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EPICURUS AND THE IUVENIS AT VIRGIL'S ECLOGUE 1.42*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2016

Peter Bing
Peter Bing*
Affiliation:
Emory University
*
pbing@emory.edu
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Extract

‘But tell us, Tityrus, who is that god?’ (sed tamen, iste deus qui sit, da, Tityre, nobis). This is what the herdsman Meliboeus asks in Virgil's first Eclogue (Ecl. 1.18) in response to Tityrus' assertion that a certain deity granted him the leisure to sing and to pasture his herd (o Meliboee, deus nobis haec otia fecit. | namque erit ille mihi semper deus, Ecl. 1.6–7). In posing this question, the herdsman raises the issue of this god's identity also for us, Virgil's readers. We are invited to ponder ‘Who is that deus?’ The question lingers, hanging over the text for the next twenty-three verses, without answer. For despite Meliboeus' blunt and plainspoken query (qui sit, da … nobis), which demands a concrete response, Tityrus—on finally returning to the question qui sit—pointedly names no names. Rather, he leaves his divinity anonymous. We learn only that the god is a iuuenis, whom Tityrus saw at Rome, and who answered the herdsman's entreaty (hic illum uidi iuuenem … | hic mihi responsum primus dedit ille petenti, Ecl. 1.42, 44). In honour of this deity, Tityrus' altars smoke with sacrifice every month of the year (quotannis | bis senos cui nostra dies altaria fumant, Ecl. 1.42–3). As the poem takes the form of a dramatic dialogue without narrative frame, no authoritative voice intervenes to offer further guidance as to the god's identity. Thus we continue to wonder as to the identity of this divine iuuenis. The question remains open, an incitement to readerly conjecture.

Type
Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , May 2016 , pp. 172 - 179
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2016 

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Footnotes

*

This paper emerged from a stimulating seminar on ‘Epicurean Virgil’ taught by Alison Keith at the University of Toronto in the Spring term of 2014. I am grateful to Prof. Keith and her students, Adam Barker, Marion Durand, Nathan Gilbert and Brad Hald for encouraging me to pursue my ideas on this theme. For constructive criticism and challenging dissent, warm thanks to Brian Breed, Rip Cohen, Regina Höschele, Niklas Holzberg, Alison Keith, James O'Hara and Christine Perkell.

References

1 Cf. already Serv. Ecl.1.18: quaeritur, cur de Caesare interrogatus, Romam describat. et aut simplicitate utitur rustica, ut ordinem narrationis plenum non teneat, sed per longas ambages ad interrogata descendat: aut certe quia nullus, qui continetur, est sine ea re, quae continet, nec potest ulla persona esse sine loco: unde necesse habuit interrogatus de Caesare locum describere, in quo eum uiderat. est autem longum hyperbaton ‘urbem quam dicunt Romam. hic illum uidi Meliboee’.

2 On the stylistic register of da … nobis, see A. Cucchiarelli, Publio Virgilio Marone, Le Bucoliche (Rome, 2012), ad loc.: ‘dalle attestazioni pre-virgiliane sembrerebbe un uso colloquiale (Plauto, Terentio, Lucilio, etc.)’. Meliboeus' question may be driven by the need to know to which god(s) to address potential prayers. On the supplicant's desire to have his prayers reach the appropriate deity, known or unknown, cf. E. Norden, Agnostos Theos (Leipzig, 1913), 144–6 and passim.

3 This identification, which appears in Servius' comment (n. 1, de Caesare interrogatus), pervades the standard commentaries and handbooks, e.g. R. Coleman, Vergil Eclogues (Cambridge, 1977), 20 and on Ecl. 1.42; W. Clausen, Virgil Eclogues (Oxford, 1994), on Ecl. 1.42; Cucchiarelli (n. 2), on Ecl. 1.42; Büchner, K., ‘P. Vergilius Maro’, RE 15 (1955), 1021–264Google Scholar, at 1184, 1185: ‘Hier kann wohl kein Zweifel sein, dass mit dem Jüngling Octavian gemeint ist’, ‘Vergil sieht in Octavian 10 Jahre vor seiner eigentlichen Enthüllung als grosser Sieger und Herrscher in dichterischer Vision den rettenden Gott’; R.J. Tarrant, ‘Poetry and power: Virgil's poetry in contemporary context’, in C. Martindale (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (Cambridge, 1997), 169–87, at 174; B.W. Breed, ‘Eclogues’ in R.F. Thomas and J. Ziolkowski (edd.), The Virgil Encyclopedia (Malden, MA, 2014), 1.395–401, at 398: ‘Octavian does appear to be referenced in Ecl. 1 in the guise of the iuvenis.’

