United States or Guyana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When he published them he placed at the very beginning the well-known line that recalled Messalla's own line: Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi. What can this mean but a graceful reminder to Messalla that it was he who had inspired the new effort? We may conclude then that Vergil's use of that line as the title of his Eclogues is a recognition of Messalla's influence.
And does not this explain why he gives so much space to Messalla's verses, and why he so quickly passes over the victory of Philippi with an assertion of his incapacity for doing it justice? To the biographer, however, the passage praising Messalla's Greek pastorals is the most interesting for it reveals clearly how Vergil came to make the momentous decision of writing pastorals.
The exploit of Messalla that Vergil especially stresses is the defeat of "barbarians," naturally the subjection of the Thracian and Pontic tribes and of the Oriental provinces earlier in the year. Could he have been more explicit in explaining that Messalla's exploits, for which he has friendly praise, were performed in a cause of which his heart did not approve?
The whole poem, therefore, is a delightful commentary upon Vergil's life in Siro's garden, written probably after Siro had died, the school closed, and Varus gone off to war. The younger man's school days are now over; he had found his idiom in a poetic form to which Messalla's experiments had drawn him. The Eclogues are already appearing in rapid succession.
They apparently assumed that poets as a matter of course wrote what they did in order to please some patron a questionable enough assumption regarding any Roman poetry composed before the Silver Age. The second Eclogue is a very early study which, in the theme of the gift-bringing, seems to be reminiscent of Messalla's work.
Since Messalla's verses were in Greek they had, of course, been written two years before this while he was a student at Athens. Would that we knew this heroine upon whom he represents the divinities as bestowing gifts! Could she have been the lady he married upon his return from Athens?
Pompey rages, remonstrates, backs Scaurus, but whether only ostensibly or from the heart people don't feel sure. No one takes the lead: money reduces all to the same level. Messalla's chance is at a low ebb: not because he is wanting in spirit or friends, but because this coalition of the consuls, as well as Pompey's opposition, stands in his way.
Later, after his defeat and submission, Messalla had of course to suppress every indication that might connect him with "tyrannicide" stock or faction. The poem, therefore, must have been written before Messalla's surrender in 42 B.C. The poet's silences and hesitation in touching upon this subject of civil war are significant of his mood.
The eulogy of Messalla, written in 42 B.C., reveals Vergil already at work upon pastoral themes, to which, as he tells us, Messalla's Greek eclogues had called his attention. We may then at once reject the statement of the scholiasts that Vergil wrote the Eclogues for the purpose of thanking Pollio, Alfenus, and Gallus for having saved his estates from confiscation.
The poet hearing of Messalla's remarkable exploit at Philippi saw at once that his association with Brutus would remind every Roman of the events of 509 B.C., and that the populace would as a matter of course acclaim the young hero by the ancient cognomen "Publicola."
Word Of The Day