Space for immortality in Virgil's 5th Eclogue
Stephanie Crooks
Despite sharing the same name and the same general situation as his Theocritean counterpart and primary model, Virgil’s Daphnis departs from all other previous depictions of that same character in Hellenistic literature.1 Virgil’s Daphnis is not just the character the reader encountered dying of a broken heart in Theocritus’ first Idyll (Leach, 1974, p. 11), and it is precisely because Daphnis is deified in Eclogue 5 that readers have long equated him with the deified Julius Caesar (Kronenberg, 2016, p. 28).2
The connection between the fictional Daphnis and the historical Julius Caesar has greatly illuminated the relationship between Virgil’s historical reality and his poetry. Nevertheless, the allegory continues to dominate scholarly discussion of Eclogue 5, and to overshadow other aspects of the poem that perform a similar function. In this chapter, I move beyond allegorical readings of Daphnis to focus on an object that has received little scholarly attention in Virgilian studies: Daphnis’ tomb. By situating Daphnis’ monumentum into a broader network of socio-cultural ideas, I identify funerary material culture, as well as shifting attitudes about deification in the works of Cicero, as two important points of reference between Virgil’s lived reality and Eclogue 5. In this reading of Daphnis’ tomb, I take my cue from Pierre Bourdieu, who, in the Field of Cultural Production, dismissed the idea that a literary or art object could ever be fully understood in relation to itself (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 32). On the contrary, Bourdieu insists, only when the original circumstances (intellectual, political, social, philosophical, etc.), or ‘spaces of possibles,’ which produced the literary work have been reconstructed can an accurate analysis of an art or literary work ensue:
One of the major difficulties of the social history of philosophy, art or literature is that it has to reconstruct these spaces of original possibles, which, because they were part of the self-evident givens of the situation, remained unremarked and are therefore unlikely to be mentioned in contemporary accounts, chronicles or memoirs.
(Bourdieu, 1993, pp. 31–32)
Tombs, epitaphs, and funerary rituals, I want to suggest, as well as notions about merit-based deification in the writings of Cicero, were part of the original circumstances of Eclogue 5 that go unmentioned by the poet because they were deemed part of a shared cultural knowledge or ‘common sense’ (Bourdieu, 1993, pp. 31–32). By situating Daphnis’ tomb firmly in the commemorative practices of 1st c. BCE Rome, and more specifically, by comparing the fanum that Cicero planned to construct for his daughter Tullia, Daphnis’ tomb becomes a response to and a reflection of Virgil’s own cultural milieu, in which individuals increasingly strove to leave behind permanent records of their achievements in an effort to construct a lasting memory and achieve divine status. Although some readers will view Daphnis’ sepulchre as a narrative prop that either continues Theocritus’ Idyll 1 (in which Daphnis drowns), or further links Daphnis to the deified Julius Caesar (whose own funerary monument was erected in the Campus Martius shortly after his assassination in 44 BCE), I argue that Daphnis’ funerary monument in Eclogue 5 represents a new aesthetic in the Roman literary production, one that is tightly bound up with the cultural practices and intellectual movements of the 1st c. BCE.
The Virgilian story of Daphnis begins when two shepherds, Mopsus and Menalcas, meet to make music among the hazels and elms. Menalcas suggests several topics on which the duo might sing, but finds Mopsus recalcitrant. Mopsus, the younger of the two, prefers to try out a new song, which he recently scratched into the bark of a green beech tree, on the subject of Daphnis’ death.3
Extinctum nymphae crudeli funere Daphnim
flebant; vos coryli testes et flumina nymphis;
cum complexa sui corpus miserabile nati,
atque deos atque astra vocat crudelia mater.
Non ulli pastos illis egere diebus
frigida, Daphni, boves ad flumina; nulla neque amnem
libavit quadrupes, nec graminis attigit herbam.
Daphni, tuum Poenos etiam ingemuisse leones
interitum montesque feri silvaeque loquuntur.
The nymphs were mourning Daphnis, taken by a cruel death; You, hazel trees and streams, witnessed the nymphs; Having embraced the sad body of her son, his mother calls the gods and the stars cruel. No one drove the grazing cattle to the cool streams in those days, Daphnis; No four-footed creature sipped from the brook, nor touched a blade of grass. The wild mountains and woods say that even Punic lions groaned at your death, Daphnis
(Virgil. Eclogues. 5.20–28)4
Mopsus does not explain in this passage whether Daphnis died drowning, as he does in Theocritus’ first Idyll (DuQuesnay, 1976, p. 27).5 This is significant because it indicates that Virgil’s Daphnis does not perfectly map onto his Theocritean counterpart. Daphnis has the same name and the same general situation as Theocritus’ shepherd, but it is unclear if he died of the same cause. In fact, rather than explain the circumstances of Daphnis’ death, Virgil only elaborates on Nature’s reaction to it. Nymphs weep, Daphnis’ mother mourns, and shepherds, grieving for Daphnis, forgo leading the cattle to the streams, while the animals themselves refuse to eat or drink. In sum, Virgil’s pastoral world experiences a total breakdown of its social structure as Nature hyperbolically grieves for the deceased:
Daphnis et Armenias curru subiungere tigres
instituit; Daphnis thiasos inducere Bacchi,
et foliis lentas intexere mollibus hastas.
