After the account of the fray, given by Moeris, and the comments of Lycidas, in which he introduces the lines referred to in the previous chapter, as having all the signs of being a real description of the situation of Virgil’s farms—
qua se subducere colles incipiunt—
Moeris sings the opening lines of certain other pastoral poems, some his own, some the songs of Menalcas. Two of these—[pg 142]‘Tityre dum redeo’ and ‘Huc ades O Galatea’—are purely Theocritean. Two others—
Vare tuum nomen, superet modo Mantua nobis,
and
Daphni quid antiquos signorum suspicis ortus[218]—
indicate the new path which Virgil’s art was striking out for itself. There is certainly more real substance in this poem than in most of the earlier Eclogues. Lycidas and Moeris speak about what interests them personally. The scene of the poem is apparently the road between Virgil’s farm and Mantua. There seem to be no conventional and inconsistent features introduced from the scenery of Sicily or Arcadia, unless it be the ‘aequor’ of line 57—
Et nunc omne tibi stratum silet aequor[219].
But may not that be either the lake, formed by the overflow of the river, some distance above Mantua, or even the great level plain, with its long grass and corn-fields and trees, hushed in the stillness of the late afternoon?
The sixth Eclogue was written probably about the same time and at the same place, the villa of Siron, in which Virgil had taken refuge with his family. It is inscribed with the name of Varus, who is said to have been a fellow-student of Virgil under the tuition of Siron. But, with the exception of the dedicatory lines, there is no reference to the circumstances of the time. Though abounding with rich pastoral illustrations, the poem is rather a mythological and semi-philosophical idyl than a pure pastoral poem. It consists mainly of a song of Silenus, in which an account is given of the creation of the world in accordance with the Lucretian philosophy; and, in connexion with this theme (as is done also by Ovid in his Metamorphoses), some of the oldest mythological traditions, such as the tale of Pyrrha and Deucalion, the reign of Saturn on earth, the theft and punishment of Prometheus, etc., are introduced. The opening [pg 143]lines—Namque canebat uti—are imitated from the song of Orpheus in the first book of the Argonautics[220], but they bear unmistakable traces also of the study of Lucretius. There seems no trace of the language of Theocritus in the poem.