Eclogue 3
After trading insults, the two men decide to have a singing competition, for which each offers a prize (Damoetas a female calf and Menalcas a pair of ornamented cups).
[5][6] The rule was that the second singer should answer the first in an equal number of verses, on the same or a similar subject, and also if possible show superior force or power of expression.
[6] The Eclogue is largely copied from the fourth and fifth Idylls of Theocritus, but this form of poetry was probably extremely popular in Italy, where improvised rude songs were always a characteristic of village festivities.
B. Greenough notes, "Though the Amœbæan verse is Greek, and the poem itself copied from Theocritus, yet the alternate abuse is thoroughly Italian.
According to its rules the leader (Damoetas) needs to dazzle and bewilder his opponent through versatile handling of conventional literary forms and through sudden shifts in subject or theme.
Damoetas responds with a reminder of how Menalcas had broken Daphnis's bow and panpipes in a fit of jealousy over a boy.
- 28 At this point Damoetas challenges Menalcas to a singing competition, proposing that he will put up a female calf as a prize.
Menalcas responds that he dare not offer a calf, since his father and strict stepmother count the herd twice every day, but he has some cups carved by the skilled craftsman Alcimedon, which he claims are much more valuable.
- 84 Next both young men mention Virgil's patron Pollio and his love of poetry, one promising him a female calf, the other a bull.
In his next three couplets Damoetas warns the slave boys to beware of dangers such as the snake hiding in the grass and the crumbling river bank; Menalcas replies in a similar way.
- 108 After this last exchange, Palaemon brings the contest to a close, declaring that it is impossible to judge between them, and that both are worthy of a female calf.
Theocritus's idyll, set in a rural location near Thurii and Sybaris in southern Italy, has a very similar structure to Eclogue 3: a goatherd Comatas and a young shepherd Lacon first exchange insults, then agree to have a singing contest, one wagering a goat and the other a lamb.
Eclogue 3 also has elements taken from the pseudo-Theocritan Idyll 8, such as the name Menalcas of one of the participants, and his reluctance to wager an animal because his parents count the herd every evening.
[11] Hatzikosta (2001) shows how both Virgil and Theocritus subverted the conventions of bucolic poetry by putting sophisticated words into the mouths of uncouth herdsmen.
He declares that they were carved by the craftsman Alcimedon (who is otherwise unknown) and that they have pictures of the astronomer Conon and "who was that other, who described the whole world for the nations with his rod and what times the harvester and the bent ploughman should keep?"
Segal writes: "This scene ... presents in small that fusion of the real and the mythical which is characteristic of the Eclogues and lies at the heart of their suggestive power.
One solution proposed by ancient commentators and attributed to Virgil himself by Asconius Pedianus is that since caeli spatium can mean not only 'the extent of the sky' but also 'the extent of Caelius', said to be a wealthy man from Virgil's home town of Mantua, who spent so much money that when he died he had only a piece of land big enough to be buried in.
[25] Carl Springer (1984) finds this suggestion "cogent", noting that Virgil makes puns on names elsewhere in the poem also.
[26] D. E. W. Wormell (1960), dismissing Savage's solution as "over-ingenious", suggested that the first riddle refers to a remarkable orrery or three-dimensional model of the sky which was designed by Archimedes and brought to Rome by Marcus Claudius Marcellus the conqueror of Syracuse.
There was another similar model made by Posidonius described by Cicero in De natura deorum, a book published in 45 BC, only three or four years before Virgil composed this eclogue.
[27] In return for her services, Amalthea, as the star Capella, and her two kids (Haedi) were placed in the sky as part of the arm of the constellation Auriga 'the Charioteer'.
[28] E. L. Brown (1978), noting Aelius Donatus's remark in his life of Virgil that maxime mathematicae operam dedit 'he was extremely keen on mathematics', proposed that the phrase tris ulnas refers to the three sides of a triangle, whose angles add up to 180°, the extent of the sky.
T. K. Dix (1995) suggested that it might refer to the shield of Achilles, which according to one story was washed ashore near the tomb of Ajax; in this way he would link this riddle to the solution of the second.
[31] Scholars agree that the second riddle refers to the flower hyacinthus (which might not have been the modern hyacinth)[31] which was mentioned in Menalcas's first answer at the beginning of the contest (line 63) as being associated with Phoebus (Apollo).
[32] T. K. Dix (1995) agreed with Campbell that the second riddle might refer to a book; but rather than Callimachus's Aetia, he suggested that the story of Ajax as well as that of Phyllis were described by Euphorion of Chalcis in a poem about Apollo's grove at Gryneium on the coast of Asia Minor.
This poem or parts of it was reportedly translated into Latin by Cornelius Gallus and the grove is also mentioned by Virgil in Eclogue 6.72.
Also in Eclogue 9 Moeris quotes from a poem in which Menalcas had promised to compose to honour a certain Varus if Mantua (Virgil's home town in northern Italy) could be saved: it is believed that Varus was one of the land commissioners responsible for distributing land among retired soldiers in 41 BC after the civil war.
[36] In Eclogue 10 Menalcas is represented as a cowherd comforting the poet Cornelius Gallus, who is dying of love after being deserted by his girlfriend Lycoris.
In Eclogue 3.12–15 Damoetas teases Menalcas for having broken Daphnis's bow and panpipes in a fit of jealousy when he learnt they had been gifted to a boy.
