Eclogue 8

Engraving for Dryden's Virgil, 1709

Eclogue 8 (Ecloga VIII; Bucolica VIII), also titled Pharmaceutria ('The Sorceress'), is a pastoral poem by the Latin poet Virgil, one of his book of ten Eclogues. After an introduction, containing an address to an unnamed dedicatee, there follow two love songs of equal length sung by two herdsmen, Damon and Alphesiboeus. One is the song of a love-sick young man, whose girlfriend Nysa is marrying another man, Mopsus. The second is the song of a woman who, with the help of her servant Amaryllis, is performing a magic rite to try to entice her beloved Daphnis back from the city.

The poem is believed to have been written in 39 BC, and the dedicatee is usually thought to be Virgil's patron Gaius Asinius Pollio, whose military exploits are alluded to in verses 6–13.[1]

This eclogue is mainly based on Theocritus's Idyll 2, but the first song also includes elements from Idylls 1, 3, and 11.[2]

  1. ^ Greenough, ed. 1883, p. 21.
  2. ^ Macdonald (2005), pp. 14, 24.