Eclogue 8

After an introduction, containing an address to an unnamed dedicatee, there follow two love songs of equal length sung by two herdsmen, Damon and Alphesiboeus.

The second is the song of a woman who, with the help of her servant Amaryllis, is performing a magic rite to try to entice her beloved Daphnis back from the city.

The poem is believed to have been written in 39 BC, and the dedicatee is usually thought to be Virgil's patron Gaius Asinius Pollio, whose military exploits are alluded to in verses 6–13.

[2] - 1 An anonymous narrator says he wishes to tell of the songs of two outstanding singers, Damon and Aphesiboeus, to whom cows, lynxes, and even rivers listen in amazement.

He breaks off (lines 6–13) to address an unnamed dedicatee, whom he imagines at this moment crossing the rocks of the river Timavus or skirting the coast of Illyricum, asking him to accept the dedication.

The young man praises the Arcadian mountain Maenalus and the god Pan, who listen to lovers' complaints.

Now wolves will run away from sheep, oak trees will bear apples, and all sorts of other impossible things will happen.

- 64 Alphesiboeus sings the song of an unnamed woman, who is making a magic spell to bring home her beloved Daphnis.

She declares that songs have the power to bring down the moon, and enabled Circe to turn Ulysses' companions into pigs.

She describes how the clay she is holding grows hard and the wax soft in the same fire; she prays her love for Daphnis will do the same.

First, Virgil imagines him sailing past the "rocks of Timavus" (a river at the very north of the Adriatic sea) and the Illyrian coast.

[3] Some scholars, however, such as Bowersock (1971), have proposed that the addressee is not Pollio but Octavian, who fought a campaign in Illyricum beginning in 35 BC; he is also said to have composed a tragedy on the subject of Ajax.

[6] In 2014 it was noticed that the initial letters of the dedication (lines 6 to 13) contain an acrostic: TV SI ES ACI (i.e. accipe) 'if you are the one, accept!'

Possibly this instruction is addressed only to Pollio, though Neil Adkin, who discovered the acrostic, believes that Virgil wished to leave the addressee ambiguous.

Adkin suggests that the ambiguous words oram legis (line 7) 'you skirt the coast' or 'you read the margin' provide a clue to the presence of the acrostic, just as the words primi lege litoris oram provide a clue to an acrostic FIAS in the dedication to Maecenas in Georgics 2.44.

In this idyll a woman called Simaetha makes a magic spell to attract her lover Delphis to return to her.

[16] The adjective "Maenalian" refers to the mountain Maenalus in Arcadia, the fabled region in Greece which Virgil chose to make the scene of his bucolic poems.

For example, in the stanza quoted above, the first two lines are adapted from Theocritus 11.25–29, where the giant Polyphemus recounts leading the nymph Galatea and his mother to gather hyacinths on a hillside.

By introducing a garden and apples, Virgil calls to mind the story of Acontius as told in a poem by Callimachus.

[22] Another myth referenced in this song is that of Ariadne, who was abandoned by the unfaithful Theseus on the island of Naxos, as told in the famous poem 64 of Catullus.

T. Hubbard writes, “By adopting Catullus’ revision of Theocritus, Vergil acknowledges that Damon’s situation is somehow closer to Ariadne’s than to the Theocritean goatherd’s, one of abandonment by the lover rather than one of unreciprocated courtship.”[24] The second song is the song of an unnamed woman who is performing a magic rite in order to cause her husband Daphnis to come home from the city.

One view, taken by the ancient commentator Servius and others, is that the singer makes two effigies, a clay one of herself which grows hard in the fire, and a wax one of Daphnis which melts.

Other scholars, however, have argued that both the clay and the wax refer to Daphnis, and represent his erotic hardening with desire as well as his melting with love.

[29] In support of the view that these acrostics are deliberate not accidental, it is argued that they are nearly symmetrically placed (one five stanzas from the beginning of its song, the other five stanzas before the end); both name a god of love (Amor and Veneris) in the second line; and one is preceded by the words me malus abstulit error 'an evil error has stolen me', the other followed by Daphnis me malus urit 'evil Daphnis is burning me'.