VIRGIL’S FIFTH ECLOGUE
A lecture to the Virgil Society, March 1977 ' by
I.M. DuQuesnay
The Song o f Mopsus and the New Daphnis The purpose o f this paper is twofold. In the first part, the song of Mopsus in the fifth Eclogue will be re-examined in relation to the song of Thyrsis in the first Idyll o f Theocritus. The intention here is to illuminate some o f the techniques used by Virgil both in his direct verbal imitations o f Theocritus and in his creation of a new lament for Daphnis which is designed rather to rival and to provide an alternative to that o f Theocritus than simply to follow and be a substitute for the model. The second part o f the paper will be devoted to an examination o f the transformation o f the Theocritean Daphnis into an ‘allegory’ o f Caesar and the political significance o f the poem. In broad outline, both these aspects o f the fifth Eclogue are well understood.1 What is new in this paper is in the detail, the emphasis and in the general conclusions concerning the signifi cance o f the poem in its contemporary context.
The Song o f Thyrsis, the Song o f Mopsus and the epicedion. The song o f Mopsus in the fifth Eclogue begins with a clear and striking allusion to the opening o f Thyrsis’ song in the first Idyll.2 It is not however a simple translation or a motto. Thyrsis began the lament proper by asking the Nymphs why they were not present to assist Daphnis in his final hour. The implication is that if they had been present they would not have let Daphnis die. Mopsus has inverted this situation. The Nymphs were present at the death o f Daphnis but they could not save him. The pathos o f the Theocritean original is captured by the introduction of a new motif: the mother o f Daphnis embracing and bewailing her dead son.
The emotionality of this scene is coupled with a learned allusion. According to the mythographers,3 Daphnis was the son o f a Nymph who had been exposed at birth in a laurel grove (whence his name) and reared by herdsmen. By having the Nymphs present at the death of Daphnis, Virgil is able to reunite the mother, one of the Nymphs, with her son in these most tragic circumstances. The doctrina here serves to reinforce rather than to counteract the emotionality. The idea o f having the mother present may have been inspired by Theocritus, at least indirectly. In the song o f Thyrsis, the first o f the gods to visit the dying Daphnis was Hermes: again according to the mythographers, Hermes was the father of Daphnis.4 Virgil, then, has replaced the father with the mother.
In Idyll 1, this opening question is followed by a description o f the mourning o f the animals (71-77):
Tfjvov pca> Owes, -rfjvov Xukoi cbpOuccvro,
tt|vov x & k SpunoTo A to v fxAocvae S a vo vra.
fipXrrs povKoXiKas, M olaai ipiAca, apxer’ doiSaj.
iroAAcrf ol Trap ttoctcjI piss, ttoAXo! 51 ts Tccupoi, TroAAai 8£ 5crpaAca xal Trop-ms <£Supcarro.
6 pxete pouKoXiKas, MoTcrai
fivO’ *Epnas TTpdrriaTOS drrr' <5>peos, eItte 6£ ‘ Aatpvt,,., .
In the song o f Mopsus, the account o f the mourning o f the Nymphs is followed by a description o f the mourning o f the mater (22f), the herdsmen (non ulli, 24), boves (25), (nulla) quadrupes (25f), Poenos leones (27) montesque fe ri silvaeque (28). As often happens in the Eclogues, the concepts in both passages are strikingly similar but verbally and stylistically the two passages are very different. In the Theocritean passage, there is a progression from the wild animals to the tame ones and, finally, Hermes (the father o f Daphnis) is introduced. In the Virgilian passage, this movement is basically reversed: the mother, the tame'animals and then the wild animals. Moreover, although Virgil has reduced and simplified the catalogue o f mourners, he has also made some interesting additions.
In the first place, Virgil has added to the list o f mourners montesque feri silvaeque. Although it should be noted that the song o f Thyrsis began with a question to the Nymphs and a list o f their mountain haunts and that this first passage ends with Hermes coming ‘from the mountain’ , this detail has been recognised as a borrowing from the other Theocritean account o f Daphnis in Idyll 7.72-74:s
o Se i>T w s Tlovw t 2 $ ly^riTcCTO O |3ooToi^ op os 77OV/61TO K«ii bp06^ o!u rlv 68^> y y; This technique o f contaminating two Theocritean models, even on this small scale, is typical o f Virgil’s procedure. It is especially interesting in this poem, because the framework o f Idyll 1 is o f the same type as that o f Eclogue 5: two herdsmen meet and initial conversation is followed by exchange o f songs, o f compliments and o f gifts. This typical similarity is further reinforced by a number o f very specific verbal imitations.6 This borrowing from one o f the songs in Idyll 7 thus serves to underline the compatibility o f Idylls 1 and 7, which are Virgil’s two main models in Eclogue 5. Nonetheless, the most important result o f having the mountains and the forests share in the mourning for the dead Daphnis is considerably to increase his stature in comparison to that of his counterpart in the first Idyll. The second addition to the Theocritean catalogue o f mourners serves a similar purpose: nulla neque amnem / libavit quadripes necgraminis attigit herbam (25f.). The word quadripes denotes any four-legged animal, but in Latin hexameter poetry the word is almost always used to denote a horse.7 The horse is in ancient poetry one of the more noble beasts and it is sometimes objected that horses have no place in Theocritean pastoral. But Virgil, in his imitations of Theocritus, does not confine himself to the precedent o f the bucolic Idylls8 and female horses do appear in Theocritus’ Idyll 2,48f.(B o * x itckol) where they are specifically situated in the hills o f Arcadia. This is not a case of verbal imitation or allusion, which would direct the reader’s attention away from the first Idyll; but it is important to realise that Virgil is a meticulous enough imitator to seek precedent in his model whenever possible. The effect and purpose o f the mourning horses is quite independent of that o f the Theocritean precedent. In part the motif subserves the allegory;9 in part it is again designed to enhance the status and dignity of the dead Daphnis. Finally, it is worth noting how Virgil treats the mourning lions. The ancient scholiasts on Theocritus objected that there were no lions in Sicily and that it was therefore a mistake to have had them lament Daphnis in Idyll 1,72. Virgil meets the criticism head on: through the use o f the epithet Poenos (27) he places the lions firmly in Africa.10 News o f their lamenting is passing on by the mountains and woods and this allows the reader to infer the ‘scientific’11 explanation o f how they came to know o f his death: they had learned o f it from these same mountains and woods which may be supposed, in accordance with the bucolic convention, to have lamented the death o f Daphnis. Again, the effect is to enhance the dignity o f Daphnis and to emphasise the universal effect o f his death and, by implication, his role as a universal benefactor in life. This important theme is picked up in the epitaph, where it is claimed that Daphnis is hinc usque ad sidera notus (43). In these opening lines o f Mopsus’ lament Virgil has thoroughly reworked the opening lines o f the lament of Thyrsis in Idyll 1. The original material has been reordered and compressed by the omission o f simple repetitions and supplemented by the addition o f new material, taken where possible from other Theocritean poems. But lines 29ff., swing away completely from the model o f the first Idyll. There are however parallels and precedents to be found in other Idylls for much o f what follows. Again, it should be stressed that there seems to be no intentional allusion designed to distract the reader’s attention away from the model o f the first Idyll: it seems simply to be part o f the intellectual game that there should be as far as possible Theocritean precedent for the detail and phrasing o f the poem. The transition to the new section is carefully managed. The repetition o f the name Daphnis (29f.) picks up the repeated vocatives Daphni. .. Daphni (25,27); the phrase Poenos. . . leones prepares for Armenian... tigris (29). The implicit equation o f Daphnis and Dionysus seems harsh because they have such strongly contrast ing traditional images. It is therefore worth noting that in Idyll 20,33 ‘the fair Dionysus (w ho) herds the heifer in the vales’ appears amid a series of divine and heroic herdsmen, which includes Anchises and Adonis who themselves make a brief appearance in Idyll 1,106 and 109. Again, the description of the Bacchic rites seems out o f place if the poem is thought o f chiefly as bucolic rather than Theocritean. Yet there is a much more extended description o f Dionysiac ritual in Idyll 26 which provides ample Theocritean precedent. However, the most important Theocritean parallel for these lines in praise o f Daphnis (29-34) is to be found in another non-bucolic poem o f Theocritus: the praise o f Helen at Idyll 18,29-37. There praise o f Helen’s beauty is followed by praise o f her deeds and achievements. At Eclogue 5,29ff. the order o f these two encomiastic topoi is reversed and a suitably modified account o f Daphnis’ deeds and achievements is followed by praise o f his beauty which draws stylistically and verbally on the praise o f Helen. (Idyll 18,29-31): TTtElpa ntyaXa err' av'iBpaUE Kojpo; apoOpa v) K&TTCO Kvrrdpiacros, f| appcrri ©EdoaAos Itt-ttos, coSe kcc! a £o£6xp«s ‘EAsva AaxsBalpoyi xocrpos- From the first colon o f this simile Virgil has taken the ‘fat arable land’ and used it in the final colon o f his own simile (pinguibus arvis, 33) and has substituted segetes as a more suitable adornment. He has also taken over the repetition o f the key-word (Hoayuo^), which he too uses in the first and final cola of his simile but with the added refinement o f polyptoton (decori. .. decus). The most striking point o f contact, however, is between the phrases ‘rosy Helen (was) an adornment to Lacedaemon’ and tu decus omne tuis (34). The word decus is perfectly suitable as a translation of. vCt>s/105 . Both Helen and Daphnis are being praised for their beauty, and yet the beauty o f Daphnis has a different significance from that o f Helen in that it is one o f the characteristics which mark him as a universal benefactor. It is therefore worth noting that the word decus has connotations that the word Koty<-o$ does not, since it is regularly used as an encomiastic term for the praise o f great men and in this use it is closer to the Greek than to Kcs>n>s 12 It is particularly interesting that Virgil has chosen this passage as a model, since there is a more obviously bucolic version o f this simile at Idyll 8,79f.: -rqt 8put Tal (MActvoi xoapos, tct poAiSt paAa, T Idyll 8 is, o f course, not considered to be genuinely Theocritean by modern scholars. But there is no ground for thinking that Virgil avoided it here for that reason.13 At most he learned from this poem that the simile could be adapted to a bucolic setting and some general ideas as to how the adaptation might be done. But the vines, which figure so prominently in the Virgilian version, have no place in either passage although they are common enough elsewhere in the Idylls.14 Here they follow naturally from the Dionysiac material o f the preceding lines (29-31). In lines 34-39, Virgil returns to the model o f the song o f Thyrsis in Idyll 1. But the technique o f imitation which he uses is not the same as it was in the opening lines o f Mopsus’ song. Here the various elements from Daphnis’ closing words appear to have been isolated, compressed and completely reworked in order to generate something quite new. So, each element in the apparently unTheocritean lines postquam te fata tulerunt, / ipsa Pales agros atque ipse reliquit Apollo (34-35) can be seen, on closer examination, to have its counterpart in Idyll 1 ,123ff. At line 130, Daphnis says: fj y&p lyobv C-tt' 'Epco-ros I; 'AiSav IXxoncn f|Sri. Then, at line 139f. Thyrsis describes his death: t h ye-u&v Xiva -ro&vTa AeXo!tci Jk Moipav, A&yvis ipa £>6ov. These two descriptions have apparently been combined through the substitution of fata, the equivalent o f A lo s p=i* in 140, for ’ fe w j who