In its defence it may be urged that the very nature of the subject demands elaboration, and that the resulting picture has the merit of being vivid despite its elaborate ingenuity. It is in this poem that Calpurnius is seen at his best. Elsewhere his love for minute and elaborate description is merely wearisome. It would be hard, for instance, to find a more tiresomely circuitous method of claiming to be an authority on sheep-breeding than (ii. 36)—
me docet ipsa Pales cultum gregis, ut niger albae terga maritus ovis nascenti mutet in agna quae neque diversi speciem servare parentis possit et ambiguo testetur utrumque colore.
Pales herself teaches me how to breed my flocks and tells me how the black ram transforms the fleece of the white ewe in the lamb that comes to birth, that cannot reproduce the colour of its sire, so different from that of its dam, and by its ambiguous hue testifies to either parent.
It is difficult to give a poetic description of the act of rumination, but
et matutinas revocat palearibus herbas (iii. 17)
And recalls to its dewlaps the grass of its morning's meal.
is needlessly grotesque. And the vain struggle to give life to old and outworn themes leads to laboured lines such as (iii. 48)—
non sic destricta marcescit turdus oliva, non lepus extremas legulus cum sustulit uvas, ut Lycidas domina sine Phyllide tabidus erro.
Not so does the thrush pine when the olives are plucked, not so does the hare pine when the vintager has gathered the last grapes, as I, Lycidas, droop while I roam apart from my mistress Phyllis.
Calpurnius yields little to compensate for such defects. He meanders on through hackneyed pastoral landscapes haunted by hackneyed shepherds. It is only on rare occasions that a refreshing glimmer of poetry revives the reader. In lines such as (ii. 56)—