Bucolics

Virgil was the most famous poet of the Augustan age. Born in 70 BCE near Mantua, he received his first education in Cremona; at sixteen he received the toga of manhood. This celebration coincided with the year of Lucretius’s death, so contemporaries regarded the young poet as the direct successor of the singer of "De rerum natura." Virgil continued his education in Milan, Naples, and Rome, where he studied Greek literature and philosophy. Despite his interest in Epicureanism and his deep admiration for Lucretius, Virgil did not join the Epicurean school; he was drawn to Plato and the Stoics.

In his first work—"Bucolica" (consisting of 10 eclogues and written in 43–37 BCE)—Virgil wanted to bring into Latin poetry the features of Greek verse: its simplicity and naturalness, starting by imitating Theocritus. But he absolutely failed to achieve his goal, despite the straightforward translation from the Sicilian poet in many places—because it is precisely simplicity and naturalness that are absent in Virgil’s Bucolica. While Theocritus’s shepherds truly live an unpretentious life, the entire interest of which lies in the flourishing of herds and in love, the shepherds and shepherdesses of Virgil’s Bucolica are poetic fiction, an artistic image concealing the Romans’ laments about the hardships of the civil wars. In some of them, Virgil presents prominent figures of that era; for example, Caesar appears in Daphnis.

In the overall character of Eclogue X—its hatred of war and desire for peaceful life—Virgil reflected the longing for peace that swept through all Roman society. The literary significance of the Bucolica lies mainly in the perfection of the verse, surpassing everything written earlier in republican Rome.