 | The eclogues and georgics of Virgil (1753) |  |
ECLOGUE VIII. PHARMACEUTRIA.
ARGUMENT.
This is evidently an imitation of the φαρμακευτρια of Theocritus, and is very valuable not only for its poetical beauties, but likewise for the account it preserves to us of several superstitious rites and heathen notions of inchantment. The poet seems to have had an high idea of his composition by his introducing it in so lofty a strain, quorum stupefactae carmine lynces. The critics have been very much divided whether it is inscribed to Pollio or Augustus. Catrou pleads very strongly for Augustus; but Dr. Martyn largely examines this plea, and confutes it solidly. There is doubtless a great stress to be laid on
Sola Sophocleo tua carmina digna cothurno.For tho' Augustus began a tragedy on the death of Ajax, (after Sophocles) yet this piece was never published, as many fine ones of Pollio were, who is highly celebrated by Horace for his dramatic excellence. Lib. II. Od. 1. Motum ex Metello, &c. The enchantments described in this Eclogue, are finely imitated in the Arcadio del Sannazora. Prosa 10.
Charm'd with the songs of two contending swains,
The herds for wonder ceas'd to graze the plains,
In deep surprize the lynxes listening stood,
The rolling rivers stopt their headlong flood!
O Pollio! leading thy victorious bands
O'er deep Timavus' or Illyria's sands;
O when thy glorious deeds shall I rehearse,
When tell the world how matchless is thy verse,
Worthy the lofty stage of laurell'd Greece,
Great rival of majestic Sophocles!
With thee began my songs, with thee shall end;
The strains thyself commanded, O attend!
And mid the laurels which thy brows entwine,
Admit this humble ivy-wreath of mine.
Night, her unwholesome shadows scarce withdrew,
What time the cattle love to sip the dew,
Damon, against an olive's trunk reclin'd,
Thus pour'd the transports of his jealous mind.
17. Reclin'd.] Denoting the melancholy posture of the shepherd, leaning against the tree, not incumbens baculo ex olivá.
Bright Lucifer arise! bring on the day,
While I deceiv'd by Nisa pine away,
To heav'n addressing my last pray'rs and tears,
Yet which of all the gods my sorrow hears?
Begin with me, my pipe, Maenalian strains.
And vocal pines, still hears the shepherds' loves;
The rural warblings hears of skilful Pan,
Who first to tune neglected reeds began.
Begin, &c.
Fair Nisa Mopsus weds! O wond'rous mate,
Ye lovers! what may we not hope from fate?
Now gryphons join with mares! another year,
With hostile dogs shall drink the timid deer:
Thy bride comes forth! begin the festal rites!
The walnuts strew! prepare the nuptial lights!
O envied husband, now thy bliss is nigh,
Behold for thee bright Hesper mounts the sky.
Begin, &c.
O Nisa I congratulate thy choice!
Me you despise, my pipe, and artless voice,
My goats, my shaggy brows, my length of beard,
Nor think the gods your broken vows have heard.
Begin, &c.
Once with your mother to our fields you came,
For dewy apples—thence I date my flame;
The choicest fruit I pointed to your view,
Tho' young my raptur'd soul was fix'd on you!
The boughs I scarce could reach with little arms,
But then, ev'n then, could feel thy pow'rful charms.
How glow'd my heart in sweet delusion lost!
Begin, &c.
I know thee, Love! on horrid Tmarus born,
Or from cold Rhodope's hard entrails torn,
Nurs'd in hot sands the Garamants among,
From human stock the savage never sprung.
Begin, &c.
Relentless love the mother taught of yore,
To bathe her hands in her own infant's gore;
O barbarous mother thirsting to destroy!
More cruel was the mother or the boy?
Both, both, alike delighted to destroy,
Th'unnat'ral mother and the ruthless boy.
Begin, &c.
Now hungry wolves let tim'rous lambkins chace,
Narcissus' flowers the barren alder grace,
Let blushing apples knotted oaks adorn,
Let liquid amber drop from every thorn!
Let owls contend with swans; our rural bard
To Orpheus or Arion be preferr'd!
Like Orpheus draw the listening trees along,
Or like Arion charm the finny throng.
Begin, &c.
Let the sea rush o'er all, in shoreless floods!
Take this last dying gift!—farewel, ye woods!
Nisa adieu!—from yon impending steep,
Headlong I'll plunge into the foamy deep!
Cease now, my pipe, now cease Maenalian strains.
The swain's reply—Not all in all excel.
Alphesiboeus.
The altar's sides with holy fillets bind—
The strongest frankincense, rich vervain burn,
That mighty magic may to madness turn
My perjur'd love—'Tis done—and nought remains
To crown the rites but all-inchanting strains.
By strains pale Cynthia from her sphere descends,
Strains chang'd to brutes Ulysses' wondering friends,
Strains in the meadow, or the secret brake,
Can the deaf adder split, and venom'd snake.
Bring, &c.
Lo! first I round thy waxen image twist,
And closely bind this triple-colour'd list,
And three times round the altar walk; for three
Is a dear number to dread Hecaté.
Bring, &c.
Haste, Amaryllis, ply thy busy hand;
Haste, quickly, knit the consecrated band,
And say 'tis knit at Venus' dread command;
In three close knots the mixing colours knit,
For ardent lovers such close bands befit.
Bring, &c.
As this same fire melts wax and hardens clay,
To others deaf, let him my love repay.