plays no part in the Virgilian conception o f Daphnis. The verb ^bXorntu echoes the imperative to’ Pan in line 125 (Avne)', who is commanded to leave Arcadia, an idea which finds its counterpart in agros... reliquit (35). Finally, the line (141): t 6v MoEcrcas In the song o f Thyrsis, the last words attributed to the dying Daphnis are a wish for a reversal o f nature. These lines (132ff) provide the model for the description o f the effect o f Daphnis’ death at Eclogue 5, 36-39. Apart from the obvious general similarity, there are specific verbal links, especially with lines 132f: v iv la |j£v tpopioiTE p The verbal echo would be even stronger if the testimony o f the late grammarian Diomedes were accepted and pro purpurea narcisso taken into the text. 17 Instead o f the twin thorns fiiroi and 3<£*,ty8 u. , Virgil has carduusls and paliurus; it is worth noting that are a standard pair,19 o f which Theocritus has used one and so Virgil has used the other. These general and specific links should not, however, be allowed to obscure the fact that Virgil is not simply repeating or even inverting the topos used by his model. Rather he has substituted a deterioration o f nature for the reversal o f nature topos in the model. The final lines o f Mopsus’ song relate the mandata o f Daphnis. Again, there is some general similarity (see below), but this time the verbal echoes o f Theocritus are taken from Idylls other than the first. There is a general similarity between the effects o f the command (40): spargite humum foliis, inducite fontibus umbras and the description o f the laying out o f Adonis at Idyll 1 5 ,119f: XAu>(j«u. S>'e CKti&fcs The echo does little more than confirm the appropriateness o f such a setting for a dead hero like Daphnis. It is o f interest because one o f the pre-Virgilian imitators of Idyll 1 had taken Adonis as his subject. More impressive are the verbal parallels with the description o f the cult instituted for Helen by a ‘band o f maidens mourning the loss o f a compeer’20 at Idyll 18, 3948. The word foliis corresponds to (jio A X * in the phrase h Atipcovia cpuAAa ipyEOps; (390 anc* both words have the extended meaning ‘ flowers’ rather than ‘leaves’ . Furthermore, there are the purely verbal echoes: X*/*cU.(43) and humum (4); Cnot/CMV (44; 46) and umbras (40). Finally, both passages, Eclogue 5,4044 and Idyll 18, 3948, end with a quotation o f the inscription erected in honour o f their respective heroes. However, the echoes are hardly strong enough to be considered as allusion designed to direct the reader’s attention away from the first Idyll to the eighteenth. What lends support to the notion that these lines were in Virgil’s mind is that he has already in this poem borrowed from Idyll 18. There is one other passage from the Idylls which has apparently contributed to this section o f Mopsus’ song. In Idyll 23 exactly the same topos is used: mandata morituri comprising instructions for making a grave and for the mourner; the quotation o f the dead man’s epitaph. The verbal echoes are precise enough: X&ucc U poi kchAccvov (43) corresponds to et tumulum facite (42); yp&yov xai t 65e ypduua(46) corresponds to et tumulo superaddite carmen (42) in sense, while the effect o f the repetition is captured in the polyptoton tumulum . . . tumulo. Nonetheless, it is not possible to be certain that Virgil had this passage in mind: there is no ancient evidence that this poem is by Theocritus or that it was believed to be so, as is the case with Idyll 8, in Virgil's day. Moreover, mandata morituri are a commonplace and the verbal parallels could be coincidental. Since, however, there is no question o f allusion, the point is o f little significance: Idyll 23 is an imitation o f Theocritus and so is Eclogue 5; what matters is that both writers felt that both the topos and the style were suitable for such an imitation. The song o f Mopsus closes with the epitaph (4344): Daphnis ego in silvis, hinc usque ad sidera notus, form osi pecoris custos, formosior ipse. This is both imitation o f and allusion to the lines in which Daphnis proclaims his identity in Idyll 1, 120f : A69VIS tycov 65; -rfjvo; 6 t&s pdas £>8e vopsucov, Aityvis 6 T(i>s Tavpcoj Kod uopTicj cbSe rrOTiaocov. The first two words are ‘quoted’ in Daphnis ego in (elided); the repition fo rm osi. . . form osior creates an effect analogous to that o f the Theocritean repetitions at the beginnings and ends o f the lines. The information conveyed by the entire couplet in Theocritus is condensed into the two words pecoris custos. The emphasis on the beauty o f Daphnis is new. In view o f the possible influence o f Idyll 23, it is worth noting a parallel in line 45: the excluded komast asks his beloved to say o f him “ kcxX6s 5£ poi cjXeB’ J-raipos This sentence is highly reminiscent o f the opening lines o f the Epitaphios Adonidos (I f ): 0(7\wVtTD « 0<\o£ ’XklOVlt, f ojXfcTO 'KWvis I f the m otif o f beauty has been taken from this source and it is reasonable to expect a reader to recognise the allusion, then this is significant. Adonis, like the Virgilian Daphnis, was a mortal hero who was worshipped after his death as a deity and universal benefactor. Precisely these factors were played down by the author o f the Epitaphiosin his attempt to assimilate his Adonis to the type o f the Theocritean Daphnis. Virgil has reversed this procedure and assimilated his Daphnis to the well-known figure o f Adonis. The allusion thus provides a literary dimension to the beauty m otif wholly consistent with the fact that its main function in the epitaph is to characterise Daphnis as a universal benefactor, a function that it derives from its conventional role in Roman politico-religious propaganda rather than from the literary tradition.21 The more striking addition to the Theocritean model is the phrase hinc usque ad sidera notus. The commentators have long noted that this is modelled on the closing words at Odyssey 9, 19f where Odysseus delcares his identity to the Phaeacians: tifji ’O ’bofeos 0$ t h s 'l & o \ o k jw *C\J0^WAOKTv OOpoiVOV tKtt- The question arises as to why Virgil should suddenly introduce an Homeric allusion at this point. The question may be answered on two levels. First, both Idyll 1 ,120f. and Odyssey 9 , 19f. are variations on the same topos, the proclamation o f identity. The Homeric example may therefore be considered as the ultimate source o f the Theocritean lines. As a scholar poet, Virgil offers this philological comment on the lines o f Theocritus by means o f contaminating his model with his model’s model.22 On this level. Virgil’s communication with his reader is learned and intellectual and its effect is strictly local and secondary. On a second level however the ‘contamination’ has significant implications. The striking differences between the Theocrjtean and Homeric versions o f this topos in both form and content serve to dissociate totally the bucolic hefro from the Homeric. The ‘contamination’ in the Virgilian epitaph blurs that distinction and so the Daphnis o f Eclogue 5 is moved away from the conventional model o f the bucolic hero towards that o f the Homeric hero. The aspect o f the Homeric hero in question is not, o f coursc, the warrior but the hero as a king, the ideal o f which wa^presented in Odyssey 19, 107ff. This passage (which is itself introduced with the phrase:a eo e>vpcivo\/ ■zvpuv' ^ «< V e i) provided later generations with a model for the ideal king which greatly influenced the Hellenistic ideology o f kingship and his Roman counterpart, the man o f the saeculum.23 The contamination o f the Theocritean and Homeric models thus serves to highlight precisely the nature o f the transformation from the herdsman, singer and unhappy lover in Idyll 1 to the herdsman and universal benefactor o f Eclogue 5. The preceding analysis has shown that the techniques o f imitation and their corresponding effects and functions are numerous and diverse even within the compass o f such a small section o f a single poem. The most important distinction is that between imitations which constitute allusion and those which do not. In the case o f an allusion the reader is expected to recall the model passage and its context and then to read the imitation in the light o f that passage, appreciating similarities and differences, variations, defeat o f expectations and any implied ‘learned’ comment on the original. In the case o f non-allusive imitations to recall the original may simply distract or confuse. All that seems to matter in these cases is that they are recognisably Theocritean. By generating new poetry out o f a mass o f Theocritean material and ‘tags’ quotations and topoi, Virgil was able to talk with the accents o f Theocritus in the language o f bucolic and at the same time to innovate, to say in that language new things on new topics. In these cases, close analysis reveals more about the writer’s meticulous attention to detail, his cleverness and skill as an adapter, the workings o f his mind than about the sense or significance o f the poem. The importance o f this technique is that it allows Virgil constantly to proclaim himself the imitator and successor o f Theocritus, the Roman counterpart to an important Greek poet without being simply a translator or writer o f pastiche. An approach to imitation such as that presented above and based entirely on parallel passages is unsatisfying and inadequate since it fails to provide a framework within which to make sense o f the relationship o f the imitation to the model. The reason for this failure is clear enough: such an approach fails to take account o f the obvious fact that both the song o f Thyrsis and the song o f Mopsus are laments for Daphnis. To understand Virgil’s poem, it is obvious that the Daphnis o f his song must be compared and contrasted with that in the model. To complete our understanding o f his song and its relationship to the model, it is also necessary to compare the two songs as laments.24 In spite o f numerous studies, the nomenclature o f the death genres and the real nature o f the distinctions between them remain obscure.25 Nonetheless, the most satisfactory solution seems to be to assign both the song o f Mopsus and the song o f Thyrsis (Idyll 1), together with the so-called Epitaphios Adonidos and Epitaphios Bionos to the genre epicedion. A selection o f poetic examples o f this genre has been analysed in great detail by J. Esteve-Forriol in his book Die Trauer- und Trostgedicht in der romischen Literatur (Munchen 1962). The prose tradition o f Leichenrede (funeral speeches) has been most recently analysed by J. Soffel in the introduction to his commentary Die Regeln Menanders fu r die Leichenrede (Meisenheim an Gian 1974). Together these analyses establish the nature and range o f the conventions and functions against which individual members o f the genre should be read. The purpose o f the genre epicedion is to honour a dead man. Typically, the epicedion comprises five major elements: ( 1 ) an introduction in which the speaker indicates his attitude to the dead man, the mourners and the grief; (2) laudatio o f the dean man; (3 ) lamentatio or comploratio by the speaker; (4) descriptio o f the final suffering or illness and the death scene and o f the funeral and tomb; (5 ) consolatio o f the mourners. Under these various heads Esteve-Forriol enumerates eighty-three separate topoi. No member o f the genre makes use o f all the possible material and many omit even some o f the major elements listed 1-5 above. This is clear even from Esteve-Forriol’s analysis, which rigorously excludes any poems which deviate from the norm as a result o f any but the most minor generic sophistication. It also emerges clearly that, although the order o f the major elements is normally that in which they have been listed, variations are possible and that the writer is not expected to keep the various elements totally separate and distinct.26 The prose tradition, analysed by Soffel, confirms this general picture.27 The laudatio is the central and dominant element and, depending on circumstances, it is combined with lamentation, consolation and exhortation or advice to the mourners. The descriptio o f the death and the funeral is less prominent in the prose tradition, where it is normally subsumed under the laudatio. Finally, two points should be stressed. First, the various constituent parts o f the genre are interdependent: the lamentation validates the laudatio and occasions the consolatio; the laudatio justifies the lamentation and provides a source o f consolation to the mourners and a model which they can be exhorted to emulate. Secondly, the genre is enormously flexible and capable o f adapting itself to the particular circumstances o f any death. This is clear not only from the diversity o f ancient practice but also from the existence o f four rhetorical prescriptions,28 each with a different emphasis, o f which Menander’s prescription for what he calls monodia comes closest to the song o f Mopsus. Within this genre the bucolic epicedia form a distinct sub-group and in order to understand Virgil’s relationship to this tradition it is first necessary to consider the bucolic epicedia o f his predecessors.29 At the head o f the tradition stands Thyrsis’ lament for Daphnis in the first Idyll o f Theocritus. The following account is intended only to highlight the conventional features o f the song, on which the imitators could play generic variations according to what appears to have been a standard technique o f imitation. 