The idea that Vergil engaged in intentional and meaningful wordplay in the form of acrostics, acronyms, and coded signatures has begun to gain traction. The recent proliferation of verbal games identified in Vergil's work may perhaps confirm the suspicions of those who dismiss such wordplay as accidental and who characterize scholars who claim to have identified additional verbal games as philological conspiracy theorists.Footnote 1 On the other hand, if taken seriously, the rapidly growing body of Vergilian word games may point to the phenomenon's legitimacy, intentionality, and meaningfulness; if found to be interrelated and participating in a common discourse, at least some of the numerous signatures, acronyms, and acrostics in Vergil's poetry may yet overcome the charge of pure coincidence.
The primary aims of this article are twofold: first, to identify and defend a new dedicatory acronym in Eclogue 6; and second, to contextualize the specific linguistic choices and central themes of the new acronym within a broader network of Vergilian word games and, simultaneously, to begin to understand the nature of that network. These two aims are interconnected: the new dedicatory acronym informs our understanding of the network of Vergilian word games and, in turn, its intelligibility relies on an appreciation of that network. The emergence of a common discourse on poetic lineage, genre, and patronage from the correspondences among Vergil's numerous word games—including the one I identify in the first section of this article—provides a starting point for a more comprehensive and nuanced interpretation both of individual Vergilian word games and of Vergilian wordplay as a general phenomenon.Footnote 2 On another level, the conclusions drawn from the relationship between wordplay and various thematic questions will inform a clearer picture of generic shifts and expectations in the Eclogues (and Vergil's corpus more broadly) and of the subtle ways in which Vergil negotiates issues of patronage in his first collection.
To date, at least seven authorial signatures have been identified in Vergil's corpus. The first, Vergilium, which appears in the sphragis of the Fourth Georgic (4.563), is the only explicit occurrence of Vergil's own name in his corpus; the remaining six appear as acrostics and acronyms, hidden in the text of the poems, with clues in the surrounding language suggesting that Vergil's authorial hand (and, with it, his name) might be found somewhere beneath the surface of the passages. In 1963, Edwin L. Brown famously identified the first of these coded Vergilian signatures in G. 1.429, 431, and 433: the poet's three nomina, MA-VE-PV, appear in reverse order in the first words of each of these three lines.Footnote 3 Another Vergilian acronym, identified by Joshua Katz in 2008, appears at the beginning of the same poem (G. 1.1–2): in very basic terms, Katz finds Vergil's signature in terRAM (MARret in reverse) / VERtere. Footnote 4 Brown has identified another potential Vergilian signature in G. 2.315–42: P-VER-MA appears—evenly spaced—in 321, 324, and 327 and is followed in 330 and 333 by PART and CRE, which Brown suggests represent Vergil's two home cities (his later home in Parthenope and his childhood home in Cremona).Footnote 5 Together, these initials give us Publius Vergilius Maro Parthenopeius Cremonae across 2.321–33. The fourth coded Vergilian signature, also identified by Katz, appears in G. 2.475 as Me VERo Primum. Footnote 6 In Aen. 12.587–8, Matthew Carter has identified a Vergilian autograph in PUmice… / VEstigavit…aMARO.Footnote 7 Finally, Cristiano Castelletti observed the boustrophedon acrostic A STILO MAR V in the first four lines of the Aeneid.Footnote 8
In addition to these six hidden signatures, several other word games have been identified. To name only a few:Footnote 9 the acrostic MARS, popularized by D. P. Fowler in 1983, appears in Aen. 7.601–4;Footnote 10 J. J. Clauss finds FONS in Ecl. 1.5–8;Footnote 11 in Ecl. 9.34–8, Alexei Grishin finds UNDIS;Footnote 12 Grishin has also identified the acronym CINNA in Ecl. 9.34–5 (sed non ego Credulus Illis. / Nam Neque Adhuc Vario videor nec dicere Cinna, 9.34–5);Footnote 13 and Leah Kronenberg has identified the acrostic DE-CA-TE in Ecl. 4.9–11.Footnote 14 The latter acrostic in the Fourth Eclogue is remarkable in that its final syllable, TE, is immediately followed by the acronym a dec a te (in adeo decus hoc aevi, te…, Ecl. 4.11), which both repeats the acrostic of 4.9–11 forward and backward (TEque Adeo DECus hoc Aevi TE) and underscores its intentionality, as the acronym functions as a clue to the previous wordplay (‘read from DEC to TE’).Footnote 15