Vitis ut arboribus decori est, ut vitibus uvae,
ut gregibus tauri, segetes ut pinguibus arvis,
tu decus omne tuis. Postquam te fata tulerunt,
ipsa Pales agros atque ipse reliquit Apollo.
Grandia saepe quibus mandavimus hordea sulcis,
infelix lolium et steriles nascuntur avenae;
pro molli viola, pro purpureo narcisso,
carduus et spinis surgit paliurus acutis.
Daphnis taught men how to yoke Armenian tigers to the chariot; Daphnis led in the Bacchic choruses, and wound soft vines around pliant spears. Just as the vine is the glory of trees, just as grapes are the glory of vines, just as bulls are the glory of herds, and just as the crop is the glory of fertile fields, so you were the glory of your whole people. After the fates snatched you away, Pales and Apollo themselves abandoned our fields. Often the sedges, in which we sowed big barley plants, bear wretched darnel and sterile oats; Instead of soft violets, in place of purple narcissus, prickly thistle with spiky thorns grows.
(Virgil. Eclogues. 5.29–39)
Much like the previous passage, this scene likewise equates Daphnis’ death to a natural catastrophe. Pales and Apollo have abandoned the shepherds, while harmful thistles and thorns grow in place of the crops the shepherds had previously sown. Daphnis’ death thus has ramifications for the landscape seemingly because the deceased is painted by Mopsus as a figure who has contributed in meaningful, albeit odd, ways to his society. The reader learns, for example, that Daphnis was the first to yoke Armenian tigers to a chariot and to institute the Bacchic rites,6 and it is because of these contributions that Daphnis is deemed a subject worthy of being commemorated with both a tomb and an epitaph.
Romans had desired fama aeterna at least from the time of Ennius and Cato, both of whom celebrated the deeds of individuals in their works. Indeed, as literary exempla, generals, like the Scipiones, who conquered barbarian peoples, secured a place in the cultural memory of Rome and were remembered with each reading and rereading of the text (Goldschmidt, 2014, p. 163). Being the subject of a literary work, though, either in prose or in poetry, was only available to certain Romans who had accomplished remarkable feats on behalf of the patria. For this reason, Romans living in the 1st c. BCE increasingly turned to tombs, a more accessible vehicle of eternal fame, to perpetuate the accomplishments of the deceased. Of course, stone inscriptions had been used in the Roman world to commemorate the elite dead since the 8th c. BCE. It was not, however, until the last three centuries of the Republic, and, in particular, during the late 1st c. BCE, that Rome experienced a boom in epigraphic activity across every social stratification (Lloris, 2015, p. 144 ff.; Mayer, 2012, p. 104).
During this period of epigraphic furor, soldiers, freedmen, plebs, and foreigners, as well as elites, commemorated their deceased kin with both a tomb and an epitaph (Mayer, 2012, p. 104). Indeed, as John Pearce has already pointed out, there was an increased:
tendency on the part of aristocrats and wealthy freedmen in the second and first centuries BCE to build tombs oriented towards an audience of passersby, striving to surpass one another in scale, materials and innovation in form, with text and decoration on the exterior of the monument [. . .]
(Pearce, 2006, p. 19)
Furthermore, and because each aspect of the tomb (its location, architectural form, and epitaph), all together, constructed a representation of the deceased, it was common practice for individuals to design the funerary monuments of their beloved dead with great attention to detail. Such was the case for Cicero, who, in one of his letters to Atticus, painstakingly planned a suitable monumentum for his daughter Tullia after she died in childbirth in 45 BCE:
[. . .] a te approbari volo, de fano illo dico, de quo tantum quantum me amas velim cogites. equidem neque de genere dubito (placet enim mihi Cluati) neque de re (statutum est enim), de loco non numquam. velim igitur cogites. ego, quantum his temporibus tam eruditis fieri potuerit, profecto illam consecrabo omni genere monimentorum ab omnium ingeniis sumptorum et Graecorum et Latinorum.
