The Eclogues

By Virgil and Mint Editions

“In the whole of European literature there is no poet who can furnish the texts for a more significant variety of discourse than Virgil. [He] symbolizes so much in the history of Europe, and represents such central European values…” –T.S. Eliot

The Eclogues (38 BC), also known as the Bucolics, is a work by Roman poet Virgil. Although less prominent than The Aeneid, Virgil’s legendary epic of the Trojan hero Aeneas and his discovery of what would later become the city of Rome, The Eclogues have endured as a landmark in the history of pastoral poetry. The Eclogues were inspired by the bucolic idylls of Hellenistic poet Theocritus, poems set in the rural region of Arcadia in Ancient Greece. In contrast to Theocritus, whose poems idealized agricultural life for a cosmopolitan audience based in Alexandria, Virgil’s work is grounded in the complex sociopolitical realities of its day, a time of civil war following the assassination of Julius Caesar.

“Some brutal soldier will possess these fields / An alien master. Ah! To what a pass / Has civil discord brought our hapless folk!” Displaced from his land, Meliboeus laments his fate to the farmer Tityrus, who has been fortunate enough to retain his ancestral home. Set amidst civil war, poverty, and cultural upheaval, the Eclogues vary in tone and scope from the tragic dialogue just described to a lonely shepherd crying for lost love and a singing competition held between two gifted men. In emphasizing the connection between poetry, singing, and labor, Virgil recalls the roots of written language in an older, oral tradition, restoring what has been lost—peace, land, possessions, love—in what can never be taken away. “Love conquers all things; yield we too to love!” In a time of widespread uncertainty, Virgil found solace in surrendering to the unknown while remaining certain of one eternal truth: as long as love survives, there will be songs.

This edition of Virgil’s The Eclogues is a classic work of Roman literature reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mint Editions
• Release date: Apr 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781513285306

Virgil

Virgil (70 BC-19 BC) was a Roman poet. He was born near Mantua in northern Italy. Educated in rhetoric, medicine, astronomy, and philosophy, Virgil moved to Rome where he was known as a particularly shy member of Catullus’ literary circle. Suffering from poor health for most of his life, Virgil began his career as a poet while studying Epicureanism in Naples. Around 38 BC, he published the Eclogues, a series of pastoral poems in the style of Hellenistic poet Theocritus. In 29 BC, Virgil published his next work, the Georgics, a long didactic poem on farming in the tradition of Hesiod’s Works and Days. In the last decade of his life, Virgil worked on his masterpiece the Aeneid, an epic poem commissioned by Emperor Augustus. Expanding upon the story of the Trojan War as explored in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid follows the hero Aeneas from the destruction of Troy to the discovery of the region that would later become Rome. Posthumously considered Rome’s national poet, Virgil’s reputation has grown through the centuries—in large part for his formative influence on Dante’s Divine Comedy—to secure his position as a foundational figure for all of Western literature.

Book preview

Eclogue I

MELIBOEUS    TITYRUS

MELIBOEUS: You, Tityrus, ’neath a broad beech-canopy

Reclining, on the slender oat rehearse

Your silvan ditties: I from my sweet fields,

And home’s familiar bounds, even now depart.

Exiled from home am I; while, Tityrus, you

Sit careless in the shade, and, at your call,

Fair Amaryllis bid the woods resound.

TITYRUS: O Meliboeus, ’twas a god vouchsafed

This ease to us, for him a god will I

Deem ever, and from my folds a tender lamb

Oft with its life-blood shall his altar stain.

His gift it is that, as your eyes may see,

My kine may roam at large, and I myself

Play on my shepherd’s pipe what songs I will.

MELIBOEUS: I grudge you not the boon, but marvel more,

Such wide confusion fills the country-side.

See, sick at heart I drive my she-goats on,

And this one, O my Tityrus, scarce can lead:

For ’mid the hazel-thicket here but now

She dropped her new-yeaned twins on the bare flint,

Hope of the flock—an ill, I mind me well,

Which many a time, but for my blinded sense,

The thunder-stricken oak foretold, oft too

From hollow trunk the raven’s ominous cry.

But who this god of yours? Come, Tityrus, tell.

TITYRUS: The city, Meliboeus, they call Rome,

I, simpleton, deemed like this town of ours,

Whereto we shepherds oft are wont to drive

The younglings of the flock: so too I knew

Whelps to resemble dogs, and kids their dams,

Comparing small with great; but this as far

Above all other cities rears her head

As cypress above pliant osier towers.

MELIBOEUS: And what so potent cause took you to Rome?

TITYRUS: Freedom, which, though belated, cast at length

Her eyes upon the sluggard, when my beard

’Gan whiter fall beneath the barber’s blade—

Cast eyes, I say, and, though long tarrying, came,

Now when, from Galatea’s yoke released,

I serve but Amaryllis: for I will own,

While Galatea reigned over me, I had

No hope of freedom, and no thought to save.

Though many a victim from my folds went forth,

Or rich cheese pressed for the unthankful town,

Never with laden hands returned I home.

MELIBOEUS: I used to wonder, Amaryllis, why

You cried to heaven so sadly, and for whom

You left the apples hanging on the trees;

’Twas Tityrus was away. Why, Tityrus,

The very pines, the very water-springs,

The very vineyards, cried aloud for you.

TITYRUS: What could I do? how else from bonds be freed,

Or otherwhere find gods so nigh to aid?

There, Meliboeus, I saw that youth to whom

Yearly for twice six