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THYRSIS’ ARCADIAN SHEPHERDS IN VIRGIL'S SEVENTH ECLOGUE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2015

Chris Eckerman
Chris Eckerman*
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
*
eckerman@uoregon.edu
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Extract

In Virgil's seventh Eclogue, Meliboeus relates a singing contest that Corydon and Thyrsis undertook. Upon beginning their songs, Corydon invokes the Libethrian nymphs (21), and Thyrsis invokes ‘Arcadian shepherds’ (25–6). Scholars have previously interpreted Thyrsis’ Arcadian shepherds as people, but here I suggest that they should be interpreted as divinities. In support of this assertion, I rely on the expectations of the capping style (which requires that Thyrsis ‘cap’ Corydon's invocation of Libethrian nymphs), Virgil's description of the setting and the characters present, an epigram by Erucius (an intertext for this poem), the Greek and Roman literary tradition that developed especially in relation to gods associated with Arcadia, and Thyrsis’ quatrains, which can be profitably interpreted if we assume that Arcadian gods have heard Thyrsis' prayer and are now inspiring his song.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , December 2015 , pp. 669 - 672
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Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2015 

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References

1 Cf. A. Cucchiarelli, Publio Virgilio Marone: Le Bucoliche (Rome, 2012), 384; T. Papanghelis, ‘Winning on points’, in C. Deroux (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, vol. 8 (Brussels, 1997), 144–57, at 149; Jenkyns, R., ‘Virgil and Arcadia’, JRS 79 (1989), 26–39 Google Scholar, at 30; Fantazzi, C. and Querbach, C., ‘Sound and substance: a reading of Virgil's seventh Eclogue ’, Phoenix 39 (1985), 355–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 359; R. Coleman, Vergil Eclogues (Cambridge, 1977), 214, 226; B. Frischer, At tu aureus esto: eine Interpretation von Vergils 7. Ekloge (Bonn, 1975), 90, 92; Waite, S., ‘The contest in Vergil's seventh Eclogue ’, CPh 67 (1972), 121–3Google Scholar, at 122; M. Putnam, Virgil's Pastoral Art: Studies in the Eclogues (Princeton, 1970), 232; Martitz, P. Wülfing-von, ‘Zum Wettgesang der Hirten in der siebenten Ekloge Vergils’, Hermes 98 (1970), 380–2Google Scholar, at 382; Hornsby, R., ‘The pastor in the poetry of Vergil’, CJ 63 (1968), 145–52Google Scholar, at 145; Savage, J., ‘The art of the seventh Eclogue of Vergil’, TAPhA 94 (1963), 248–67Google Scholar, at 256; Beyers, E., ‘Vergil: Eclogue 7—a theory of poetry’, AClass 5 (1962), 38–47 Google Scholar, at 44; W. Clausen, Virgil Eclogues (Oxford, 1994), 216.

2 Virgil refers to the god Apollo as a pastor at G. 3.2; see Hornsby (n. 1), at 146.

3 On the capping style, see Cucchiarelli (n. 1), 373; Fantazzi and Querbach (n. 1), 357;  Beyers (n. 1), 40.

4 Jenkyns (n. 1), 32 also stresses this point.

5 Cf. Cucchiarelli (n. 1), 378; Clausen (n. 1), 215.

6 As Clausen (n. 1), 222 notes, Micon's offering reverberates with another bucolic epigram (which has Pan as its dedicatee) that would have been available to Virgil in Meleager's Garland: Rhianus 6 G.-P. (= Anth. Pal. 6.34).

7 Jenkyns (n. 1), 34 considers the connections between Erucius’ epigram and Virgil's seventh Eclogue, and concludes: ‘I suspect that Pan had a part to play here [i.e. in Eclogue 7, shortly after Thyrsis invokes Arcades pastores]; but if we reflect upon the subtlety and wit of Virgil's allusive technique in other places, we shall realize that it is vain to seek for an accuracy of appreciation which we have not the power to attain’. According to the argument made here, Jenkyns was correct to presume a reference to Pan in Eclogue 7. Pan is simply somewhat hard to find, since, as I suggest, he is latent in Virgil's Arcades pastores.

8 ‘Pan’, in S. Hornblower, A. Spawforth and E. Eidinow (edd.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford, 20124), 1072.

9 Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden and Boston, 2010), 1149.

10 Jost (n. 8), 1072.

11 Jenkyns (n. 1), 28.

12 Jenkyns (n. 1), 28.

13 See also F. Jones, Virgil's Garden: The Nature of Bucolic Space (London, 2011), 48–50 and B.W. Breed, Pastoral Inscriptions: Reading and Writing Virgil's Eclogues (London, 2006), 127–9, both with further bibliography.

14 Coleman (n. 1), 208, with references to further discussion.

15 Hom. Hymn Merc. 491–4.

16 Cf. Catull. 7.12 mala fascinare lingua and Clausen (n. 1), 222.

17 Cf. Coleman (n. 1), 214: ‘mala lingua refers not to the evil eye but specifically to a verbal spell or curse’. The identity of the plant baccar is unknown. Servius notes on this passage herba est ad depellendum fascinum, presumably basing his statement on how Virgil uses baccar. On baccar see Clausen (n. 1), 222, who notes that Virgil here attributes ‘magical properties’ to baccar, and Coleman (n. 1), 214.

18 At Ecl. 9.33-4, Lycidas similarly boasts of his pre-eminent poetic status, which derives from divinities.

19 Coleman (n. 1), 214. See also Cucchiarelli (n. 1), 388.

20 T. Page, P. Virgili Maronis Bucolica et Georgica (London, 1963 [1897]), 151.

21 Page (n. 20), 155 suggests that ‘the inferiority of Thyrsis is marked in the arrogance of lines 25–28’.

22 Frischer (n. 1), 86 refers to Libethrian as an ‘abstruse Wort’.

23 Egan, R., ‘Corydon's winning words in Eclogue 7’, Phoenix 50 (1996), 233–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 234.

24 As Putnam (n. 1), 252 notes, ‘the poem is more than a study in decorum. It is a meditation, in dialogue form, on the idealism of pastoral song and what is appropriate to it’.

25 On the importance of Thyrsis’ and Corydon's names as ‘speaking names’, see Harrison, S.J., ‘The lark ascending: Corydon, Corydon (Vergil, Ecl. 7.70)’, CQ 48 (1998), 310–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sullivan, M., ‘ Et eris mihi magnus Apollo: divine and earthly competition in Virgil's seventh Eclogue ’, Vergilius 48 (2002), 40–54 Google Scholar. On the symbolic importance of names in the Eclogues, see J. O'Hara, Virgil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor, 1996), 44.

26 Beyers, E., ‘Vergil: Eclogue 7—A Theory of Poetry’, AClass 5 (1962), 38–47 Google Scholar, at 40, refers to him as having a ‘bad character’.