I wish it to be approved by you, I’m speaking about that shrine. Please, think on it as much as you love me. At any rate, I do not hesitate concerning its style (for the design of Cluatius is pleasing to me), nor do I hesitate about the quality (for that’s decided): but about the site I do sometimes hesitate. Please, think about it. I will, indeed, consecrate her memory, as much as is possible in such enlightened times, by every kind of memorial borrowed from the genius of all men, both Greek and Latin
(Cicero. ad Atticum. 12.18.1)
The monument that Cicero intends to construct for his daughter in this passage, is not just a tomb, but a fanum, or shrine. The structure, which would have resembled a temple built on consecrated land and adorned with inscriptions and statues honoring the deceased, was never built (Hope, 2017, pp. 57–58). Nevertheless, Cicero’s letter to Atticus demonstrates his desire to commemorate his daughter after her death in an elaborate fashion (Baltussen, 2013, p. 78). Much like his contemporaries in the 1st c. BCE, Cicero understood monuments to be status symbols, as well as vehicles of eternal memory, and, it is for this reason that he dedicated so much time thinking on the shrine’s design, building and location (cf. Cicero. ad Atticum. 12.14; 12.18; 12.17). These characteristics, together, stimulated memories of the dead, and, were capable of reminding the living of events and persons now remote.
Prior to his daughter’s death, Cicero had already been reflecting on the mnemonic quality of the tomb. In his de Legibus, thought to have been composed in 52 BCE, Cicero elaborates on the power of funerary monuments when he has Atticus declare that he ‘becomes delighted’ while walking among the graves of great Athenian men. By viewing their funerary monuments, Atticus says, he can remember more easily the deceased’s deeds and virtus:
Mouemur enim nescio quo pacto locis ipsis, in quibus eorum quos diligimus aut admiramur adsunt uestigia. Me quidem ipsae illae nostrae Athenae non tam operibus magnificis exquisitisque antiquorum artibus delectant, quam recordatione summorum uirorum, ubi quisque habitare, ubi sedere, ubi disputare sit solitus, studioseque eorum etiam sepulcra contemplor [. . .]
For we are moved in some way by the places themselves, in which the traces of those whom we love or admire are still present. Even that Athens of ours does not delight me so much because of its magnificent works and in the exquisite skills of the ancients, but because of the recollection of its greatest men, where each one was accustomed to live, to sit, and to carry on their discussions. I even eagerly contemplate their tombs [. . .]
(Cicero. de Legibus. 2.4)
In the de Legibus, Atticus eagerly contemplates the tombs of great men in order to recall their former deeds and virtus. Similarly, in Eclogue 5, Daphnis’ tumulus, a tomb form frequently associated with local heroes, as well as Etruscans, helps to recall the memory of the deceased because it is adorned with a carmen. Often translated as a song or curse, carmen can also refer, as it does in this case, to a poetic epitaph inscribed on a tomb. Mopsus, as though mimicking the program of events involved in a typical Roman funeral leads the reader to Daphnis’ tomb after completing his laudatio for the deceased (Flower, 1996, p. 93; Toynbee 1971, p. 179). He then recalls Daphnis’ desire for his funerary monument before his death and quotes the hero’s final instructions to the shepherds in his song.
spargite humum foliis, inducite fontibus umbras,
pastores (mandat fieri sibi talia Daphnis),
et tumulum facite, et tumulo superaddite carmen:
‘Daphnis ego in siluis, hinc usque ad sidera notus,
formosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse.’
Sprinkle the ground with leaves, Shepherds, bring shade to the springs. For Daphnis commands such things to be done for himself, and build a tumulus and place an epitaph above it: ‘I am Daphnis in the woods, known from here to the stars, the guardian of a lovely flock, I myself am lovelier
(Virgil. Eclogues. 5.40–44)7
From this passage, it appears that Daphnis has left specific instructions for his burial, as was the habit of Roman elites. Julius Caesar, for example, with whom Daphnis is often equated, left his will in the care of his niece, Atia, while Augustus, who died several decades later in 14 CE, is said to have included specific instructions for his funeral in his will (Flower, 1996, pp. 116–117). In Eclogue 5, the reader learns from Mopsus that Daphnis’ ‘last will and testament’ did not include any specific details for the funerary ritus, but rather, directions to scatter flowers, plant trees, and erect a tomb and epitaph. While Daphnis’ instructions may initially seem odd, funerary gardens, replete with flowers, trees, and water pools enticed the living to spend time at the deceased’s grave and were popular features of many funerary monuments. The most famous example of a funerary garden in Latin literature comes from Petronius’ Satyricon, in which Trimalchio gives directions that ‘every kind of fruit should grow around his ashes and plenty of vines,’ Omne genus enim poma volo sint circa cineres meos, et vinearum largiter (Petronius. Satyricon. 71.2), and yet, historic Romans, like Cicero also desired that the funerary monuments of their kin incorporate horticulture. In another letter to Atticus, for example, Cicero speaks about acquiring a portion of land for Tullia’s shrine that contains both a garden and a view of the Tiber. This land is desirable, Cicero states, because it will be frequented by visitors attracted to its charm:
est hic quidem locus amoenus [. . .] cogito interdum trans Tiberim hortos aliquos parare [. . .] nihil enim video quod tam celebre esse possit. sed quos, coram videbimus [. . .]
