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