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VirgilThe Eclogues
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Eclogue 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Eclogue 2 Summary
Another of the Eclogues’ shepherds, Corydon, laments his love for a young slave, Alexis. In “shreds of song” (Line 5), he addresses the absent Alexis as he tracks him in the heat of day. Reminding Alexis that his youthful beauty will soon fade, Corydon lists the many gifts he could provide should the two become lovers (Lines 16-23). Corydon has many cattle and sheep and is good-looking to boot; he knows this because he recently saw his reflection in seawater (Lines 26-27).
Corydon imagines life with Alexis in his humble cottage: Alexis could shepherd flocks in the meadow with him and learn how to play the pan flute (first taught to mankind by the wild woodland god, Pan) (Lines 29-36). Corydon’s own flute was a gift from another shepherd, Damoetas; Corydon highlights that his rival, Amyntas, was envious of it. Corydon catalogues the many flowers that the nymphs gathered for Alexis (Lines 45-50).
Still, Alexis scorns Corydon’s gifts. A miserable Corydon neglected his duties in pursuit of love, allowing his plants to wither and wild boars to access his springs (Lines 59-61). He rhetorically asks Alexis why he flees when “Gods too have lived in the woods […] Let Pallas Athene dwell / inside the citadels she builds. Let us enjoy / the woods” (Lines 62-65).
In conclusion, Corydon encourages himself to move on: “Why don’t you do instead a useful piece of work? […] If he despises you, you’ll find another Alexis” (Lines 73-75).
Eclogue 2 Analysis
Eclogue 2 introduces another classic pastoral theme: unrequited love. A Roman reader would not have balked at the bisexual desires of Corydon and his fellow Arcadian shepherds. In Roman culture, homosexual relationships were not necessarily stigmatized as long as a clear power dynamic was in place (such as that between a master and his slave). Stigma only came into play when a free-born man accepted a passive (for the Romans, “feminine”) role in a relationship. This attitude can be seen in Eclogue 3, Lines 7-9, when Damoetas suggests that Menalcas have illicit sex in the woods (“Take care, nevertheless, that you jibe more sparingly / at men. We know with whom the billy goats watched / and in what little shrine, but the tolerant nymphs merely laughed”).
Virgil heavily models Eclogue 2 after Greek predecessor Theocritus’s Idyll 4 (See the Themes section’s “Pastoral Poetry and the Influence of Theocritus.”). In Theocritus’s poem, the role of forlorn lover is played by Polyphemus, the cyclops who almost ate Odysseus and his crew in Book 9 of Homer’s Odyssey. Theocritus plays down the monster, making him a comically dejected lover in his futile pursuit of the lovely sea nymph, Galataea. Many of Eclogue 2’s charming details—including Corydon’s observation that he’s not ugly, as he recently saw his reflection in water (Lines 26-27)—are lifted directly from Theocritus’s text.
The image of the denied lover is a favorite in ancient literature across genres. Eclogue 2 (and Theocritus’s Idyll 4) plays on the trope of paraklausithyron, the Greek word for “lament beside the door.” The trope typically comprises a character lingering outside his lover’s barred door and pleading for entry. Theocritus and Virgil riff on the image in their pastoral poems, making the wilds themselves the locked “barrier” between lover and beloved. With comedic notes and a happy-go-lucky ending (Corydon shrugging and telling himself he can find another Alexis if his won’t have him, Lines 73-75), Virgil lightens Eclogue 1’s mood and ensures that this quaint episode not be taken too seriously.