This is indeed a charming spot [. . .] I think sometimes of purchasing some gardens across from the Tiber for I see that nothing is able to be so well visited. But which gardens [ought to be purchased] we will discuss in person,
(Cicero. ad Atticum. 12.19.1).
In addition to conveying instructions for the tomb and its surroundings, the Virgilian passage claims that Daphnis’ epitaph was composed by the deceased himself. Like Daphnis, historical Romans were also known to compose their own epitaphs. In fact, the imperial biographer Suetonius reports that Virgil composed the epitaph that would adorn his tomb in Naples, “Mantua gave birth to me, Calabria slew me: Parthenope holds me now: I sang of pastures, the country, and generals,” Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere: tenet nunc Parthenope: cecini pascua, rura, duces (Suetonius. Vita Vergili. 36). Many poetic epitaphs, like Virgil’s, are recorded, but they were not very common in the Roman world. Of the 400,000 extant Latin inscriptions, only 2 per cent are carmina. Of these, the majority date to the late 1st c. BCE–3rd c. CE and are overwhelmingly composed by non-elite groups (Schmidt, 2015, p. 770–772).
As a shepherd, Daphnis would surely fit into a ‘non-elite’ category outside of Virgil’s pastoral universe. This status, however, cannot be confirmed by Daphnis’ carmen because, much like historic carmina, it conveys none of the data commonly conveyed in prose epitaphs such as the deceased’s full name, place of birth, age-at-death, and the name(s) of the tomb’s dedicator(s) (Bodel, 2001, p. 31). Instead, Virgil uses Daphnis’ carmen to redefine funerary practices in pastoral terms and, most importantly, to claim that Daphnis’ renown will reach the stars:
[. . .] En quattuor aras:
ecce duas tibi, Daphni, duas altaria Phoebo.
pocula bina novo spumantia lacte quotannis,
craterasque duo statuam tibi pinguis olivi,
et multo in primis hilarans convivia Baccho [. . .]
Haec tibi semper erunt, et cum solemnia vota
reddemus Nymphis, et cum lustrabimus agros [. . .]
semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt;
ut Baccho Cererique, tibi sic vota quotannis
agricolae facient: damnabis tu quoque votis.
[. . .] Look four altars: Behold, Daphnis, two altars are for you, and two are for Phoebus Apollo. Each year, I’ll set up for you two cups of frothy milk, and two mixing bowls of rich olive oil, and most importantly, I’ll gladden the feast with much wine [. . .] These will always be your rites, when we render solemn prayers to the Nymphs and when we purify the fields [. . .] your honor, your name and your praise will always endure. Just as farmers pray to Ceres and Bacchus each year, to you also they will make prayers, and you will hold them to their promises.
(Virgil. Eclogue 5. 65–69; 74–76; 78–80)
In this passage, Menalcas appears to correct his companion’s narration of the events that occur after Daphnis’ death. Rather than present a Daphnis who is dead and mourned as Mopsus does in the first half of the poem, Menalcas celebrates the deceased by dedicating to him a monument and rituals that further advance his status as a founder figure of his pastoral community. As previously mentioned, Daphnis’ tomb was referred to as a tumulus in Mopsus’ account. While, tumuli were associated with tombs of ancient heroes, Maureen Carroll, in her analysis of Eclogue 5, suggests that the duas aras, the two altars, dedicated to Daphnis, indicate a certain ornateness of design, especially since his altars are located near Apollo’s (2006, pp. 86–126). Altar tombs themselves, Carroll states, were a popular form of grave monument in Herculaneum during the period in which Virgil was writing. Arae in Herculaneum varied greatly in size and material, and yet neither the dimension of the monument nor its materials are mentioned in Virgil’s poem. The omission of these details instead emphasizes the location of the altars and their proximity to Apollo’s. Indeed, it seems likely that the close association of Daphnis’ altars with those of Apollo stress Daphnis’ association with the Apolline domain of poetry, to which Daphnis is connected as both the inductor of the Bacchic choruses and as the composer of his own carmen epigraphicum. Similarly, the proximity of Daphnis’ arae with the altaria of Apollo shows that Daphnis shares in the gods’ offerings (Clausen, 1994, p. 168; Kimmel-Clauzet, 2013, p. 237).8 Simply put, Daphnis is permitted to have two funerary altars near to Apollo’s because, in Menalcas’ song, he is also divine.
In Eclogue 5, Virgil erects a literary tomb for Daphnis that, in its poetic inscription, horticultural elements, and architectural form, adheres to 1st c. BCE trends in funerary material culture. Daphnis’ funerary monument, which makes no appear ance in Theocritus’ poems on that same character, is not, therefore, the product of the generic system of which it is a part (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 34). Instead, when embedded in some of the original ‘possibles’ that comprised Virgil’s society, Daphnis’ monumentum is shown to both respond to and reflect the tomb’s ability to preserve the memory of the dead, and, as we will see, to permit deification in the Roman social imagination.
