Eclogue 4, also known as the Fourth Eclogue, is the name of a Latin poem by the Roman poet Virgil. Part of his first major work, the Eclogues, the piece was written around 40 BC, during a time of brief stability following the Treaty of Brundisium; it was later published in and around the years 39–38 BC. The work describes the birth of a boy, a supposed savior, who once of age will become divine and eventually rule over the world. During late antiquity and the Middle Ages, a desire emerged to view Virgil as a virtuous pagan, and as such the early Christian theologian Lactantius, and St. Augustineto varying degreesreinterpreted the poem to be about the birth of Jesus Christ.
This belief persisted into the Middle Ages, with many scholars arguing that Virgil not only prophesied Christ prior to his birth but also that he was a pre-Christian prophet. Dante Alighieri included Virgil as a main character in his Divine Comedy, and Michelangelo included the Cumaean Sibyl on the ceiling painting of the Sistine Chapel (a reference to the widespread belief that the Sibyl herself prophesied the birth of Christ, and Virgil used her prophecies to craft his poem). Modern scholars, such as Robin Nisbet, tend to eschew this interpretation, arguing that seemingly Judeo-Christian elements of the poem can be explained through means other than divine prophecy.
Background The scholarly consensus is that Virgil began the hexameter Eclogues (or Bucolics) in 42 BC and it is thought that the collection was published around 39–8 BC (although this assertion is not without its detractors).Fowler (1996), p. 1602. The Eclogues (from the Greek word for "selections") are a group of ten poems roughly modeled on the bucolic hexameter poetry ("pastoral poetry") of the Hellenistic poet Theocritus. The fourth of these Eclogues can be dated to around 40 BC, during a time when the Roman Civil war seemed to be coming to an end.Morwood (2008), p. 5. Eclogue 4 largely concerns the birth of a child (puer) who will become divine and eventually rule over the world.Rose (1924), p. 114.Davis (2010), p. x. Classicist H. J. Rose notes that the poem "is in a sense Messianic, since it contains a prophecy (whether meant seriously or not) of the birth of a wonder-child of more than mortal virtue and power, who shall restore the Golden Age".Rose (1924), p. 113.
By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries AD, Virgil had gained a reputation as a virtuous pagan, a term referring to pagans who were never evangelized and consequently during their lifetime had no opportunity to recognize Christ, but nevertheless led virtuous lives, so that it seemed objectionable to consider them damned.Vitto (1989), pp. 3649. Eventually, some Christians sought to reconcile Virgil's works with the supposed Christianity present in them. Consequently, during the Late Antiquity and beyond, many assumed that the puer referenced in the Fourth Eclogue was actually Jesus Christ.Conte (1999), p. 267.
History
Early interpretations
According to Classicist Domenico Comparetti, in the early Christian era, "A certain theological doctrine, supported by various passages of [Judeo-Christian] scripture, induced men to look for prophets of Christ among the Gentiles". This inevitably resulted in early Christians looking to the works of Virgil—a famed poet who, even in late antiquity had immense clout in Roman society—for any sign of prophecy. Eventually, there arose a belief that Virgil's Fourth Eclogue foretold the birth of Jesus, which seems to have first emerged during the 4th century.Comparetti (1895), p. 100.Kallendorf (2015), 51. The scholar Steven Benko proposes that this interpretation became so popular around this time (and not earlier) because it "provided [Constantinian Christians] a way to connect to non-Christian society and to give Christianity respectability."Kallendorf (2015), 52.
The first major proponent that the poem was prophetic was likely the early Christian writer Lactantius, who served as Constantine the Great's religious advisor. In a chapter of his book, Divinae Institutiones (The Divine Institutes), entitled "Of the Renewed World", Lactantius quotes the Eclogue and argues that it refers to Jesus's awaited return at the end of the millennium. He further claims that "the poet [i.e. Virgil] foretold [the future coming Christ] according to the verses of the Cumaean Sibyl" (that is, the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae).Comparetti (1895), p. 101.Bourne (1916), p. 392.Pelikan (1999), p. 37.Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones 7.24. According to Sabine G. MacCormack, this quote seems to suggest that while Lactantius believed the poem was a prophecy, he did not necessarily believe that Virgil himself was a prophet, as the poet was merely "reflect[ing] what the Sybil of Cumae and the Erythraean Sibyl had said long before [he] wrote."MacCormack (1998), p. 25.
