Ecloga 1: Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi Add a review

Eclogue 1 (Ecloga I) is a bucolic poem by the Latin poet Virgil from his Eclogues. In this poem, which is in the form of a dialogue, Virgil contrasts the diverse fortunes of two farmers, Tityrus, an old man whose lands and liberty have been restored to him thanks to the intervention of an unnamed young man (usually identified with Octavian), and Meliboeus, who has been forced off his land, which is due to be given to a soldier (line 70). It is generally assumed that the poem refers to the confiscations of land that took place around Virgil's home town of Mantua in 41 BC in order to settle retired soldiers after the civil war. The poem has 83 lines, and is written in the dactylic hexameter metre.