Before Menalcas institutes the annual rituals that will occur at Daphnis’ tomb each year, he notes the association of Daphnis’ arae with those of Apollo, and portrays Daphnis’ new status as a god:
Candidus insuetum miratur limen Olympi,
sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis [. . .]
ipsi laetitia voces ad sidera iactant
intonsi montes; ipsae iam carmina rupes,
ipsa sonant arbusta: ‘Deus, deus ille, Menalca.’
Sis bonus O felixque tuis!
Bright Daphnis marvels at the unaccustomed threshold of Olympus, and he surveys the clouds and the stars beneath his feet [. . .] The mountains themselves, unshorn, cast their voices towards the stars in joy; the cliffs and the bushes themselves resound in song, ‘A god, that one is a god, Menalcas.’ Be kind to your people, oh fortunate one!
(Virgil. Eclogues. 5.56–57; 62–65)
Menalcas takes praising Daphnis to “new heights” in his song, as the shepherd proclaims Daphnis’ successful translation to the stars. Importantly, the existence of Daphnis’ tomb and, the very elements that mark his mortality in Eclogue 5, do not prevent the shepherd’s deification. This moment in Menalcas’ song, in which the poet calls Daphnis a god, should be surprising, but, perhaps, because of the cultural knowledge shared between Virgil and his contemporary readership, it was not. In 42 BCE, the same year in which Virgil is thought to have commenced work on the Eclogues, Julius Caesar was made a god by the Roman senate (Price, 1992, p. 73). Indeed, it was precisely because deification of the dead was not a conventional practice in the Republican period that Daphnis has been viewed an allegory for Caesar since the time of Servius (4th c. CE) (Kronenberg, 2016, p. 28). This is not to say that informal forms of deification, such as the worship of the paterfamilias within his household, were not practiced before Caesar’s senate-approved consecration, nor that prominent Roman politicians, such as the Gracchi, Sulla and Pompey, had not enjoyed ‘marks of assimilation’ with the gods. The latter, however, were not officially decreed by the State (Beard et al., 1998, pp. 141–47), nor, in the case of the paterfamilias, can they be confirmed by extant literary sources (Gradel, 2002, p. 33).
I want to suggest that these examples of informal deification during the Republican period, along with Cicero’s corpus, indicate that ideas about deification were circulating in the years leading up to the Eclogues’ publication. In an excerpt from his now lost consolatio ad se ipsum, written after Tullia’s death, Cicero claims that his daughter’s reputation as a woman of moral substance and good learning has earned her a place among the immortal gods, and that he himself will enroll her in their divine council: ‘I will indeed do this, and I will consecrate you, the best, the most learned of all women, placed in the company of the immortal gods with their approval and in the estimation of all mortals,’ quod quidem faciam, teque omnium optimam, doctissimam, approbantibus diis immortalibus ipsis in eorum coetu locatam ad opinionem omnium mortalium consecrabo (Lactantius. Institutiones Divinae.1.15.20).
The fact that Cicero could have considered deifying Tullia in an official way is bewildering. While it is true, as evinced from the extant corpus of carmina epigraphica, that the ancients believed in a variety of afterlives, deification of the sort that Cicero proposes in his consolatio (if, indeed, he envisioned a ‘state-sanctioned’ cult for Tullia) would have contradicted Cicero’s denunciation of Caesar’s divinization in the Philippics, delivered less than a year after Tullia’s death (44 BCE). Although these speeches were primarily an invective directed against Mark Antony, they display Cicero’s disdain for Caesar’s impending honors when he asserts that he could never ‘be persuaded to associate any dead man with the rites of the immortal gods,’ adduci tamen non possem ut quemquam mortuum coniungerem cum deorum immortalium religione (Cicero. Philippics. 1.13).
Cicero objected to Caesar’s deification in the Philippics. Other works, however, indicate that Cicero had been thinking about the possibility of deification for Romans some years before Tullia’s death. In an especially compelling example from book 6 of the de Re Publica commonly referred to as the Somnium Scipionis (54–51 BCE), Cicero adapts Platonic and Stoic ideas to accommodate the notion that immortality can be earned through patriotic deeds:
Sed quo sis, Africane, alacrior ad tutandam rem publicam, sic habeto: omnibus, qui patriam conservaverint, adiuverint, auxerint, certum esse in caelo definitum locum, ubi beati aevo sempiterno fruantur; nihil est enim illi principi deo, qui omnem mundum regit, quod quidem in terris fiat, acceptius quam concilia coetusque hominum iure sociati, quae civitates appellantur; harum rectores et conservatores hinc profecti huc revertuntur.
But, know this, Africanus, so that you may be more eager to protect the Republic: for all those who have preserved, aided, or enlarged their fatherland there is a fixed place in heaven, where they may enjoy an eternal life of happiness; for nothing that is done on earth is more pleasing to that supreme God who rules the whole universe than the assemblies and gatherings of men called States joined together in justice. The rulers and preservers of these come from here, and to here they return.
