The Bucolics and Ecloges (annotated)

Thank you, Penguin, for publishing this slender volume which is small enough to tuck into my carryon whenever I travel to Italy; for Vergil's "Eclogues," written in the first century BC, celebrate the essence of the Italian landscape. Vergil's susurrant pines and splashing fountains; his humming bees and keening doves; his savours of crushed garlic and thyme are omnipresent, as any walk in Rome, Ostia Antica, or Hadrian's Villa on a summer's day will reveal. Reading Vergil's "Eclogues" makes one almost forget about the incessant din of the Roman traffic. So that readers of Latin can fully appreciate these ten short poems, Penguin has set Vergil's Latin text on the left page and and Guy Lee's translation on the right page. The translator has essayed to approximate the Latin hexameter by using English Alexandrine meter. Translation is a matter of taste. I am not certain that one approaching these poems from English with no knowledge of Latin will get a sense of "what Vergil was really like" from the translator's rendition, which is nevertheless punctilious. Furthermore, since the poems are not annotated, the words "lucerne" (cytisus) and "sappy vervain" (verbenas. . . pinguis) may send non-Latin readers rushing to a dictionary. Vergil may be regarded as 'untranslatable' in that one must read the "Eclogues" in Latin to appreciate the beauty of these poems. For example "The very pines,/ the very springs, these very orchards called to you/" is accurate, but it fails to catch Vergil's brilliant combined sibilance, consonance, and alliteration that imitates these sounds of nature themselves: "ipsae te Tityre, pinus/, ipsi te fontes, ipsa haec arbusta vocabant." Nor does "[as ever feeding Hybla bees]/ will often whisper you persuasively to sleep/" capture Virgil's drowsy combination of L's and S's in ". . . saepe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro." But again, one has to read these poems, which are unfortunately sometimes neglected in favour of the "Aeneid," in Latin to appreciate their stunning beauty. Thanks to Penguin, readers of Latin, if not completely satisfied with the English, can refer to the magnificent original.

No reading of the Eclogues is complete without a reading of the Idylls of Theocritus. Having said that, and having (re-)read that, I find myself commenting on the other review, which was excellent (though it was written for a different edition). I disagree that Virgil "slavishly imitated" Theocritus. My impression is that the Eclogues are more of an artful (and extensive) adaptation. The fear of plagiarism and insistence on originality is a modern phenomenon. Ancient literature depended upon the recasting of existing works to suit the poet's purpose and taste. Appropriation provided a cultural continuum that preserved and transmitted the beauty, values, and ideas of one's predecessors. In Virgil's case, poetic license would not have referred to a deviation from form or tradition as it does today; it would have meant knowing the rules and biding by them. If anything was slavishly imitated by Virgil, it would have been the characters created by Theocritus. Daphnis, Thyrsis, Amaryllis, Tityrus, Corydon, Damoetas and Menalcas all make somewhat more than cameo appearances in the Eclogues. They have in fact re-emerged as Virgil's main cast of characters. In some cases they appear as the poet himself! The Idylls as an art form only superficially affected Virgil. Of course he adapted the singing contests to his own settings and themes. The prizes still included cups, heifers, girls, banes and boons. While the Idylls were a collection of poems written at various times and for various purposes, the Eclogues appear to be (and there is ample evidence to support this) composed as a coherent set. They are the equivalent of a modern-day popular music album. Cohesive devices link one poem to another; matching numbers of lines provide internal balance; there is an introduction and a conclusion.