Eclogue 10 (Ecloga X; Bucolica X) is a pastoral poem by the Latin poet Virgil, the last of his book of ten poems known as the Eclogues written approximately 42–39 BC. The tenth Eclogue describes how Cornelius Gallus, a Roman officer on active service, having been jilted by his girlfriend Lycoris, is imagined as an Arcadian shepherd, and either bewails his lot or seeks distraction in hunting "with the Nymphs" amid "Parthenian glades" and "hurling Cydonian arrows from a Parthian bow".[1]
According to T. E. Page (1898), "Gallus is conventionally represented as surrounded by Arcadian shepherds, and the whole poem is highly artificial: it is none the less singularly beautiful".[2] Lord Macaulay had an almost unbounded admiration for it.[3] "The Georgics pleased me better [than the Aeneid]; the Eclogues best,—the second and tenth above all."[4]