(Cicero. de Re Publica. 6.13)
In this passage, Cicero has Scipio Africanus reveal to his adopted grandson, Scipio Aemlianus, that a certain part of heaven is reserved for those who have performed good deeds on behalf of their patria, and who set an example that future generations of Romans might emulate. Although Cicero borrows extensively from Platonic and Stoic philosophy throughout the de Re Publica, he ultimately distances himself from the Platonic concept of metempsychosis, as well as traditional Roman thinking about the Di Manes (Cole, 2013, p. 140) in order to propose an individuated immortality connected to the ‘civic life in the here and now’ (Zetzel, 1995, p. 15).
Cicero also explored the notion of merit-based deification expounded in de Re Publica and in his other philosophical works. In the de Legibus, for example, Cicero further elaborates on those who are able to make the celestial journey. He specifies in that text that women can also be transported in caelum upon death. This inclusion of women makes sense since, as a woman of moral substance and good learning Tullia is deemed, at least by her father, to be an example of feminine virtue to which future generations might look. Like Tullia, the fictional Daphnis, is also a figure whose deeds are described as being worthy of emulation by Virgil. Furthermore, as a contributor to his pastoral society, who led in the Bacchic rites and yoked tigers to chariots, Daphnis can be likened to Cicero’s Scipio Africanus or to any historical Roman who had accomplished good and virtuous deeds on behalf of the Republic.
Daphnis is hailed as a god in Menalcas’ song (‘Deus, deus ille, Menalca’, Virgil. Eclogues. 5.64).9 And yet, he is not the only figure in the poem who is destined to receive divine honors. Menalcas also salutes Mopsus as ‘divinus poeta’ in Eclogue 5 for having chosen a worthy subject for his song: ‘Divine poet, your song is to me like a nap on the grass for the weary, like quenching thirst with a bubbling brook of sweet water in the summer heat: you rival your teacher not only on the pipe, but also with your voice,’ Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta, / quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per aestum / dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere rivo: / nec calamis solum aequiparas, sed voce magistrum (Virgil. Eclogues. 5.45).
Perhaps it is impossible to determine precisely what Virgil meant by calling Mopsus a divinus poeta. Most commentators of the Eclogues simply note that the phrase can be adequately translated as ‘inspired poet’ (cf. Clausen, 1995 p. 165). I wonder, though, in light of the ‘unremarked’ connections between Virgil’s poem, the funerary culture of his day, and the writings of Cicero, if this translation encapsulates the phrase’s full meaning.
As far as we know, Cicero was the first to introduce the word divinus into Latin oratory.10 He had been experimenting with this terminology since the Pro lege Manilia, delivered in 66 BCE. In that speech, Cicero acknowledged that traditional modes of praising Pompey ‘fell short’ of the general’s greatness (Cole, 2013, p. 36). To accurately describe Pompey’s skill in defeating the pirates, Cicero borrowed concepts and language from the Greek world and repackaged them for his Roman audience. For this reason, Cicero is careful not to salute Pompey as a god outright in the Pro lege Manilia. Instead, he describes aspects of Pompey’s character as divine:
pro di immortales! tantamne unius hominis incredibilis ac divina virtus tam brevi tempore lucem adferre rei publicae potuit, ut vos, qui modo ante ostium Tiberinum classem hostium videbatis, nunc nullam intra Oceani ostium praedonum navem esse audiatis?
By the immortal gods! Was the incredible and divine virtue of so great a man able in so short a time to bring so great a light to the Republic that you, who just now were seeing an enemy fleet before the mouth of the Tiber, now hear that that no pirate ship is within the mouth of the Ocean?
(Cicero. Pro lege Manilia. 33)
Although Cicero does not attribute the adjective divinus directly to Pompey in the Pro lege Manilia, the phrase incredibilis ac divina virtus emphasizes Pompey’s super-human traits and begins the work of blurring the distinct categories of human and divine at Rome. In subsequent years, Cicero continued to think through the ways in which ‘civic benefactors’ and ‘savior figures,’ like Pompey, might posthumously achieve divine status (Cole, 2013, p. 62), and by 62 BCE, Cicero had applied the term divinus directly to the younger Scipio in both the Pro Murena (Cicero. Pro Murena. 75) and the Pro Archia Poeta (Cicero. Pro Archia Poeta. 16). Together with his philsophica, as well as his correspondence with Atticus, Cicero’s speeches from the 60s indicate that Cicero was in the process of establishing new modes of thinking about death, commemoration, and deification. Tullia, of course, was never deified by her father, and yet, Julius Caesar was enrolled in the council of the gods in 42 BCE by a consecratio of the Roman senate (Davies, 2000, p. 10). Caesar’s deification changed the categories of human and divine that Cicero’s works had already begun to blur (Hope, 2017, p. 50). For this reason, and because Virgil was writing the Eclogues after the deification of Caesar between 42–37 BCE, it seems likely that the Virgil’s divinus poeta carried with it the connotation of posthumous deification for those who were deemed ‘civic benefactors’ and ‘savior figures’ by their peers (Cole, 2013, p. 62).
