‘Eclogue IV’: Virgil’s Mysterious Prophecy

Scholars debate whether Virgil’s cryptic poem foretells the rise of Augustus or of Christ.

The first few lines of Virgil's “The Eclogues,” 15th-century manuscript, Vatican Library. Public Domain

The Roman poet Virgil (70 B.C.–19 B.C.) is best known for writing the epic poem “The Aeneid,” but he also wrote a series of pastoral and political poems called “The Eclogues” (sometimes “The Bucolics”). The poems sing mostly of idyllic rural life among the burnished fields, flower-speckled meadows, and winding orchards, with the occasional intrusion of the political discord that was occurring at the end of the first century B.C.

“The Eclogues,” a term meaning “selections,” feature mostly herdsmen, speaking to one another and engaging in songs that echo through the countryside. The songs sometimes deal with the confiscation of their land due to the political upheaval of the time.

One of these poems—“Eclogue IV”—stands out from the rest: It’s music of a higher strain, and it touches on far loftier themes and on a more cosmic scale than the humble pastoral verses that surround it.

‘Eclogue IV’

“Eclogue IV: Thy Very Cradle Quickens.” 1876, by Samuel Palmer. Pencil black and white landscape study. CC BY 2.5

“Eclogue IV“ has entranced and befuddled critics for centuries, kicking up a controversy that involves widely differing interpretations. It’s written like a riddle or a prophecy, but when it comes to precisely what it means, the critics and scholars—as they are wont to do—disagree.

The poem begins with an overt shift in tone from the ones prior in the series. The poet signals that this selection will be different: “Sicilian Muses, let us sing a somewhat loftier strain. Not everyone do orchards and the lowly tamarisks delight. If your song is of the woodland, let the woods be worthy of a consul.”

The poet proclaims the dawning of a new age: “Now is come the last age of Cumaean song; the great line of the centuries begins anew. Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns; now a new generation descends from heaven on high.”

This new age is associated with the birth of a child: “Only do you, pure Lucina, smile on the birth of the child, under whom the iron brood shall at last cease and a golden race spring up throughout the world!” Lucina is the epithet given to the goddesses Juno or Diana as patronesses of childbirth. The Latin work “Lux,” from which Lucina is derived, means “light,” and in this context refers to bringing a new child into the light.

Virgil presents the child in question, a baby boy, as a savior and ruler of the world. “He shall have the gift of divine life, shall see heroes mingled with gods, and shall himself be seen by them, and shall rule the world to which his father’s prowess brought peace.”

After predicting the child’s sovereignty over the earth, Virgil enters into several lovely and mysterious verses using natural imagery to depict the world opening its arms to welcome this young ruler. The poet predicts that the earth will spring forth in joyful verdure, and the lines gently glide from one image of abundance to the next: ivy, foxglove, Egyptian bean, briar, smiling flowers, and goats with full udders.

Traditional Symbols

A rich symbolic tradition surrounds the ivy plant: it has been associated with fertility, orchards, religious ecstasy, the god Dionysus, and theater. Perhaps most significantly in terms of this poem, the evergreen ivy engendered a symbolic connection with immortality and fidelity. Since the poem implies that the reign of the infant boy will be unending, Virgil likely has the immortality of ivy in mind here.

In Roman mythology, the goddess Flora touched Juno (or Hera, for the Greeks) with foxglove to impregnate her with the god Mars without the involvement of a father. As we will see below, this is important for the Christian interpretations of Virgil’s poem, which see a possible allusion in this to the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.

“Juno and Flora” 1702, Bon Boullogne. Palace of Versailles, Paris. Public Domain

More cryptically, the next few lines speak of cows who no longer fear lions and the destruction of a “serpent.” The young hero’s entrance into maturity coincides with further earthly fruitfulness: fields of corn, brambles covered in clusters of shining grapes, and oak trees releasing a sweet liquid.

So peaceful and prosperous will be the hero’s reign that, after a repeat of the Trojan War, a kind of beatitude will descend over the world, where commerce, agriculture, and similar arts will no longer be needed. “No more will wool be taught to put on varied hues, but of himself the ram in the meadows will change his fleece, now to sweetly blushing purple, now to a saffron yellow; and scarlet shall clothe the grazing lambs at will.”

Virgil sees the gloriousness of the new age spreading out, settling over, and entering into all things, to the very rim of earth and sky: “See how the world bows with its massive dome—earth and expanse of sea and heaven’s depth!”

