Corydon Revisited: An Interpretation of the Political Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus

Abstract

The first thing that the student of Vergilian pastoral may notice in turning to the pastoral Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus is the obvious symmetrical arrangement of the poems in the later book. While the multitudinous inter-lacings of theme and subject in Vergil's ten poems continue to tease and baffle investigations of the larger organizational pattern, the principles of Calpurnius' design are simple and clear. Instead of ten poems, an even number that causes Vergil's centrally oriented balancing of similar pieces to remain ambiguously off-centre, Calpurnius has seven, clearly divided by subject into two kinds: four rustic poems and three that critics have called court poems, allegorical poems, or, more rightly, political poems whose chief topic is the benefits of the Neronian golden age. The uneven number allows for a precise balancing of similar poems in the two halves of the book. A political poem, a contest poem and a rustic dialogue in the first half have their counterparts in a rustic monologue, a contest poem and a political poem in the latter half. The central poem is political. In devising this order, Calpurnius may well have aimed to remedy what to him seemed defective in Vergil's uncertain symmetry, but the pattern is also well adapted to his own themes.