In the Eclogues alone, at least three characters, Daphnis, Mopsus and Cornelius Gallus, are either deified or receive the title divinus. All three are either poets, or associated with poetry, and two of the three, Daphnis and Gallus, compose their own epitaphs. By erecting monuments to poets and poet-figures in his text, Virgil seems to suggest that poets also contribute to their societies in meaningful ways, and, for this reason, are worthy candidates for merit-based deification. The notion that poets contribute to their societies significantly was innovative on Virgil’s part, especially because poets had not always been recognized as “civic benefactors” in Roman society.
[. . .] poëtam natura ipsa valere et mentis viribus excitari et quasi divino quodam spiritu inflari [. . .] Sit igitur, iudices, sanctum apud vos, humanissimos homines, hoc poëtae nomen [. . .] Carus fuit Africano superiori noster Ennius, itaque etiam in sepulcro Scipionum putatur is esse constitutus ex marmore. At iis laudibus certe non solum ipse qui laudatur, sed etiam populi Romani nomen ornatur. In caelum huius proavus Cato tollitur: magnus honos populi Romani rebus adiungitur. Omnes denique illi Maximi, Marcelli, Fulvii non sine communi omnium nostrum laude decorantur.
Nature herself fortifies the poet and he is roused by mental fortitude and as if infused by some divine inspiration [. . .] Let this name of poet, therefore, o judges, you most learned men, be considered holy among you. [. . .] Our Ennius was dear to the elder Africanus, and so a marble statue of him is thought to have been erected in the tomb of the Scipiones. But from those praises, surely, not him alone who is praised, but also the name of the Roman people is adorned. The great-grandfather of Cato is raised into heaven; great glory is added to the affairs of the Roman people. Not without the common praise of us all are adorned all the deeds of Maximus, Marcellus and Fulvius
(Cicero. Pro Archia Poeta. 19; 22)
In this passage from the Pro Archia Poeta (62 BCE), Cicero states that poetry, like triumphs, adds glory to the state, and it is for this reason that the name of poets should be considered sanctum. Ennius’ poetic prowess, Cicero indicates, earned him a statue among the tombs of his patrons, the Scipiones. Furthermore, and in a phrase nearly identical to one by Menalcas in line 51 of Eclogue 5 (Daphninque tuum tollemus ad astra), Cicero describes the great-grandfather of Cato as being ‘raised into heaven,’ in caelum [. . .] Cato tollitur (Cicero. Pro Archia Poeta. 22) by Ennius’ poetry.11 Thus the deeds of ‘super-human’ Romans, like the Scipiones or, perhaps, even Tullia in Cicero’s failed poetic experiment of the consolatio, are made immortal, while the poetry itself, replete with virtuous deeds, awards its author a place among those who have ‘preserved, helped and enlarged the commonwealth’ (Cicero. de Re Publica. 6.13).
Greek city-states, Cicero maintains later on in the Pro Archia Poeta (Cicero. Pro Archia Poeta. 20), have long understood the value of poets and their work. In fact, city-states like Colophon, Chios, Salamis and Smyrna, all instituted a poetic cult for Homer, while the archaic poet Archilochus appears to have received a similar cult on his native Paros. These cults provided public burial for the poet, erected memorial inscriptions in his honor, and even recited the poet’s work (Kimmel-Clauzet, 2013, p. 230, Clay, 2004, p. 7). Romans, on the other hand, with the exception of Ennius’ patrons, were not accustomed to bestow similar honors on their poets. Cicero attempts to rectify this depreciation of poets in the Pro Archia Poeta when he calls attention to the efficacy of nationalistic poetry and asserts that it ‘adds lustre’ to the glory of the nation much in the same way that the deeds of a ‘Maximus, Marcellus or Fulvius’ add glory to the state.
As a founder-figure of his society who led in the Bacchic rites and first yoked Armenian Tigers to chariots, Daphnis, like a ‘Maximus, Marcellus or Fluvius’ is worthy of being remembered after his death, while his fellow shepherds, like Mopsus and Menalcas, ensure that his memory will endure by erecting for him a tomb and carmen according to his instructions.
In its purpose, as well as in its form, then, Virgil’s fictional tomb for Daphnis engages with many of the elements that were becoming increasingly characteristic of 1st c. BCE tombs. The contemporary qualities of the monument are best demonstrated in comparison to other tombs of Virgil’s day, and in particular, to the shrine that Cicero intended to build for Tullia. Cicero never built the shrine he outlined in his letters to Atticus. Nevertheless, just as he had hoped to construct a fanum for his daughter that would entice visitors and, thereby, activate her memory, so too does Daphnis’ fictional tomb recall his life’s achievements, however bizarre they may be, to the shepherds who visit his monument in Virgil’s pastoral universe; by reading Daphnis’ carmen and performing rituals on his behalf, the shepherds who live there, and, by extension, Virgil’s reader, ultimately ensure that the deceased’s ‘name, honor, and memory’ (Virgil. Eclogues. 5. 78) will survive the tempus edax.
