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CELIA CAMPBELL

The Land of Milk and Honey: Goats, Bees,

and the Poetic Identity of Virgil’s Eclogues

This article offers a new perspective on the poetic concerns of the Eclogues by looking at goats
as the programmatic poetic symbol of the collection. It shows how Virgil has adapted a new
poetic identity for the goats of his pastoral world from the bucolic landscape of Theocritus’ Idylls
by borrowing and transforming the established poetic identity of a different animal, the bee. In
particular, it traces the significance and intricacies of etymological play and markers to deepen
our understanding of the relationship Virgil creates between his work and that of Theocritus, and
shows how this shift in poetic identity from bees to goats establishes a Virgilian conception of
Roman pastoral. It gives especial consideration to Idyll 10 as a source text of inspiration for the
Eclogues, with an eye to rehabilitating the importance of this poem to Virgil’s bucolic collection.

Keywords: pastoral, bucolic, eclogue, idyll, Virgil, Theocritus, goats, bees, metapoetics,
etymology

INTRODUCTION: RUMINATING OVER RUMINANTS

Few people would consider goats poetic animals. Those few who do, intel-
lectually speaking, are liable to be thinking of the connection between goats and
tragedy.1 The purpose of this piece is to establish the goats of the framing poems of
Virgil’s Eclogues (1 and 10) as programmatically poetic, and to outline how, and
then why, they function as poetic symbols of the collection.
The capellae that open and close the collection are expressive of Virgilian
self-identity and of poetic inheritance, homage, and allegiance. In this role, they
are active agents in transforming the understanding of pastoral as it stands in the

1. Namely, the etymological origins of τραγῳδία as a “goat-song”; cf. Etym. Magn. 764.1 and,
e.g., Pl. Cra. 408c.

Classical Antiquity. Vol. 42, Issue 1, pp. 19–48. ISSN 0278-6656(p); 1067-8344(e)
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Roman world. At the heart of this system is an allusive interplay between two
animal identities that Virgil uses to create and locate a set of poetic stylistics for
his pastoral landscape; these two animals are bees and goats. I argue that through
the Eclogues’ staged textual forays into the world of the Idylls, Virgil continually
positions these animals in relation to each other and conditions their appearances in
order to transfer the established pedigree of the bee as a poetic symbol to the goat,
thereby creating a novel symbol of poetics for his novel collection of Roman pasto-
ral. To reach this point, I examine the goats of Eclogue 1 and Eclogue 10 and how
their poetic identity is constructed to reflect both internally upon the world of the
Eclogues and externally upon Virgil himself, before examining how the symbolic
transfer of poetic process from bee to goat is suggestively and cumulatively built
up. This examination is accomplished by the fine-grained textual analysis of ety-
mological markers, wordplay, and soundplay. This intertextual work also achieves
a subsidiary but formative purpose for this discussion: to not just rehabilitate but
also promote the importance of Idyll 10 as a source text and inspiration for the
Eclogues, as this poem provides the significant intertext that is the interpretive key
for the relationship Virgil manipulates and adapts between bees and goats. New
focus on Idyll 10 grants a more nuanced understanding of how the relationship
between Virgil and Theocritus is also layered within Virgil’s metapoetic (re)config-
uration of the pastoral world. After following the textual trail of Virgil’s substitutive
mechanism, I then discuss the ramifications of this reassigning of poetic identity
from bee to goat, showing that the model of Theocritean poetics promoted by bees
is untenable for the precarity of Virgil’s pastoral ecosystem, which is framed by the
mutual dependence of song and land.

GRAZING THE VERSE

Part of the Eclogues’ notable aesthetic is achieved by richly textured sensory

details. Over time, the echo has become fixed as the programmatic sensory detail
of this textured universe. It is the sound enduringly attached to the collection as
an auditory emblem, constitutive of the responsive power of the natural world and
the symbiotic nature of song and landscape.2 Nature’s ability to repeat and, there-
fore, locate and affirm the presence of man and his song is first established by a
juxtaposition of circumstances: nos patriam fugimus; tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra/
formosam resonare doces Amaryllida siluas, “We are fleeing our fatherland; you,
Tityrus, idling in the shade, teach the forests to echo back beautiful Amaryllis”
(Ecl. 1.4–5).3 The reflexivity of the echo ratifies Tityrus’ situatedness within his

2. Cf., e.g., Boyle 1977. However, Fitzgerald 2016a prefers to reconceptualize the sound as
“resonance.”
3. On the Virgilian reversal of Lucretian didactic, see esp. Breed 2000: 13–14 (on the echo, see
11–17) and the subsequent discussion of Hardie 2006: 285.
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CELIA CAMP B E L L : The Land of Milk and Honey 21

wooded landscape: the sound comes back to him as bidden (resonare), while in
contrast Meliboeus is forced to flee his countryland (fugimus). Song and land are
introduced as interrelated, as Tityrus’ production of song both becomes illustrative
of and reinforces his experience of belonging. This relationship is made clear in a
different sense in the final image of Meliboeus’ exchange: carmina nulla canam;
non me pascente, capellae,/ florentem cytisum et salices carpetis amaras, “I shall
sing no songs; little goats, you will not graze upon the blossoming clover nor bitter
willow, with me putting you to pasture” (1.77–78). Meliboeus ends his lament with
the mutual cessation of singing and grazing, two pastimes of the pastoral world
simultaneously inherent and defining. His negation of both activities indicates a
specific formulation of interrelated loss, of connectivity and causality: Meliboeus
will no longer sing songs (carmina, in its first use within the Eclogues), while his
flocks, no longer pastured by him, will no longer graze (carpetis) upon the clover
or willow.4 Singing and grazing are complementary, mutually reinforced activities.5
This crossover in activity is also in evidence at the end of the Virgilian col-
lection: the poems end when the flock is full (ite domum saturae, uenit Hesperus,
ite capellae, Ecl. 10.77, in an echo of Meliboeus’ earlier injunction ite meae, felix
quondam pecus, ite capellae, 1.74).6 This bond between song and grazing is also
demonstrated at the beginning of Eclogue 10, lending further structural and the-
matic resonance: sollicitos Galli dicamus amores,/ dum tenera attondent simae uir-
gulta capellae, “Let me sing the unsettling loves of Gallus, while my snub-nosed
little goats crop the underbrush” (10.6–7). What, therefore, might be some of the
reasons that the complementary nature of singing and grazing is observable—
programmatically so—in these poems that open and close the poetic collection? We
shall use this as the initial framework of interrogation for understanding the goats
as symbolic agents of Virgilian bucolic.
Let us return to Meliboeus’ final couplet in Eclogue 1, an ending about end-
ings: carmina nulla canam; non me pascente, capellae,/ florentem cytisum et
salices carpetis amaras, “I shall sing no songs; little goats, you will not graze
upon the blossoming clover nor bitter willow, with me putting you to pasture”
(1.77–78). The balance Virgil strikes between song and grazing deserves some lin-
gering. Both pairs of nouns and verbs are carefully, definingly linked: carmen with

4. Although pasco and carpo can both be translated “graze,” I am here distinguishing between
Meliboeus putting the goats to pasture (me pascente, where Meliboeus acts as pastor) and the goats’
own activity of grazing. For the connection between pastor and pasco, cf. also Apollo’s injunction at
Ecl. 6.4–5, ‘pastorem, Tityre, pinguis/ pascere oportet ouis. . . .’
5. Connecting the acts of singing/music and grazing, Varro uses the pipes of the tibia to illustrate
metaphorically the relationship between grazing and agriculture, placing primacy on grazing by grant-
ing it the significance of the right pipe, which is responsible for the melody (and is accompanied by the
left); cf. Varro, Rust. 1.2.15–16. Likewise, goat and song are again closely linked at Eclogue 3.21–24,
where Damoetas wins a goat by means of song.
6. For analysis of the goats at the end of the Eclogues, cf. Geymonat 2004. For an overview of
the animals within the world of the Eclogues, cf. Jones 2011: 39–43.
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cano and capella with carpo. Despite the fact that a firmly traceable linguistic
etymology of carmen remains elusive, it is now accepted practice to link it with
the verb cano as part of an indivisible semantic construct: the noun carmen is an
established, defining iteration of the verb canere.7 This defining bond is likewise
observable between goats and grazing. Capella is a diminutive of capra, and capra
is commonly etymologized as stemming from the animal’s act of grazing (carpo): a
carpendo caprae nominatae,8 “Goats are so called because of their grazing” (Varro,
Rust. 2.3.7).9 The range of meaning for carpo is also relevant here for its applicabil-
ity to poetic processes. One of the given meanings for carpo is “to separate a whole
into single parts, to cut to pieces, divide” (Lewis and Short s.v. 2.γ.2; cf. also the
similar meanings at OLD s.v. 5b and 6), a sense of separation which can include the
meting out into metrical feet. The Ciceronian usage (De or. 3.190)10 illustrative of
this meaning can be coupled with a late (read: discredited) etymology for carmen
that also picks up on this potential (carmen uocatur quidquid pedibus continetur:
cui datum nomen existimant seu quod carptim pronuntietur, Isid. Etym. 1.39.4).
Together, this set of associations led to the etymological suggestion of carmen’s
roots in the old Italic verb form car (meaning “measure,” “divide,” “cut”) from
which, it was postulated, carmen kept derivative company with words predicated
on similar acts of division (carina, the keel that slices the water; carere, the separa-
tion of lack; cardo, the dividing hinge).11
Secure etymology between carmen and carpo cannot be established to the sat-
isfaction of modern scholars, but ancient etymological theory is a flexible medium,
and Virgil’s interest in etymology is well-documented. Without a Virgilian the-
ory of language fully articulated, it seems possible that the author was making
or hinting at a dual etymological play within this couplet, linking carpo to both

7. Most recently, see Pierre 2016. Habinek 2005 and Lowrie 2009: 1–23 remain foundational for
approaching the multivalent meaning and signification of carmen.
8. Cf. also capros et capras a carpendis uirgultis quidam dixerunt (Isid. Etym. 12.1.15) and
Maltby 1991 s.v. “caper.”
9. The pseudepigraphic Dirae seems to support this etymological conceit and its pastoral signif-
icance by textual echoes near the poem’s close (89–92):

‘dulcia rura ualete et Lydia dulcior illis

et casti fontes et, felix nomen, agelli.’
tardius, a, miserae descendite monte capellae
(mollia non iterum carpetis pabula nota)