4 The identification gains a certain credibility from the fact that Virgil refers to Octavian as a iuuenis at G. 1.500, as does Horace at Sat. 2.5.62 and Carm. 1.2.41—a term still applicable to Octavian even after Actium, when he was in his mid thirties, since, according to Varro (in Censorinus, DN 14), one could be counted a iuuenis until the age of 45; cf. also R.G.M. Nisbet and M. Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace Odes, Book I (Oxford, 1975), on Carm. 1.2.41. Further on iuuenis, cf. DuQuesnay, I.M., ‘Vergil's first Eclogue ’, PLLS 3 (1981), 29–182 Google Scholar, at 133. In each of these passages, however, the iuuenis is further qualified and identified in ways that are completely absent in the eclogue—for example, at G. 1.503 he is Caesar; at Hor. Sat. 2.5.62–3 he is a relative of Aeneas; at Carm. 1.2.44 he is Caesaris ultor.

5 Mayer, R., ‘Missing persons in the Eclogues ’, BICS 30 (1983), 17–30 Google Scholar, at 18. In the Suetonian Life of Virgil as preserved in Donatus, the evidence is contradictory: on the one hand, it reports that Virgil ad Bucolica transiit, maxime ut Asinium Pollionem, Alfenum Varum et Cornelium Gallum celebraret, quia in distributione agrorum, qui post Philippensem uictoriam ueteranis triumuirorum iussu trans Padum diuidebantur, indemnem se praestitissent (19), while later asking an ideo potius Bucolica scripsit, ut in eiusmodi poemate … facultatem haberet captandae Caesaris indulgentiae repetendique agri (60). In resisting the widespread identification of the iuuenis with Octavian, Mayer follows the lead of Liegle, J., ‘Die Tityrusekloge’, Hermes 78 (1943), 209–31Google Scholar, who (like Mayer after him) sees the city of Rome itself as Tityrus' benefactor: ‘Das Buch war mit Wort und Namen niemandem gewidmet. Aber es widmete sich durch sein erstes Gedicht selbst der Roma, der Herrin, nein der Befreierin und Patronin Italiens.’ (227); cf. Mayer (this note), 20: ‘Rome is the true benefactor—hence the position that Virgil gave this poem in the collection. The young man, whom we should not even try to identify, is simply Rome's human—and humane—face.’ Liegle argues that, if one must look outside the poem to identify the iuuenis, then the more likely candidate would be L. Antonius, brother of the triumvir (224). Such a text-external identification is, however, in his view unnecessary.

6 Cf. Cairns, F., ‘C. Asinius Pollio and the Eclogues ’, CCJ 54 (2008), 49–79 Google Scholar, with 70–4 on Ecl. 1, and especially 71 with its useful summary of attempts to identify the iuuenis with someone other than Octavian.

7 Withholding a name in riddling fashion is of a piece with Virgil's practice elsewhere in the Eclogues, e.g. the second figure on the cup at Ecl. 3.40 (with the provocative question quis fuit alter), the nameless puer of Ecl. 4, the unidentified addressee of Ecl. 8—all of whom have prompted endless debate among readers. For riddles in the Eclogues, cf. Dix, T. Keith, ‘Vergil in the Grynean grove: two riddles in the third Eclogue ’, CPh 90 (1995), 256–62Google Scholar, Prioux, É., ‘Deux jeux de mots sur le nom d'Aratos : note sur Virgile, B. III, 42 et Aratos, Phaen. 2’, RPh 79 (2005), 309–17Google Scholar.

8 To be sure, Virgil does not have Tityrus say explicitly that the deus came to his aid, as B. Breed notes to me (per litteras). Yet within the framework of Tityrus describing himself as soliciting assistance from this god (mihi … petenti 44, cf. OLD s.v. peto 8) or even seeking to have him as a helper (OLD s.v. peto 10), it seems clear that the god did in fact do just that. What is divine benefaction in response to the explicit request of a supplicant if not aid?

