Eclogue 4

Another possibility, argued by Francis Cairns, is that the child is the expected offspring of Virgil's patron Gaius Asinius Pollio, to whom the poem is dedicated.

Notable individuals such as Constantine the Great, St. Augustine, Dante Alighieri, and Alexander Pope believed in this interpretation of the eclogue.

Modern scholars by and large shy away from this interpretation, although Floyd does note that the poem contains elements of religious and mythological themes, and R. G. M. Nisbet concluded that it is likely that Virgil was indirectly inspired by the Hebrew Scriptures via Eastern oracles.

[2] The Eclogues (from the Greek word for "selections") are a group of ten poems roughly modeled on the bucolic hexameters ("pastoral poetry") of the Hellenistic poet Theocritus.

[4] In line 4, the speaker references the Cumaean Sibyl, claiming it as a source for his unfolding prophecy concerning the magnus ordo saeclorum, or "great order of the ages".

Yet do thou at that boy's birth, In whom the iron race shall begin to cease, And the golden to arise over all the world, Holy Lucina, be gracious; now thine own Apollo reigns."

Jenny Strauss Clay noted that the poem implies that the whole Heroic Age will have to be replayed; a new band of Argonauts will travel the seas, and a new Trojan War will occur.

[14] Virgil's reference to Linus in this section symbolizes "the symbiosis of Hesiodic song culture and erudite, 'bookish' poetics of the so-called Alexandrian poets", resulting in a "uniquely Virgilian pastoral aesthetic.

[24] Some modern scholars believe that the poem celebrates the Treaty of Brundisium, which gave rise to the Second Triumvirate of Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.

"[22] Rose proposed that, because Virgil was highly educated and had "a great taste for philosophic and quasi-philosophic studies", it is possible that he combined dozens of mystical and religious ideas in the poem, "joining Sibylline formulae to age-old beliefs about divine kings, taking hints from many doctrines of original sin … with astrological speculations of recent date, and coloring the whole with the theanthropic, or Messianic, expectations.

"[28] Due to this synthesis of ideas, Rose points out that it is possible that Virgil used the Hebrew Scriptures for part of the poem's inspiration.

[30] Nisbet pointed out that the poem can be analyzed according to two different schools of thought: the "Easterners" (promoted notably by Eduard Norden) argue that the eclogue had to have been influenced by religions of the East, most notably Jewish messianism, whereas the "Westerners" (furthered by the work of Günther Jachmann) argue that the work was influenced largely by concepts familiar to the Greco-Roman West.

Other sections, however, such as lines 26–36—which Nisbet argued were written in a style akin to Greco-Roman prophecies (and whose wording suggests "the ideals of Virgil's own society")—should be viewed through the Westerners' lens.

[36] One strong argument for making this change is that Virgil here seems to be imitating Catullus 61.219, where a baby is encouraged to smile sweetly at its father (dulce rideat ad patrem).

[37] Another argument is that where Quintilian 9.3.8 quotes the line, even though the manuscripts there also have cui, it seems certain from the point he is making about singular pronouns referring to plural antecedents that his text actually had qui.

Nisbet, for instance, writes, "It is clear from the structure and sense of the passage that the baby is doing the laughing and not the parents (that is to say, the cui of Virgil's manuscripts is impossible against the qui implied by Quintilian 9.3.8).

[41] In 2017 Leah Kronenberg found a double-letter acrostic in the syllables DE CA TE which begin lines 9, 10, and 11, forming the Greek word δεκάτη (dekátē) 'tenth'.

[47] Another apparent acrostic, the Latin word CACATA, has long been observed in lines 47–52, but it is disputed by scholars whether it is intentional or an "embarrassing accident".

[51] Many noted individuals, such as Constantine the Great, St. Augustine, Dante Alighieri and Alexander Pope believed in this interpretation of the eclogue.