The rhythm marker (as well as an authorial marker vis-à-vis Virgilian pastoral) of tardius and the idea
of the pabula nota as denoting the pastoral world and pastoral’s generic boundaries make a metrical
understanding of carpetis possible; its tone of lament and farewell resonates with Eclogue 1’s record
of Meliboeus’ despair. For the relationship of the Dirae to Eclogues 1 and 9, cf. Breed 2012. For other
uses of carpo and caper together, cf. Varro, Rust. 1.2.18 and esp. Ov. Met. 1.299–300: et, modo qua
graciles gramen carpsere capellae,/ nunc ibi deformes ponunt sua corpora phocae. The alliterative
effect of graciles gramen, carpsere capellae, and ponunt . . . phocae is particularly resonant. Cf. also
Ov. Met. 13.927.
10. Cited in the OLD as an example under 6 (“to pull or tear pieces off”).
11. Baehrens 1887. For early etymologizing efforts see also Nettleship 1885: 46–50.
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CELIA CAMP B E L L : The Land of Milk and Honey 23

carmen and capella.12 However, even if that possibility does not find favor with
modern thinkers, there is nevertheless the opportunity for carpo to be read here
more broadly as descriptive of a poetic act. The idea of selectivity that comes from
carpo’s meanings of “culling” or “harvesting” further speaks to two related con-
cepts: an active discernment of quality as a poetic concern, and the editorial pro-
cesses of both excerption and arrangement. It is in these related capacities that we
can integrate the later picture of the goat, named by this selective act of grazing, as
responsible for the collection’s own name. Popular folk etymology first held that
“eclogue” was the product of αἴξ (“goat”) and λόγος (“speech,” “word”), making
the Eclogues “goat-speech,” until Julius Caesar Scaliger (Poetices 1.4) identified
“eclogue” as coming from the Greek ἐκλέγω, and therefore meaning “choice” or
“selection.”13 It is of especial relevance that even ἐκλέγω (“to pick from”) relates to
the range of meaning of carpo;14 these ten poems were “plucked” or “selected” and
arranged into the present collection. Although it is commentators who overwhelm-
ingly title the Virgilian collection as Eclogues rather than Bucolics (a titling that
places the collection in an immediately visible line of continuity with Theocritean
pastoral), it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Virgil himself had styled
them “Eclogues” in some capacity.15 In this way, there is a conduit of metapoetic
applicability that bridges carmen/cano and capella/carpo, these two evenly bal-
anced pairs of etymologically bound nouns and verbs.
The connection between these two pairs is strengthened by Meliboeus’ medi-
ating act of me pascente. Naturally, it indicates that Meliboeus has set his goats
to graze, rather than his own feeding (of them, or himself), but this qualification
brings both his singing and their grazing into closer proximity with the similar
semantic field covered by carpo and pasco, and with his status as a poet-herdsman.
It also serves to set up the idea of the material for grazing as poetic material, a
pre-existing generic field, so to speak, along the lines of the poetic trope of the silu-
ae.16 In this way, a poetic awareness built into the act of grazing becomes a partic-
ularly appropriate act for the Eclogues, where, as Meliboeus is so painfully aware,
song is predicated on the possession of land, and land and song exist in mutually
productive symbiosis. It begins to encapsulate the interaction between land and

12. For comparison, and for evidence of this flexibility, one might consult Allen 2005 on the Stoic
system and foundations of etymology.
13. Cf. Greene et al. 2010 s.v. “eclogue.”
14. Especially in the shared sense of harvesting crops, but cf. also OLD s.v. 4: “to select, pick out,
take out.”
15. Cf. Van Sickle 2011: 1. Cf. also the note of Laguna 1992 about the ancient testimony gathered
on Statius’ summa est ecloga (Silv. 3.praef.20–21), where he states that ecloga as a term has no inherent
bucolic connotations, and instead only signals a portion or fragment of a longer work. For the rela-
tionship of ecloga to Bucolica in a titular sense, and a similar separation of ecloga from an exclusively
pastoral context, see Schröder 1999: 68–70. Horsfall 1981: 108–109 and Geymonat 1982: 17–18 also
provide valuable discussions of the title.
16. On siluae as poetic material, see the classic discussion of Hinds 1998: 11–14.
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song as the imaginative space of pastoral meaning, an appropriate way to formally

introduce song to the world of the Eclogues.

FODDER FOR INSPIRATION

As is well known, this world of Virgilian bucolic is not an idle precipitate of a

formidable independent imagination, but one (primarily, but not solely)17 indebted
to the poetic vision of the Theocritean Idylls. It is now generally accepted that
Virgil arranged his ten-poem book of bucolic verse in alignment with a version
of Theocritus that collected and arranged the ten bucolic Idylls (including the ps.-
Theocritean Idylls 8 and 9) together in an order, making Theocritus an essen-
tial Virgilian model for not only theme, style, and content, but also structural
arrangement.18
Virgil displays an indebtedness to Theocritus through the patterned appear-
ances of his flock of goats. When Meliboeus speaks of pasturing his flocks, the
first material they graze upon is a shrub called cytisus. Sometimes translated as
simply “clover” (less cumbersome than “tree-medick” or “snail-clover”), cytisus
is an especially good and useful source of fodder, as identified in and endorsed
by the agronomic treatises of both Varro and Columella.19 A plant more utilitarian
than poetic, it does appear within the Theocritean landscape, first in an couplet
exchanged by the goatherd Comatas: ταὶ μὲν ἐμαὶ κύτισόν τε καὶ αἴγιλον αἶγες
ἔδοντι,/ καὶ σχῖνον πατέοντι καὶ ἐν κομάροισι κέονται, “My goats feed on clover
and goat-grass, and walk upon the mastic and lie themselves upon the arbutus”
(Id. 5.128–29). Just as in the Virgilian couplet, Comatas names two plants that his
goats eat: κύτισος and αἴγιλος. The second plant, “goat-grass,” is found only here
in Theocritus, while the second plant that Meliboeus’ goats graze upon, the wil-
low (salix), is a recurring botanical feature within the Virgilian landscape. In the
case of Comatas’ goats, the relationship between herd animal and animal feed is
automatically apparent: the plant is named for the animal (αἴγιλον αἶγες). It seems
to me that this small moment of Theocritean pastoral further underscores the ety-
mological connection Virgil makes between capella and carpo. By providing an
overt instance of the working interconnections of the pastoral world (goat-grass is
so named because goats like to eat it), Theocritus gives Virgil the opportunity to
acknowledge these fundamental relationships of the natural world as not just an

17. As Hunter 2002: 98 reminds us, “Already in the Epitaphios Bionos (? early first century BC)
‘bucolic song’ is ‘Dorian song’ or ‘Sicilian song’ and for Vergil it is ‘Syracusan/Sicilian verse’ (Ecl.
4.1, 6.1, 10.51); to insist that this does not mean just ‘the poetry of Theocritus’ is not to split hairs.”
18. Cf. esp. Vaughn 1981 and Gutzwiller 1996a, with additional bibliography collected by Hunter
2002: 99n.21.
19. Varro, Rust. 2.2.19, 3.16.27; Columella, Rust. 5.12.1–2, 7.3.22, 7.6.5, 7.7.5, 9.4.2. On
the identification of the ancient cytisus, see Ambrosoli 1997: 105n.30. For Virgilian usage, see Lipka
2001: 32.
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CELIA CAMP B E L L : The Land of Milk and Honey 25

organic process, but linguistic symbiosis, and to recreate this relationship within
his own conception of bucolic space. Cued by the shared material for fodder, cyti-
sus/κύτισος, Virgil’s etymological play does not connect the animal and its food
(αἴξ/αἴγιλος), but is subtly adapted instead between the animal and its act of feeding
(capella/carpo), thereby alerting the attentive reader to the Theocritean model of
Comatas’ goats for the poetic Meliboean flock of Eclogue 1.
Cytisus/κύτισος as a common grazing element also connects other passages of
the Eclogues and Idylls in ways that have been recognized, but not extended fully to
the symbolic potential of the animals themselves. The structured comparisons that
Corydon uses to talk about his unrequited love for Alexis in Eclogue 2 are clearly
based on Bucaeus’ love for Bombyca, from Idyll 10:
torua leaena lupum sequitur, lupus ipse capellam,
florentem cytisum sequitur lasciua capella,
te Corydon, o Alexi: trahit sua quemque uoluptas.
Virg. Ecl. 2.63–65

The fierce lioness follows the wolf, the wolf itself

follows the goat, the playful little goat tracks the
blooming clover, and you, o Alexis, Corydon hunts:
their own desires draw each along.
ἁ αἲξ τὰν κύτισον, ὁ λύκος τὰν αἶγα διώκει,
ἁ γέρανος τὤροτρον‧ ἐγὼ δʼ ἐπὶ τὶν μεμάνημαι.
Theoc. Id. 10.30–31

The goat follows the clover, the wolf follows the goat,
the crane follows the plow, and I am wild over you.
Corydon further embeds his analogy within the space of the Eclogues with his use
of florentem cytisum, the same descriptive phrase (occupying the same metrical
sedes) found in Eclogue 1.78. The same lines of Idyll 10 that feature κύτισος are
also reworked for the admonishment Pan gives to Gallus in Eclogue 10:
‘ecquis erit modus?’ inquit. ‘Amor non talia curat,
nec lacrimis crudelis Amor nec gramina riuis
nec cytiso saturantur apes nec fronde capellae.’
Virg. Ecl. 10.28–30

“What will be the end?” he said. “Love cares not for such
things.
Cruel love knows not its fill of tears, nor meadows of
moisture,
nor bees of clover, nor little goats of leafage.”
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Pan’s opening query (ecquis erit modus?) also reworks the reproach of Corydon
(quis enim modus adsit amori?, Ecl. 2.68); Pan’s words are given undertones of the
voices of both Bucaeus and Corydon, thereby pointing to the Theocritean source
passage as well as its previous Virgilian imitation. Pan’s reconfiguration of these
passages to provide a portrait of Love’s insatiability, however, includes telling
changes and contradictions that have a number of repercussions for interpreting
the Virgilian collection, its motivating aesthetic, and its relationship to Theocritean
bucolic. These changes and contradictions make Pan’s short speech an interpretive
touchstone for much of the following discussion.

