Pauperis et tuguri congestum caespite culmen (I. 69)
More characteristic of his economy is his use of concrete predicates.
Molli paulatim flavescet campus arista,
Incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva;
Et durae quercus sudabunt roscida mella (IV. 28).
More concise than Theocritus in style, and graver, he is quite independent in composition. The Pharmaceutria (VIII) owes to the second idyll of Theocritus little but the subject. The encomium of Pollio (IV), instead of following the sophistic recipe item by item, selects and weaves into an integrated vision of the Golden Age. But such economy of phrase and movement seems to have had less influence in making his eclogues models than his use of shepherd rivalries to suggest larger struggles and personal concerns.
Moralized eclogue was familiar from the schoolbook called Auctores octo. As used at Troyes in 1436, this collection contained, with an Isopet (Aesop’s fables), a Cathonet (maxims of Cato), and other medieval compends, a Théodolet. The work thus familiarly styled is Theodulus (or Liber Theoduli), ecloga qua comparantur miracula Veteris Testamenti cum veterum poetarum commentis. It matches pagan with Christian instances in a contest of Falsehood (Pseustis) with Truth (Alethia) which is judged by Reason (Phronesis). Probably of the ninth century, it was printed as late as the sixteenth.[29] Literary use of Latin eclogues during the intervening centuries is sufficiently indicated by Dante’s in reply to Giovanni di Virgilio. Petrarch’s Vergilian Bucolicum carmen expresses the actual conflict of Christian with pagan poetry. Boccaccio’s eclogues are less distinctive than his Italian prose narrative Ameto. Though this is far longer than any previous pastoral and is dilated with lavish description, it must be remembered not only for its pastoral setting, but for its alternations of verse and for its myth. The successive interviews of the shepherd with the nymphs and demigoddesses symbolize the progress from earthly to heavenly love.[30]
But humanism must have its own eclogues and its own symbolism. The eclogues (1498) of Mantuan (Baptista Spagnolo, known as Mantuanus, 1448-1513) were lifted out of the humanist throng by being adopted for use in school. The imitation thus invited through some two hundred years was the easier because they are far less concise than Vergil’s. Vicar General of the Carmelites, Mantuan doubtless owed some of his vogue to his edification. Nevertheless he admits that classicizing which Erasmus attacked later as paganizing: Tonans, for instance, or Regnator Olympi for God. Eclogue III presents the convention of hopeless, ill-starred love; IX, the conventional contrast of country to city; but X makes the shepherds debate the actual controversy over the Observantists. Eclogue IV finds women still, as of old, servile genus, crudele, superbum. Most of its examples being classical, boys could learn simultaneously to recognize allusions and to beware women. Mantuan occasionally indulges in word-play.
invida res amor est, res invidiosa voluptas (II. 167).
Nescio quis ventos tempestatesque gubernat;