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