Greek poetry. It is equally possible to regard the Cyclops as emblematic
merely of the rough neatherd flouted by the more delicate
shepherd-maiden--the contrast is of constant occurrence in later
works--for, alike in one of his own fragments and in Moschus' lament, Bion
is represented as courting this same Galatea after she has rid herself of
the suit of Polyphemus. Vergil was content with no such simple mythology
as this. He must needs shake Silenus from a drunken sleep and bid him tell
of Chaos and old Time, of the infancy of the world and the birth of the
gods. This mixture of obsolescent theology and Epicurean philosophy
probably possessed little reality for Vergil himself, and would have
conveyed no meaning whatever to the Sicilian shepherds. Its introduction
stamps his eclogues with that unreality which has been the reproach of the
pastoral from his day to ours. The didactic homily was one fresh
convention introduced. Far more important was the tendency to make every
form subserve some ulterior purpose of allegory and panegyric.[15] For the
Roman its own beauty was no sufficient end of art. That the _Aeneid_ was
written for the glorification of Rome cannot be made a reproach to the
poet; the greatness of the end lent dignity to the means. That the
pastoral was forced to serve the menial part of a vehicle of sycophantic
praise is less easily pardoned. In Vergil's hands a conversation between
shepherds becomes an expression of gratitude to the emperor for the
restitution of his villa, a lament for Daphnis is interwoven with an
apotheosis of Julius Caesar, and in the complaint of the forsaken
shepherd, whom Apollo and Pan seek in vain to comfort, we may trace the
wounded vanity of his patron deserted by his mistress for the love of a
soldier. The fourth eclogue was written after the peace of Brundisium, and
describes the golden age to which Vergil looked forward as consequent upon
the birth of a marvellous infant, perhaps some offspring of the marriages
of Antonius and Octavianus, celebrated in solemnization of the treaty. The
poem achieved considerable fame, which lasted as late as the time of