A NOSE FOR ALLUSION: FROM THEOCRITEAN BEE TO VIRGILIAN

GOAT

Up to this point, we have traced how Virgil’s goats are introduced to the col-
lection in a manner that showcases a poetic expressivity, and suggested that this
mechanism has Theocritean roots, working to establish the goats’ ability to reflect
internally the poetic concerns and constructions of Virgil’s collection. Now, the
focus will narrow to look at the first major descriptive channelling between goats
and bees, by seeing how the adjective “snub-nosed” is first used in the Idylls to
describe bees and then adapted by Virgil to describe goats. When Corydon echoes
Bucaeus in Eclogue 2, he preserves the pairing of goat with clover found in Idyll
10. When Pan in Eclogue 10 echoes both Bucaeus and Corydon, he instead pairs
bees with clover, and goats with unspecified greenery: nec cytiso saturantur apes
nec fronde capellae (Ecl. 10.30). This moment is in dialogue with the goats of
the poem’s external framing: incipe: sollicitos Galli dicamus amores,/ dum tenera
attondent simae uirgulta capellae (Ecl. 10.6–7). The shift Pan makes from goats
to bees may seem a minor detail, but recognition of this change compels consider-
ation of the positioning which these two animals receive within the bucolic world.20
Pan’s replacement of goats with bees is not just motivated by a need for variety or
substitutive ease of equivalence, but calls attention to and validates a choice Virgil
himself makes at the beginning of the same eclogue, Eclogue 10: Virgil’s appli-
cation of simus (“snub-nosed”), an adjective Theocritus uses to describe bees, to
goats instead.21

20. This substitution does not pose any threat to pastoral verisimilitude: cytisus is a perfectly
appropriate plant for bees to feed upon, as the agronomists tell us (Varro, Rust. 3.16.27; Columella,
Rust. 9.4.2; cf. also Ov. Fast. 5.271–72). Likewise, in Eclogue 1 bees and goats alike feed upon wil-
low (uicino ab limite saepes/ Hyblaeis apibus florem depasta salicti, Ecl. 1.53–54; et salices carpetis
amaras, Ecl. 1.78), and we find the feeding process of bees described with the same vocabulary of herd
grazing (depasco; cf. also dumque thymo pascentur apes, Ecl. 5.77); cf. also Lucr. 3.11–12 and Ov. Ars
am. 2.517.
21. This adjective has a notable afterlife in Virgilian pseudepigrapha, for it lends a name to
Similus, the rustic “hero” of the Moretum (cf. 106 for the etymological marker of his name and simus).
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CELIA CAMP B E L L : The Land of Milk and Honey 27

Theocritean snub-nosed bees appear in the poetically complex Idyll 7, the

“Thalysia.” In this poem, the goatherd Lycidas embeds the song of Tityrus within
his song offering to Simichidas, the idyll’s poetic protagonist. In the embedded
song, Tityrus sings of an imprisoned goatherd, Comatas, who is sustained by bees
bringing him honey:
ᾀσεῖ δʼ ὥς ποκʼ ἔδεκτο τὸν αἰπόλον εὐρέα λάρναξ
ζωὸν ἐόντα κακαῖσιν ἀτασθαλίαισιν ἄνακτος,
ὥς τέ νιν αἱ σιμαὶ λειμωνόθε φέρβον ἰοῖσαι
κέδρον ἐς ἁδεῖαν μαλακοῖς ἄνθεσσι μέλισσαι
οὕνεκά οἱ γλυκὺ Μοῖσα κατὰ στόματος χέε νέκταρ.
Theoc. Id. 7.78–82

He will sing how at one time a broad coffer enclosed the

goatherd,
yet alive, due to the evil presumptuousness of the ruler,
and how the snub-nosed bees came to the fragrant
cedarwood
from the meadow to feed him soft blossoms,
since the Muses had anointed his mouth with sweet nectar.
The saviour bees of Comatas are described as “snub-nosed” (σιμαὶ . . . μέλισσαι).
Virgil subsequently applies this adjective to the goats in the framing of Eclogue
10 (simae . . . capellae, Ecl. 10.7). The honey that the bees supply to Comatas
sustains him not just as a person but as a poet; it ensures his continued anointing as
one beloved by the Muse. As such, the bees carry out an indisputably poetic func-
tion, and have an indisputably poetic identity.22 The poetic dimension of these bees
and their sustaining honey can also be cross-referenced with other poems in the
Theocritean collection. In their conveyance of honey to Comatas, the bees literalize
the valedictory wish that the unnamed goatherd of Idyll 1 makes to Thyrsis after
the conclusion of his song (πλῆρές τοι μέλιτος τὸ καλὸν στόμα, Θύρσι, γένοιτο,/
πλῆρες δὲ σχαδόνων, Id. 1.146–47). We also see this expressed by the forlorn (also
unnamed) goatherd of Idyll 3, who envisions his death as this specific balm to
Amaryllis, his scornful beloved:
Ἀλγέω τὰν κεφαλάν, τὶν δʼ οὐ μέλει. οὐκέτʼ ἀείδω,
κεισεῦμαι δὲ πεσών, καὶ τοὶ λύκοι ὧδέ μʼ ἔδονται.

On the imitative potential of his name, which also demonstrates a certain sensitivity to the adjective’s
use in the Eclogues, see Connors 2004: 200–201.
22. Farrell 2015: 413 identifies this passage in Lycidas’ song as “allud[ing] to a myth about the
origin of poetry.” The importance of the imprisoned goatherd-poet to an understanding of bucolic
poetics is demonstrated by the recollection of Lycidas’ (genre-defining) ἐξεπόνασα (Id. 7.51) within
the embedded song of Tityrus (ἐξεπόνασας, 85). On the defining nature of ἐξεπόνασα for Theocritean
bucolic see the commentary of Hunter 1999 ad loc.; on the relationship between these two usages see
Acosta-Hughes 2006: 39.
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ὡς μέλι τοι γλυκὺ τοῦτο κατὰ βρόχθοιο γένοιτο.

Theoc. Id. 3.52–54

I feel a pain in my head, but you care not. I sing no more,

I shall lie neglected where I fall, and thusly the wolves shall
feast on me.
Let this lie as sweet as honey in your throat.
If we recall the pastoral food chain outlined by Bucaeus, the goatherd’s throwing
himself to the wolves at the close of his song assimilates him to the animal of his
herd, the goat (cf. Id. 10.30, ὁ λύκος τὰν αἶγα διώκει). This imaginative equivalence
accords with the goatherd’s earlier self-description (ἦ ῥά με μισεῖς;/ ἦ ῥά γέ τοι
σιμὸς καταφαίνομαι ἐγγύθεν ἦμεν,/ νύμφα, καὶ προγένειος; Id. 3.7–9); his snub
nose (σιμός) and projecting beard (as is understood by προγένειος) visually present
him as a satyr, with goat-like features.23 And it is this appearance of σιμός (Id. 3.8)
within the Theocritean corpus that occasioned scholarly glossing:24
a. Some say that Theocritus is the singer because of the word “snub-nosed”
(σιμός), since he is called “Simichidas” in Thalysia. However, Theocritus
cannot [here] be a goatherd, nor is he [there] called Simichidas from
“snub-nosed,” but rather after his father, Simichus.
b. Some who call Theocritus “Simichidas” think he is the singer because of the
word “snub-nosed.”
The scholia confirm that Theocritus was identified with the poet Simichidas of Idyll
7, and that the heteronym (to use the label of Payne) is more appropriately under-
stood as a patronymic.25 The scholia therefore reveal ancient interest in securely
naming the singers of the Theocritean world, and the accompanying ability to
attach these names to an authorial reality. The same phenomenon is also observ-
able in the commentary (and scholarly) tradition on Virgilian pastoral, dominated
by especial efforts to identify Tityrus and Menalcas as Virgil (cf., e.g., Quint. Inst.
8.6.46–47).26 In the Theocritean scholia, the resistance stated is to first make, and

23. Shaw 2014: 100 notes that Simos is the most popular satyr-name of record. For the relation-
ship between kômos-song and satyr drama (with the opening Κωμάσδω of Idyll 3 in mind, and its title
“Κῶμος”) see further ch. 2 (26–55) and 98–105.
24. For discussion see Farrell 2015: 414, who has provided the translation of the Theocritean
scholia above.
25. Payne 2007: 144n.70 cites approvingly the scholiastic connection between Simichidas and
simos, but does not give any currency to Simichidas as a patronymic. His discussion of Idyll 7 (includ-
ing poetic heteronyms) that provides the bulk of material for his fourth chapter is of enormous value
for understanding how the innovative nuance granted admiringly to Virgilian pastoral is already much
in evidence in Theocritus. On the similarity between Simichidas and the goatherd of Idyll 3, cf. also
136. On the similarity between Simichidas and the speaker of Eclogue 6, see Kania 2016: 16.
26. Peirano 2017: 8 posits this relationship as one of clear influence, stating that “Servius’ preoc-
cupation with allegorical identification is ultimately indebted to the Theocritean scholia”; see esp. her
discussion at 4–9, although the reminder that these identifying impulses are inherited critical reflexes
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CELIA CAMP B E L L : The Land of Milk and Honey 29

then use, the linguistic connection between Simichidas and σιμός to identify the
unnamed goatherd of Idyll 3 as Theocritus himself. Looking to the evidence of
available manuscript traditions, and the reconstructions of Vaughn and Gutzwiller,
Idyll 3 followed Idyll 7 in the version of Theocritus that Virgil had access to, col-
lapsing the space between these appearances of σιμός and Simichidas.27 It is of fur-
ther note, then, that this unnamed goatherd-singer, self-identified with a snub-nose,
expresses a desire to be a bee in order to enter the ivy- and fern-draped cave of
Amaryllis:
αἴθε γενοίμαν
ἁ βομβεῦσα μέλισσα καὶ ἐς τεὸν ἄντρον ἱκοίμαν,
τὸν κισσὸν διαδὺς καὶ τὰν πτέριν ἅ τυ πυκάσδει.
Theoc. Id. 3.12–14