9 Most recently, see Rundin, J., ‘The Epicurean morality of Vergil's Bucolics ’, CW 96 (2003), 159–76Google Scholar, G. Davis, Parthenope: The Interplay of Ideas in Vergilian Bucolic (Leiden, 2012), Cucchiarelli (n. 2), 25–7. M. Gigante, ‘Vergil in the shadow of Vesuvius’, in D. Armstrong, J. Fish, P.A. Johnston and M.B. Skinner (edd.), Vergil, Philodemus, and The Augustans (Austin, 2004), 85–99, at 95–6 gives a more skeptical assessment of earlier scholarship in a section entitled ‘The Early Vergil: Epicureanism in the Eclogues?’, though he sees strong Epicurean influence in Virgil's later works.

10 Capasso, M. and Gigante, M., ‘Il ritorno di Virgilio a Ercolano’, SIFC 7 (1989), 3–6 Google Scholar. Cf. also Gigante, M., ‘Virgilio all’ ombra del Vesuvio’, CErc 31 (2001), 5–26 Google Scholar, and the English translation of this article in Gigante (n. 9).

11 Thus Catalepton 5 of the Appendix Vergiliana describes how the poet leaves behind the schools of rhetoric so as to study philosophy with Siro. Cf. also Serv. Ecl. 6.13 and Aen. 6.264. For a more skeptical view of the evidence for Virgil's association with Epicureans, including Philodemus, cf. Naumann, H., ‘Ist Vergil der Verfasser von Catalepton V und VIII?’, RhM 121 (1978), 78–93 Google Scholar, at 80–2, N. Horsfall, ‘Virgil: his life and times’, in N. Horsfall (ed.), A Companion to the Study of Virgil (Leiden, 1995), 1–25, at 7–8, Holzberg, N., ‘Impersonating young Virgil: the author of the Catalepton and his libellus’, MD 52 (2004), 29–40 Google Scholar, at 38 with n. 37, and in his aftermath I. Peirano, The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake: Latin Pseudepigrapha in Context (Cambridge, 2012), 105–14.

12 C. Bailey, Titi Lucreti Cari De Rerum Natura Libri Sex, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1947), on 5.8 notes the similarity, as do Castelli, G., ‘Echi lucreziani nelle Ecloghe virgiliane’, RSC 15 (1967), 14–39 Google Scholar, at 21, Coleman (n. 3), on Ecl. 1.6, though he finds it superficial, Ferguson, J., ‘Epicureanism under the Roman Empire’, ANRW 2.36.4 (1990), 2257–327Google Scholar, at 2265, and Rundin (n. 9), 162. It is highlighted as ‘an obvious echo’ (though without further explanation) by G. Davis, ‘Consolation in the bucolic mode: the Epicurean cadence of Vergil's first Eclogue’, in D. Armstrong et al. (n. 9), 63–74, at 71–2. Cf. also Cucchiarelli (n. 2), on Ecl. 1.6 deus: ‘Particolarmente rilevante la magnificazione di Epicuro nelle parole di Lucrezio: 5, 8.’

13 For this and other allusions in Eclogue 5 to Lucretius' praises of Epicurus at the start of De Rerum Natura 3 and 5, see Mizera, S.M., ‘Lucretian elements in Menalcas’ song, Eclogue 5’, Hermes 110 (1982), 367–71Google Scholar.

14 See Clauss, J.J., ‘An acrostic in Vergil (Eclogues 1.5–8): the chance that mimics choice?’, Aevum Antiquum 10 (1997), 267–87Google Scholar. For fons used with reference to a literary source, see OLD s.v. 4a. While Clauss finds in the acrostic a signal of Virgil's debt to Hesiod (with the Hippocrene as the ultimate ‘font’ of poetic inspiration), Theocritus and Callimachus, C. Castelletti sees the chief reference to Aratus, ‘Following Aratus’ plow: Vergil's signature in the Aeneid ’, MH 69 (2012), 83–95 Google Scholar, at 90–2. Neither considers Lucretius as a ‘source’ at all. I would by no means exclude the models proposed by these scholars, yet Lucretian influence is evident already at Ecl. 1.2, where the siluestrem … Musam that Tityrus cultivates on his pipe, and that he teaches the woods to resound to (1.5), clearly echoes Lucretius 4.589 (fistula siluestrem ne cesset fundere Musam: in a section on echoes!), as indeed Virgil's locus amoenus at 1.1–5 generally recalls its Lucretian counterparts at 2.29–33 and 5.1392–6 (see next note). Lucretius also dwells on fontes as source of inspiration within his poetological landscape, especially at 1.927–8 (… iuuat integros accedere fontis | atque haurire), repeated verbatim at 4.2–3.

