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Updated: June 19, 2025
But there is no proof that Alfenus gave ear to his plea; at any rate the poet never mentions him again. Servius' supposition that Alfenus had been of service to the poet seems to rest wholly on the mistaken idea that the sixth Eclogue was obsequiously addressed to him. As we have seen, however, Quintilius Varus has a better claim to that poem. IX. 10; ex oratione Cornelii in Alfenum. Cf.
The female Cricket does not run to hide herself in the folds of her lettuce leaves; but she lifts the curtain a little, and looks out, and wishes to be seen: Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri. She flies towards the brake, but hopes first to be perceived, said the poet of the delightful eclogue, two thousand years ago. Sacred provocations of lovers, are they not in all ages the same?
If, as seems wholly likely, Servius is right, the sixth Eclogue is a fervid tribute to a teacher who deserves not to be forgotten in the story of Vergil's education. The poem has been so strangely misinterpreted in recent years that it is time to follow out Servius' suggestion and see whether it does not lead to some conclusions.
The dramatic tendency was indeed inherent in the eclogue from the very first. Throughout there is a steady growth in the use of dialogue: of the Idyls of Theocritus only about a third contain more than one character; of Vergil's Bucolics at least half; of Calpurnius' all but one; of the eclogues of Petrarch and Boccaccio all without exception.
Velleius Paterculus has written its happier aspects: he describes how the "Pax Augusta," the "Roman Peace," delivered every quarter of the world from violence. He celebrates the return of Justice and prosperity, of order, of mild and equable taxation, of military discipline and magisterial authority. It is like the Saturnian Reign, which Virgil sings in the Eclogue "Pollio."
The tradition of the older classic culture was first revived for England in his quotations of Plato and Aristotle, of Seneca and Cicero, of Lucretius and Ovid. Virgil cast over him the same spell that he cast over Dante; verses from the Æneid break his narratives of martyrdoms, and the disciple ventures on the track of the great master in a little eclogue descriptive of the approach of spring.
The fourth eclogue was written after the peace of Brundisium, and describes the golden age to which Vergil looked forward as consequent upon the birth of a marvellous infant, perhaps some offspring of the marriages of Antonius and Octavianus, celebrated in solemnization of the treaty.
The poet was perhaps unconscious of the secret sense and object of these sublime predictions, which have been so unworthily applied to the infant son of a consul, or a triumvir; but if a more splendid, and indeed specious interpretation of the fourth eclogue contributed to the conversion of the first Christian emperor, Virgil may deserve to be ranked among the most successful missionaries of the gospel.
The towns of Cisalpine Gaul were accused of favoring Dec. Brutus, and saw nearly all their lands handed over to new possessors. The young poet, Vergil, lost his little patrimony, but was reinstated at the instance of Pollio and Maecenas, and showed his gratitude in his First Eclogue.
Her abiding charm was her repose. She brought to him the quiet values of an eighteenth-century eclogue he saw her as a divinely artificial shepherdess watching an unreal flock, while the haze of decorative atmosphere would envelop her, with not a vestige of real life on the canvas.
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