Ecloga Epicurea

Abstract

Literary origins are a melancholy business. Only in an age when men are certain of their own preferences and intentions do we find a corresponding lack of scruple regarding historical reconstruction. Herder thought he knew where the epic came from; Pope similarly knew where, and how, and by whom the first pastorals were sung. Pope’s answer, in his A Discourse on Pastoral Poetry,¹ that the pastoral is the oldest literary genre, and that bucolic ditties were first composed by the early herdsmen who were both simple and good, is an answer almost as old as the genre itself. It is one of the answers given by the ancient “anthropologists,” from Dicaearchus to Varro and beyond.² More commonly, however, the ancient scholars derive the genre from a background of ritual, specifically the worship of Artemis in various avatars.³ The first eclogues, the scholiasts argue, were rustic hymns and dances offered to he goddess in times of stress. But as long ago as 1821 F. G. Welcker⁴ carefully went through the evidence adduced by the scholiasts and found it wanting.

il ne s’agit nullement, ici, d’un monde de la compensation et de la justification, ou certaines tendances seraient exprimées ou contr-exprimées par certains actes; le roman abolit délibérément tout passé et tout profondeur, c’est un roman de l’extension, non de la comprehension.

Roland Barthes