15 As Castelli (n. 12), 21 says, ‘il verso virgiliano esalta soprattutto il deus datore di otium, come Lucrezio aveva esaltato Epicuro datore di serenità interiore attraverso la liberazione dalle passione’. CQ's anonymous reader points in a similar direction: ‘as scholars have noted, Ecl. 1.1–5 also resonates with the Lucretian locus amoenus at 2.29–33 and 5.1392–6, suggesting a correspondence between Tityrus' otia and the state of ataraxia promised by the teachings of Epicurus.’ The reader cites Putnam, M.C.J., ‘Virgil's first Eclogue: poetics of enclosure’, Ramus 4 (1975), 163–86Google Scholar, at 172 and Giesecke, A.L., ‘Lucretius and Virgil's pastoral dream’, Utopian Studies 10 (1999), 1–15 Google Scholar, at 5–9.

16 See Perkell, C., ‘On Eclogue 1.79–83’, TAPhA 120 (1990), 171–81Google Scholar, at 175, who describes the iuuenis as, in Tityrus' view, ‘a new, private, urban god’, whom he is ‘ready to worship … for reasons of expediency’. Within Lucretius' Epicurean context, the limitation conveyed by the pronoun in nobis deus esse uidetur speaks particularly to the self–definition of those belonging to the school relative to the population at large: by accepting their founder's divinity and cult, each member of the Garden sets himself off from those beyond its walls. Does the Epicurean colouring in Lucretius' avowal carry over into that of Tityrus?

17 Indeed, despite appearing numerous times in De Rerum Natura, Epicurus typically remains nameless there: Lucretius identifies him by name only at 3.1042, and in a context subject to particular generic constraints, since he appears in the midst of Lucretius' catalogue of the deceased, a sort of Heldenschau illustrating the universality and finality of death. In this context, the naming of Epicurus evokes conventions of epitaph, where the dead are generally named. For his part, Virgil turns on its head that passage from De Rerum Natura 3 in the Heldenschau of Aeneid 6: there Underworld souls are named as they are waiting to be reborn (and they are named in their future identities). On this passage of Lucretius, cf. D.N. Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (Cambridge, 1998), 55.

18 To be clear, we are talking here about ancient folk-etymology. Modern historical linguistic analysis of iuuenis has linked it to the *h 2 oiu-family, whose Proto-Indo-European (PIE) meaning is ‘vital force’ and ‘eternity’; cf. Weiss, M., ‘Life everlasting: Latin iugis “everflowing”, Greek ὑγιής “healthy”, Gothic ajukdups “eternity”, and Avestan yauaeji “living forever”’, Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 55 (1994), 131–56Google Scholar, at 133 n. 6.

19 Varro died only in 27 b.c. and we do not know with certainty when he published De Lingua Latina. Virgil would, however, very likely have known about the Varronian etymology by the time he wrote Eclogue 1 for the following reasons: Varro himself tells us in Ling. that that part of the work which concerned etymology had previously been published separately, namely Books 2–4 addressed to his quaestor Publius Septumius (5.1), and Books 5–7, addressed to someone else (7.109), likely Cicero, as attested by Quint. Inst. 1.6.37, and others. It is clear that preliminary studies toward Varro's great opus were already well known to Cicero by June of 45 b.c., when the latter tells (Att. 13.12.3) of its author's promise already two years earlier to dedicate the book to him. See further Cicero's laudes Varronis at Acad. post. 1.9, which include the study of Latin words (omninoque Latinis et litteris luminis et uerbis attulistis), most likely a reference to Varro's preliminary publications on etymology. The likelihood is great, therefore, that Varro's etymology was au courant and known to Virgil. On the date of Ling. cf. Dahlmann, H., ‘M. Terentius Varro’, RE Suppl. 6 (1935), 1172–277Google Scholar, at 1203–5, and Ax, W., ‘ Disputare in utramque partem: zum literarischen Plan und zur dialektischen Methode Varros in de lingua Latina 8–10’, RhM 138 (1995), 146–77Google Scholar, at 147–52.

