Eclogue 5
Eclogue 5 is a pastoral poem by the Latin poet Virgil, one of his book of ten poems known as the Eclogues. In form, this is an expansion of the first Idyll of Theocritus, which contains a song about the death of the semi-divine herdsman Daphnis. In the first half of Virgil's poem, the goatherd Mopsus sings a song lamenting the death of Daphnis; in the second half, his friend Menalcas sings a song of equal length telling of Daphnis' welcome among the gods, and the rites paid to him as a divinity.
The poem has sometimes been held to be allegorical, celebrating the apotheosis of Julius Caesar, which was confirmed by a solemn act passed in BC 42. Another suggestion is that the "god" in this poem, which recalls Eclogue 1 in its language, represents not Julius Caesar but his adopted son Octavian. Scholars have also noted in Virgil's deification of Daphnis echoes of the poet Lucretius's deification of the philosopher Epicurus. According to another interpretation, Daphnis, in this and other eclogues, allegorically represents Lucretius himself.
Summary
Two herdsmen, Mopsus and Menalcas, meet and engage in a friendly contest, one singing about the death and the other about the deification of Daphnis. The poem is amoebaean, and the 25 lines which compose the song of Mopsus are replied to in 25 lines by Menalcas. The parallelism of the two songs is very marked: lines 20–23 are parallel to 56–59, 24–28 to 60–64, 29–35 to 65–71, 36–39 to 72–75, and 40–44 to 76–80.Introduction
Mopsus' song
Transition
Menalcas' song
Exchange of gifts
Analysis
Daphnis
is the ideal cowherd of pastoral poetry, which he was said to have invented, and his death is sung by Thyrsis in the first Idyll of Theocritus. In Theocritus's poem, the herdsman Thyrsis describes the moments before Daphnis died: the gods Hermes, Priapus, and Cypris try to console him and persuade him not to die, but in vain. In Mopsus's song, Daphnis has now died and is being mourned by the nymphs. Menalcas's song describes Daphnis's ascent to Olympus and the rejoicing that follows.The deification of Daphnis by Virgil has generally been supposed to describe the deification of Julius Caesar, and to have been written shortly after the order made by the triumvirs in 42 BC for the celebration of his birthday in the month Quinctilis, which was thenceforward called after him Julius. However, many modern critics have pointed out that several elements in the description do not fit well with the life and character of Caesar. For example, Caesar was 56 when he died, whereas Daphnis is said to have been a boy ; the great general could not in any way be described as a lover of peace, yet Daphnis "loves peace".
An alternative interpretation, proposed by Pulbrook, is that the "god" mentioned in this poem and the "god" described in very similar terms in Eclogue 1 were one and the same person, namely Julius Caesar's adopted son Octavian. During the three weeks of the battle of Philippi in 42 BC, according to the historian Dio, rumours reached Rome that Octavian had died. The language in both poems is very similar. In Eclogue 1, Tityrus praises a young man, who has created peace ; he calls him a "god" and declares that he will make offerings to him every year. In Eclogue 5, Menalcas praises Daphnis, who is referred to as a boy, who loves peace ; he calls him a "god" and declares that he will make offerings to him every year. In 42 BC Octavian was 21 years old, and could well be described as both "boy" and "young man".
A third interpretation is that the god of Eclogue 5 represents the philosopher Epicurus. The eclogue contains at least six echoes of Lucretius's poem De Rerum Natura about the doctrines of Epicurus, of which the most notable is line 64: deus, deus ille Menalca, which recalls Lucretius 5.8: deus ille fuit, deus, inclute Memmi, in which Lucretius praises Epicurus as a benefactor of mankind. It is therefore argued that it is possible that Daphnis represents Epicurus, whose philosophy Virgil followed. A keyword is otia, which occurs in line 61, Eclogue 1.6 and Lucretius 5.1387, representing the Epicurean ideal of ἀταραξία 'freedom from disturbance'.
Yet another possibility, suggested by Leah Kronenberg, is that Daphnis represents the poet Lucretius, whose poetry combined intellectual brilliance with divine inspiration. In lines 45–48 Menalcas praises Mopsus as a "divine poet" who has inherited the mantle of his "master" ; his song is like sleep for tired people in a pleasant grassy place, which could represent the Epicurean ideal of freedom from disturbance. Mopsus, on the other hand, praises Menalcas's song as being like the roar of the south wind, the crashing of waves against the shore, or a torrent rushing down a rocky river bed; these are descriptions typical of the effect of sublimity in poetry, according to the author of the work On the Sublime. Thus one song represents the Apollonian aspect of Lucretius's poetry, and the other the Dionysian.
Kronenberg also sees an evocation of Lucretius in other eclogues, such as Eclogue 7, where Daphnis is portrayed as the master poet, Eclogue 8, where Daphnis is a figure apparently immune to the chains of love, and Eclogue 9, in which Daphnis is portrayed as gazing at the stars. In Eclogue 3, Daphnis is said to have made Menalcas jealous by passing on his bow and "reeds" to a boy; Kronenberg suggests that the boy is Mopsus, and the gift is a symbol of Mopsus's inheriting the mantle of Lucretius.