Eclogues

The Eclogues are the first published work of Publius Vergilius Maro (70–19 BC), ten short hexameter poems written between about 42 and 38 BC. Their model is the pastoral poetry of the Greek poet Theocritus, but Vergil brings into his landscape of herdsmen and singing contests the realities of his own time: the civil wars after Caesar's murder and the confiscation of farms in northern Italy to settle the victorious veterans.

In the first poem the exile Meliboeus meets Tityrus, who has been allowed to keep his land by a young god in Rome. The second is Corydon's complaint for the boy Alexis, and the third a singing match between Menalcas and Damoetas. The fourth foretells the birth of a child who will bring back the golden age, dated to the consulship of Pollio in 40 BC. In the fifth Mopsus and Menalcas sing the death and deification of Daphnis; in the sixth Silenus sings of the world's creation and of old myths; in the seventh Meliboeus recalls a contest between Corydon and Thyrsis. The eighth pairs Damon's lament with Alphesiboeus' love-spell, the ninth returns to the evictions, and the tenth shows the poet Gallus wasting away for love.

These are polished, musical poems in a language simpler than the Aeneid's, though full of allusion. The fourth Eclogue was long read by Christians as a prophecy of Christ, and the whole collection shaped the European pastoral tradition from Petrarch to Milton.