I joked in class about how the setting in Eclogue 1 reminded me of The Simpsons. Just as Springfield is not Capital City, the urbs of Meliboeus and Tityrus is not Rome. Such distancing is seen when Tityrus refers to the city as “urbem quam dicunt Romam,” (19) using a relative clause with a third person subject. Rather, we are set in an Italian countryside troubled by Octavian’s land confiscation (I refer you to Bruce’s post). We are not, however, in Mantua (Vergil’s birthplace). Coleman points out that the beech trees and hills (montibus) found in the poem are not to be found in Mantua. It is a humble environment. Tityrus’ farm has rocky soils and reedy marshes. Meliboeus’ cottage is thatched with sod.
There are additional locations specified in the poem which serve as a contrast to the relatively shabby locale of the two herdsmen. The Hyblaean bees evoke Theocritus’ idyllic Sicily. Vergil demonstrates an absurdity by having a Parthian drink from the Arar river (modern Saône in France and a German drink from the Tigris. Germani of Vergil’s day occupied the region of what is today France, so that the two groups would have swapped places. Meliboeus suggests that they must depart to either Libya, to the exotic Oaxes River (location unknown), or to remote Britain. (Coleman).
We also see how humans interact with different environments. Tityrus is first found lying in a grove. It is shady and he treats it as a leisure spot. Such a location is to be contrasted with the urbs Tityrus calls it ‘ingratae.’ It is cold and unfeeling. The cheese is hard-pressed; the animals go to slaughter. Some human manipulation of the land is good, though. Cultivated land reflects the industriousness of the farmer. But the wanton soldier will bring such lands to ruin.
The contrasting landscapes and the places they evoke are certainly important in the poem. Unlike Theocritus, Vergil consistently inserts elements that contradict, or at least call into question, the bucolic landscape of Theocritus. Eclogue 1 does this brutally, introducing Tityrus as the archetypal pastoral poet confronted by the disenfranchised Meliboeus. T's account of his liberation from slavery by the youth/deus in Rome also jars with the bucolic setting.
ReplyDeleteWorth noting: the Parthian drinking form the Arar and German drinking from the Tigris are examples of the adynaton (an impossible thing). There are many examples of this trope in Greek and Latin lit. , e.g. both Lucretius and Horace mentioning fish clinging to elm trees. I will post a link to an excellent 20th century example of this.