Vergil on Nature and Culture: a Re-reading of Eclogue 10

Vergil’s tenth eclogue is often read as a pessimistic coda to the collection as a whole, not least as a rejection of the genre of pastoral. Not only does Gallus, the main figure of the poem, spurn the bucolic hexameter in favour of love elegy, but the poet himself is preparing to leave the world of shepherds and flocks. As modern readers, we know that in closing the collection Vergil is already looking ahead to the Georgics, to the world of organised farming and the loftier genre of didactic. As the shadows fall across the valleys (75: surgamus; solet esse gravis cantantibus umbra), the tone is melancholic. There is no sense, as we leave the world of the Eclogues, that any of the ineluctable tensions of pastoral have been resolved.

In my paper, I strive towards an “optimistic” reading of the poem – a reading that foregrounds the ways in which Eclogue 10 presents a world rich with the potential for connectivity between individuals, and between humankind and nature. I base my redemptive reading first and foremost on the ways in which the boundaries between the categories of “human” and “non-human” are consistently blurred throughout the poem. On the one hand, there are several well-documented instances of the pathetic fallacy in the poem, where the natural world is granted human agency (e.g. 13: Illum etiam lauri, etiam flevere myricae). On the other, the poem also documents the inverse phenomenon, where human characters are made plant-like, Lycoris most of all (49: ah, tibi ne teneras glacies secet aspera plantas!, discussed by Armstrong (2019), p.32). I adduce the ways in which poetry is repeatedly assimilated to the natural world in the poem. This takes place both through the use of natural imagery as metaphors for poetry, and through “real” action, when Gallus inscribes his work onto tree-bark.

I conclude by discussing Vergil’s famous line omnia vincit Amor in light of Michel Serres’ The Natural Contract and the idea of love for nature paralleling love for humanity in both local and global contexts. I argue that the Vergilian tag can be reread not as a rejection of the genre of pastoral in favour of elegy but rather as the rejection of a strict division between man and nature. The poem is not about turning away from the natural world, but about discovering the elements that unite us with our surroundings.