If only I could become a buzzing bee and enter your cave

slipping through the ivy and fern fronds that conceal you.
In this kômos-song adapted for the rustic “stage” of bucolic, the goatherd-singer
longs to be a bee, the symbolic originator of verse. Not content with only song’s
capability to gain auditory entry, the singer wishes for an embodied form of verse
that would both communicate his desires and give him access.28 This wish brings
together the two animals (bee and goat) that share the designation σιμός, a rela-
tionship activated in Idyll 7 by the snub-nosed bees that do gain entrance to the
enclosed space of Comatas’ imprisonment and are responsible for his (poetic) sus-
tenance. This overlap within the Theocritean pastoral world becomes critical to
the replacement and equivocation Virgil later creates between these two animals,
taking the Theocritean connection further. The unnamed goatherd’s wish to become
a bee is one signifier of how Theocritus transforms the goatherd into a figure of
poetic significance.29 The connection between goatherds, bees, and honey in the
passages cited above creates a picture of affinity within Theocritean pastoral that
allows the goatherd a more readily discernible poetic identity. This identification
was nevertheless met with resistance, as the scholia attest (see above: “However,

of Hellenistic scholarship and its preoccupation with the lyric first person (10) is also helpful. For Virgil
and the literary conceit of “biofiction” see most recently Goldschmidt 2019: 16–17. Identification of
Virgil with these internal characters is made on the basis of shared reactions to the land confiscations; cf.,
e.g., Winterbottom’s declaration “[i]n this single sense Menalcas is Virgil, just as in one single respect
Tityrus was Virgil” (1976: 57).
27. Vaughn 1981; Gutzwiller 1996a does not agree fully with his ordering, but each configuration
she traces likewise places Idyll 3 following 7.
28. Idyll 3’s adapting of the kômos for the bucolic world also represents an area of conceptual
overlap between “dramatic” goats and pastorally poetic goats, as comedy and satyr play inform the
generic background of the poem.
29. Berman 2005; cf. also the response of Kolde 2019 to the argument of Stanzel 1995: 44–50 that
the poetry should be labelled “aipolic” rather than “bucolic” due to the prominence of the poet-goatherd.
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Theocritus cannot [here] be a goatherd, nor is he [there] called Simichidas from

‘snub-nosed’, but rather after his father, Simichus”).
The idea of the poet as a herdsman, however, is what garners the attention
of Servius when he records his own commentary on Virgil’s use of simae: simae
Graecum est nomen, id est pressis naribus, unde et simias dicimus: quod epitheton
Theocritus dat praecipue apibus. et dicens ‘simae uirgulta capellae’, hic poe-
tam quasi pastorem posuit, “‘Simae’ is the Greek name, that is, for things with
pushed-in noses, from which we call things ‘ape-like’: and this epithet Theocritus
gave above all to bees. And saying ‘simae uirgulta capellae’, here he makes the
poet almost like a shepherd” (Serv. ad Ecl. 10. 70).30 Beyond this identifying con-
clusion, Servius does not draw further significance from Virgil’s use of this adjec-
tive. Despite the nexus of accrued significance that the Theocritean scholia on Idyll
3 holds for Virgilian interpretation, there has been little attention paid to the partic-
ulars of Virgil’s simae capellae.31 If we return to the goats’ appearance in Eclogue
10, the potential signifying depth of this adjective, imported via the commentary
tradition from the framework of Theocritean usage and resonance, deserves some
reckoning in tandem with the material of their fodder (tenera . . . uirgulta). As ear-
lier remarked, these goats also mark the time of song with their act of grazing, posi-
tioning them to recall Meliboeus’ goats in Eclogue 1, who bear a subtle Theocritean
stamp of influence. In Eclogue 10, the poetic line intertwines two noun-adjective
descriptions: dum tenera attondent simae uirgulta capellae. If we keep in mind the
ancient debate over whether Theocritus was called Simichidas as a patronymic,
or can be identified as a speaker from the designator σιμός, it seems possible here
to see these she-goats being allusively cast as Theocritean, too. At the same time,
however, Virgil might be taking the opportunity to make an etymological play upon
his own name with uirgulta, their grazing material (cf. Priscian 2.135.14, seruilis
Seruilius . . . uirgulta Virgilius).32 With this additional etymological play in mind,
there are two layers to pastoral symbiosis at work here: the mutually implicated
activities of singing and grazing, as previously discussed, and the interdependence
of the Theocritean and Virgilian elements within this constructed bucolic world.33
By using simus, an adjective with implications of biographical allegory, Virgil
expresses a certain poetic allegiance to Theocritus that he underscores with a play
upon his own name, but by transferring its application from bee to goat, he stakes a
new expressive valence for his own collection.

30. See Farrell 2015: 413.

31. This significance is well-discussed by Farrell 2015: 413–17.
32. Also cited in Maltby 1991 s.v. “virgulta”; for further wordplay in the previous line on amara,
also derived from Isidore’s Etymologies, cf. O’Hara 1996: 251.
33. The Varronian etymology that allows for the linking of carpo and caper in Eclogue 1 also
sheds some light upon this line, as it is specifically uirgulta that the etymologized goats graze upon:
studiose enim de agrestibus fruticibus pascuntur atque in locis cultis uirgulta carpunt. itaque a
carpendo caprae nominatae (Rust. 2.3.7) This choice finds clear favor in its later echoing by Isidore
(capros et capras a carpendis uirgultis quidam dixerunt, Etym. 12.1.15).
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CELIA CAMP B E L L : The Land of Milk and Honey 31

PAN’S LIMITED READING: ECLOGUE 10 AND POETIC BOUNDARIES

I noted briefly above how Pan’s speech modifies Theocritean material, and
now more directed focus will be given to Pan’s remarks. Pan’s identity as a goatish
god makes him an opportune vehicle to call attention to the poetic status of Virgil’s
goats.34 His replacement of the cytisus-chasing goats of Bucaeus’ line-up in Idyll
10 with bees first occasioned joint examination of these animals, but there is more
yet to be gleaned from how his sense of the pastoral world and its hierarchy fit in
with the wider world of the Eclogues as products of Virgilian expression. Pan’s
refusal to acknowledge an existence of natural limits (begun by his query ecquis
erit modus?) accords with the totalizing sense of his name; his mode of denial,
however, leads to questions about the ideas of variety, choice, and selectivity, and
how these ideas can reflect upon the poetic concerns of the collection.
Pan’s use of the natural world to depict Amor’s cruel thirst is notable for the
discordant tone it strikes with other occurrences within the world of the Eclogues.
Nature elsewhere in the Eclogues does not display the same hopeless insatiability,
but rather its managed boundaries. Pan’s first example, nec gramina riuis [satur-
antur], calls to mind Palaemon’s closing line of the longest poem of the collection,
Eclogue 3: claudite iam riuos, pueri; sat prata biberunt, “Close off the streams
now, boys—the meadows have drunk enough” (3.111). Palaemon’s assessment of
the meadows as having drunk their fill in watering lends Pan’s claim a particu-
lar falsity. This same dissonance is demonstrated by the poetic coda to Eclogue
10 that confirms the satiety of the grazing goats, which also echoes the end of
Eclogue 3: ite domum saturae, uenit Hesperus, ite capellae, “Come along home,
my full-fed little goats, come along—the evening star draws nigh” (10.77).35 In
both instances, the satiation point is also metapoetic, signalling respectively the
end of the poem (Eclogue 3; cf. the reading of Servius ad loc.) and of the poem
and collection (Eclogue 10). The poetic collection therefore offers directly contrary
evidence to two of the three natural images Pan uses to illustrate the unquenchable
Amor. Consequently, his statement about the bees stands out even more: it draws
attention for its modification of Theocritean source material, replacing goats with
bees, but also as the one example uncontradicted by internal poetic evidence. This
seems designed as a challenge to the reader, to not only recognize the substitution
but assess the consequent veracity of the claim. Are bees insatiable?
Pan’s bluntness in so claiming appears at odds with the behavioral sensibilities
that attracted poets to harness the symbolic potential of bees, seeing an affinity

34. On the etymologizing of Pan as the “goatherd,” cf. Pl. Cra. 408c–d; this passage is founda-
tional for the analogue developed between shepherd and poet, on which see Peraki-Kyriakidou 2006:
86. She notes possible translingual awareness of Pan’s meaning at Virg. G. 1.21. Servius ad Ecl. 2.31
also includes etymologizing discussion of the pastoral deity.
35. The singer’s earlier judgment of “enoughness” (haec sat erit, diuae, uestrum cecinisse poe-
tam, Ecl. 10.70) prepares for the image of the full (saturae) goats that close the poem and collection.
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32 classical antiq uity Volume 42 / No. 1 / April 2023

between their activity and the labor of versifying. For the gathering flight of the bee
to provide an inspired and appropriate analogue for the poetic process, it has to be
predicated upon deliberate selectivity, a selectivity that further implicates the role
of variety—poikilia in action. More specifically, the selective gathering, harvest-
ing, and culling flight of bees makes them active agents of poikilia, and therefore
able to model a generic programme of varietas.36 If this sense of cultivated toil
defines and circumscribes the permissibility of bees being poetic symbols, Pan
denies this status to bees when he states their inability to be sated with cytisus.
Unbounded (heedless) consumption does not ring true with a poetic model.37
One can further refine this poetic quality of bees by connecting it to the expres-
sive potential of carpo: namely, the ability of carpo to indicate the process of active
selection, as previously discussed with programmatic relation to Meliboeus’ goats.
Carpo is a verb aptly used to describe the harvesting process of selection that bees
undertake in their production of honey.38 In this capacity, the bee becomes a symbol
of Pindaric epinician, flitting from theme to theme as befits the choicest odes of
praise: ἐγκωμίων γὰρ ἄωτος ὕμνων/ ἐπ᾽ ἄλλοτ᾽ ἄλλον ὥτε μέλισσα θύνει λόγον,
“The choicest of praise-hymns flits like a bee, now alighting on one theme, now
on another” (Pind. Pyth. 10.54–55). Taking this image in concert with Olympian
9.26–27, Liebert notes, “These and other Pindaric passages develop what I call an
apian program of poetic activity oriented by poikilia (variety), which characterizes
the whole process of poetic composition in terms of the bee’s art and the sweetness
of poetic pleasure as the product of his labour. Like the bee’s activity, the poet’s
task involves a discriminating selection that results in the choicest product: ‘the
perfection of honey’ (Pae. 6.58–59).”39 As she further notes, poets’ adoption of