24 The song complies, with its eight-one lines, with the rhetoricians’ recommendation o f brevity.30 A striking characteristic is the use o f a refrain: this is addressed to the Muses and constantly requests inspiration. Such requests are topical in the epicedion (7).31 A line o f formal preface gives the singer’s name, his place o f origin and asserts the quality o f his song. All this implies, in accordance with the conventions.32 the suitability o f the subject to the singer: Daphnis, like Thyrsis, was a Sicilian herdsman and a singer. Like the refrain, the conclusion is addressed to the Muses. Together they serve to distance the singer from his subject in a manner appropriate to the lapse o f time between the song and the event it commemorates.33 The lamentation is presented indirectly, through description and consequently subserves the encomiastic and commemorative function o f the song: that is to say that the fact that all nature laments is an indication o f the status and importance o f Daphnis within the bucolic world, not personal expression o f grief by Thyrsis. It is normal in the genre for the speaker to begin by requesting or demanding lamentation,34 which he then justifies (1;2). This conventional opening is here adapted to the fact that Daphnis is long dead. The Nymphs are asked why they were not there to assist and to lament and this question is then justified by reference to the lamentation o f the animals. The lamentation o f the natural world for the dead man is the most characteristic feature o f bucolic epicedia. It is perhaps an adaptation o f a conventional feature o f the epicedion, the extensive use o f exempla drawn from the natural world, especially to justify grief (82). The central section o f Thyrsis’ song consists o f a descriptio o f the deathbed scene (404 3). This description, itself conventional, presents indirectly and allusively many topoi which normally belong to the laudatio. The presence o f the gods is in itself an indication o f the importance and ‘heroic’ status o f Daphnis. The first o f the gods is Hermes, the father o f Daphnis.35 The allusion to divine parentage (11) is characteristically36 indirect. His praiseworthy and virtuous character is first revealed in the implied contrast between him and the coarse and vulgar Priapus and again in his defiance o f Aphrodite. That this resistance to the counsel and wishes o f these gods is, paradoxically, praiseworthy is confirmed by the fact that at the end., Aphrodite repents and wants to save him. She fails. The irrevocability o f death (36) and the inability o f even gods to bring back the dead to life are again well known topoi. This aspect o f his character is further developed and it was o f course conventional to say that the dead man was the favourite o f the gods (47). So Daphnis was the favourite o f the Nymphs and Muses, a point made at both beginning and end o f the song, and he also enjoyed a special relationship to Pan (invoked at lines 123ff). A large part o f the song (100-136) is taken up with the novissima verba, a standard feature (42). These are presented dramatically. Indirectly, as noted, they reveal the character o f Daphnis as praiseworthy (25) and his relationship with Pan (c f 47). It was normal to explain the cause o f death.37 This is hinted at throughout but, as is well known, never made explicit. Part o f the cause is clearly the malice o f Aphrodite: premature death was conventionally attributed to the malice o f the gods (31 ;39). The novissima verba are also used to convey the importance o f Daphnis to the natural world and Sicily (13) through his farewell; his reputation and fame as The Cowherd; and, in the prayer to Pan, his achievement as a singer (24). This generically sophisticated presentation o f standard topical material is followed by a simple inversion of a standard topos. It was conventional for a dying man to console the mourners and wish them well (42B): in contrast, Daphnis ends by wishing for a reversal o f nature, the destruction o f the world o f his mourners. The next example to be considered is the Epitaphios Adonidos o f Bion, composed around 100 BC. In both dialect and verse technique the poem is presented as an imitation o f Theocritus. The Adonis is comparable in length to the song o f Thyrsis with ninety-eight lines. The subject matter, the death o f Adonis, has been taken from Idyll 15 and recast in imitation o f Idyll 1, in typically Hellenistic contamimtio, that may have been inspired by the fact that Adonis received passing mention at Idyll 1, 109f. Unlike Daphnis, Adonis was an important if minor deity who received cult and worship in association with Aphrodite in the Hellenistic world.38 In Bion’s poem he has been assimilated to the figure o f Daphnis as presented in the first Idyll and stripped o f his religious significance. The allusion to the fust Idyll is sustained by the use o f refrain-like repetitions and by numerous verbal imitations which are not, however, confined to the first Idyll.39 As always, it is the differences that are the more interesting. Although Adonis resembles Daphnis in being young, beautiful and a herdsman, he is obviously an anti-Daphnis in that he is the beloved and not the enemy o f Aphrodite. The poem is also different from Theocritus in that it is highly emotional. There is no formal introduction or conclusion and the ‘refrain’ is not a prayer for inspiration but subserves the main functions o f lamentation, commiseration and consolation. Equally important are the fact that the lamentation is expressed directly in the first person and not indirectly through description as in the Thyrsis song and also the exuberant and exotic detail o f the descriptions o f the grieving Aphrodite and the dead Adonis. Generic analysis o f Bion’s poem provides useful information for comparison o f the two poems and valuable insights into the methods o f the imitator. The most obvious parallel in the technique o f the two laments is the use, by both Bion and Theocritus, o f the mourning o f both nature and the gods to indicate the importance and ‘heroic’ status o f the dead man. But there is a most striking difference between the two laments in generic terms. The song o f Thyrsis is distinguished, as a member o f the genre epicedion, by its omission o f consolation. The mourners are never addressed directly and are never offered consolation by Thyrsis. The only consolatory elements that are present are those employed by Daphnis himself in his final words. In complete contrast, Bion’s poem is primarily concerned to offer consolation to the grieving Aphrodite and thus exploits a major topos omitted by the model. The same independence o f selection, combination and presentation is to be seen in the handling o f minor topoi. The poem opens with a personal expression o f grief that justifies (2 ) his enjoining Aphrodite to lament (1). With line 7 begins the description o f the corpse in the course o f which the manner o f death40 is revealed and which lays especial emphasis on the beauty o f the dead man. The latter is a standard ecomiastic topos (17) and is coupled with the contrast o f his present and past appearance as recommended by the rhetoricians.41 Line 16 introduces a comparison o f the wound o f Adonis and the metaphorical wound o f grief that afflicts Aphrodite: this is a stock metaphor (83). This is followed by a description o f nature mourning and o f the grief o f Aphrodite: the mourning o f the dead man’s ‘fellow citizens’ , o f his wife or lover and o f the gods is a standard topos (43; 49; 77 and compare 20). The subsequent description o f nature mourning for both the dead Adonis and the bereft Aphrodite effects a transition from the lament to the consolation, a pattern approximate to that recommended by Menander for the speech he calls the paramythetikos logos 42 The central section is taken up with dramatic quotation o f Aphrodite’s final speech, which exploits the topical material o f the ‘death-bed scene’ : last kisses, embraces and the drawing o f the last breath (41); she cannot follow him to Hades;43 entrusts him to Persephone;44 laments the destruction o f her life by the death o f her husband/lover (77); reproaches him, not the gods as is normal (31f); ends with reference to his beauty (17). This is followed by direct address to Aphrodite and a command to cease lamenting, a command which is repeated at the end o f the poem. Description o f the actual laying out and the funeral (44) is given dramatically in the form o f instructions to the goddess and coupled with simple description o f the activities o f the Erotes, Hymenaeus and the Charites as gods and mourners who attend the funeral (45; 47). The poem ends with allusion to two standard topoi: the marriage-death antithesis45 and the irrevocability o f death (59). The second o f the pre-Virgilian imitations o f the first Idyll is the anonymous Epitaphios Bionos which was possibly composed in Italy early in the first century BC 46 This poem combines imitation o f Bion’s poem with imitation o f that poem’s model, the song o f Thyrsis. It proclaims itself as an imitation by the choice o f dialect and metre, the use o f a refrain and the numerous verbal imitations which are, again, not confined to Idyll 1 and Bion’s Adonis.