The tomb that Virgil constructs for Daphnis in Eclogue 5 can be read as a continuation of that character’s story begun in Theocritus’ first Idyll, or as a narrative prop that solidifies Daphnis’ allegorical representation of Julius Caesar. These interpretations, however, fall short of understanding the complete connotations of Virgil’s literary object. Indeed, as Pierre Bourdieu remarks in the Field of Cultural Production, it is in the ‘hectic rhythm’ of change, that ‘poetry’s aesthetic revolutions live [. . . and endure] in brief literary generations.’ This certainly seems to be the case for Daphnis’ tomb, which, when embedded in a greater network of socio-cultural ideas, is shown to be the aesthetic result of the changing commemorative practices and intellectual movements that were occurring in Virgil’s contemporary world. Inspired by the epigraphic furor of his own day, the increased interest in tomb monuments across every social stratification and class, as well as the Ciceronian discourse on merit-based deification, Virgil includes in his poem a historically accurate tomb for the deceased Daphnis. As the earliest of the Augustan poets, Virgil is the first to erect a literary tomb inside his poems.12 In so doing, he combines the most powerful vehicles of eternal memory, poetry and the tomb, in one locus, and creates a new aesthetic about death and deification in the literary production of 1st c. BCE Rome.
1 I am very grateful to the participants and attendees of Imagining the Afterlife for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Additional thanks go to Alessandro Barchiesi, Joy Connolly, Celia Campbell, David S. Levene, and the volume’s anonymous reviewer, all of whom provided valuable suggestions and constructive feedback in the preparation of this piece.
2 For recent studies on allegory in Virgil’s Eclogues, see Payne 2007, Cucchiarelli 2011, Kania 2016 and Farrell 2016.
3 Cf. Clausen, 1994 p. 157. Perhaps Mopsus inscribes the tree with his music because he is younger, less confident, and more likely to forget the song if he attempts to play it from memory. Cf. also Breed, 2006, esp. 50–53 and 117. The inscription on the tree marks Mopsus’ status as a literary poet. Literate poets are not unusual in the Eclogues. Gallus, for example, in Ecl. 10 inscribes his Amores on a tree.
4 All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
5 DuQuesnay, 1976 suggests that a Daphnis who dies of love-sickness would be too similar to the Daphnis of Idyll 1, while a Daphnis who dies a violent death would be too reminiscent of Julius Caesar. Cf. also Anagnostou-Laoutides and Konstan (2008).
6 Zanker, 1990 p. 44–65. The mention of the Bacchic rites calls to mind Dionysus, with whom Mark Antony identified himself after Caesar’s death.
7 The first-person construction of the inscription may be the most obvious for a self-composed epitaph, but it has the added effect of collapsing Daphnis’ identity onto his tomb. Such constructions result in a ‘speaking inscription,’ (Bodel, 2001, p. 18), which enable the inanimate tomb to speak for itself, and it is for this reason that I have chosen to render Daphnis’ epitaph in the present, rather than the past tense: the act of reading an epitaph aloud combines the oral present with the textual past, persuading the reader that a communication between the living and the deceased in the present time is possible (cf. Breed, 2006, p. 4; Lowrie, 2009, p. 358).
8 Clausen, 1994, p. 168 explains the difference between Apollo’s altaria and Daphnis’ arae. Altaria are “superstructures for burnt offerings [. . .] here in apposition to aras [. . .] As a rural deity Daphnis will receive no burnt offerings, but libations of fresh milk and olive oil.”
9 In his post reditum speeches, delivered in 57 BCE, Cicero refers to Lentulus as parens ac deus (Cicero. Post reditum in Senatu. 8) because of the role that consul played in securing his return. Cf. Cole, 2013, p. 70; Levene 1997, p. 77.
10 No Roman speeches prior to those of Cicero have come down to us. Therefore, we cannot know for certain if he was truly the first to use the word divinus.
11 The Ciceronian quote is an allusion to Ennius’ description of Romulus’ apotheosis: unus erit quem tu tolles in caerula caeli / templa (Enn. Ann. 1. 54–55).
12 Virgil may have been the first of the Augustan poets to erect a literary tomb inside his poems, but he was not the last. In fact, the image of the tomb in Roman poetry becomes even more prominent in later Roman authors, like Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid, who, like Virgil, not only experience the epigraphic furor of the 1st c. BCE firsthand, but who also witness Julius Caesar’s deification and Augustus’ self-fashioning as the son of a god. The development of the tomb image in Augustan poetry is the topic of my dissertation, The Poet’s Tomb: Space for Immortality in Augustan Rome (in progress).
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