Eclogue 4, lines 1-17

Virgil predicts a forthcoming birth and a new golden age

by Virgil

This extract from one of Virgil’s Eclogues, or pastoral poems, modelled on the Sicilian Greek poet Theocritus (hence the “Sicilian Muses”), was interpreted by many early Christians as a prediction of the birth of Christ. This helps to explain the special status that Virgil enjoyed in the middle ages as a virtuous pagan prophet, including his appearance in Dante’s work, the Divine Comedy, as the poet’s guide through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Pollio, to whom Virgil addresses himself, was a general whose writings are gone, but who had a literary reputation and was also mentioned by Horace. Cumae was the seat of a famous Sibyl-prophetess. Lucina is the Goddess of childbirth. Who the divine child was meant to be, we don’t know, but Pollio’s consulship was in 40 BCE, the year in which Mark Antony married the sister of Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus, in an unsuccessful attempt to counter the growing pressures on their creaky alliance. That this poem was written to celebrate the marriage seems as good a guess as any – the reference near the end to putting an end to (the) guilt (of civil war?) would fit, but something about the poem remains strangely disproportionate.

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Sicelides Musae, paulo maiora canamus.
non omnis arbusta iuvant humilesque myricae;
si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae.
ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas;
magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna,
iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto.
tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum
desinet ac toto surget gens aurea mundo,
casta fave Lucina; tuus iam regnat Apollo.
teque adeo decus hoc aevi, te consule, inibit,
Pollio, et incipient magni procedere menses;
te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri
inrita perpetua solvent formidine terras.
ille deum vitam accipiet divisque videbit
permixtos heroas et ipse videbitur illis
pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus orbem.

Sicilian Muses, let’s sing of slightly greater things.
Orchards and lowly tamarisk aren’t everyone’s delight;
if we sing of woods, let them be worthy of a consul!
The last age of Cumaean prophecy has come,
the great sequence of the ages is born afresh.
The virgin and the reign of Saturn come again,
now a new child is sent from heaven above.
Chaste Lucina, smile on the new-born boy,under whom
the iron race shall make way, a new, golden race rise
throughout the world; now your Apollo reigns. With you,
you, Pollio, as consul, this glory of the age shall
come in, its months begin their great, successive march;
under your consulate, if vain traces of guilt remain,
they shall release the world from its perpetual fear.
He shall have the life of the Gods, see heroes
consorting with the Gods, himself be seen by them, rule
a world that owes its peace to his fathers’ powers.

`

More Poems by Virgil

  1. The Fury Allecto blows the alarm
  2. Palinurus the helmsman is lost
  3. The death of Pallas
  4. The Trojan horse opens
  5. Aeneas comes to the Hell of Tartarus
  6. Charon, the ferryman
  7. Fire strikes Aeneas’s fleet
  8. A Fury rouses Turnus to war
  9. King Latinus grants the Trojans’ request
  10. How Aeneas will know the site of his city
  11. The battle for Priam’s palace
  12. The Syrian hostess
  13. More from Virgil’s farming Utopia
  14. Aeneas prepares for a hopeless fight
  15. Dido’s release
  16. The death of Priam
  17. Turnus is lured away from battle
  18. Aeneas saves his son and father, but at a cost
  19. Help for Father Aeneas from Father Tiber
  20. Aeneas sees Marcellus, Augustus’s tragic heir
  21. New allies for Aeneas
  22. King Mezentius meets his match
  23. The boxers
  24. The Harpy’s prophecy
  25. The natural history of bees
  26. Hector visits Aeneas in a dream
  27. Storm at sea!
  28. The Trojan Horse enters the city
  29. The death of Dido
  30. Aeneas’s oath
  31. The death of Euryalus and Nisus
  32. Rumour
  33. Mercury’s journey to Carthage
  34. Omens for Princess Lavinia
  35. The farmer’s starry calendar
  36. Dido and Aeneas: royal hunt and royal affair
  37. Turnus the wolf
  38. Helen in the darkness
  39. Rites for the allies’ dead
  40. Laocoon warns against the Trojan horse
  41. Aeneas is wounded
  42. The Aeneid begins
  43. The journey to Hades begins
  44. Aeneas finds Dido among the shades
  45. Aeneas learns the way to the underworld
  46. The portals of sleep
  47. Virgil’s poetic temple to Caesar
  48. Aeneas’s vision of Augustus
  49. Jupiter’s prophecy
  50. Dido and Aeneas: Hell hath no fury …
  51. Turnus at bay
  52. Aeneas rescues his Father Anchises
  53. Aeneas reaches the Elysian Fields
  54. Into battle
  55. Catastrophe for Rome?
  56. Juno throws open the gates of war
  57. Aeneas tours the site of Rome
  58. Virgil’s perils on the sea
  59. Aeneas arrives in Italy
  60. Anchises’s ghost invites Aeneas to visit the underworld
  61. Aristaeus’s bees
  62. The death of Priam
  63. Laocoon and the snakes
  64. Aeneas joins the fray
  65. Aeneas’s ships are transformed
  66. Signs of bad weather
  67. Virgil begins the Georgics
  68. Cassandra is taken
  69. Aeneas prepares to tell Dido his story
  70. Mourning for Pallas
  71. In King Latinus’s hall
  72. The Trojans prepare to set sail from Carthage
  73. Vulcan’s forge
  74. Sea-nymphs
  75. The farmer’s happy lot
  76. Juno is reconciled
  77. The Trojans reach Carthage
  78. Love is the same for all
  79. Venus speaks
  80. Juno’s anger
  81. Dido falls in love
  82. Dido’s story
  83. The infant Camilla
  84. Aeneas and Dido meet
  85. What is this wooden horse?
  86. Souls awaiting punishment in Tartarus, and the crimes that brought them there.
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