*1 It is rather longer than either o f the models with one hundred and twenty-six lines. Its strongly emotional tone is reminiscent o f the Adonis, and this tone is created by the personal involvement o f the speaker, a ‘pupil’ o f Bion, and his direct expression o f grief, the exuberant and apparently uncontrolled detail o f the catalogues and the constant interplay between the joyful and music-filled past, the tearful present and the silent future. This last is a device recommended by Menander for achieving just such an emotional effect for the monodia.48 This tone o f lamentation is sustained by the refrain which, in spite o f its verbal similarity to that o f Idyll 1, is not a repeated request for inspiration but a constant demand that the Sicilian Muses should lead the lamentation. The similarities o f tone and effect between this poem and that o f Bion should not conceal the differences in technique and purpose. The most significant innovation in this poem is the choice o f a historical person as the subject. But the author is concerned with Bion only qua bucolic poet and not with any other area o f his life. In order to accommodate him to the form o f his chosen models, the author divests him o f most o f his historical and biographical characteristics, casts him in the role o f Theocritus’ Daobnis and Bion’s Adonis and assimilates him to the type o f bucolic hero that they represent. The technique is well known in Latin poetry.49 The most important o f the means for achieving this effect is the exploitation o f the most characteristic device o f his predecessors: extended description o f the mourning o f nature and o f the gods and their reaction to the death o f Bion which here creates for him a ‘heroic’ status and significance in the natural world comparable to that o f Daphnis or Adonis. A more extended generic analysis will reveal the distinctive features o f the poem. Analysis o f the song o f Thyrsis as an epicedion revealed that its main purpose was encomiastic and commemorative. The description o f lamentation subserves this main purpose and consolatory topoi are notably absent. By contrast, the lamentation and praise in Bion’s Adonis were shown to be merely a prelude to the primary function o f the poem, consolation o f Aphrodite. Exactly such a combination is prescribed by Menander for the paramythetikos logos. The Epitaphios Bionos is different again. Consolation plays no part in the poem and its purpose is rather to express exactly that blend o f lamentation and praise which Menander sees as characteristic o f what he calls monodia.50 It has already been noted that the interplay of past, present and future exploited in this poem for its emotional effect is also recommended for use in monodia by Menander.51 Another standard rhetorical device is the comparison or synkrisis and Menander recommends extensive use o f this device in his prescription for the epitaphios logos.52 Extended comparisons are a marked feature o f this poem and it is these that account for its greater length. In view o f all this, it seems reasonable to suppose that the author was influenced by some prototype of Menander’s rhetorical prescriptions, either consciously or subconsciously, when reworking his poetic models.53 The first twenty-five lines o f the Epitaphios consist o f three demands for lamentation (1), each justified by an encomiastic reference to the dead Bion (2 ) and culminating in description o f the present situation. This is followed by the now familiar description o f the mourning o f the natural world and o f the gods (47; 49), which is here expanded by a lengthy comparison with a catalogue o f mythical mourners. A t line 46 begins a long encomiastic section containing a detailed, elegant and allusive account o f his poems and his achievements as a poet (24). This is in turn expanded, via a reference to his birthplace (13), by a sustained synkrisis with Homer and a series o f other poets. The stock contrast o f the ability o f nature to regenerate itself with the finality o f man’s death (60) preludes an allusive reference to the cause o f Bion’s death at line 109. The poem ends with the standard topoi: ‘if I were an Orpheus I’d follow you to Hades’ 54 and a description o f deadman in the underworld. (80). There are two clear trends in the Greek imitations o f Idyll 1, an increase in length and in emotionality. Virgil has drastically reversed both. With twenty-five lines the song o f Mopsus is only one fifth o f the length o f the Epitaphios Bionos. This brevity in itself contributes to a reduction in emotionality and the resulting effect o f dignified restraint is further enhanced by the omission o f a refrain. In a more important respect also, Virgjl has reversed the practice o f his predecessors. Bion had reduced an important Hellenistic deity to the level o f the purely mythical Cowherd of Theocritus; the author o f the Epitaphios had divested Bion o f most o f his historical and biographical attributes and presented him also as almost a purely mythical poet. Virgil has, by omission, modification and addition, elevated the figure o f Daphnis and assimilated it to the historical figure o f Julius Caesar, at least .in so far as he had been presented in pro-Caesarian propaganda and o f Divus Iulius, who had been recognised since the beginning o f 42 BC as an official god o f theRoman state with his own cult. In other ways, however, Virgil follows the lead o f his predecessors. Both o f them had composed epicedia which were quite distinct from that o f their model in the selection, combination and ordering o f topoi but which nonetheless both fulfilled, in their own way, the traditional purposes o f the genre: to lament, to praise and commemorate, to console. It is now possible to compare the songs o f Mopsus and Thyrsis as epicedia.55 Virgil has returned to Theocritean practice in that the song is performed by a herdsman in a context divorced from both the death and the funeral o f the hero. This context generates an expectation that the function o f Mopsus’ song will be primarily commemorative and encomiastic. The purpose o f the song as an epicedion is o f course determined by reference to the aim o f the speaker, in this case the fictional characters Mopsus and Thyrsis, and not by reference to the underlying purpose o f the author, which may or may not be the same, The song o f Thyrsis is commemorative rather than laudatory and the encomiastic elements are presented dramatically and indirectly. This accords with the purpose o f Theocritus which is to narrate a version o f the Daphnis story in an elegant, learned, intellectually demanding and allusive manner for the entertainment o f his readers. In the song o f Mopsus the aim is primarily to praise. This accords with Virgil’s purpose which is to make a political comment. The most striking differences between the two songs derive from the fact that Virgil has omitted precisely those generic topoi o f which Theocritus makes most extensive use. There is no formal epilogue or introduction, no refrain or prayer for inspiration, no description o f the actual deathbed scene and no dramatic quotation o f the actual words o f those attending the dying man or o f the dying man himself. The opening sentence o f the lament (20-23) sets the scene with remarkable brevity aind economy. The essential information is presented at once in the words exstinctum . . . Daphnin. The second piece o f information is that the Nymphs lamented his death. It was a commonplace o f the genre to justify grief (2) by reference to the fact that even the gods lamented their favourites (78). Virgil exploits this topos here and so recalls the closing description o f Daphnis in Idyll 1, 141: t& v o u Nuptpcacnv drrex&'O. . But it was also conventional to use the topos o f gods lamenting for a dead man to emphasise his stature and as a source o f praise. (47). The reference to the mourning o f the Nymphs here fulfils that traditional purpose and so at the outset establishes that the lamentation theme subserves the encomium. The information that his mother was there to lament his death also gains in resonance from the same sort o f allusion to convention. It was a commonplace o f lamentation to bewail the fact that a child had died before his parents55 and Menander insists on its importance.56 It carries with it the implication that it was mors immatura and it is worth noting that this is all the reader is told about the nature o f Daphnis’ death. This may be because a love-death would be too specific to the mythical Daphnis and violent death or assassination too specific to the mythical Daphnis and violent death or assassination too specific to Caesar. The matter is left suitably vague. In addition, the theme o f immatura mors suggests that the man had died young and this generates an expectation that his beauty will be praised, because the two themes are conventionally connected. The word corpus (22) is probably a hint at this theme which is then picked up and made explicit in the epitaph at the end (43f) . 57 Finally, the use o f the past tense (flebant, 21) establishes the important fact that the occasion which provides the imaginary setting for the song is not the actual death and funeral o f Daphnis but some later occasion, presumably one o f the annual festivals held in honour o f the dead.58 This theme is again picked up in the second half o f the song. The first sentence is then a vivid description o f a past event presented simply in the form o f a statement. This is in marked contrast to the normal practice o f beginning a lament with an indignant question, an exclamation or exhortation (1), a practice also recommended by Menander.59 The use o f statement, the simplicity and the brevity lend a dignified restraint to the description and the exploitation o f the conventions gives a resonance and suggestiveness to the whole scene. The emotionality traditionally associated with such themes is evoked by the style and a series o f linguistic hints. Most obvious are the repetitions Nymphae (2 ) — Nymphis (21); crudeli (20) — crudelia (23). The past scene is vividly presented in the imperfect tense (flebant, 21) and becomes even more vivid with the switch to the present tense (vocat, 23) with a corresponding increase in emotionality. Just as conventions are exploited to enrich the informational content o f the lines so they are exploited further to enrich the emotional effect. The bitter grief o f the Nymphs is conveyed through the juxtaposition Nymphae crudeli and the adjective seems best taken as empathetic (i.e. as expressing the emotional response o f the mourners) rather than as objective and factual information. The chief function o f the adjective miserabile (22) is also to evoke the conventional image of the mother’s grief. This is followed by an indirect quotation o f the mother’s indignant reproach to the gods. Such a schetliasmos is conventional in such a scene and Menander recommends the use o f schetliasmos at the beginning o f the monodia.60 The use o f simple statement at the opening o f a lamentation is, in generic terms, a major formal sophistication. To some extent the loss o f emotionality is compensated for by the command to coryli et flumina (21) to bear witness. But this device also serves to emphasise that the lamentatio section is here subordinated to the encomiastic purpose o f the song. For it is a standard encomiastic device to evoke the features o f a landscape in which an action took place and call them as witnesses.61 This topos has o f course been adapted to the bucolic character o f both speaker and laudandus. But its encomiastic function remains clear and signals both the dominant concern o f the song and the new, elevated status attributed to Daphnis. The next section (24-28) is also a description o f the lamentation which followed the death o f Daphnis. The appropriate emotional tone is imparted by the repetitions o f sound in non u lli.. . illis. . . nulla neque. . . nec; Daphni - Daphni; and this scene is linked to the preceding one by the repetition flumina (21) — flumina (25). The new topic is the lamentation o f the natural world and this is, o f course, the most characteristic topos o f the bucolic epicedion, a sine qua non. It corresponds, however, to a regular topos in other epicedia (49; compare 45 and 48), the lamentation o f the whole state, o f all fellow citizens and this topos is again recommended for use in the monodia by Menander.62 It is o f course particularly prominent in those cases where the dead man is presented as the leader o f his state or community. The conventional function o f this topos is twofold: to justify the lamentation o f the immediate mourners by showing that the sense o f grief and loss is shared by all and also to praise the dead man. Both functions are here fulfilled although the justificatory function is very much subordinate to the encomiastic function as is revealed by the fact that the whole description is addressed to Daphnis himself. The second section, which indicates the central importance o f Daphnis within his world, the world o f nature, thus prepares for the third and central section o f the song. This consists o f pure praise o f Daphnis and deals with the time prior to his death, his achievements in life. The laudatio comprises two themes. In the first place Daphnis is cast in the role o f a Neos Dionysos and is credited with one o f the traditional achievements o f Dionysus, the yoking o f tigers.63 It was this deed which above' all others symbolised Dionysus as a civiliser and universal benefactor. By means o f the transfer the same is claimed for Daphnis. He is in addition associated with Dionysus and described as having introduced worship o f that god. The achievements o f a man in the religious sphere were doubtless a regular topic o f encomium whenever a man had built or repaired a temple, celebrated at his own expense a religious festival or the like.64 The significance o f this section cannot be over emphasised for it reveals the complete originality o f the Virgilian Daphnis and the gulf that