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VirgilThe Eclogues
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Eclogue 10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Eclogue 10 Summary
The final poem of the collection, Eclogue 10, opens with the speaker invoking a new Muse, Arethusa. (Arethusa was a nymph who fled her home of Arcadia and became a freshwater spring in Syracuse, Sicily—the home of the Greek inventor of pastoral poetry, Theocritus. Arethusa has strong associations with the genre as a whole.) The speaker wishes for her help in composing a “little song” for Gallus, Virgil’s fellow poet and friend.
The speaker describes the woodland community mourning with Gallus, who is “perishing of unrequited love” (Lines 9-10). Plants, natural features of the land, fellow shepherds, and even gods like Apollo and Pan visit the languishing poet (Lines 11-30). Pan, one of the forest gods, tells Gallus “Enough! Love cares not for such. Cruel, neither is he sated with tears nor grass with brooks / nor bees with clovers nor nanny goats with leafy sprays” (Lines 28-30).
In Line 33, Gallus himself begins to speak, wishing he could while away the time with his lover Lycoris: “Now a mad love / keeps me in the arms of Mars amid his weapons with foes / opposed” (Lines 43-45). Lycoris herself retreated to snowy climbs, pursuing another lover and leaving Gallus alone. Gallus imagines various scenarios of his death from a broken heart (Lines 51-67).
The speaker provides a brief epilogue: “This will be enough,” he says, “Goddess of Pieria [that is, the Muses]” (Line 68). He created sufficient songs to sing as he weaves his baskets. As the sun sets, the speaker begins driving his goats home, ending the poem.
Eclogue 10 Analysis
Eclogue 10 is a poem for Virgil’s close friend and fellow poet, Gallus. Virgil first introduced Gallus in Eclogue 6, where Apollo and the Muses crown him with plants and give him a pipe to play (Lines 65-74). In Eclogue 10, the speaker connects Gallus to Daphnis, the mythological inventor of pastoral poetry whose death was commemorated in Eclogue 5—thus transplanting Virgil’s real-life colleague into Arcadia.
Gallus is depicted in mourning, and nature itself mourns with him (Lines 9-30). Again, a poet or musician’s ability to make the natural world mirror his own emotions is brought to the forefront. Flora and fauna, shepherds and gods alike, visit Gallus, asking about his lost love, Lycoris. Like Corydon in Eclogue 2 and Damon and Alphesiboeus in Eclogue 8, Gallus suffers from heartbreak.
More like an elegiac poet than a pastoral one, Gallus seems to take macabre enjoyment from imagining his own death of a broken heart (Lines 54-66). But like many of his pastoral counterparts, it’s clear that Gallus’s fantasies were ruined not by his own actions, but by another encroaching factor: war (Lines 42-45). As the sun sets on Arcadia, Virgil’s shepherd persona drives his goats home, dimming the lights on the collection itself in the process.
