Virgil's Book of Bucolics

BUY THIS BOOK

Nonfiction
SNL in old Rome

VIRGIL'S BOOK OF BUCOLICS:

The Ten Eclogues Translated 
into English Verse Framed by 
Cues for Reading Aloud and 
Clues for Threading Texts and Themes

By John Van Sickle
288 pp. The Johns Hopkins University Press

Review by Nick Catalano

During the late first century B.C.E. in Rome a literary trend developed using satiric references and cryptic myths which sought both to capture dramatic political and social changes (Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 B.C.E. , civil war, and Augustus' consolidation of power) and to please audiences. Writers of the “new” literature such as Virgil, Cinna, Catullus, Pollio, and Cornelius Gallus frequently introduced their work by reading it to friends in aristocratic homes, schools, and private libraries. Sensing an opportunity for career enhancement, Virgil resurrected the tradition largely made popular by Theocritus during the Greek Alexandrine age. He reconstructed the bucolic form (from the Greek boukolikon or “care for cattle”), adapted it for stage presentation, and garnered instant fame. The record of his considerable success was duly noted by reliable sources including Suetonius, Donatus, and Tacitus.

In his new book, John Van Sickle describes Virgil's poetry, the so-called eclogues, as “snappy skits - a mix of country music, rustic by-play, erotic scandal, political protest and prophecy.” The staging involved up to three actors reciting, miming and reacting to musical accompaniment. One can imagine these creations having a sort of Saturday Night live popularity in old Rome characterized by topicalities which were destined to need vast explication in the centuries ahead. This is the task that Van Sickle has set up. In rigorous scholarly fashion he has translated the poetry, providing copious footnotes explaining Virgil's myth-making, satire, political innuendoes, and spurious characters.

In addition, Van Sickle includes “cues” or directorial suggestions whereby readers can read aloud the poetry and capture the subtleties of Virgil's wit, his connotations and innuendoes, and his poetic diction. This part of the book is particularly valuable because many of the myths, topicalities, syntaxes, and exchanges are too arcane for general readers.

The Roman audiences were well-educated in the ways of political gossip and satire hidden in layers of allegory and uttered by newly popularized mythic characters such as Tityrus and Meliboeus. If they were instantly responsive and entertained, these audiences must have instinctively responded to his cornucopia of literary references and weapons with an immediacy that we cannot possibly muster, but Van Sickle's “cues” give modern readers an opportunity to participate in the original theatrical entertainment. In addition to providing directorial guidance for readers, the author includes a section dubbed “clues” to show how Virgil adapted the “threads” of the Greek pastoral writers and “wove” new ideas from them for his own dramatic effects and thematic purposes.

The pastoral tradition of the Eclogues originating with Theocritus continued its popularity with all the Roman writers noted above until the advent of the middle- ages. It revivified itself during the renaissance in Spenser's poetry and continued to appear in the work of writers such as Wordsworth. Robert Frost is perhaps the best known exponent in the modern age, but other contemporary poets frequently use the form often employing the original machinery from the classical era. Literature students can certainly profit from the kind of scholarship that Van Sickle employs with Virgil, and one hopes for such treatments explicating the pastoral tradition in later writers.

In examining Virgil's eagerness to adapt the original Greek pastoral form we are reminded of the apotheosis of his Greek emulations - The Aeneid. Because of the enormous literary homage that Roman poets paid to Greek masters and countless emulations forged in other areas such as sculpture, architecture, history, and philosophy, one cannot overstate the cultural influence that Greece had over Rome.