In his exultation, the poet rises on a surge of audacity to challenge the gods themselves to poetic competition, proclaiming that, if he lives to see the dawning of this new day, his artistic powers will swell to such heights that not even the god Pan himself will be able to compete with him. He concludes the poem by returning to the image of the coming hero as an infant: “Begin, baby boy, to recognize your mother with a smile: ten months have brought your mother long travail. Begin, baby boy!”

Interpretations

Clearly, with this Eclogue, we have moved beyond the harping and flute-playing of shepherds to a grand prophecy concerning the whole world. A number of understandings of the poem have been put forward, including that Virgil was eulogizing his own poetry or that he was writing about the son of a friend, the C. Asinius Pollio to whom the poem is first addressed, or that he was predicting the greatness of Mark Antony’s offspring.

None of these scenarios match the tone of the poem. It speaks about a definite individual whose reign will reform the face of the whole world—although a case could be made that at the time of writing, Antony’s child was expected to do something of the kind.

Two other interpretations seem more appropriate, given the euphoric and grandiose nature of the poem’s language and content. The first holds that the ruler of the world referenced in the poem is Octavian—Caesar Augustus—and with this poem Virgil was engaged in the longstanding tradition of praising one’s poetic patrons.

The Founder of the Roman Empire

At the time of Virgil’s writing, Rome was engaged in the transition from a republic to an empire through the famous civil wars involving Julius Caesar, Pompey the Great, Marcus Crassus, Mark Antony, Marcus Lepidus, and Octavian. Julius Caesar had named his great-nephew Octavian as his adopted son and heir. After Caesar’s assassination, Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Lepidus defeated Caesar’s killers before turning on one another. The last man standing was Octavian. Octavian became Caesar Augustus and the founder of the Roman Empire. He inaugurated a period of peace and stability such as Rome (and the world) had not known in a long time.

A bust of Caesar Augustus as a young Octavian, dated circa 30 BC. Capitoline Museums, Rome. Public Domain

Virgil knew Augustus personally; in fact, his magnum opus, “The Aeneid,” was commissioned by Augustus. Virgil even gave private readings of “The Aeneid” to Augustus and his family. So, it’s not unreasonable to imagine that Virgil saw in Augustus a kind of savior figure who had at last brought a period of peace, stability, and prosperity to the Roman world.

It’s not a stretch to imagine he’d want to write something in praise of his powerful patron. He did so in some passages of “The Aeneid,” so there is precedent for it. In this reading, the infant boy who grows up to rule over the world is Augustus himself—whose domain did, in fact, include most of the known world at that time. This interpretation stumbles a bit when one realizes that Virgil wrote the poem in 40 B.C., before Octavian became Augustus and the ruler of the world. Of course, it’s possible that Virgil was simply able to accurately predict the course of political events, or else he had genuinely prophetic powers.

A Christian Interpretation

The second interpretation holds that Virgil was a “proto-Christian” offering a messianic prophecy of Christ on the eve of his coming. Early Christian writers such as St. Augustine developed this reading of the poem. In this reading, Virgil had, somehow, a prophetic glimpse of the coming redemption of the world and the initiation of the Christian era in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Dante makes Virgil a central figure in his Christian poem, “The Divine Comedy,” partly because of this medieval belief, taken from Augustine, about Virgil’s cryptically Christian poetry. The Eclogue was seen as a pagan counterpart to the Old Testament prophecies of Isaiah and others. Support for this interpretation comes from the striking Christian themes and imagery throughout the poem. An incomplete list includes a reference to a virgin; the coming of a hero who is a god/associated with the gods; the remittance of the sin and guilt of the world; the foxglove and its associated mythology; the perishing of the serpent (a traditional symbol of the devil); the lambs covered in scarlet (resembling Christ, the Paschal Lamb); and the grand extent and duration of this baby boy’s kingdom.

An illustration of Isaiah 11:6, 7, 1896, by William Strutt. The passage describes the how the Christ Child will lead the animals—both the wild and the gentle. Public Domain

Most modern scholars, however, contend that these elements can all be interpreted without recourse to Christian ideas.

Whatever Virgil had in mind exactly, there’s no denying that the poem possesses an unmistakable potency that grips the mind and imagination so that, when we encounter it, we know we have crossed some kind of threshold into the unknown. We’re in the presence of great mysteries, an otherworldly atmosphere powerfully conjured by Virgil’s poetry. Whether for its semi-mystical content or its beautiful verses, the poem is well worth reading and meditating on.

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