Eclogues
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The Eclogues is one of three major works by the Latin poet Virgil.
Written in around 37 BC, it consists of ten poems with a rural setting. (For this reason, they are sometimes known as "The Bucolics".) Most of the individual poems are in the form of conversations between characters with names such as "Tityrus" (supposedly representing Virgil himself), "Meliboeus", "Menalcas" and "Mopsus".
The most famous of them is Eclogue 4 (Template:Perseus), which appears to contain a Messianic prophecy, and was seized on by early Christians as such - one reason why Dante later chose Virgil as his guide through the underworld. Some modern scholars have pointed to Virgil's knowledge of Roman Jewish families as a possible route for his near quotations of Isaiah in the poem.
Eclogue 10 (Template:Perseus) is in praise of Virgil's near-contemporary, the poet Gallus. They are based in large part on the Idylls of Theocritus in terms of style and content, but there are political undercurrents in Virgil not present in Theocritus, who maintains his rustic theme throughout.
External links
- The Internet Classics Archive: The eclogues (http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/eclogue.html)
- Gutenberg Project: The Bucolics and eclogues (English) (http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/230)
- French translations: Bibliotheca Classica Selecta: Bucoliques (http://bcs.fltr.ucl.ac.be/Virg/buc/bucgen.html,)nl:Bucolica