separates him from ; his Theocritean counterpart. The second theme tu decus omne tuis (34), reinforces the effect o f the first but also reintegrates this new Daphnis into the bucolic world. This is achieved partly through the bucolic comparisons and partly through the Theocritean reminiscence. On one level, and through allusion to the simile in Idyll 18, the word decus refers to the beauty o f Daphnis. Beauty was a regular encomiastic topos and one o f especial importance in the epicedion.65 But primarily the word decus is a word o f praise, it acclaims Daphnis as the crowning glory o f his world, as the one who through his presence, his deeds and his leadership conferred glory on his people. The combination o f beauty, great deeds and glory may seem strange to the modem reader, but it was conventional and o f particular importance at Rome.66 Exactly the same combination is found in the epitaph o f L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, (cos. 298 BC): quoius forma virtureiparisuma fuit.67 The tradition persisted and while in the Greek world masculine beauty was chiefly appreciated in an erotic context, at Rome in the first century BC beauty was an attribute claimed by just those men who claimed to be the man o f saeculum: Sulla, Pompey, Caesar and, later, Augustus. This combination o f themes in the central laudatio section serves to elevate Daphnis to the level o f these men and to assimilate him to the image o f the man o f the saeculum, which was a powerful and recurrent theme in the propaganda o f the first century BC.68 The fourth section (34-39) is clearly introduced as being concerned with the events subsequent to Daphnis’ death: postquam tefata tulerunt (34). Nonetheless it is also linked to the lamentatio section proper (20-28) and so establishes the ring-compositional structure. The pronoun te picks up the vocatives Daphni — Daphni (25; 27) and there is a correspondence o f theme: the effect o f Daphnis’ death on the natural world (animals (24-28); plants (36-39)) and on the gods (Nymphs (20-23); Pales and Apollo (35)). The more delayed effects o f Daphnis’ death are thus presented in part as a continuation o f the grief o f gods and nature, the standard features o f the bucolic lamentation and as such this section too performs the functions o f justifying the grief o f the mourners (mater, 23; pastores, 41) and o f praising the dead Daphnis. But it is equally important to realise that both the themes and the technique o f the central section are also repeated here. This section too splits into two parts, the first o f which (34f), like the Dionysus lines (29-31), has only the faintest Theocritean colouring. But the theme o f the gods leaving the earth is a standard topos with a conventional significance: it marks the passing o f one age and the beginning o f a new and inferior age.69 This m otif thus reinforces the hints o f the preceding lines that Daphnis is here presented as a man o f the saeculum. With his death, his age or saeculum passes and a new, worse age begins. The next lines (36-39) confirm this interpretation by giving details o f the deterioration. The modification o f the Theocritean model noted above is thus highly significant and is bound up with Virgil’s novel conception o f Daphnis. But is also noteworth that unmistakable, though purely verbal, Theocritean echoes are used here, as in lines 32ff, to integrate an unTheocritean idea into a Theocritean poem. The final section (40-44) consists o f a set o f instructions addressed to the pastores. The occasion does not appear to be the actual funeral o f Daphnis. This emerges from the past tenses o f the lines 20-28 and the reference to illis diebus (24); but, most clearly, from the implication in lines 36-39 that at least one (and probably more) complete growing season has elapsed since the death o f Daphnis. The occasion must be, therefore, one o f the annual ceremonies in honour o f the dead but insufficient clues are provided for us to determine which, if any, Virgil had in mind.70 Such an occasion is not, o f course, inconsistent with the command tumulum facite (42). The word tumulus denotes any mound o f earth and when associated with the dead it denotes a mound erected to honour the dead. The erection o f an honorific monument must frequently, as here, have taken place some time after the actual interment, especially in the case o f those who died prematurely.71 The nature o f the occasion accounts for the fact that the main emphasis o f the song is laudatory, since, as is duly noted by Menander, the need for lamentation and consolation grows less as time passes.72 In formal presentation, these closing lines resemble the final consolatio section recommended by Menander for both paramythetikos logos and epitaphios logos. They comprise a series o f imperatives addressed to the pastores who were previously numbered among the mourners (non ulli pastos, 24). Moreover, the task or duty o f caring for the tomb can be used as a consolatory theme.73 Here, however, the consolatory nature o f these lines is more apparent than real. It was conventional in the epicedion to close with a promise to care for the tomb.74 This theme serves both to placate the dead man and to praise him, since it indicates that he will not be forgotten. Mopsus’ song closes not with such a promise but with the dramatic fulfilment o f such a promise: consequently, the ostensibly consolatory function o f these lines is subordinated again to the encomiastic function o f the whole song. The honorific nature o f these activities is made more apparent as a result o f their being presented as ih? execution o f the mandata o f the dying Daphnis (mandat fieri sibi talia Daphnis, 41). The novissima verba are a standard topos of the epicedion and the novissima verba o f Daphnis are quoted extensively in Idyll 1. A standard theme o f these final words was the mandata o f the dead man concerning his funeral and his tomb.75 Virgil has thus exploited a standard variation on the same topos as that used by his model. The final couplet quotes the inscription to be set up in Daphnis’ honour. The beauty o f Daphnis is emphasised and this is a topos particularly suited to praise o f a young man prematurely dead and Menander recommends its use at the conclusion o f both the monodia and the paramythetikos logos. It is also appropriate for Daphnis as a bucolic hero like Bion’s Adonis. But it is also important to remember the association o f beauty with the man of the saeculum. The recurrence o f this theme at the end o f the song underlines its importance. The combined allusion, already discussed, to both Idyll I and to the Odyssey can now be seen to reinforce this new conception o f Daphnis. The overall structure and organisation o f the song owes little if anything to Idyll 1. The dramatic setting o f the song at an annual festival finds an obvious parallel in Bion’s Adonis and the rhetorical structure at least a partial parallel in the Epitaphios Bionos. O f the extant prescriptions o f Menander that for the monodia comes closest to the song o f Mopsus.76 The most important difference is that Menander imagines the speech being made at the actual funeral, while Mopsus’ song is set much later. But Menander recommends beginning with a schetliasmos and a description o f the present events i.e. those taking place at the funeral. This is to be followed by an account o f past events i.e. praise o f the man’s achievements in life and then an account o f the future i.e. the ways in which the family and the state will be adversely attected by the loss o f a man on whom hopes had been pinned. This account o f the present, past and future is to be followed by description of the actual funeral ceremony and praise o f the beauty o f the dead man. This scheme is exactly that followed in Mopsus’ song, modified only in order to accommodate a different temporal setting. The modification is presumably due to a desire to make Daphnis’ death resemble that of Caesar by projecting it into the past. But a second organisational principal, also independent o f Theocritus, has been superimposed on this generic pattern or rhetorical scheme, that o f ring composition. The following schematisation should suffice to draw together the hints o f the preceding analysis. A1 (20 - 24) Nymphs (including his mother) and fellow herdsmen mourned the premature death o f Daphnis B1 (24 - 28) and, Daphnis, all nature joined in their mourning. C (29 - 3 4 ) Praise o f Daphnis as beautiful universal benefactor. B2 (34 - 3 9 ) Daphnis, the natural world has deteriorated since you died and your saeculum ended. A2 (40 - 44) Don’t mourn, herdsmen; carry out the dying wishes o f Daphnis and honour the beautiful youth who won renown as a universal benefactor. 30 ®- vV-■::VVV"'.i":■ V-'V--': : ;'■■v■■ ■ / ■'■■■'■-;-v-W-; '-’'V.-v:■ ■ '-V;y ■■■ ■: :■■ :/■ ■ ■■ ■:■:■/:■ - ; ; . v- v-I:£ ■ : ; : ^;/f : ^-v:/ 0 : V';: ^V: :■ • ■■ : v :. -y: . : ::V;’. ’: : : : : V - : f v :; /:;;. V.::;:. v:■ V;.: j -; ■;: :;; ’ . ^:^^-v; The new Daphnis Daphnis as he appears in the first Idyll o f Theocritus is a singer, a herdsman and a man suffering from love. His death is hinted at in the song o f Thyrsis, but it is not described in any detail, and there is no information at all concerning his life after death. The story o f Daphnis was used by many Greek writers:77 Stesichorus, Hermesianax, Timaeus (Sicelica), Alexander Aetolus, Sositheos and Nymphodorus (On the marvels o f Sicily). There were many variations regarding the name and nature o f his beloved, the geographical setting and the cause o f his death. But there is no hint in any o f the Greek sources o f a metamorphosis or hero cult and certainly nothing to suggest that he was deified. The Latin tradition presents a rather different picture. Ovid refers to vulgatos...... pastoris amores/Daphnidis Idaei, quem nymphe paelicis ira/contulit in saxum. (Metamorphoses A,711 — 79). The location on Ida and the metamorphosis into a stone are both new and unless Ovid is making some kind o f learned joke this would seem to indicate that there were more versions o f the myth known to a writer o f the first century BC than there is now evidence for. Quite independently o f Ovid Servius auctus (ad Eclogue 8,68) also mentions the metamorphosis: (Daphnis) ab irata nympha amatrice luminibus orbatus est deinde (in ) lapidem versus: nam apud Cephaloeditanum oppidum saxum dicitur esse, quod formam hominis ostendat. The metamorphosis version probably comes from some lost Hellenistic work, either a poem treating metamorphosis or an aetiological work on Sicily. But there is insufficient evidence to make any further speculation profitable. Nonetheless, it must be emphasised that metamorphosis into a stone is something very different from deification and it must also be recalled that the version o f the story best known to Virgil’s readers was that o f Theocritus and that preserved in the Erotica Pathemata o f Parthenius. He was Virgil’ s Greek teacher (Macrobius Saturnalia 5, 17, 18) and it was to Virgil’s friend and fellow poet, C. Cornelius Gallus, that Parthenius had dedicated his work perhaps only a few years before. However, it is the deification which serves above all else to differentiate the Daphnis o f Eclogue 5 from the Daphnis of the rest o f the literary tradition and it is also the deification which more than anything else calls to mind Divus Iulius. Given the nature o f the literary tradition, this innovation, if such it is, must have had a dramatic impact upon the contemporary reader. Only one piece o f evidence suggests that Virgil was not innovating completely in his account o f Daphnis. In his comment on Eclogue 5,20, Servius auctus says that when the nymph discovered Daphnis’ infidelity luminibus eum orbavit. ille in auxilium patrem Mercurium invocavit; qui eum in caelum eripuit et in eo locofontem elicuit, qui Daphnis vocatur, apud quem quotannis sacriflcant. He does not however name his source. There is apparently no other reference to a deification o f Daphnis nor to a Sicilian stream called Daphnis. It is just conceivable that Servius auctus may here be preserving an obscure version o f the myth. But it should be noted that it is not mentioned in either o f the other two accounts o f the myth given in the Virgilian