Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars consider his authorship of these poems to be dubious.
Theocritus was a Greek poet from Sicily, Magna Graecia, and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry.
The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target audience is typically an urban one. A pastoral is a work of this genre. A piece of music in the genre is usually referred to as a pastorale.
An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics.
The Eclogues, also called the Bucolics, is the first of the three major works of the Latin poet Virgil.
"Thyrsis" is a poem written by Matthew Arnold in December 1865 to commemorate his friend, the poet Arthur Hugh Clough, who had died in November 1861 aged only 42.
Corydon is a stock name for a herdsman in ancient Greek pastoral poems and fables, and in much later European literature.
The pastoral elegy is a poem about both death and idyllic rural life. Often, the pastoral elegy features shepherds. The genre is actually a subgroup of pastoral poetry, as the elegy takes the pastoral elements and relates them to expressing grief at a loss. This form of poetry has several key features, including the invocation of the Muse, expression of the shepherd's, or poet's, grief, praise of the deceased, a tirade against death, a detailing of the effects of this specific death upon nature, and eventually, the poet's simultaneous acceptance of death's inevitability and hope for immortality. Additional features sometimes found within pastoral elegies include a procession of mourners, satirical digressions about different topics stemming from the death, and symbolism through flowers, refrains, and rhetorical questions. The pastoral elegy is typically incredibly moving and in its most classic form, it concerns itself with simple, country figures. In ordinary pastoral poems, the shepherd is the poem's main character. In pastoral elegies, the deceased is often recast as a shepherd, despite what his role may have been in life. Further, after being recast as a shepherd, the deceased is often surrounded by classical mythology figures, such as nymphs, fauns, etc. Pastoral elegy is one of the forms of poems in Elizabethan poetry.
Idyll XI, otherwise known as Bucolic poem 11, was written by Theocritus in dactylic hexameter. Its main character, the Cyclops Polyphemus, has appeared in other works of literature such as Homer's Odyssey, and Theocritus' Idyll VI.
Eclogue4, also known as the FourthEclogue, is a Latin poem by the Roman poet Virgil. The poem is dated to 40 BC by its mention of the consulship of Virgil's patron Gaius Asinius Pollio.
The Eclogues is a collection of Latin poetry attributed to Calpurnius Siculus and inspired by the similarly named poems of the Augustan-age poet Virgil.
Eclogue 1 is a bucolic poem by the Latin poet Virgil from his Eclogues. In this poem, which is in the form of a dialogue, Virgil contrasts the diverse fortunes of two farmers, Tityrus, an old man whose lands and liberty have been restored to him thanks to the intervention of an unnamed young man, and Meliboeus, who has been forced off his land, which is due to be given to a soldier. It is generally assumed that the poem refers to the confiscations of land that took place around Virgil's home town of Mantua in 41 BC in order to settle retired soldiers after the civil war. The poem has 83 lines, and is written in the dactylic hexameter metre.
Eclogue 3 is a pastoral poem by the Latin poet Virgil, one of a collection of ten poems known as the "Eclogues". This eclogue represents the rivalry in song of two herdsmen, Menalcas and Damoetas. After trading insults, the two men decide to have a singing competition, for which each offers a prize. A neighbour, Palaemon, who comes along by chance, agrees to be the judge. The second half of the poem consists of the contest, in which each of the two competitors in turn sings a couplet and the other caps it with another couplet. In the end Palaemon brings the contest to an end and declares it a draw.
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 bewailing 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.
Eclogue 6 is a pastoral poem by the Latin poet Virgil. In BC 40, a new distribution of lands took place in North Italy, and Alfenus Varus and Cornelius Gallus were appointed to carry it out. At his request that the poet would sing some epic strain, Virgil sent Varus these verses.
Eclogue 7 is a poem by the Latin poet Virgil, one of his book of ten pastoral poems known as the Eclogues. It is an amoebaean poem in which a herdsman Meliboeus recounts a contest between the shepherd Thyrsis and the goatherd Corydon.
Eclogue 8, also titled Pharmaceutria, is a pastoral poem by the Latin poet Virgil, one of his book of ten Eclogues. After an introduction, containing an address to an unnamed dedicatee, there follow two love songs of equal length sung by two herdsmen, Damon and Alphesiboeus. One is the song of a love-sick young man, whose girlfriend Nysa is marrying another man, Mopsus. The second is the song of a woman who, with the help of her servant Amaryllis, is performing a magic rite to try to entice her beloved Daphnis back from the city.
Eclogue 9 is a pastoral poem by the Latin poet Virgil, one of his series of ten poems known as the Eclogues. This eclogue describes the meeting of two countrymen Lycidas and Moeris. Moeris has been turned out of his farm and is taking some kid goats to town for the new occupant; young Lycidas is astonished, for he had heard that Menalcas had secured the safety of the district by his poetry, but Moeris replies that, so far from that being so, he and Menalcas himself had barely escaped with their lives: they then proceed to recall passages of Menalcas' poetry. Lycidas wants to continue singing to lighten the journey but the distressed Moeris begs him to cease, promising that they will sing again when Menalcas returns.
Eclogue 10 is a pastoral poem by the Latin poet Virgil, the last of his book of ten poems known as the Eclogues written approximately 42–39 BC. The tenth Eclogue describes how Cornelius Gallus, a Roman officer on active service, having been jilted by his girlfriend Lycoris, is imagined as an Arcadian shepherd, and either bewails his lot or seeks distraction in hunting "with the Nymphs" amid "Parthenian glades" and "hurling Cydonian arrows from a Parthian bow".
Idyll V, sometimes called Αιπολικόν και Ποιμενικόν, is a bucolic poem by the 3rd-century BC Greek poet Theocritus. This Idyll begins with a ribald debate between two hirelings, who, at last, compete with each other in a match of pastoral song. The scene is in Southern Italy.