36. Fitzgerald’s book-length study of uarietas (Fitzgerald 2016b) continuously returns to the rela-
tionship between uarietas and poikilia; the starting point is 20–21. On poikilia as a defining quality of
bucolic, see Breed 2006: 6. Fabiano 1971: 537 likewise makes a concluding point about Quintilian’s
tacit endorsement of Theocritus as distinguished by uarietas through his juxtaposition of Aratus and
Theocritus (Inst. 10.1.55).
37. Poikilia occurs in a culinary context (Astydamas, TGF 779) to describe the plenitude of a
feast, the enjoyment of which is predicated upon variety; as Liebert 2017: 66 remarks upon the use
of poikilia to bring together literary and sensory enjoyment, “We owe this renewed conception of the
‘poetic feast’ to Pindaric imagery, where the complexity of poikilia is first coordinated with the concept
of poetic satiation in a self-conscious poetic program.” Pan’s model of nature contravenes the Pindaric
dictum of pleasure’s limits expressed in Nem. 7.52–53: “even honey can cloy,/ and the delightful
flowers of Aphrodite”; cf. again Liebert 2017: 66 on Pindaric avoidance of (cloying) excess through a
programme of poikilia.
38. Varro uses carpo as the defining activity of bees, when he explains the bee’s production of
food, honey, or wax from the variety of materials gathered and remarks that this selectivity defines
their nature (Rust. 3.26–27). This passage includes the only extant use of carptura, which the OLD
cites as specifically a gathering (of honey) on the basis of this appearance. Of animal behavior in the
De re rustica, Varro uses carpo only of bees and goats. Rust. 3.16.7 makes the most explicit mention of
bees’ connection to poetry. On the importance of employing the active gathering that produces honey,
and not simply honey’s sweetness, in order to communicate poetic ideas, see Liebert 2017: 71.
39. Liebert 2010: 98n.2; cf. also the expanded discussion in Liebert 2017: 69–74. For the poet as
bee, cf. Simonides fr. 593 Page and Bacchyl. 10.10, with the classic discussion of Waszink 1974 on
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the bee as emblematic of their craft already lends itself to parody in Plato’s Ion,
where Socrates describes the poet in mid-flight, as a bee, with his cullings of song
(534a–b). Horace rewrites the Pindaric bee of praise in the image of his Matine bee
(Carm. 4.2.27–32), which represents the strongest Roman example of this “apian”
poetics. Especially noteworthy is his use of carpo to describe the effortful harvest-
ing work of the bee, and, analogously, the act of writing verse.40
Pan’s poetic model, therefore, is one wholly and calculatedly at odds with the
wider world of the Eclogues. Before we can think about some of the broader impli-
cations of Virgil’s signalled transfer of symbolic meaning from bees to goats, how-
ever, a tour through the source text of Idyll 10 is opportune for what it tells us about
the bucolic use of bee-poetics.

BUCAEUS, BOMBYCA, AND BEE-POETICS

A close reading of Idyll 10, assisted by an additional passage of Eclogue 10,

helps to illuminate why Pan’s change of animal is important. Here, it will stand as
a case study in displaying the poetic variety which bees emblematize, and which
becomes a perceivable, stylistic feature of Virgilian bucolic.41 This examination of
Idyll 10 will look first at the details and mechanics of Bucaeus’ song, then situate
it against a significant imitative passage found in Eclogue 10, and finally make a
suggestion about the inspirational (and aspirational) motivation behind the design
of his song.
Bucaeus’ formulations upon love embody a sense of source selectivity incor-
porated into a subjective pastoral framework. His song is itself an embedded exper-
iment of genre. Both of these aspects make it appealing to Virgil:42

bees, honey, and their poetic symbolism. Berrens 2018: 363–76 provides the most recent discussion.
Lefkowitz 2016: 182–83 recaps the metaphorical connection of poets to bees as well as the literal-
ization of bees and honey as shaping forces in poetic biographical allegory. Further speaking to an
importance of process, Sophocles was called “the bee” due to his practice of adopting the choicest
characteristics from his poetic models (TGF 4, T. 1.20). Cf. also Janson 1964: 152–53 for collected
examples of the metaphor of an apian poetics of selectivity.
40. Horace’s image is clearly derived from the Pindaric bee of Pyth. 10.54–55. Morgan 2010:
224–38 analyzes this poem and its metrical choices in a way that emphasizes the act of selectiv-
ity. Fitzgerald 2016b: 155 cross-references the Matine bee with Epist. 1.30.20–22, suggesting that
the question quae circumuolitas agilis thyma? indicates that Horatian bee-poetry is about “varied
movement.”
41. Idyll 10 remains somewhat of an unsung source of interest, let alone influence; it has not
typically received much scholarly attention. Grethlein 2012 represents a recent effort to rehabilitate
the poem as poetologically interesting and a sophisticated representation of Hellenistic poetic ideals,
on the heels of Hunt 2009. Cairns 1970 suggests that it derives from a structured type of symposiastic
poetry, a reading that has met with some resistance.
42. Hunter 1999: 200 and the following commentary situates this poem well in terms of style
and influence. The “bucolic” nature of Idyll 10 has been subjected to a range of interpretations; on its
ambiguous status as “bucolic,” and for background to this issue, see Hunt 2009. One of the features that
does invest Idyll 10 with a bucolic flavor is Bucaeus’ name (βουκαῖος = “cowherd,” “one who ploughs
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34 classical antiq uity Volume 42 / No. 1 / April 2023

Μοῖσαι Πιερίδες, συναείσατε τὰν ῥαδινάν μοι

παῖδʼ· ὧν γάρ χʼ ἅψησθε, θεαί, καλὰ πάντα ποεῖτε.
Βομβύκα χαρίεσσα, Σύραν καλέοντί τυ πάντες,
ἰσχνάν, ἁλιόκαυστον, ἐγὼ δὲ μόνος μελίχλωρον.
καὶ τὸ ἴον μέλαν ἐστί, καὶ ἁ γραπτὰ ὑάκινθος‧
ἀλλʼ ἔμπας ἐν τοῖς στεφάνοις τὰ πρᾶτα λέγονται.
ἁ αἲξ τὰν κύτισον, ὁ λύκος τὰν αἶγα διώκει, 30
ἁ γέρανος τὤροτρον‧ ἐγὼ δʼ ἐπὶ τὶν μεμάνημαι.
αἴθέ μοι ἦς ὅσσα Κροῖσόν ποκα φαντὶ πεπᾶσθαι‧
χρύσεοι ἀμφότεροί κʼ ἀνεκείμεθα τᾷ Ἀφροδίτᾳ,
τὼς αὐλὼς μὲν ἔχοισα καὶ ἢ ῥόδον ἢ τύγε μᾶλον,
σχῆμα δʼ ἐγὼ καὶ καινὰς ἐπʼ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἀμύκλας.
Βομβύκα χαρίεσσʼ, οἱ μὲν πόδες ἀστράγαλοί τευς,
ἁ φωνὰ δὲ τρύχνος· τὸν μὰν τρόπον οὐκ ἔχω εἰπεῖν.
Theoc. Id. 10.24–37

Pierian Muses, bind your song together with mine about the
slender girl.
The things you take hold of, goddesses, you render all
beautiful.
Lovely Bombyca, they all call you Syrian—scrawny,
sunburnt;
I alone call you honey-hued. And the violet is dark, the
inscribed
hyacinth, too—but they are first plucked for placing in
garlands.
The goat follows the clover, the wolf follows the goat,
the crane follows the plow, and I am wild over you.
If only there were as much to me as what they say Croesus
once had;
we should both be made golden offerings to Aphrodite,
you holding your pipes and a rose or an apple,
I, newly turned out and smartly shod.
Lovely Bombyca, your feet are like knucklebones,
you’ve a nightshade voice—your ways defy description.
The invocation of the Pierian Muses is redolent of Hesiod.43 As has been well rec-
ognized, his description of Bombyca as μελίχλωρον has a notable Platonic source
(Resp. 474d–e) about love’s charmingly naïve tendency to repackage imperfections

with oxen”); cf. Hunt 2009: 394–95. Richer 2019 argues that Bucaeus’ name earns this Idyll a bucolic
status.
43. See the commentary of Hunter 1999 ad loc., and also 199–200 for the Hesiodic background
to the interference of love with work. Cf. also Acosta-Hughes 2006: 32, who notes that the invoca-
tion might set up the expectation for “a somewhat tongue-in-cheek take on the language of didac-
tic poetry.” Grethlein 2012: 615 notes the contrast between Bucaeus’ Hellenistic aesthetic and the
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CELIA CAMP B E L L : The Land of Milk and Honey 35

as ideals.44 Likewise, the image of the lover as a hungry wolf is Platonic in nature
(Phdr. 241c–d).45 Alternatively, Acosta-Hughes and Lentini have read Bucaeus’
praise of Bombyca as particularly Sapphic.46 Her name (Bombyca) and occupation
(flute-girl; cf. line 16) are united in the knowledge of βόμβυξ as a type of flute,
or denoting the lowest note of the flute.47 However, her being called “the Syrian”
(Σύραν καλέοντί τυ πάντες) could also point to a balancing of Platonic reference
with Aristophanic humor: the Scythian archer in the Thesmophoriazusae, awak-
ened by a flute-girl, asks: τί τὸ βόμβο τοῦτο; κῶμο τίς ἀνεγεῖρί μοι, “What is this
ruckus? Some revelry to awaken to!” (1178), with the onomatopoetic noise of the
flute given a “barbarian” twist.48 Bucaeus’ praise of beloved Bombyca therefore
incorporates elements of didactic, Platonic dialogue, lyric, and comedy. Milon’s
mocking response to Bucaeus (ὡς εὖ τὰν ἰδέαν τᾶς ἁρμονίας ἐμέτρησεν, Id. 10.39)
alerts the readers to the dissonance between the metricality of the song as it is writ-
ten (in hexameters) and ostensibly sung (in shorter, lyric measures). This point of
technicality speaks to the importance of metre as a formal component of verse: it is
a moment self-consciously designed to call attention to Bucaeus’ ability as a poet,
by blurring the boundaries between an internal and external frame of understand-
ing.49 It invites reflection on Bucaeus’ song as verse, and on the difference between
text and song, a demonstrably Virgilian preoccupation within the Eclogues.50
To the later, Roman reader, the intervening text of Meleager’s Garland also
opens up a new interpretative possibility that invites reflection on not just verse
but verse arrangement, of critical importance to the shaping of the poetry book.
Bucaeus notes that dark flowers are chosen first for garlands (καὶ τὸ ἴον μέλαν
ἐστί, καὶ ἁ γραπτὰ ὑάκινθος‧ / ἀλλʼ ἔμπας ἐν τοῖς στεφάνοις τὰ πρᾶτα λέγονται, Id.
10.28–29), a couplet that lies behind Gallus’ pastoral dreamscape in Eclogue 10:51

