Eclogue 7
Poem by Virgil / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eclogue 7 (Ecloga VII; Bucolica VII) is a poem by the Latin poet Virgil, one of his book of ten pastoral poems known as the Eclogues. It is an amoebaean poem in which a herdsman Meliboeus recounts a contest between the shepherd Thyrsis and the goatherd Corydon.[1]
The poem is imitated from the sixth Idyll of Theocritus.[2] J. B. Greenough thinks the scene is apparently laid in the pastoral region of North Italy.[2] The date assigned to the poem is 38 BC.[2]
In the chiastic structure of the Eclogues, Eclogue 7 is paired with Eclogue 3, which also recounts an amoebaean contest between two herdsmen. The two contests have the same number of lines, but with a different arrangement. In Eclogue 3 the contest has 12 rounds, with each contestant singing two lines in a round; in Eclogue 7 the contest has 6 rounds, with each contestant singing 4 lines in a round. The contest in Eclogue 3 ended in a draw, while in Eclogue 7 Corydon is declared the winner.[3]