scholia. The detail o f the story is so similar to the standard account o f the apotheosis o f Romulus and others78 that the possibility cannot be excluded that some earlier Virgilian scholar had invented the story to ‘explain’ Eclogue 5. So far as it is possible to judge from the extant evidence, Virgil alone presented a Daphnis without reference to his being a singer 79 or the inventor of bucolic or the (reluctant) beloved o f a nymph, a princess, Menalcas or Hermes. In complete contrast to his traditional image, Daphnis is here presented as a beautiful and semi-divine figure, a universal benefactor on the model o f Dionysus and a man o f the saeculum. In short, Daphnis is like Divus Iulius.80 But this is not to suggest that the poem is an allegory in the crude sense that Daphnis ‘really is’ the historical person C. Iulius Caesar. In order to understand the relationship o f Daphnis to Caesar it is necessary to be clear on the meaning o f the concept for a Greek or Roman.81 ‘Allegory’ was for them simply the device o f saying one thing and meaning another. It was originally developed as a means o f interpreting Homer in order to meet the charges o f immorality which were laid against the treatment o f the gods in the Iliad and Odyssey. This method o f reading Homer was rejected by the Alexandrian critics and in Virgil’s day it was chiefly associated with the Stoics. In the first century BC, the word was also used to denote any extended metaphor, the device whereby either an impious or pious person is called an Aeneas for sarcasm and irony. It was considered to be a figure closely related to the metaphor, the simile and the riddle or aenigma. The concept o f pastoral allegory or masquerade, so familiar to the modern reader, does not appear to have been available as a concept to Virgil.82 It is not however inconsistent with rejection o f an allegorical reading o f the Eclogues in general to believe that Virgil is ‘hinting darkly’ at the death and deification o f Julius Caesar in his version o f the Daphnis myth.83 There are important differences between this case and that o f the other alleged allegories. Daphnis is a figure o f myth and he is presented as such in the songs o f Mopsus and Menalcas; Julius Caesar is a major political figure with a public life and a public image about which Virgil could reasonably expect his readers to know. Roman audiences were accustomed to seeing references to such men in literature. So Cicero tells how they referred the line from Accius’ Brutus; Tullius, qui libertatem civibus stabiliverat to himself, when he was in exile for the execution o f the Catilinarians and branded as an enemy of Libertas. (Sest. 123.) But there is a much more important precedent for the allegorical use o f a standard bucolic myth in a dithyramb of Philoxenus o f Cythera. His poem concerned the Cyclops, Galatea and Odysseus and, according to the ancient scholia, this poem served as a model for Idylls 6 and 11. It may be confidently assumed that Virgil knew this poem both because it was so important to his model and because o f a casual reference in the writings o f Philodemus, one o f Virgil’s teachers, to Philoxenus: at On Music 9, 18, 6 Kemke, he seems to assume ready access to this poet, if not familiarity with him, among his readers. Athenaeus (1,6E — 7A ) interprets this poem o f Philexenus as follows: When (Philoxenus) was detected seducing Galatea, the beloved (o f Dionysius I o f Syracuse), he was sent to the stone quarries. There he c6mposed the Cyclops, shaping the story to suit his own experience and conceiving o f Dionysius as the Cyclops ja ev ZW'/cfe'iov/ Kok\uJ7i<<. un o< rrrja'oipev/o<>j o f the flute-player as Galatea, o f himself as Odysseus. The scholion on Aristophanes Plutus 29d (2 ) tells a similar story: escaping from (the stone-quarries), (Philoxenus) went to the mountains o f Cythera and there composed a drama, Galatea, in which he introduced the Cyclops as the lover o f Galatea and made this refer in a riddling way to Dionysius (to u ta C t ^iov These interpretations sound like the work o f biographers in pursuit o f information84 and it is perhaps improbable that Philoxenus wrote the poem as an allegory. But Virgil may have read it as such, since there are suggestions o f such an interpretation in Hermesianax Fragment 7,69ff. (Powell). It is obvious from other information about this dithyramb that the ‘allegory’ could not be seen as being elaborated in the detail o f the story but must have been thought o f as being confined to a few striking points o f similarity. In view o f this tradition, it seems that Virgil has taken over a technique supposedly used by his model’s model and transferred it from the major bucolic myth that he never used (Polyphemus-Galatea) to the one that he did use (Daphnis). Virgil’s contemporaries obviously had a great deal o f information and knowledge about Caesar and were therefore in a position to recognise that he had ‘conceived o f Caesar as Daphnis’ or, better, that he had ’made the songs o f Mopsus and Menalcas refer in a riddling way to Caesar’. The Juilius Caesar on which Daphnis was modelled was not the historical person, the balding, ageing dictator, victor o f wars both civil and foreign, but the Caesar o f the pro-Caesarian propaganda.86 In 42 BC, when the fifth Eclogue was written, it was inevitable that the readers o f Virgil should recall the dead dictator through the medium o f that propaganda. All the dominant features o f the Virgilian Daphnis which distinguish him from his Theocritean counterpart played an important role in the pro-Caesarian propaganda. Good looks and beauty were claimed for Caesar as a mark o f the favour o f Venus and o f his divine descent and his divine nature;87 the role o f man o f the saeculum, a persistent, widespread and important concept in the first century BC, was claimed for Caesar88and he was also claimed to be a universal benefactor.89 Other details too strengthen the similarity o f the portrait o f Daphnis in this poem to that o f Caesar in the propaganda, even though, as noticed above, they are perfectly appropriate to Daphnis qua Daphnis. Firstly, there is the association between Daphnis and Apollo (35) .90 Apollo was an ancestral god o f the Julii and Caesar was born on the principal day o f the Ludi Apollinares. In connection with the consecration o f Caesar in 42 BC, celebrations were instituted on the anniversary o f his birth and this involved the official transfer o f his ‘birthday’ so that it would be contiguous with the Ludi Apollinares instead o f falling on one of the most important days of the Ludi. It is clear then that the association of Apollo and Caesar was prominent and topical in 42 BC, the year in which Eclogue 5 was composed. Secondly, there was a similar sort o f relationship between Caesar and Pales.91 Caesar had first associated himself with the Ludi Apollinares in 45 BC. Also in 45 BC games were held at the Parilia in honour o f Julius Caesar. These games are particularly memorable, because they were the first games ever held in Rome in honour o f a man rather than in honour o f a god. According to ancient scholars the Parilia was a festival in honour o f Pales; thus in 45 BC she must have been thought o f as sharing her honours with Caesar. Finally, there is the prodigy which is reported by Suetonius as foretelling Caesar’s murder (Divus Iulius, 81): proximis diebus equorum greges, quos in traiciendo Rubiconi flumini consecrarat ac vagos et sine custode dimiserat, comperit pertinacissime pabulo abstinere ubertimque flere.n Virgil seems to have modelled the quadripedes which refuse all food and drink (25f.) on the reported behaviour o f these animals, perhaps because this was the one portent associated with the death o f Caesar which could be integrated into the traditional theme o f the mourning o f nature for the death of a bucolic hero.93 Other, more general, considerations only reinforce the conclusion that Virgil has deliberately recast and reshaped the Daphnis o f Theocritus and the Hellenistic literary tradition so that he should recall and ‘hint at’ the dead and now deified dictator. It is impossible to formulate a definition o f the relationship of Daphnis to the world o f the pastores which does not mirror what the pro-Caesarian propaganda said o f Caesar’s relationship to the Roman state, if that may be fairly judged from Cicero’s Pro Marcello. Cicero says (2 2 ): nam quis est omnium tam ignarus rerum, tam rudis in re publica, tam nihil umquam nec de sua nec de communi salute cogitans qui non intcllegat tua salute contineri suam et ex unius tua vita pendere omnium? equidem de te dies noctisque, ut debeo, cogitans casus dumtaxat humanos et incertos eventus valetudinis ct naturae communis fragilitatem extimesco doleoque, cum res publica immortalis esse debcat, earn in unius mortalis anima consistere. Cicero again provides evidence which suggests that Virgil has quite deliberately emphasised the fact that Daphnis first died, was mourned as a dead man and had a tumulus and only later was recognised as a god in order to make the case o f Daphnis parallel to that o f Caesar. From Cicero Philippic 1,13 it can be seen that it was precisely this combination o f factors in the case o f Caesar which caused so much difficulty: An me censetis, patres conscripti, quod vos inviti secuti estis, decreturum fuisse, ut parentalia cum supplicationibus miscerentur, ut inexpiabiles religiones in rem publicam inducerentur, ut decernerentur supplicationes mortuo? nihil dico cui. fuerit Ole Brutus. . . adduci tamen non possem, ut quemquam mortuum coniungerem cum deorum immortalium religione, ut, cuius sepulcrum usquam extet, ubi parentetur, ei supplicetur. This line o f argument must have been frequently used by those who opposed the deification o f Caesar and therefore this passage is vital to an understanding o f the argument o f Eclogue 5, as will be shown below. Nonetheless the similarities exist on a general level and everything seems to have adapted to the character o f Daphnis rather than o f Caesar. It would be useful if one striking detail could be shown to be related rather to Caesar than to the received picture of Daphnis. It is well known that Servius saw just such a detail in the lines about Dionysus (29 - 31). He comments: hoc aperte ad Caesarem pertinet, quem constat primum sacra Liberi patris transtulisse Roman. It is equally well-known that Caesar did nothing o f the kind so far as can be judged from the evidence now available and that Servius’ comment cannot be true as it stands.94 Since these lines contain the details which most strikingly differentiate the Daphnis o f Virgil from the Daphnis o f Theocritus and Hellenistic poetry, it is worth considering another possibility. The lines in question are 29 - 31: Daphnis et Armenias curru subiungere tigris instituit, Daphnis thiasos induccre Bacci et foliis lentas intexere mollibus hastas. The purpose o f these lines is to depict Daphnis as a second Dionysus.95 Comparison with Dionysus was standard in encomia of great men.96 It was in particular a standard feature o f encomia o f Alexander.97 The image o f Dionysus implied by these lines is very familiar from later writers: it is that o f Dionysus returning in triumph from his Indian conquests.98 This myth was developed by some Hellenistic poet precisely in association with the eastern conquests o f Alexander.99 The fullest account o f the Indian triumph o f Dionysus in extant literature is that o f Nonnus, who exploited to the full earlier versions. It is well-known that one o f Nonnus’ favourite poets was Euphorion100and it is probable that Euphorion was a major source for Dionysus’ triumph. 101 There are references to both an Alexander (Frr. 1; and 80, 81, 168 Powell) and a Dionysus (Frr. 13ff.; and 84 - 86 Powell) by Euphorion. In view o f this it should be noted that the name Mopsus is not from Theocritus. It is rather the name o f a famous seer, who competed with Chalcas in the Grynaean grove: hoc ... Euphorionis continent carmina, quae Gallus transtulit in sermonem latinum.