Constantine himself also believed the poem could be interpreted as a prophecy about Christ. Many copies of the Roman historian Eusebius's Vita Constantini (The Life of Constantine) also contain a transcript of a speech made by the emperor at a Good Friday sermon during the First Council of Nicaea (AD 325),Constantine apud Eusebius, Oratio ad coetum sanctorum 1921. in which the emperor re-imagines almost the entire poem line-by-line as a Christian portent (although a few are omitted because they overtly reference pagan characters and concepts). Some of Constantine's interpretations are obvious: he argues that the virgo in line 6 is a reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the puer in lines 8, 18, 60, and 62 to Christ, and the serpent in line 24 to the Serpent of Evil. Others are more subjective: For instance, the lions in line 22 represent, to the emperor, those who persecuted Christians, and the Assyrian flower in line 25 represents the race of people, i.e. the Assyrians, who were "leader[s] in the faith of Christ".Bourne (1916), p. 391. The emperor also interpreted the reference to Achilles fighting against Troy in lines 34-36 as an allegory for Christ (the "new" Achilles) battling evil (the "new" Troy). Finally, Constantine proposed that lines 37–59 do not refer the birth of a normal, mortal child, but rather to a being who "mortal parents have not smiled upon": in other words, Jesus Christ, who, according to Christian scripture, "had no parents in the usual sense".Bourne (1916), pp. 3902. However, Constantine differed from Lactantius in his opinion of Virgil, arguing that, given all the supposed allusions in this poem, Virgil surely "wrote with full knowledge that he was foretelling Christ", but he "expressed himself darkly and introduced the mention of [Roman] deities to avoid affronting the pagans and provoking the anger of the authorities."
Several decades later, Church Father Augustine of Hippo expressed his belief that Virgil was one of many "Gentile ... prophets" who by divine grace had prophesied Christ's birth.Pelikan (1999), p. 36.Augustine, Epistolae ad Romanos inchoata expositio 1.3. Echoing the sentiment of Lactantius, he wrote that the mention of Cumae in line 4 was a likely reference to the supposed Sibylline prophecy concerning Christ. However, Augustine, reasoned that while Virgil may have prophesied the birth and coming of Christ, it was likely that he did not understand the true meaning of what he himself was writing.Bourne (1916), p. 392–393.Augustine, De civitate Dei, 10.27.
The opinion that Eclogue 4 was a reference to the coming of Jesus was not universally held by early members of the early Church, however. St. Jerome, an early Church Father now remembered best for translating the Bible into Latin, specifically wrote that Virgil could not have been a Christian prophet because he never had the chance to accept Christ. Jerome further derided anyone who held Virgil as a pre-Christian prophet, calling such a belief childish and claiming that it was just as ridiculous as Christian cento poems. But regardless of his exact feelings, the classicist Ella Bourne notes that the mere fact Jerome responded to the belief is a testament to its pervasiveness and popularity during that time.Bourne (1916), p. 393.
Medieval interpretations
In the early part of the sixth century, Latin grammarian Fabius Planciades Fulgentius made a passing reference to the supposed prophetic nature of the Fourth Eclogue, noting: In quarta vaticinii artem adsumit ("In the Fourth [Eclogue], [Virgil] takes up the art of prophecy"). However, his view seems to have been a bit nuanced, and in one of his books, he wrote that "no one is permitted to know all the truth except ... Christians, on whom shines the sun of truth. But [Virgil did] not come as an expositor well-versed in [the] books of Scripture."Fabius Planciades Fulgentius, Expositio Virgilianae continentiae secundum philosophos moralis, 2324. Craig Kallendorf writes that this indicated Fulgentius's belief that "there [were] limits to what ... Virgil knew about Christianity."Kallendorf (2015), 54.
According to legend, Donatus, a bishop of Fiesole in the ninth century, quoted the seventh line of the poem as part of a confession of his faith prior to his death.Comparetti (1895), p. 102. During the same century, Agnellus, the archbishop of Ravenna, referenced the poem, noting that it was evidence that the Holy Spirit had spoken through both Virgil and the Sybil. The monk Christian Druthmar also makes use of the seventh line in his commentary on Matthew 20:30.Bourne (1916), pp. 3934.
In the eleventh century, Virgil began appearing in plays, such as one particular Christmas work wherein the poet is the last "prophet" called on to give testimony concerning Christ. According to Bourne, the play was particularly popular, and philologist Du Cange gives mention of a similar play performed at Rouen. Virgil and his purported prophecy even found itself in the Wakefield Mystery Plays.Bourne (1916), pp. 3945. Around this time, Eclogue 4 and Virgil's supposed prophetic nature had saturated the Christian world; references to the poem are made by Abelard, the Bohemian historian Cosmos, and Pope Innocent III in a sermon. The Gesta Romanorum, a Latin collection of anecdotes and tales that was probably compiled about the end of the 13th century or the beginning of the 14th, confirms that the eclogue was pervasively associated with Christianity.Bourne (1916), pp. 3956.
Virgil eventually became a fixture of Medieval ecclesiastic art, appearing in churches, chapels, and even cathedrals, sometimes depicted holding a scroll with a select passage from the Fourth Eclogue on it.Bourne (1916), pp. 3967. At other times, he "figured in sacred pictures ... in the company of David, Isaiah and other [Judeo-Christian] prophets". Virgil's popularity in Medieval art is likely why Michelangelo included the Cumaean Sibyl on the ceiling painting of the Sistine Chapel, for, according to Paul Barolsky, the Sibyl's presence "evokes her song in Virgil [i.e. the Fourth Eclogue], prophesying spiritual renewal through the coming of Christthe very theme of the ceiling." Barolsky also points out that Michelangelo painted the Sibyl in close proximity to the prophet Isaiah; thus, the painter drew a visual comparison between the similar nature of their prophecies.Barolsky (2007), p. 119.