| Abstrakt: |
An innovation in Vergilian pastoral, compared with that of Theocritus, is the increased emphasis on competition, both as a feature of formal song exchange and as a thematic focus of the collection overall. In the Idylls, Theocritus presents a range of possibilities for competition in song exchange, from harmonious sharing, to playful one-upmanship, to open hostility. Vergil's intertextual program redeploys key features of the Idylls so as to emphasize the contentiousness of song exchange in the Eclogues. I suggest that this foregrounding of conflict reflects political tensions, especially those between urban and rural interests during the confiscations of the 40s BCE, which famously form the backdrop to Ecl. 1 and 9. The sharpened contentiousness of song competition in the Eclogues may reflect as well tensions felt by Roman municipal citizens as they strove to construct new identities that prized both their local, ancestral origin and their Roman civic role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
