SOURCE: “Eclogue 1: An Introduction to Virgilian Pastoral” in The Singer of the “Eclogues”: A Study of Virgilian Pastoral, University of California Press, 1979, pp. 65-95.

In the essay below, Alpers presents a detailed analysis of Vergil's Eclogue One and maintains that the poem suspends potential conflicts, thereby achieving a certain harmony.

I

Virgil's first eclogue is a problematic poem, yet it has always been felt to be a representative pastoral. It is perhaps too neat to say that it is representative because problematic, and yet no less an authority than Sidney feels something of the sort: “Is it then the Pastoral poem which is misliked? … Is the poor pipe disdained, which sometime out of Meliboeus' mouth can show the misery of people under hard lords or ravening soldiers? And again, by Tityrus, what blessedness is derived to them that lie lowest from the goodness of them that sit highest...