(Servius ad Eclogue 6 , 72). That is one side o f the matter. But there is another. The triumphant Dionysus is a familiar image in Augustan poetry and his appearance is commonplace in comparison with triumphatores and with Augustus himself. Augustus was of course the triumphator par excellence in the twenties as a result o f his having celebrated the triple triumph in 29 BC.102 The identification o f Daphnis with the triumphant Dionysus in this Eclogue is implicit and oblique. It is natural to assume that Virgil had some particular passage in mind. Thefollowing points should be noted. The Indian triumphs of Dionysus and Alexander, the latter represented in a famous painting by Apelles,103were consciously evoked as precedents by triumphant Roman generals, Marius and Pompeius.104 Caesar held two triumphs in his dictatorship: the magnificent quadruple triumph in 46 BC which was the all-important precedent for the triple triumph o f Augustus in 29 BC; the triumph o f 45 BC for the victory at Munda which was won on the 17th March, the day o f the Iiberalia. 105 It seems safe to assume that Caesar and his encomiasts evoked the now standard comparison with Dionysus (whose Roman equivalent was Liber Pater, the god o f the Iiberalia). Two pieces o f evidence confirm this: the story that he used elephants in connection with his triumph and that must have been designed to recall the Indian triumphs o f Dionysus and Alexander;106 the appearance on a denarius o f 45 BC o f the personified Triumpus (sic).107 Apelles’ statue was also known as Triumphus et Bellum and there is an obvious connection between Dionysus and Triumphus since the Greek word for a triumph was a word which both denoted a hymn to Dionysus and was an epithet o f Dionysus himself. 108 The triumph poem was a very popular genre in the Augustan period. It was particularly favoured by the elegists and there is an important version embedded in the proem to Georgic 3, a book which opens with a joint invocation o f Pales and Apollo Nomios who are also mentioned together at Eclogue 5,35. The genre was probably thought o f as a Roman equivalent o f the dithyramb or thriambos. 110 One example o f the genre is Tibullus 1,7 and this poem shows certain similarities to the fourth Eclogue, the Pollio, which are best explained by postulating a common model.111 Tibullus also imagines the chariot o f Messalla being drawn nitidis equis ( 8). This need mean no more than that their coats shone with health and good grooming and Weinstock was rash to infer that the phrase denotes white horses.112 But it could have been used by a predecessor to describe the white horses o f Caesar’s triumph or, at least it may have been suggested by such a description. Finally, the phrase Armeniae tigres. 113 This epithet is next used o f tigers, which are always feminine in Latin poetry, in extant poetry by Propertius at 1,9,19 where Armenias ... tigris occupies the same sedes as in this poem. There is nothing to suggest that Propertius had this passage o f Virgil in mind and it is better to suppose a common source.114 Also at Propertius 1,9,5 there is the phrase Chaoniae ...columbes and the same epithet is given to the doves o f Dodona by Virgil at Eclogue 9,13. Again Propertius does not seem to have Virgil in mind. The epithet Chaonius was apparently first used as an equivalent for Dodonaeus by Euphorion (Fragment 48 Powell) in his Chiliades: Z«ivo^ 'y^ovioio ro -115 It again seems best to suppose a common source and there can be little doubt this time that the source was Gallus. The evidence is sparse but the question o f who wrote the description o f Dionysus to which Virgil here alludes seems to allow o f only one answer: C. Cornelius Gallus.116 It seems almost as certain that its context must have been a triumph poem for Julius Caesar. Gallus was the Roman Euphorion; he was writing in the forties; he is known to have been imitated by Virgil in his Eclogues; if he wrote the original triumph poem that would explain its recurrence in the Georgies and in elegy; a poem by Gallus would provide an obvious common source for Tibullus 1,7 and Eclogue 4 and for the phrase Armenias tigris. Nor is it in itself implausible that Gallus should have written a poem in honour of. Caesar Triumphator. Gallus was the protegee o f C. Asinius Pollio, a prominent Caesarian.117 Pollio was with Caesar in Africa in 46 BC; it is not known whether he returned with Caesar and his army to celebrate the quadruple triumph in that year, but it is not unlikely that he did. In all events, he was with Caesar in Spain in 45 BC and was actually present at the victory at Munda. This time he certainly returned with Caesar for the triumph which was celebrated in October 45 BC and he also held the praetorship in that year, probably in the final quarter. If, then, the inference that Virgil is alluding to such a poem o f Gallus has been correctly drawn, this allusion must have been primarily intended to establish Daphnis as the analogue o f Julius Caesar and the relationship o f the two would have been much clearer to a contemporary than to us. It remains only to attempt an explanation o f the significance o f the poem on a political level, a question raised by the analogy between Daphnis and Caesar. Probus says (p. 329 Hagen): eum (i.e. Virgil), ut Asconius Pedianus dicit X X V IIIa nnos natum Bucolica edidisse. This cannot refer to the collection that now exists. The earliest Eclogues are agreed to be 2,3 and 5 and these are marked out as a group by the ‘quotations’ o f the opening lines o f the second and third Eclogues at the end o f the fifth. They may well have been issued as a pilot collection and on a limited scale in Virgil’s twenty-ninth year, i.e. between Ides o f October 42 and 41 BC. Caesar was killed on the Ides o f March 44 BC; he was unofficially recognised as a god when the comet appeared at the games held in his honour in July o f that year; he was formally recognised as a god by the Roman Senate on or about 1st January 42 BC. In view of the time lapse and the indirectness o f the fifth Eclogue it is implausible to think that Virgil is here expressing his personal grief or elation. The matter o f Caesar’s deification was a crucial one in 42 BC. The deification proclaimed Caesar as a benefactor o f the Roman state and so justified the newly constituted triumvirs taking revenge on his murderers. They, on the other hand, claimed to have removed a tyrant and to have liberated the Roman state. As people took sides in the preparations for the war that was to end at Philippi, their attitude to Caesar must have been both a deciding factor and proclaimed as a-symptom o f their allegiance. Many o f Virgil’s friends from the Epicurean community at Naples fought on the side o f the liberators. 118 But Virgil’s patron, C. Asinius Pollio, although a professed Republican,119chose the side o f the triumvirs, the Caesarians. In this context it seems probable that a contemporary would have seen in this poem by one of Pollio’s protegees, in which it is implied that Caesar was a benefactor, that his death was a disaster and justly mourned and that he had been rightly recognised as a god, a tactful and restrained explanation, justification and declaration o f Pollio’s decision. Virgil may have been at one with his patron on this issue. Yet the politics o f an unknown poet could not be expectcd to interest anyone but himself; those of his powerful and influential patron were doubtless o f great interest to many. That is what they would be looking for and that is what they would see: it is implausible to think that a Roman reader would ever have entertained the notion that a poet should express views different from those held by his patron on a matter o f such vital importance. It is no objection to this view that Pollio is not named in this poem. Those who attended early readings o f the poem or who received personal copies doubtless knew the background. Those who read it in any edition, preliminary or final, would recall the acclamation o f Pollio as Virgil’s patron in Eclogue 3,84 - 85: Pollio amat nostram, quamvis est rustica, Musam: Pierides, vitulam lectori pascite vestro. 35 NOTES This is a revised version o f the lecture. I am grateful to Professor Francis Cairns and Dr. Tony Woodman for their helpful comments and criticisms o f the earlier version: responsibility for the errors remaining in the final version is, o f course, mine alone. I am naturally indebted to my predecessors, both when I agree and when I disagree with them. W. Berg, Early Virgil, London 1974, 121ff.;W. Berg, TA P A 96 (1965) 1 Iff.; K. Buchner,/*. VirgiliusMaro der Dichter der Romer, Stuttgart 1966, 193ff.; F. Cupaiuolo, Trama poetica delle Bucoliche di Virgilio, Napoli 1969, 149 ff.; F. Klingner, Virgil, Zurich 1967, 84ff.; E. W. Leach, Virgil’ Eclogues: Landscapes o f Experience, Ithaca and London 1974,182ff.; E. Pfeiffer, Virgils Bukolika: Untersuchungen zum Formproblem, Stuttgart 1933, 56ff.; M. C. J. Putnam, Virgil’s Pastoral A rt: Studies in the Eclogues, Princeton 1970, 171 ff.; G. Rohde, Studien und Interpretationen zurantiken Literatur, Religion und Geschichte, Berlin 1963,117ff.; H. J. Rose, The Eclogues o f Virgil, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1942, 117ff.;E. A. Schmidt, Poetische Reflexion: Virgils Bukolika, Munchen 1972, 186ff. R. Coleman, Virgil: Eclogues, Cambridge 1977 only became available to me for the revision o f this paper. References to the more important older criticism can be found in the above. For the fullest lists o f Virgil’s imitations o f Theocritus see S. Posch, Beobachtungen zur Theokritmchwirkung bei Virgil (Commentationes Aenipontanae X IX ), Innsbruck Munchen 1969. E.g. Aelian VH 10,18; Diodorus Siculus 4,84. Note the chiastic verbal link Nymphae crudeli.. . cmdelia mater. In addition to Aelian and Diodorus Siculus (n.3), the version preserved by Parthenius (Erot. Path 29), and so well known to Virgil, states that Daphnis was the son o f Hermes. J/ / £ / / / )\ V i / Characteristically combined with Bion Adonis 32: ojpCot. 77o^ri< opu£S toV A t - j o v n } mioquuntur.. See Posch (op. cit. n.2) 20f. After Ennius Ann. 232 V3. When quadripes does not denote a horse, the meaning is clear from the context. Calpurnius Siculus clearly took it to refer to a horse here (6,49ff.): (equus) quigram ina... libavit. As that term is normally understood. The tables in Posch (op. cit. n.2) provide ample evidence of this. But note that the scholium at the end o f Idyll 18 reads: tc \ o $ i W ©eow(>rroi> See below. For the scholia and Virgilian imitation see the important book R.R. Schlunk, The Homeric scholia and the Aeneid, Ann Arbor 1974. For the Eclogues compare C. Wendel Abh. Gott. 17,2 (1920) 60ff. Cf. I. M. Le M. Du Quesnay, Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue in: F. Cairns (ed.), Papers o f the Liverpool Latin Seminar 1976 (Area 2), Liverpool 1977, 43. For decus see Hor. Odes 1,1,2 and Nisbet-Hubbard ad loc.; OLD s.v.3; ThLL 5,1,243,6ff. For trCioj (translated by Cicero as decus at carm. fr. 29,1 (Morel) and * 0^*05 see LSJ sw. 36 He imitates it frequently. According to Posch (op. cit. n.2), Id. 1 (152 lines) 58 times; Id. 7 (157 lines) 57 times; Id. 8(93 lines) 41 times. There is no ancient evidence to suggest that the authenticity of Id. 8 was doubted in Virgil’s day. See K. Lembach, Die Pflanzen bei Theokrit, Heidelberg 1970, 123ff. E.g. Cic. ND 3,57: (A p ollo) quem Arcades Nomionem appellant quod ab eo se leges ferunt accepisse. But there were Nomian mountains in Arcadia according to Pausanias 8,38,11, who refers to a Nomian Pan and a nymph Nomia. Apollo Nomios is also associated with Admetos and the river Amphrysus in Thessaly (e.g. Callimachus Hymn 2,47ff.; Georg. 