Absent Amaryllis

Nancy Evans
Brown University

Nos patriam fugimus; tu, Tityre, Lentus in umbra
formosam resonare doces Ammaryllida silvas.
O Meliboee, deus nobis haec otia fecit (Eclogue 1, 4-6)

We are outcasts from our country; you, Tityrus,
at ease beneath the shade, teach to woods to re-echo "fair Amaryllis."

O Meliboeus, it is a god who wrought for us this peace.[1]

With these words Meliboeus addresses his fellow shepherd and songster Tityrus at the opening of Vergil's first Eclogue. Meliboeus' statement establishes the political reality in the poem: while Meliboeus is compelled to flee his native land, Tityrus can compose poetry and enjoy the leisure granted him by a god. Once established, this tension between the two shepherds remains unresolved even at the end of the Eclogue; Tityrus can only invite Meliboeus to pass one night with him and enjoy a little leisure before moving on (ll. 79-81). However, these three lines do more than introduce the political into the poem; they also introduce a third character into the bucolic drama: Amaryllis. Amaryllis is most notable in this Eclogue because of her connection with absence; when she is mentioned again later in the Eclogue at line 36, it is in the context of Tityrus' absence while on his journey to Rome. It is no coincidence that Amaryllis is mentioned only in connection with politics and absences owed to political necessities; Vergil's poetic conception f the political world requires that her presence be unsure. This essay will attempt to explore the inter-relationship between politics, gender and absence by examining Amaryllis' role in the first Eclogue. In the end I will show that the marginal presence of the woman in the man's world and the unstable political situation depend upon each other, and both provide the poet with the opportunity to create song.

At the beginning of Eclogue 1, Meliboeus contrasts his situation with that of Tityrus, noting that, while he is in exile (nos patriae fines linguimus, 1.3), Tityrus sits alone in the shade, "meditating on a woodland Muse" (silverstem Musam meditaris, 1.2), teaching the woods to sing his song about Amaryllis. The contrast between on exiled man in flight and another leisurely contemplating poetry is heightened by the subject of the latter's song. Tityrus has so much otium that he willingly teaches the woods to recount a story of his love affair with Amaryllis so that later, when the woods echo his song, he might be reminded of her. Such a process of remembering, singing, and hearing again creates and maintains Tityrus' contemplative life. Although physically absent, Amaryllis is still present in the poem; the woods sound and re-sound her presence and her beauty. However, the "Amaryllis" the woods resound is the male's representation of the female, Tityrus' poetic recollection that Meliboeus hears at the beginning of the poem is not objective or absolutely true, unless we assume that male representations of the female are always true, or, for that matter, anything represented in art is, by definition, an absolutely true representation. Amaryllis' absent presence in this Ecologue could then be considered Tityrus' idealized recreation in song of a current relationhip with an absent woman. Thus, Meliboeus, the pathetic shepherd in exile, meets his friend Tityrus living in an ideal political situation singing an idealized song about an absent love. Meliboeus sees and hears that Tityrus' life is as stable as his is unstable; teaching the woods to resound his beautiful Amaryllis ensures that Tityrus' meditative way of life will continue.

As Meliboeus is confronted with Amaryllis at the very beginning of the first Eclogue in the form of a song, so Meliboeus is next confronted with what Tityrus' life has been ever since he went to Rome. As their dialogue continues, and the differences between their outlooks increase as Tityrus extols the virtues f the god for whom he offers lambs in sacrifice (ll. 7-8), Meliboeus claims that he is not so much jealous of Tityrus' political situation as he is just plain shocked, especially in light of the contemporary turmoil (undique totis / usque adeo turbatur in agris (ll. 11-12)). Meliboeus hears Tityrus confess how he had for so long been foolishly mistaken about the extent of Rome's grandeur (ll. 11-25) before journeying there to gain his freedom (libertas, l 27). This appearance of libertas at line 27, and libertatis and peculi at line 37, indicates another political facet active in the poem: Tityrus is now a freedman, having journeyed to Rome to buy his freedom with the money he had earned and saved as a slave, his peculium. The status of Meliboeus--whether slave or free--remains unclear throughout the remainder of the poem. But emphasis continues to be placed on the fact that Meliboeus will roam in exile, possibly living to see an impius miles or a barbarus take over the lands he once tended (ll. 70-71), while Tityrus will become a fortunatus senex (ll. 46, 51) now that he has bought his freedom and can enjoy the fruits of his pastoral labor.

It is important to keep in mind here that Amaryllis played a key role in Tityrus' acquisition of freedom.