Inflam'd with liquid sulphur crackling blaze;
As Daphnis warms my bosom with desire,
May Daphnis burn in this consuming fire.
Bring, &c.
May Daphnis feel such strong, unanswer'd love,
As the fond heifer feels, thro' copse and grove,
Who seeks her beauteous bull, then tir'd and faint
On the green rushy bank lies down to pant,
Lost to herself and rolling on the ground,
Heedless of darksome night now clos'd around!
Ev'n thus, may disregarded Daphnis burn,
Pine to despair, nor I his flame return.
Bring, &c.
This vest the faithless traitor left behind,
Pledge of his love I give, to thee consign'd,
O sacred earth! thus plac'd beneath the door,
O may the precious pledge its lord restore!
Bring, &c.
These powerful, poisonous plants in Pontus dug,
(Pontus abounds in many a magic drug)
Sage Moeris gave; in dire enchantments brew'd,
Moeris his limbs with these has oft bedew'd,
Hence the fell sorcerer have I seen become
A wolf, and thro' wild forests howling roam,
With these from graves the starting spectres warn,
And whirl to distant fields the standing corn.
Bring, &c.
And strew them, Amaryllis, o'er the flood;
But backward cast them, dare not look behind,
With these I'll strive to touch his harden'd mind;
But weak all art my Daphnis' breast to move,
For he nor charms regards, nor pow'rs above.
Bring, &c.
Lo! round the altar's sides what flames aspire!
The dying embers burst into a fire!
List! Hylax barks! O may it lucky prove!
But ah! how oft are we deceiv'd that love?
Can it be truth? my heart will Daphnis ease?
He comes, my Daphnis comes—Enchantments cease!
25. 'Tis very poetical to personify the mountain Maenalus, and ascribe to it a voice and the power of hearing.
34. Nuptial lights.] The bride used to be led home by night with lighted torches before her. Their torches were pieces of pine or unctuous wood, which were cut to a point, that they might be the more easily inflamed. Plutarch says, there were five usually carried. Martyn.
That nuces signify walnuts, and have a mystical signification in the nuptial ceremonies, see Martyn's Georgics, v. 187.
36. Hesper.] That is, night approaches.
“------ Hesperus that led“The starry host shone brightest, till the moon, &c.
Milton.
40. Length of beard.] La Cerda is of opinion, that the meaning is, my violent love has made me neglect my person.
45. The choicest fruit.] The circumstances of his officiousness of pointing out the fruit, and of his being but just able to reach the branches from the ground, are natural and poetical.
Ut vidi! ut perii! ut me malus abstulit error!excells the
Ως ιδων, ως εμανη, ως ες βαθυν αλλετ ερωτα.52. On horrid Tmarus.] Does not the shepherd Damon seem to be too well acquainted with the geography and names of distant countries?
57. Relentless love.] After Medea had fled with Jason, one of the Argonauts, from her father and country, he basely forsook her and married another: this so highly enraged her, that she murdered before his face the children she had by him. The most pathetic tragedy of Euripides is on this fine subject: wherein the tenderness of the mother, and the fury of the forsaken mistress, produce noble struggles of passion. I cannot forbear adding, that the celebrated lines crudelis mater magis, &c. contain a trifling play and jingling of words very unworthy the simplicity of Virgil's style. Dr. Trapp and Dr Martyn are of a quite contrary opinion, and think the passage beautiful.
78. Ye tuneful virgins.] The poet hints that he is unable to proceed by his own strength, and begs therefore the assistance of the muses. Bossu.
80. Bring water.] The water was heated in the house, and the sorceress calls to her assistant Amaryllis to bring it out to her; so there is no need to read affer, as some have done.
94. For three.] The ancients had a prodigious veneration for the number three, and held many ridiculous superstitions in relation to it. This number was thought the most perfect of all numbers, having regard to the beginning, middle, and end.
103. As this same fire.] There were plainly two figures made, one of wax, and the other of clay, the former would naturally melt, and the other harden by the fire. The notion was, that as the image consumed, so did the person it represented. Dr. Martyn observes, that in the beginning of the last century, many persons were convicted of this and other such like practices, and were executed accordingly, as it was deemed to be attempting the lives of others. King James the first was a great believer of the power of magic, and wrote a very idle book on the subject, entituled, Daemonologie. Shakespear seems to have chosen the subject of his Macbeth to please the taste of that prince.
The bays were burnt also to consume the flesh of the person on whose account these magical rites were performed. The cake is crumbled upon the image of Daphnis as upon the victim of this sacrifice.
105. The mola was made of meal salted and kneaded, molita, whence it was called mola: and victims were said to be immolated, because the foreheads of the victims, and the hearths and the knives had this cake crumbled on them. Ruaeus.
115. Night.] In the original, Perdita, nec serae meminit decedere nocti; which sweet line, says Macrobius, is taken entirely from Varius.
125. Sage Moeris.] The description of the powerfulness of Moeris his magic, is sublime. Pontus was the land of poisons: Mithridates, who used to eat poison, reigned there; and Medea was born in Cholcis.
132. These ashes.) The most powerful of all incantations was to throw the ashes of the sacrifice backward into the water.
140. The dying embers.] The ancients thought the sudden blazing of the fire a very happy omen. For Plutarch relates, that the vestal virgins congratulated Cicero, and begged him to proceed in his prosecution of Catiline, and assured him of great success, because the fire of their sacrifice lighted of its own accord.
| The eclogues and georgics of Virgil (1753) | |