“strongly Hesiodic character” of Milon’s song; cf. 615n.57 for further specifics of this contrast and
collected bibliography.
44. Hunt 2009: 406–407; Hunter 1999 ad loc.
45. Hunt 2009: 410n.42.
46. Acosta-Hughes 2006: 31–32, 51–52; Lentini 1998. One could further note that the iconogra-
phy of the statue Bucaeus imagines is especially Sapphic, given the combination of apples and roses
in fr. 2.1–8 Voigt. Presumably, it was Sappho’s original use of rose imagery that prompted Meleager’s
use of the flower to symbolize her work.
47. On which see Grethlein 2012: 612, with further bibliography in n.36. On bass-pipes, see West
1992: 87n.30. The bombyx is part of the Dionysian soundscape appearing in Aesch. fr. 57.2–3 Radt.
48. His question echoes Mnesilochus’ (presumably deep-toned) interruptive noises of βομβάξ and
the intensified βομβαλοβομβάξ during a ritual call for silence near the play’s beginning (45, 48); cf.
Nordgren 2015: 44n.79 for the coinages. Grethlein 2012: 610 also notes terms of poetic import shared
between Aristophanes’ Frogs and Idyll 10. Aristophanes also lends some understanding to the vocabu-
lary of Milon’s response to Bucaeus’ song; cf. Hunter 1999 ad 39 and Falivene 2014: 36. Nelson 2018
gives a valuable assessment of comedy’s presence in Hellenistic poetry.
49. Cf. Hunter 1999 ad loc.; Falivene 2014: 36; Hunt 2009: 400n.25.
50. See especially Breed 2006.
51. The hyacinth as the answer to Menalcas’ riddle in Eclogue 3 (dic quibus in terris inscripti
nomina regum/ nascantur flores, et Phyllida solus habeto, 106–107) and the awarding of Phyllis
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36 classical antiq uity Volume 42 / No. 1 / April 2023

certe siue mihi Phyllis siue esset Amyntas

seu quicumque furor (quid tum, si fuscus Amyntas?
Et nigrae uiolae sunt et uaccinia nigra),
mecum inter salices lenta sub uite iaceret;
serta mihi Phyllis legeret, cantaret Amyntas.
Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori,
hic nemus; hic ipso tecum consumerer aeuo.
Virg. Ecl. 10.37–43

Certainly whether Phyllis be my passion, or Amyntas

or whoever (what of it, if Amyntas is dusky?
Both violets are dark and hyacinths dark),
with me amidst the willows under a trailing vine
she’d lie; Phyllis would gather garlands for me,
Amyntas would sing. Here are cool brooks,
Here are soft meadows, Lycoris, here, the grove;
here, I’d pass an age, itself entire, with you.
As is clearly visible, Virgil has distributed the core elements of the Theocritean
couplet more expansively. He separates the act of plucking flowers for garlands
from the idea of the appealing darkness of the blooming violets and hyacinths.
Supplying retrospective knowledge of Meleager’s Garland (Στέφανος), Bucaeus’
statement that the violet and hyacinth are a deliberate choice for primacy in floral
arrangement looks like a programmatic statement of poetics, with Bombyca as the
discerning muse for his “anthology” of love and praise.52 Bucaeus primes the (later,
learned) reader to think about this anthologizing impulse precisely due to his range
of poetic influence: there is notable selectivity and variety to his song.
Bucaeus’ assessment of dark flowers also bears some affiliation to an epi-
gram by Asclepiades (εἰ δὲ μέλαινα, τί τοῦτο; καὶ ἄνθρακες‧ ἀλλ᾽ ὅτ᾽ ἐκείνους/
θάλψωμεν, λάμπουσ’ ὡς ῥόδεαι κάλυκες, Anth. Pal. 5.210.3–4).53 If Theocritus is
indeed alluding to Asclepiades, this shows a greater awareness of the poetic dynam-
ics of an authorially edited poetic assemblage, as has been the suggested form of
Asclepiades’ book of epigrams.54 Such an allusion also strengthens the argument
for a metapoetic reading of Gallus’ lines in Eclogue 10. Gallus’ statement serta

reinforce the connection between Eclogue 3 and Eclogue 10; Eclogue 3 itself is an interpretive key to
Eclogue 10 and the collection overall. On the two passages, cf. Dix 1995: 259–60.
52. For Virgil’s use of a Meleagrian epigram that imitates Theocritus, thereby providing an exam-
ple of Meleager as a mediating text between Virgil and Theocritus, see Gutzwiller 1996b: 95–96.
53. Regarding this textual affiliation, Cameron 1995: 235–36 argues for Theocritean influence
on Asclepiades; Hunter 1999: 207 is neutral on the necessity of reading intertextuality, but states that
Theocritus is more liable to be alluding to Asclepiades; Clausen 1994: 303 has read these Virgilian
lines as a combination of Theocritus and Asclepiades.
54. The extent to which Asclepiades incorporated epigrams of varying topics (beyond the erotic)
and poetic metre is unknown, but it is possible that his collection was highly diverse in both metre and
subject matter. See esp. Gutzwiller 1998: 122–49.
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mihi Phyllis legeret accomplishes a number of things. It replicates the physical act
of weaving a garland found in Idyll 10; it metapoetically signals a “reading” of the
Theocritean source text (λέγονται/legeret); and it could additionally signal a read-
ing of actual poetic anthologies, like Meleager’s Garland.55 Unlike the Greek λέγω,
the meaning of the Latin verb lego extends to the act of reading; effectively, the
“misreading” of the Greek λέγω by mapping the Latin understanding of lego upon
it creates a linguistic space of allusion where the pastoral visions of Theocritus
and Virgil temporarily coexist as mutual influences.56 Phyllis’ gathering of serta
is a clear adaptation of the Theocritean source text, but one that further transforms
it by activating and actualizing the latent potential for Bucaeus’ own song to be
read metapoetically, a latent potential that needs only Meleager as mediating text.57
Confirmation of this translinguistic awareness is perhaps also observable in the
environment further envisioned by Gallus: prata is a (near-)homophone of πρᾶτα,
the Doric form of πρῶτος which Bucaeus uses to refer to the privileged material
of plucking.58 Despite the fact that the two words’ meanings do not overlap in any
way, unlike the case of lego/λέγω, the similarity in sound is yet another feature that
ties these two passages together. In addition, it constitutes yet another type of poetic
allusion at work: the Virgilian handling of the Theocritean poem is a masterclass
in the prismatic capabilities of allusion, which cumulatively demonstrate the moti-
vating mechanism of discerning eclecticism.59 As such, Eclogue 10’s reworking of
Idyll 10 not only paints a picture of poetic dependency symbolically visualized by
the combination of Theocritean goat – Virgilian fodder in line 7, as discussed above
(dum tenera attondent simae uirgulta capellae)—but showcases both the literal and
metaliteral power of selectivity embodied by ἐκλέγω/carpo.
It is this prismatic quality that a poetics of variety produces, the aesthetic embod-
ied by the bee as a poetic symbol, culling choiceness for the sweetest results. The
bee as a poetic symbol and defining aesthetic emblem does not appear directly in
Idyll 10, but is summoned allusively by the figure of inspiration for Bucaeus’ song.

55. Fabre-Serris 2013: 122 reads the metapoetic potential of serta . . . legeret as referring to
Gallus’ poetry. The λέγονται seems to act retrospectively as a sort of Alexandrian footnote. Asclepiades
does feature in Meleager’s Garland, under the name Sicelides (46; cf. also Hedylus, Gow-Page HE
6.4), the same name invoked by Simichidas in Idyll 7 (40). Flower-picking can also activate further
internal meaning for the Virgilian collection: elsewhere in the collection, carpo is used to describe
gathering and arranging flowers (Ecl. 2.47, 54); Schröder 1999 points to Cic. Att. 16.11.1 for the
possible connection of ἄνθη to ecloga (on the basis of the meaning “excerpt” or “selection,” and in
extension substantively used to denote “poem”).
56. Seider 2016: 19 points out that the wordplay on sat-saturae also strengthens “Vergil’s auda-
cious claim for his creation of a pre-Theocritean pastoral,” as satire is a wholly Roman invention (tota
nostra est, Quint. Inst. 10.1.93).
57. A point further confirmed by seeing an allusion to Asclepiades within Theocritus.
58. On this phrase and other appearances of bilingual (near-)homophones, see Cairns 2012:
294n.5 and 294–96. On different modes of allusion, with Eclogue 7 as a test-case, see Petrovitz 2003.
59. To which might be added stichometric allusion between the line numbers of the poems, with
Eclogue 10.30 rewriting Idyll 10.30 (it is unlikely that Idyll 10 was the tenth poem in the collection; the
allusion is merely to the thirtieth line of a primary source text).
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38 classical antiq uity Volume 42 / No. 1 / April 2023

Bucaeus’ song is inspired by Bombyca, the slender, sun-browned flute-player. As

noted above, her name is related to her occupation, and an instrument: the flute.60
However, it also resembles the onomatopoetic βόμβος/βομβέω, indicative of a
humming or buzzing sound.61 Theocritean usage is the notable contributor of this
meaning: the unnamed goatherd of Idyll 3 wishes to be a buzzing bee (ἁ βομβεῦσα
μέλισσα, 3.13), while bees hum at the hive in Idyll 5 (ὧδε καλὸν βομβεῦντι ποτὶ
σμάνεσσι μέλισσαι, 5.46).62 The honey-hued Bombyca, therefore, has a name that
also suggests a notable sound of the natural world, and hence the animal that pro-
duces it: the bee. In reassessing Idyll 10, Grethlein has argued that Bombyca is a
figure who embodies a defining Hellenistic style: “Taken together, the emphasis
on the slenderness, partly in vocabulary that is also used poetologically, of a girl
who is closely associated with art, in an embedded song with strong Hellenistic
features and bucolic flavour, prompts me to suggest that Idyll 10 plays with the
poetological notion of slenderness that is best known under the term λεπτοσύνη.
The connection between eating and poetological slenderness parallels the Hymn to
Demeter (Hymn 6) in which Callimachus seems to contrast fasting Demeter—as a
symbol of his new poetry—with gluttonous Erysichthon.”63 The bee as an emblem
of this new stylistic concern is clearly evident at the end of Callimachus’ Hymn to
Apollo (108–112), where bees carry the purest droplets of spring water to Demeter;
the priestesses of Demeter are also known as “Bees,” and, when one such “Bee”
is envisioned as the narrator of Erysichthon’s story in the Hymn to Demeter, the
bee becomes a poet in a literal, not just symbolic, sense.64 Seeing Bombyca as a
bee is not only in perfect alignment with Grethlein’s poetological assessment of
Bombyca, but appropriate, given the agricultural context of the poem.
Bucaeus’ celebration of Bombyca’s beauty (specifically, her slenderness)
builds from Milon’s disparaging assessment of her form: that the lover “will have