Libertas, quae sera tamen respexit inertem . . .
postquam nos Amaryllis habet, Galatea reliquit.
Namque, fatebor enim, dum me Galatea tenebat,
nec spes libertatis erat nec cura peculi. (ll. 27-32)

Freedom, though late, cast her eyes upon me in my sloth, . . .
after Amaryllis began her sway and Galatea left me. For yes,
I must confess, while Galatea ruled me, I had neither
hope of freedom, nor thought of savings.

Only after leaving Galatea--on whom he spent far too much of his peculium--for Amaryllis was Tityrus able to save enough money to reach his goal of freedom. But when in line 30 Tityrus mentions Amaryllis and how she still "has" him as her lover, he does incidentally, and only in the context of his affair with Galatea. In fact, Tityrus tells us more about his former love Galatea than he does about his current love Amaryllis. It is Meliboeus who volunteers real information about this absent woman Amaryllis and her relationshipo with Tityrus in Meliboeus' next speech:

Mirabar quid maesta deos, Amarylli, vocares
cui pendere sua patereris in a rbore poma:
Tityrus hinc aberat. Ipsae te, Tityre, pinus
ipsi te fontes, ipsa haec arbusta vocabant. (ll. 36-39)

I used to wonder, Amaryllis, why so sadly you called
on the gods, and for whom you let the apples hang
on their native trees. Tityrus was gone from home.
The very pines, Tityrus, the very springs, the very orchards here were calling for you.

Here Meliboeus, adressing both the abent Amaryllis and the present Tityrus in the vocative (ll. 36, 38), narrates a portion of their love story. While on the journey to Rome to obtain his freedom Tityrus left Amaryllis behind to sadly away his return, allowing the ripening apples, gifts intended for her love, to remain on the tree. At that time, political necessity had not yet forced Meliboeus to flee, and he was still present to keep an eye on Amaryllis. From his description, we envision Amaryllis as a lonely woman wandering the familiar countryside, calling out on the gods to bring her lover back to her. The picture Meliboeus paints is poignant even to himself, for once he imagines Amaryllis calling on the gods, he can even hear nature itself--pinus, fontes, arbusta--calling out the absent Tityrus' name, just as Amaryllis could see and hear Tityrus everywhere she went.

In fact, Meliboeus seems to have been initially so affected by his meeting with Tityrus, and by hearign Tityrus sing of Amaryllis to the woods, that when he recalls and envisions Amaryllis during Tityrus' absence he invokes her in the vocative as though she were actually present, just as he invokes Tityrus in line 38. Meliboeus is at this point so caught up in the emotion of the momentary recollection that, for him, Amaryllis is present just as much as the pine trees, the springs, and the orchards are present. Meliboeus, who now hears Tityrus sing of absent Amaryllis, best remembers an Amaryllis of the past who called out for an absent Tityrus. Except for the woods in line 5 that echo her beauty, and Tityrus' remark at line 30, all we know of Amaryllis, Tityrus' current lover and a presumably important person in his life, is what Meliboeus here says. As an absent present in the first Eclogue, Amaryllis is able to evoke intense repsonses from men bound up in political necessities, as Tityrus first contemplates his god-given otium, and Meliboeus next contrasts his current exile in the beginning of the poem with memories of his former life here in the middle.

Both the present and the past, then, remind Meliboeus of the instability of the recent political scene, one in which it is necessary that one man forsake his native land, while another travel to Rome to meet a praesens divus, a savior who personally ensures that one's land remains one's own. When Meliboeus on his journey into exile first finds Tityrus enjoying his otium, Vergil inserts a curiously ambiguous line of Latin where it is not immediately apparent upon which of two verbs the accusative objects grammatically depend: formosam esonare doces Amaryllida silvas (l. 4). If Amaryllis is absent, then Tityrus is teaching the woods to echo his song about her; if she is present, then he is teaching her to echo his song about the woods. The ambiguity of the Latin at this point is notable if only because it forces the reader at the very start to confront the question: in what form is this woman actually present? Is she real, or is she just a song? For Vergil, as for Tityrus, perhaps the woman and the song are not mutually exclusive but rather mutually dependent. Without Amaryllis there would be no song to teach to nature; without nature there would be no one to echo the song of Amaryllis. Amaryllis' absence is necessary for Tityrus; for Vergil and Tityrus as poets, it is necessary that the political situation be unstable enough to allow them to establish identifiable tensions to write about, but stable enough to enable them to live the leisured and contemplative life of a poet.

[1] Translations are adapted from the Loeb volume by H. R. Fairclough, Virgil, rev. ed., (Harvard 1938).