20 J.J. O'Hara, True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor, 1996), 266. O'Hara suggests further instances that likely confirm Virgil's awareness of this etymology: ‘Elsewhere, Vergil seems to connect iuvare with the name Juturna and perhaps also the name Jupiter (see on A. 10.439–40). At A. 12.813–14, Iuturnam misero (fateor) succurrere fratri | suasi, Vergil seems again to use succurrere to suggest a derivation from iuvo.’ See further R. Maltby, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (Leeds, 1991) s.v. iuuenis.

21 On the meaning of the name Epicurus, see B. Frischer, The Sculpted Word: Epicureanism and Philosophical Recruitment in Ancient Greece (Berkeley, 1982), 275–6, who speculates that the philosopher was not originally called thus: ‘Epicurus changed his nomen to one more in keeping with his omen.’

22 Cf. S.D. Olson, Athenaeus: The Learned Banqueters, vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA, 2008), ad loc. n. 27: ‘epikouroi, punning on “Epicureans”.’ P. Gordon, The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus (Ann Arbor, 2012), 21 likewise calls attention to the wordplay: ‘A pun on the name Epicureans. This comment suggests that Epicurus and his students were regular features in New Comedy.’

23 Clay, D., ‘The philosophical inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda’, BICS 50 (Suppl. 94.1) (2007), 283–91Google Scholar, at 287.

24 Snyder, J., ‘The significant name in Lucretius’, CW 72 (1978), 227–30Google Scholar, at 229–30; cf. id., Puns and Poetry in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (Amsterdam, 1980), 108.

25 H. Frisk, Griechisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg, 1960), 537–8.

26 M. Gale, Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge, 1994), 137.

27 Such a resonance between socia and ἐπίκουρος finds support in passages adduced by O'Hara, J.J., ‘Venus or the Muse as “ally” (Lucr. 1.24, Simon. Frag. Eleg. 11.20–22 W)’, CPh 93 (1998), 69–74 Google Scholar from Greek lyric that invoke the deity inspiring the poet as his ἐπίκουρος, in particular the ‘New Simonides’ (κικλήισκω] σ᾿ ἐπίκουρον ἐμοί, π[ ] Μοῦσα, West IE2 fr. 11.21). See also Timotheus' Persai (PMG 791.204–5), where Apollo is asked ἐμοῖς ἔλθ᾿ ἐπίκουρος ὕμνοις; Sappho 1.28, where the speaker tells Aphrodite σύμμαχος ἔσσο; Pind. Ol. 13.97, where the speaker appears as ἐπίκουρος of the Muses.

28 As the aforegoing suggests, my view is that this occurs at the level of ‘poet’ and ‘reader’. It is not Tityrus who engages in etymological play or alludes to Lucr. 5.8 (musically gifted though he is, nothing in his characterization suggests that he was capable of bilingual wordplay or had heard/read Lucretius and Varro); nor is it Meliboeus, his internal audience, who ‘gets’ this play. In whom is it activated, then? Primarily, I would say, in the ‘Roman Reader’ of the 40s/30s, for whom Epicureanism was (if we can believe Cicero's polemic in Fin. 1 and 2) unaccountably the most fashionable, widespread and familiar philosophy of the day. Secondarily, the allusion/play would be activated—though with greater difficulty, as circumstances and familiarity with precursor texts change—among subsequent readers, down to the present day.

Those readers who hear the play will doubtless also be struck when, immediately following his mention of the iuuenis at Ecl. 1.42, Tityrus tells how every month his altars smoke with sacrifice in the god's honour (literally, ‘for whom each year our altars smoke for twice six days’, quotannis | bis senos cui nostra dies altaria fumant, Ecl. 1.42–3). For as Rundin ([n. 9], 163) suggests, this may be construed as recalling the monthly sacrifice in honour of Epicurus, already provided for by the master himself in his will (Diog. Laert. 10.18), and remaining a well-attested practice among adherents of the Garden, notably in Philodemus, Anth. Pal. 11.44 = 27 Sider (The Epigrams of Philodemus [Oxford, 1997], 156 n. on line 3 εἰκάδα); see also Cic. Fin. 2.101 and Plin. HN 35.5.

29 So Rundin (n. 9), 163.

30 This is the suggestion of Ferguson (n. 12), 2265.

31 Thus Rundin (n. 9), 166, who also considers at 167 whether using such a model might aid in his assimilation to the divine, the Epicurean ὁμοίωσις θεῷ.