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Tityrus, while you lie there at ease under the awning of a spreading beech and practise country songs on a light shepherd's pipe, I have to bid good-bye to the home fields and the ploughlands I love .... and you lie sprawling in the shade, teaching the woods to echo back the charms of Amaryllis.
Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro), The Dispossed, from the Pastoral Poems (The Eclogues), translated by E.V. Rieu, Penguin Classics, 1949, p. 21.
PLACE: An idealization of Arcady (in the central part of Southern Greece, i.e. Peloponnesus); but more likely the images he draws on are recollections of his own home country in Northen Italy (near Mantua) where he was born in 70 B.C.; other references may be to Sicily.
TIME: During Virgil's lifetime, ca. 49 B.C.
CIRCUMSTANCE: (general notes to The Eclogues): most sound references are to the pastoral playing by shepherds of the flute (two reed-pipes joined with wax), or to singing contests, involving each contestant singing a verse in turn on related and contrasting subjects; other natural sounds found in the country and woods also abound.
Why, Tityrus, the very pines and springs, the very vineyards here, have sighed for you.
Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro), The Dispossed, from the Pastoral Poems (The Eclogues), translated by E.V. Rieu, Penguin Classics, 1949, p. 22.
PLACE: Northern Italy (see also card no. 542)
TIME: During Virgil's lifetime, ca. 49 B.C.
CIRCUMSTANCE: The sounds of nature are interpreted as conveying human emotions in the context.
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