Vergil's Eclogues

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Dialogue between two shepherds, Tityrus and Meliboeus. Contrast of destinies: the former, helped by a divine young man at Rome, will enjoy his tranquil life; the latter, dispossessed, will wander far and wide.

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Love complaint of the shepherd Corydon, who is consumed with love for the young man Alexis.

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Poetic contest between two shepherds, conducted in alternating songs (the amoebean form, in which remark is followed by reply). Menalcas and Damoetas

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Prophetic song for the birth of a child who will witness the coming of a new and happy cosmic age.

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Lament for the death of Daphnis, a deified pastoral hero. It is divided between two shepherds, Menalcas and Mopsus.

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The aged Silenus, captured by two young men, sings a catalogue of mythical and naturalistic scenes, the climax of which is the poetic consecration of the great elegiac writer Cornelius Gallus. The eclogue is prefaced by a declaration of poetics, which clearly in the Alexandrian fashion, serves to introduce the second half of the book.

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Meliboeus recounts in the first person a duel between two poets, the Arcadian shepherds Thyrsis and Corydon.

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A singing context, dedicated to Asinius Pollio and divided into two lengthy stories of unhappy love: the lament of Damon, who will choose death, and the magical practices of a woman in love.

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Dialogue between two shepherd-poets, with references to the reality of the Mantuan countryside and to the expropriations that followed the civil wars. Lycidas and Moeris.

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Consolation by the bucolic poet Virgil for the love pangs of the elegiac poet Cornelius Gallus.