3,Iff.): so Servius here explains: Apollinem nomium dicit, id est pastoralem:nam Adm eto regipavit armenta, deriving the epithet from . Aelian VH 10,18; Diodorus Siculus 4,84,2. Diomedes (Gram. Lat. Keil) 1,453,36, adopted by Ribbeck. The feminine would be unique in Latin, but it is also a rarity in Greek. It occurs also at AP 5,147 (Meleager 46 Gow-Page), 2 a poem earlier imitated by Virgil in Eclogue 2. For the plant see Lembach (op. cit. n.14) 86ff. obviously denotes a thistle (carduus) at Id. 6,15ff., (see Lembach, op. cit. n.14 82ff.) and Virgil may have so understood it at Id. 1,132. See Lembach (op. cit. n.14) 73ff. Gow on Theocritus 18,41. See S. Weinstock, Divus Julius, Oxford 1971, 24ff. (Hereafter Weinstock DJ). Cf. Du Quesnay (op. cit. n . l l ) 55 with n.213 and addendum (p.99). See Du Quesnay (op. cit. n.l 1) 39ff. See the fundamental work F. Cairns, Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry, Edinburgh 1972 (hereafter Cairns GC). Convenient summary in H. Weir Smyth, Greek Melic Poets, London 1906, cxx. For testimonia see H. Farber, Die Lyrik in der Kunsttheorie der Antike, Munchen 1936, 53f. For recent discussion see M. Alexiou, The ritual lament in the Greek tradition, Cambridge 1974, 102ff. J. Esteve-Forriol, Die Trauer-und Trostgedicht in der romischen Literatur, Munchen 1962, 113ff. (hereafter Esteve-Forriol TuT). His topical analyses are most useful but it will be clear that I do not share his views on the development o f the genre. See J. Soffel, Die Regeln Menanders fu r die Leichenrede, (Beitrage zur klassischen Philologie 57), Meisenhim an Gian 1974 (hereafter Soffel Menander), 5ff. Ps. Dionysius o f Halicarnassus Rhet. 6 (Usener); Menander 413ff. (paramythetikos); 418ff. (epitaphios); 434ff. (monodia) (ed. L. Spengel Rhetores Graeci vol. 3, Lipsiae 1856. All subsequent references are to the numeration o f this edition which is preserved by Soffel). Esteve-Forriol ( TuT 114) excludes bucolic epicedia from his analyses. See also G. Pasquali, Orazio Lirico (2nd. ed. A. La Penna), Firenze 1966, 237ff. Esteve-Forriol even omits the best known Virgilian epicedion at Aen. 6 ,868ff,, for which see Norden ad loc. The following analyses are of necessity rather crude and do not do full justice to the Greek poems. They are intended only to show how each poet combined imitation with independent selection from the topical material o f the genre epicedion. 37 30 Menander 414,27ff.; 437,1 ff. 31 Throughout this section the numbers in parentheses refer to the number given to the topos in Esteve-Forriol’s analysis ( TuT 126-161), where examples are cited. 32 This is a general purpose o f prefatory material and not peculiar to the death genres. 33 Menander 419,Iff. 34 See Hor. Odes 1,24,Iff. and Nisbet-Hubbard ad loc.; Alexiou (op. cit. n.25) 161 ff. 35 Aelian VH 10,18; Diod. Sic. 4,84; Parthenius Erot. Path. 29. 36 See Cairns GC, index s.v. Theocritus. 37 Menander 435,20f. and Soffel ad loc. 38 See W. Atallah, Adonis dans la litterature et Vartgrecs, (Etudes et commentaires 62) Paris 1966. 39 See Ph. E. Legrand, Bucoliquesgrecs, tome II, Paris 1953,191. 40 Above n.37. 41 Menander 436,15-21 and Soffel ad loc. 42 Menander 413,5f. 43 Cf. R. Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs, Urbana 1962, 203ff. 44 Lattimore (op. cit. n.43) 8 8 . 45 Lattimore (op. cit. n.43) 192ff.; Alexiou (op. cit. n.25) 155f. 46 See V. Mumprecht (ed.), Epitaphios Bionos, Zurich 1964. 47 Legrand (op. cit. n.39) 156; Mumprecht (op. cit. n. 46) 33ff. 48 Menander 435,9ff. 49 See F. Cairns CQ 19 (1969) 131 ff.; Gallus as the dying Daphnis in Eclogue 10; cf. M. Hubbard, Propertius, London 1974, 149ff. 50 Menander 434,1 Off. 51 Menander 435,16ff. 52 Menander 420,3Iff. 53 Cf. Du Quesnay (op. cit. n.l 1) 6 8 . 54 Cf. Hor. Odes 1,24,13ff.; Pasquali (op. cit. n.29) 247. 55 For iminatura mors see Soffel Menander 165 (with bibliography); Lattimore (op. cit. n.43) 184ff. 56 Menander 434,31 ff. 57 Menander 436,15ff. 58 See D. Kurtz and J. Boardman, Greek Burial Customs, London 1971,147ff.; J. M. C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World, London 1971, 61 ff. 59 Menander 435,9ff. 60 Lattimore (op. cit. n.43) 177ff.; Menander 435,9ff. and Soffel ad loc. 61 Em.Heraklid. 219; Ennius ap. Cic. de Or. 3,167; Catullus 64,357; Cic. de imp. 30; Tib. 1,7,11; Hor. Odes 4,4,38; Crinagoras 29 (Gow-Page = AP9,419), 4; etc. 62 Menander 434,26ff.; 436,12. 63 Dionysus is first found with tigers in Latin poetry eg Hor. Odes 3,3,13f.;/lew. 6,805; Ov. Am. 1,2,47f.; Ars 1,545ff.; Met. 3,668 (see Bomer ad loc.), but the m otif was doubtless taken from some lost Hellenistic source. See n.l 11. Menander recommends (421,8ff.) comparison with Herakles or Theseus to the composer o f an epitaphios logos. 64 E.g. Aug.Res Gestae 19ff.; Menander 377,14f.; Theocritus Id. 17,108f.; 123ff. See also n.95. 65 Esteve-Forriol TuT 132 (17); Menander 436,1 Iff. with Soffel ad loc. 66 Weinstock DJ 24ff. 67 Dessau ILS 1,4; cf. Catullus 64,323: o decus eximium magnis virtutibus augens. 68 Du Quesnay (op. cit. n.l 1) 39ff. 69 E.g. Hes. opera 197ff.; Aratus Phaen. 97ff.; Catullus 6 4 ,384ff.; Ovid Fasti 1,247ff.;Mef. 1,150. Pales and Apollo thus play the role normally assigned to Iustitia etc. But see B. Gatz, Weltalter, goldene Zeit und sinnverwandte Vofstellungen (Spudasmata 16), Hildesheim 1967, 230 (IIa.5). 70 Above n.58. 71 As happened in the case o f Cicero’s daughter, Tullia. For an inscription to be set up after interment see Propertius 4,7,79ff. Compare also Tib. 2,4,48: annua constructo serta dabit tumulo. The tumulus may either cover the body (as at Aen. 3,62ff.) or not (as at Aen. 3,300ff.). 72 Menander 418,28-419,10. 73 Lattimore (op. cit. n.43) 220ff. 74 Esteve-Forriol Tu T 153 (76B); cf. Menander 421,32ff. 75 Esteve-Forriol T u T 143 (42C). See esp. Propcritus 2,13; Ovid Tr. 3,3; Leonidas of Tarentum 19 (Gow-Page = AP 7,657); Petronius Sat. 71. Eel. 5,40 must refer to the establishment o f a funerary garden (for which see Toynbee (op. cit. n.58) 94ff.) as Servius saw, especially in view o f inducite fontibus umbras. Compare Aen. 6,883 with Norden and Austin ad loc. 76 See the helpful account in Pfeiffer (op. cit. n il) 57-9. 77 See A. S.F. Gow, Theocritus.Cambridge 1952, vol 2, If. The main sources for the Daphnis legend are: Parthenius Erot. Path. 29 (Timaeus SikelikaJ; Aelian VH 10, 18 (Stesichorus ?); Diodorus Siculus 4,84; Nonnos Dionysiaca 15,308ff.; Scholia ad Theocritum 1,65f.; 82e; 8 arg.; 53d; 93a; 9 arg. (reporting Hermesianax, Alexander Aetolus, Nymphodorus and Sositheos); (passing references in^i°7,518; 535; 9,341; 556; 12. 128; Theocritus epigr. 2;3;4;5;) Ovid Ars 1,'732;Met. 4,277; Silius Italicus 14,462ff.; Servius and Philargyrius ad Eclogue 5,20; Servius auctus ad Eclogue 8 ,6 8 . For casual references in Latin see ThLL s. v. Daphnis. See, for example, Ovid Met. 14,600ff. (Aeneas); 816ff. (Romulus); 15,843ff. (Caesar). That is not to deny that he is a singer (see Eel. 5,48f.), only to insist that it is not for his achievements as a singer that he is praised and subsequently deified. The relationship o f Daphnis to Julius Caesar has been debated since antiquity: see Servius ad Eclogue 5,20. For a brief survey o f current views see Schmidt (op. cit. n.l '1138f. Still important is D. L. Drew CQ 16(1922) 57ff. See further: R. Pichoni?£L4 (1917) 193ff.; P. Grimal in Melanges Ch. Picard (Rev. Arch. ser. 6,30 (1948) 406ff.; F. Bomer Bonner Jahrb. 152 (1952) 27 ff. For allegory see: Rhet. ad Her. 4,66; Cic. de Or. 3,166;Quint. 10 8,6,14 and 44ff.; Demetrius On Style 99ff. and Heraclitus Quaest. Horn. (ed. F. Buffiere (Bude), Paris 1962), 5. For modern bibliography see Kleine Pauly s. v. Allegorische Dichtererklarung. The Idylls o f Theocritus are not allegories and were not read as allegories in antiquity. I remain absolutely convinced that not one o f the dramatis personae o f the Eclogues is an allegory for Virgil or any o f his friends and that allegorical interpretations, from the first century AD on, are the result o f misusing ancient methods o f literary biography. See F.Leo Hermes 38 (1903) Iff. See the important paper by J. Fairweather, Fiction in the biographies o f ancient writers, Ancient Society 5 (1974) 23Iff. D. L. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci, Oxford 1962,423ff.; J. M. Edmonds, Lyra Graeca, 3 (Loeb), 362ff. This has been collected and studied in Weinstock DJ. His controversial interpretation o f the historical Caesar does not lessen the usefulness o f the book for the student o f literature for whom the image of Caesar is as important, if not more important, than the historical reality. So amat bonus otia Daphnis; for Caesar and peace see DJ 267ff. Weinstock Z)/24ff.;199n. Weinstock DJ 19Iff. Weinstock DJ esp. 287ff. For Daphnis as a benefactor see especially Berg TAP A 96 (1965) 1 Iff. (although direct influence o f Aeschylus’ Prometheus seems improbable and unnecessary. Sositheus' Daphnis may have mediated the influence o f Aeschylus, but it seems to me that the allegory motivates the modification o f the standard image o f Daphnis). Weinstock Z)/ 12 ff.; 397. Weinstock DJ 184. Weinstock DJ 343f. Cf. Du Quesnay (op. cit. n.l 1) 42f. Even in antiquity other views were held. Servius auctus oa Eel. 5,20: si de C. Caesare dictum est, multi per matrem Venerem accipiunt, per leones et tigres populos quos subegit, per thiasos sacra quae pontifex instituit, per formonsum pecus populum Romanum. With 30f. compare, Eur. Bacch. 115 and Dodds ad loc.; “ Whosoever leads the worshipping companies is Bromios” ( fitpoM ie>^ o V n j 5/ ) *e E.g. Tib. 1,7 (C. Valerius Messalla Corvinus); Horace Odes 3,3,9fi.\Epist. 2,1,5ff. (Augustus); Ovid Ars 1,177ff. (Gaius); Martial 8,26 (Domitian). Compare Cic. Nat. Deor. 2,62 and Pease and loc. Doubtless if more Antonian literature had survived the image would be even more familiar. For which see Rhet ad Her. 4,31; Cic. de Or. 2,341 \Fin. 2,116. Also E. Norden Rh. Mus. 54(1899) 467ff. (= Kleine Schriften, Berlin 1966, 422ff.); E. Doblhofer, Die Augustuspanegyrik. des Horaz in formalhistorischer Sicht, Heidelberg 1966,122ff. As the tigers make clear. For Dionysus and tigers see n.63. For Alexander and tigers see e.g. Curtius Rufus 9,8,1 ff. They are given as a gift from the Indians and in the conquest o f the next town people think him to be alium Liberum patrem. No tigers were seen in Rome before 11 BC and Varro explicitly states (ling. lat. 5,100) tigris... vivus capiadhuc non potuit. See further J. M. C. Toynbee, Animals in Roman Life.and Art, London 1973, 69ff.;Austin on Aen. 6 , 805; Hollis on Ovid Me?. 8,121; v4 rs 1,550. See A. D. Nock JHS 48 (1928) 21 ff.; L. R.Taylor, The Divinity o f the Roman Emperor, Middletown Connecticut 1931, 20ff.; Austin on Aen. 6,801 ff. See A. S. Hollis CQ 26 (1976) 148ff. So F. Vian, Nonnos de Panoplis: les Dionysiaques, tome 1, Paris 1976, X L I n.3; X L III (following A. Barigazzi, Misc. Rostagni, 1963,416ff.). See n.96. For Dionysus and the triumphator see Tib. 1,7; Virg. Aen. 6,804f.; Ovid Am. l,2,47f. For Augustus triumphator see Virg. Georg. 3,1 ff.;Aen. 8,714ff.; Hor. Odes 1,37; 4,2; Propertius 3,4. Weinstock DJ 6 6 . Eg Pliny NH 7,95: PompeiMagni titulos omnis triumphosque... aequato non modo Alexandri Magni rerum fulgore sed etiam Herculis prope ac Liberipatris; NH 33,150 (Marius). For Alexander and his Roman successors see O. Weippert, Alexander-imitatic und romischer Politik in republikanischer Zeit, Augsburg 1972;D. Michel, Alexander als Vorbild fiir Pompeius Caesar und Marcus Antonius (Coll. Latomus 104) Bruxelles 1967. Weinstock DJ 60ff. (46 BC); 197f. (45 BC). (Caes.) Bell. Hisp. 31,6: ipsis Liberalibus fusi fugatique ... (noted by Leach, op. cit. n .l, 190n). It was in 45 BC that Caesar was voted the title Liberator (Dio 43,44,1). Suet. Div. IuL 37,2. The symbolism o f the Pompeian precedent is made explicit by Pliny NH 8,4: (elephanti) Romae iuncti primum subiere currum Pompei Magni Africo triumpho, quod prius India victa triumphante Libero patre. For interpretation see D. L. Drew CQ 16 (1922) 57ff.; A. Bruhl, Liber Pater, Paris 1953,124ff.; Weinstock DJ 77f. (an inconclusive discussion without reference to Drew, Bruhl or the triumph of Dionysus). In general see Toynbee (op. cit. n.98) 32ff. Weinstock DJ 64ff. LSJsv. G. K. Galinsky WS n.s. 3(1969) 75ff.; Cairns G C95ff.; 286; A. Hardie in Papers o f the Liverpool Latin Seminar 1976 (op. cit. n.l 1). Cairns GC 95ff. Du Quesnay (op. cit. n.l 1) 28f. Weinstock DJ 70. The epithet is learned: see Varro lin g . lat. 5,100; tigris qui est ut leo varius ... vocabulum e lingua Armenia etc. Also (Tib.) 3,6,15; Ov. Am. 2,14,35;Met. 8,121; 15,86; Sen. HO 241. So A. Barigazzi Maia 17 (1965) 163. J. P. Boucher, Caius Cornelius Gallus, Paris 1966. J. Andre, Lae vie et Voeuvre d ’Asinius Pollion, Paris 1949. For Pollio’s movements in 46 and 45 BC see T. R. S. Brought on, The Magistrates o f the Roman Republic, vol. 2, Cleveland Ohio 1952, 300; 306; 310 and the sources cited there. See A. Momigliano JRS 31 (1941) 151f. See Asinius Pollio ap. Cicero adFam. 10,31-33, esp. 31,3; Du Quesnay (op. cit. n.l 1) 86 nl 5.