L. Bowie, CQ n.s. xxxv (1985), 67–91, at 82 f. suggests Philetas as the ultimate source both for the name Corydon (also found in Theocritus) and for the Arcadian setting. The links in his avowedly speculative chain of argument are made the more tenuous by two assumptions which are in my view wrong: (1) that Corydon in Ecl. 2 is to be identified with Corydon in Ecl. 7; (2) that Virgil ‘relocated’ pastoral in Arcadia. Of course, the identity of any common original does not affect my present argument.

34 Ecl. 10. 77.

35 Ecl. 10. 74 f.

36 On this matter see further Jenkyns, in JRS LXXV (1985), 60–77Google Scholar, at 72. Though the tone of the tenth poem is new, it should be observed that recurrent in the Eclogues is the expression of an urge to write upon grander themes: Ecl. 4. 53 ff., 6. 3 ff., 8. 6 ff., as well as Ecl. 10. This note is distinctive to Virgil, and is not simply to be explained away as a response to the exigencies of the poet's patrons: it is an idea that he has himself chosen to thrust into prominence. In our own time the belief has been commonly held that Virgil at the time of writing the Eclogues would have been content to go on indefinitely composing small, exquisite pieces in the neoteric manner; the poet himself tells us otherwise.

Hopkinson, N., A Hellenistic Anthology (1988), 99Google Scholar, notes that Callimachus' ‘contrast between slender Muse and fat victim lies behind the concluding lines of the Eclogues’, but it is important to recognize also that Virgil is giving the old Callimachean material a radically new twist: interpretation here depends hardly at all on Callimachus but rather on the witty transformation that Virgil has wrought upon him.

37 Ecl. 10. 12.

38 Ecl. 10. 14, 15, 56 f.

39 Ecl. 10. 58.

40 See, for example, Otis, B., Virgil: a Study in Civilized Poetry (1963), 163 fGoogle Scholar.

41 There is full analysis in Rehm, B., Das geographische Bild des alten Italien in Vergils Aeneis (1932), 92 ff.Google Scholar, and R. D. Williams, CQ n.s. XI (1961), 146–53.

42 Significantly Evander, though a Greek immigrant, speaks of ‘we Italians’ at Aen. 8. 331 f. (‘Itali … diximus …’). It is surprising that some recent commentary has seen this either as an oversight on Virgil's part (C. J. Fordyce) or as Evander representing the poet himself (K. W. Gransden). R. D. Williams observes, rightly, ‘Evander now regards himself as an Italian’. The point was first made by Servius auctus.

43 Servius on Aen. 7. 487. This is not the whole story, however. Silvius is to be a name of the royal house of Alba Longa, descended from Aeneas; Virgil, through the mouth of Anchises, is curiously emphatic about this in the sixth book (Aen. 6. 760–70). Indeed, he has moved Aeneas Silvius from his usual place in the sequence of kings so that the dynasty shall both begin and end with a Silvius; and he stresses that the first Silvius, Aeneas’ posthumous son, bears an Alban name and is of mixed Trojan and Italian blood (6. 762 f.). When we are told of Silvia in the seventh book, her name suggests a country simplicity; but behind this we hear also a heroic resonance, and a note of hope in the reminder, so soon before war breaks out, that the two enemy peoples are before long to be peacefully united.

44 Aen. 7. 491.

45 Aen. 7. 494 f.

46 Aen. 7. 505.

47 Ecl. 3. 93.

48 Aen. 7. 513–15.

49 Aen. 7. 538 f. (Corydon: Ecl. 2. 19–22).

50 Aen. 7. 574, 504, 521. Some form of the word ‘agrestis’ comes at the end of ll. 482, 504 and 523; compare too Allecto's words at 551, ‘spargam arma per agros’, ‘I shall sow warfare across the countryside’.

51 Aen. 7. 504, 520.

52 Aen. 7. 537–9.

53 Cf. Klingner, op. cit. (n. 5), 513.

54 The belief in Arcadians on the site of Rome can be traced back at least to Fabius Pictor (Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom. I. 79. 4 and 8 = Fabius fr. 5b Peter). For the literary and antiquarian tradition see C. J. Fordyce's commentary on Aen. 7 and 8 (1977) at 8. 51, and for the literary and antiquarian tradition see C. J. Fordyce's commentary on Aen. 7 and 8 (1977) at 8. 51, and for the background to the idea Poucet, J., Les Origines de Rome (1985), 74 ff., 128 ff., 200, 210.Google Scholar

55 Od. 14. 5–16.

56 Od. 4. 74.

57 Daphnis and Chloe first became widely known through Amyot's French translation, published in 1559, englished by Angel Day in 1587, and thus early enough to have been able to influence Lodge's Rosalynde (1590) and Greene's Pandosto (1588), the sources for As You Like It and The Winter's Tale respectively. I presume that Sannazaro at the least knew what was in Daphnis and Chloe; if his decision to write a pastoral tale in prose was wholly independent of Longus, the argument of this article is not in any way affected, but it seems very unlikely.