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Some Second Thoughts on Vergil's Eclogues by H. J

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Some Second Thoughts on Vergil's Eclogues by H. J SOME SECOND THOUGHTS ON VERGIL'S ECLOGUES BY H. J. ROSE The following incondita were suggested to me by a recent article of Professor H. Wagenvoort, in which he makes a number of ingenious suggestions, more than one being somewhat contro- versial 1) . One of these, and perhaps that one in making which he seems to me most certainly right, affects the date at which the Eclogues were written, and incidentally the time of their publication. It has been repeated by handbook after handbook in various lan- guages that the poet wrote them in the years 42-39 B.C., and this is founded on a combination of two statements in the extant Lives 2). Donatus-Suetonius informs us that Bucolica triennio (perlecit) and gives the like information for the other genuine poems 3). If we ask when this tyienniuyn was, "Probus" is ready with an answer, namely, sc-ripsit Bucolica annos natus viii et xx 4). Vergil was twenty- eight years old on Oct. 15, 42 B.C., since he was natus ... Cn. Pompeio Magno M. Licinio Cyasso primum coss. iduum Octobrium die 5). Therefore the moderns report correctly the information given by our ancient authorities. It remains to ask what that information is worth, in other words to what authority it in turn goes back. Here we have not much to guide us. "Probus" indeed cites a very 1) H. Wagenvoort, Vergilius' Ecloga I en IX, in Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie, Klasse der Letteren, Jaarg. XV, 1953, nr. 3. 2) Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from the Lives are taken from the edition of Ernst Diehl, Die Vitae Vergilianae (Lietzmann's Kleine Texte, 72, Bonn i9i i). In passing, I would mention a corruption in the Donatus-Suetonius Life. At the beginning, section I , it is reported that Ver- gil's father rose by his industry, egregieque substantiae siluis coemendis et apibus curandis auxisse reculam. I do not know if it has .been suggested, what seems to me obvious, that substantiae, which appears to make no sense, is a corrupted gloss (it is current post-classical Latin for "estate, fortune") on reculam, which was so ill understood by the copyists that they miswrote it regulam. 3) D.-S. 25 (p. 14, Diehl). 4) "Probus", p. 44, 1 Diehl. 5) D.-S. 2. 58 respectable source, Asconius Pedianus the commentator on Cicero 1), but it is obvious that he misquotes him. Asconius, who was by no means indifferent to chronology, would never have said of Vergil xxviii annos natum Bucolica edidisse, for he would not have fancied that a book of poems which plainly mention an event of q.o B.C. can have been published in 42. But in any case, for really reliable, first-hand information, all later students would necessarily go to Vergil's own days. Now it is clear that the poet's shyness was attended with an uncommunicative temper. For instance,. there is no trace of any collection of letters written by him; the anecdotes and so forth in the Lives come from oral tradition or the writings of other people. It is said 2) of Vergil that he had a peculiar method of composition and made a mild joke about it. He used to remarks (obviously in someone's hearing) that he put temporary props under unfinished parts of his work, meaning leuissima uerba. Propertius writes in his praise; letters of Augustus (Suetonius is fond of quoting letters) press for a sight of the unfinished Aeneid. Eros, formerly Vergil's secretary, used to tell a story of how two lines of Aen. vi came to be completed. We never hear that Vergil himself has left anything of the kind on record, though passages from his poems are not infrequently quoted and interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as alluding to some experience of his own. Naturally, the A.eneid, in accordance with epic tradition, gave no room for autobiography, and the Georgics little beyond the poetical signature at the end. But in pastoral, self-revelation had been allowable and even customary since Theokritos wrote the seventh Idyll. Yet even here, full though the poems are of allusions to contemporary events that interested Vergil deeply and affected his personal fortunes, they really do not give us much information. Allowing, as I think we may, that Vergil is Menalcas, we learn that he is the author of Ec. ii and iii (v. 86-87), that he had tried his hand at epic but abandoned it for pastoral (vi, I foIl.), that he wrote Ec. v before Ec. ix (at least in its present form; Ec. ix, 19-20, cf. v, 40), and, if ix, 31-36 is a i) Probi qui dicitur commentarius in Bucolica et Georgica, p. 329, 5-7 Hagen. Another citation of Asconius, D.-S. io (21). 2) The examples are taken from D.-S. 22 (33) foll. .
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