60. On the especial musicality of Bombyca see Falivene 2014: 35–36. Her argument meshes
nicely with seeing a metapoetic dimension to Bombyca.
61. For βόμβος used to describe the lowness of a voice, cf. Pl. Prt. 316a1–2.
62. It is also used of a wasp earlier in Idyll 5 (ὅστις νικασεῖν τὸν πλατίον ὡς τὺ πεποίθεις,/ σφὰξ
βομβέων τέττιγος ἐναντίον, 5.28–29). Apart from these usages, the only other word in the Idylls that
replicates this sound with the opening βομβ- is Bombyca’s name.
63. Grethlein 2012: 615. Although he elsewhere draws attention to the question of Philetas’ thin-
ness as metaphorical or physical (608n.21), he does not note that Philetas was also the author of an ele-
giac Demeter. For the influence of the Demeter on Idyll 7, see Spanoudakis 2002: 244–72. If Bucaeus’
song is inspired by both Asclepiades and Philetas, this also places Bucaeus as a singer in line with
Simichidas, who explicitly cites them as poetic influences (7.39–41); this commonality strengthens the
suggestion made passingly by Hunt 2009: 405n.37 that Idyll 7 and 10 may have been conceived of as
a poetic unit. Bowie 1985 remains influential on the importance of Philetas to understanding Idyll 7.
64. Murray 2004: 212; Müller 1987: 27–45 pioneered a metapoetic reading of the hymn, a view
subsequently endorsed by Bing 1995. Bees also hover around a spring in the locus amoenus at the
close of Idyll 7 (πωτῶντο ξουθαὶ περὶ πίδακας ἀμφὶ μέλισσαι, 7.142), the spring that is near the altar
of Demeter, and provides the water for mixing with wine; cf. Spanoudakis 2002: 292 for the layered
significance of the bee imagery in this passage. Following Gow 1950, Payne 2007: 133n.35 translates
ξουθαί as “buzzing,” although it can also denote color (“yellowy”) or movement (“nimble”); such a
range should suggest the bees as inherent embodiments of poikilia.
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CELIA CAMP B E L L : The Land of Milk and Honey 39

a grasshopper to cuddle with all night” (μάντις τοι τὰν νύκτα χροϊξεῖται καλαμαία,
Id. 10.18).65 Despite its unusual nature, not much has been made of Milon’s insult.
In most translations, the two words are taken together to mean “grasshopper.”
Καλαμαία is related to καλάμη (“stalk”), commonly denoting the stalk or straw
of corn; hence, within the few discussions of this term, we do find a more lit-
eral translation of the word that renders Bombyca as a “mantis of the cornfield.”66
Recognition that καλαμαία denotes the specific space of a cornfield or grainfield
locates Bombyca within the sphere of agricultural importance, no matter how deri-
sively. Along these lines, we can see how Bucaeus’ imaginative casting of Bombyca
(who is first named within Bucaeus’ song, lines 26 and 36) as a bee responds to and
challenges Milon’s insult, both thematically and contextually: Bucaeus’ love poeti-
cally elevates her to an (also slender/small) symbol of poetry that is simultaneously
the form of the priestesses of Demeter, goddess of the harvest.67 Bucaeus’ ending
admission (τὸν μὰν τρόπον οὐκ ἔχω εἰπεῖν, 37), if read with metapoetic aware-
ness of τρόπος as a synonym for ἁρμονία68 (and therefore indicative of a musical
“style”), would therefore explicitly reveal Bucaeus’ attempt at a “bee-like” song
in Bombyca’s honor. As such, Bucaeus’ bee-poetics becomes inspirational for the
Eclogues, both in the passage of Eclogue 10 discussed above and overall.

TITYRUS’ SLENDER MUSE

The constellation of Bombyca – flute – bee (name, instrument, animal) is a

signifying cluster that, once identified, also seems to offer a suggestive precursor
for the meaningful naming conventions of the Eclogues. The names within the
Eclogues have long been points of interpretive fixation, not least the name that
opens the collection: Tityrus. For bucolic precedent, a Tityrus is mentioned in Idyll
3, addressed by the unnamed goatherd and tasked with watching and grazing the
goats (Id. 3.3–5, closely imitated at Ecl. 9.23–25). As we have seen, Tityrus is
also the name of a singer in Idyll 7. Theocritean scholia explain this name vari-
ously: Tityrus = satyrus, according to Doric speakers; Sicilians call Sileni tityri;
according to some it means “goats”; to others, “satyrs”; it comes from the name
of a Cretan city; it means “ministers of the gods”; it means a “reed.”69 The last
explanation in particular has given rise to much scholarly attention, reignited by

65. To use the translation of Acosta-Hughes 2006: 32.

66. Borthwick 1967: 254.
67. Milon’s invocation to Demeter herself (Δάματερ πολύκαρπε, πολύσταχυ, Id. 10.42) therefore
contains further resonances with Bucaeus’ song, and Milon’s general mode of correction. Bombyca
as ἁ Πολυβώτα (Id. 10.15) perhaps also colors Demeter’s hailing as a goddess of abundance, with the
proliferation of πολυ-.
68. As does Falivene 2014: 35.
69. ΣId. 7.72 KLUEAT, 3.2a KGUEAT. For Virgilian play upon these etymologies, see Keeline
2017: 461–64, who convincingly uses Virgil’s learned paronomasia as evidence for his knowledge of
Theocritean scholia.
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40 classical antiq uity Volume 42 / No. 1 / April 2023

Cairns’ analysis of Tityrus as a learned gloss of auena, stemming especially from

the notice in Athenaeus that the reed pipe is known as the “tityrine” pipe amongst
Doric speakers (Ath. 182d).70 The name’s connection to goats is reinforced by the
contexts of its appearances in the Idylls.71 While interpretations of Tityrus’ name
seem more generally concerned with a winnowing of significance and possibility,
and the privileging of one interpretation over another, it is worth remarking that
evocation of a plurality of meaning is most in tune with the symbiotic relationships
between music and animals that lend structure and expression to the bucolic world.
Along these lines, what bears notice is that the various explanations for Tityrus’
name also replicate the constellation of signifiers that Bombyca’s name holds:72
there is also an animal (a goat) and an instrument (the reed pipe) indicated by the
proper name, Tityrus. There is a notable confluence in how the pastoral name is
consciously designed as a type of expressive shorthand: the names of “Tityrus” and
“Bombyca” conceptually package the pastoral units of “goat-pipe” and “bee-flute.”
It is true that Bombyca plays a very minor role within the Idylls, in contrast to
Virgil’s Tityrus. Nevertheless, the resemblance of Tityrus’ name to Bombyca’s in
its compression of pastoral elements further sets up the relationship between goats
and bees that Virgil capitalizes upon to communicate his own generic territory
of bucolic, and reinforces the interpretive importance that Idyll 10 holds to the
Eclogues.
One further interpretation of Idyll 10 deserves attention here. As mentioned,
after Bucaeus’ song Milon remarks: ὡς εὖ τὰν ἰδέαν τᾶς ἁρμονίας ἐμέτρησεν,
“How well he structures the form of his harmonies!” (Id. 10.39). The scholion
provides this close paraphrase of the line: ὡς εὖ τὸ τῆς ἁρμονίας εἶδος ἐρρύθμισην
ὁ Βουκαῖος, “How well Bucaeus rhythmically measures the form of his mode of
song.” Noting the equivalences made by the scholiast, Falivene argues that Milon
acknowledges the worth of Bucaeus’ song, but deems it the wrong type: “Boukaios’
song is—as Milon must admit—a good instance (strictly speaking: εἶδος) of the
form, or rhythmical structure (strictly speaking: ἰδέα) of a given mode (ἁρμονία)
but—as Milon proceeds to argue—the mode is not the right one for Boukaios.
Instead, he should be singing Lityerses’ song, for ‘this is indeed the song for reapers
at work!’ (56).”73 To Milon, Bucaeus’ love-song is simply not the right genre, as
demanded by circumstance; it should be a work-song. Falivene uses Milon’s musi-
cally, generically aware judgment of Bucaeus’ song to advance a theory about the
poetic motivation of Idyll 10 itself: “the whole point of Theocritus’ meta-mimetic
exercise is to re-present and compare different ἰδέαι, or εἴδη: different ways of life,

70. Cairns 1999; cf. also the response of Van Sickle 2004. For a different etymological take on
Tityrus’ name, see Paschalis 2008.
71. Hunter theorizes that Tityrus might refer to a goat rather than a person; cf. Hunter 1999 ad Id.
3.1–2. Correspondingly, Ellis 1899: 140–41 hypothesized that Battarus, the addressee of the ps.-Virgil-
ian Dirae, is a goat. Again, Similus, the rustic of the Moretum, is also goatish (cf. n.21 above).
72. Arguably more, if we remember that Bombyca was also a Syrian city; cf. Grethlein 2012: 612
and Hunter 1999 ad Id. 10.26–27.
73. Falivene 2014: 36.
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kinds of ἁρμονία, genres.”74 From this interpretive vantage point, and with the
evidence of scholia that collectively present the set of ἰδέα – θεωρία – εἶδος as syn-
onymous, Falivene then postulates that Theocritus’ Εἰδύλλια (Idylls) should be read
as mini-εἴδη: the collection title, consciously chosen by Theocritus, indicates their
status as “small experiments in genre.”75 Such a reading of the collection’s title
promotes generic experimentation to a defining quality of the poems. This interpre-
tation underscores Idyll 10 as an interpretive key to Theocritean poetics, and their
reception and adaptation by Virgil in defining his own Bucolics/Selections.
If Bucaeus’ song prompts this kind of panoramic assessment of the collec-
tion itself, Bombyca as the bee-Muse of inspiration has an especial significance.
If she is read as a bee, Theocritus himself was self-consciously thinking about the
more allusive and subtle expressive possibilities of the bee as a poetic symbol, and
making metaphorical one of the literal poetic symbols within the bucolic world,
granting a continuum of poetic meaning to the bee from literal to metaphorical.
The initial detachment of the poetic symbolism from the actual animal of the bee,
and its transformation to a metaphorical guise in the figure of Bombyca, show
the poetic opportunities held by animal symbolism. Virgil redirects this symbolic
impulse back into the animal world of bucolic. The change from goats to bees
within Pan’s reworking of Bucaeus’ song therefore also has a purpose in show-
ing Virgil’s recognition of Bombyca’s metaphorical guise. Virgil, as a sensitive
reader and adapter of Theocritus, has it both ways: within Eclogue 10, Bombyca is
“re-literalized” into the cytisus-seeking bees that Pan notes, but these are the very
bees that initiate the cascade of allusion that is crucial to perceiving how Virgil has
transferred the poetic symbolism of the bee, and the poetic paradigmatics of its
defining activity, to the goat.

CONCLUSION: LANDING ON PROGRAMMATICS

The question now becomes why: Why might Virgil be motivated to shift an
apian understanding of poetics to goats, and to use goats as his programmati-
cally pastoral animals? The answer can be found by taking a closer look again at
Eclogue 1, and returning to the close relationship Virgil builds between animal,
poetry, and land. As Breed encapsulates, “the very closeness of Theocritean imi-
tation throughout Eclogue 1 highlights the programmatic absence of Theocritean
sweetness. In place of the sweet music of Theocritus 1.1–11, in Eclogue 1 there
are only the ‘sweet fields’ that Meliboeus is abandoning (dulcia linquimus arua,
3), where the epithet represents Meliboeus’ awareness of what he is losing.”76 The
programmatic sweetness of Theocritus is the honey-sweetness of verse, a pleasure
and balm, which begins with the sweet sounds of nature and song (Ἁδύ . . . ἁδύ,

74. Falivene 2014: 37.

75. Falivene 2014: 38, with the interpretation of Gutzwiller 1996a: 129–33.
76. Breed 2006: 112.
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Id. 1.1–2), bucolic song whose origin is programmatically presented by Daphnis’

“honey-breathing pipe” (μελίπνουν . . . σύριγγα, 1.128–29) and is rewarded by the
valediction of having a honey-filled mouth (1.146–47). Virgil’s repositioning of
the governing aesthetic of his source text is quietly radical. When the Roman poet
transfers this programmatic sweetness to the land itself, an instability is also intro-
duced, given the political reality of land confiscation. This necessitates a change
in symbolically representing the relationships held to the land, and the defining
environmental fact of Virgilian pastoral: that the possession of land predicates the
production of pastoral song. However, Virgil’s reassignment of Theocritean sweet-
ness also has roots in different pastoral beginnings: Meliboeus’ dulcia arua bear
an affinity with the Lucretian dulcis agelli, when the didactic poet describes the
beginnings of agriculture:77
inde aliam atque aliam culturam dulcis agelli
temptabant fructusque feros mansuescere terra
cernebant indulgendo blandeque colendo.
Inque dies magis in montem succedere siluas
cogebant infraque locum concedere cultis,
Lucr. 5.1367–71

Then they were testing out some such ways and others to
cultivate the beloved little plot of land, and they were
perceiving wild fruits to bend to their will in the land
with kind treatment and coaxing tillage.
And with each day they were compelling
the forests to climb higher into the hills
and to yield the place below to their administrations.
Within Lucretius, the silua is displaced for the positive locus amoenus of incipient
agricultural civilization, which then leads to the famous passage of the produc-
tion of pastoral song (5.1379–90). Virgil preserves the Lucretian sweetness of the
land, but makes it a locus of loss, nostalgia, and pathos, which more starkly under-
lines his adaptation of Theocritean mellifluence.78 As Van Sickle notes, Lucretius
paints the movement of the woods uphill as a metaphorical herding, or driving,
with cogebant.79 The land itself is figured as a flock, which has implications for the
Eclogues, where the flock mediates between land and herdsman, and creates the
opportunity for pastoral song by the need for grazing. Reminiscence of Lucretius’
dulcis agellus is reinforced by Tityrus’ mention of his calamo . . . agresti (cf. Lucr.
5.1398 agrestis . . . musa), upon which he plays whatever tunes he likes, safe in

77. On culturam . . . agelli as hinting at the technical agri cultura, see Taylor 2020 133n.41.
78. For the acknowledgement of the continued resonance of this Lucretian passage with Virgilian
pastoral, cf. also the passage of the Dirae quoted in n.9.
79. Van Sickle 2000: 44, with n.3 for the uses of cogo in the Eclogues to communicate the herding
of flocks.
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his knowledge of secure land. Meliboeus responds to Tityrus’ tuneful ease with his
own ill circumstance, emblematized by his flock of goats, in their first appearance:
Non equidem inuideo, miror magis: undique totis
usque adeo turbatur agris. en ipse capellas
protinus aeger ago; hanc etiam uix, Tityre, duco.
Virg. Ecl. 1.11–13

Nor indeed do I envy you, but rather, I marvel:

on every side, as far as is seen, everything is
thrown into turmoil across the fields. Look, I myself,
ill at ease, drive my little goats onward; I can scarcely
lead even this little one.
Adkin explains the unusual appearance and formulation of cultivated land along-
side capellae (totis . . . agris, instead of the more contextually appropriate rura)
with Varronian etymologizing: he suggests that here Virgil is glossing Varro’s ety-
mology of ager from ago (Ling. 5.34), reinforced by both the synonymous duco
and further etymological play upon aeger/ago.80 Aeger, also deriving from ago,
unites the flock and Meliboeus, displaced as they are from the sweetness of their
land. I would add that Tityrus’ use of agrestis also calls to mind the etymology
Varro explicitly rejects, of ager from ἀγρός (agrestis = ἄγριος = ἀγρός). Meliboeus’
goats are the vehicle of the etymology: his action of leading his flock away from
its land linguistically defines the physical landscape, and does so in a way that
also furthers the Lucretian resonance of dulcia arua by recalling the herding met-
aphor used in Lucretius’ image of the dulcis agellus. Within Eclogue 1, capellae
are therefore first the agents of etymologizing the land, ailing in their displace-
ment from it, and then implicated in etymologizing song, which will cease without
the land. Within the constructed world of the Eclogues, the diminutive goat-flock
becomes charged with poetically brokering an understanding of what the land
means, and so of what sweetness means. For the new, fraught world of Roman
pastoral, replicating the bees’ defining appearances within Theocritus as agents of
programmatic honey-sweetness and positive, rewarding sustenance is unsustain-
able. This disconnect is clearly evident in Eclogue 1, when Meliboeus describes
Tityrus’ land. Without Meliboeus’ wistful eyes, it is nothing but a marsh: ergo tua
rura manebunt/ et tibi magna satis, quamuis lapis omnia nudus/ limosoque palus
obducat pascua iunco, “And so your fields will remain, and they will satisfy you,
although barren stone, and a swamp buries your pastures with its muddy reeds”
(1.46–48). Meliboeus transforms it in song, accessorizing the swampy land with
the idealized pastoral trappings of the Theocritean locus amoenus borrowed from
Idyll 7 (7.135–46):

80. Adkin 2011.

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44 classical antiq uity Volume 42 / No. 1 / April 2023

fortunate senex, hic inter flumina nota

et fontis sacros frigus captabis opacum;
hinc tibi, quae semper, uicino ab limite saepes
Hyblaeis apibus florem depasta salicti
saepe leui somnum suadebit inire susurro;
hinc alta sub rupe canet frondator ad auras,
nec tamen interea raucae, tua cura, palumbes
nec gemere aëria cessabit turtur ab ulmo.
Virg. Ecl. 1.51–58

Fortunate old man, here amidst familiar streams

and hallowed fonts you shall make yours the cool shade;
here, as always, the hedge made from the neighboring
border,
its blossom of willow grazed upon by Hyblaean bees,
will often invite you sweetly into sleep with its little
whisperings,
nor, besides, will the cooing pigeons, your care, nor the
turtle-dove
will cease to sound hollow notes from the elm tree.
Meliboeus, living up to his name as a “sweet singer” (μελιβόας),81 imports a fleet-
ing sense of paradigmatic Theocritean sweetness to Tityrus’ land, but with the
awareness of its existence as a dreamscape: a fragment of an idyllic pastoral world
circumscribed by honey-sweetness, now only accessible in song. The sound of the
bees will lull Tityrus to sleep, in a line that echoes the opening of the Idylls: saepe
leui somnum suadebit inire susurro recalls the sweetly whispering pine that intro-
duces bucolic space and sound (Ἁδύ τι τὸ ψιθύρισμα καὶ ἁ πίτυς, αἰπόλε, τήνα, Id.
1.1), with susurrus rendering ψιθύρισμα, and the implicit suauis of suadebit the
idea of sweetness in ἁδύ, making these bees especially Theocritean (beyond the
commentary formula Hyblaean = Sicilian = Theocritean). Meliboeus’ atypical for-
mulation of “entering sleep” (somnum . . . inire) paints this sonically induced state
as more of a dream than mere sleep, and it is: a Theocritean fantasy.82
Part of Theocritus’ poetic innovation was to cast the goatherd as a poetic figure
within his bucolic Idylls. Virgil, in making the transition to a specifically Roman
pastoral, not only acknowledges this characterization, but adaptively gives a more
sustaining (and symbolically streamlined) significance to this casting by making
goats the programmatic animal of his collection. However, instead of preserv-
ing the Theocritean relationship between goatherds, bees, and honey that lends a
coherency of sweetness to his conception of an unthreatened bucolic world, Virgil
assigns a borrowed “apian” symbolism to his goats, in order to more powerfully

81. Van Sickle 2000: 51.

82. For a different inspiration for this line, see Roche 2014.
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address the defining limits of his own pastoral reality: the connection between song
and land. The interrelated fate of land and song that allows the Eclogues to reflect
and express a contemporary emotional resonance cannot be adequately poetically
symbolized, mediated, or addressed by bees’ unconstrained search for sweetness
in the same way that it can by the modest, humble flocks of capellae, who link the
herdsman-poet to the land in real, tangible ways.

Emory University
[email protected]

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