The presence of both an acrostic and an acronym, which work in tandem to support a single verbal game in Ecl. 4.9–11, is notable. Vergil's habit of combining at least two Aratean techniques in his verbal gamesFootnote 16—acrostics, as in Aratus’ famous ΛΕΠΤΗ in lines 783–7 of his Phaenomena,Footnote 17 and authorial signature, as we find in ἄρρητον in verse 2—is well known, but the acronym/acrostic of Ecl. 4.9–11 presents an example of a previously unobserved conflation of two types of letter games. The forms that Vergil's verbal games can take are numerous and varied: we find both vertical and boustrophedon acrostics; acronyms, which can begin at any point in a line and can even span line breaks; signatures, which can also start either at the beginning of a line or in the middle, which may appear within a line or across several lines—even skipping lines in between—and which may present Vergil's nomina either forward or backward; and an example of another individual's name in the form of an acronym. We may be able to set some guidelines for recognizing potential Vergilian wordplay as intentional,Footnote 18 but the diverse range of forms that have already been observed in Vergil's verbal games suggests that no would-be acronym, acrostic, or signature should be dismissed solely because of the apparent uniqueness of its formulation.
A New Dedicatory Acronym in the Sixth Eclogue
It is in light of such a lively and growing body of scholarship on wordplay that I now offer my contribution to the list of verbal games in Vergil's corpus. The Sixth Eclogue contains a previously unidentified onomastic acronym: Vergil has inserted a dedication to Maecenas in the last four words of Ecl. 6.69. As the surrounding passage will be relevant to my discussion of the dedicatory acronym, I include it below:
Tum canit errantem Permessi ad flumina Gallum
Aonas in montis ut duxerit una sororum, 65
utque viro Phoebi chorus adsurrexerit omnis;
ut Linus haec illi divino carmine pastor
floribus atque apio crinis ornatus amaro
dixerit: ‘hos tibi dant Calamos, En Accipe, Musae,
Ascraeo quos ante seni, quibus ille solebat 70
cantando rigidas deducere montibus ornos.
his tibi Grynei nemoris dicatur origo,
ne quis sit lucus quo se plus iactet Apollo’.
Verg. Ecl. 6.64–73Then [Silenus] sings of Gallus wandering at the streams of Permessus,
how one of the sisters led him into the Aonian mountains,
and how the whole chorus of Phoebus rose up for the man;
how Linus, the shepherd with divine song,
his hair adorned with flowers and bitter parsley,
said this to him: ‘These reeds—here, take them—the Muses give you,
which they once gave to the old Ascraean, with which he would
bring down rigid ash trees from the mountain by singing.
On these may the origin of the Grynean Wood be told by you,
so that there will be no grove in which Apollo vaunts himself more’.Footnote 19
The first letters of the final four words of 6.69 spell MAEC- backward, and we can take this even further by then moving to the en in the middle (equidistant from the first and last letters of the acronym), which is flanked by a on its right and s on its left, thus spelling out the rest of Maecenas’ name. It should be acknowledged that this acronym is unique in form among previously identified instances of wordplay: no other backward acronyms have been identified in Vergil's word games (though several examples of reversed signaturesFootnote 20 and acrosticsFootnote 21 exist). As I argue above, however, the fact that a potential word game appears in a previously unseen form should not necessarily preclude the legitimacy of that word game.
The general riddling tone of the Sixth Eclogue primes the reader to look for wordplay and thereby increases the chance that she might be able to detect a more unusual form of wordplay in the poem: the phrase ludere versu (‘play in verse’, 6.1) appears at the end of the first line and hints at verbal games; Silenus’ use of solvite me (‘free me’) in 6.24 can be taken as a pun to mean ‘solve me’;Footnote 22 and the eclectic nature of Silenus’ song (as evidenced by the abundance of scholarship aiming to make sense of it) prompts a high level of interpretive effort in the reader that resembles the process of solving riddles.
A second point of unusualness in this MAEC- acrostic lies in the fact that the vast majority of Vergil's onomastic word games spell out the name of the poet himself. We do, though, have one other example of another individual's name hidden in Vergil's poetry in the enjambed CINNA acronym in Eclogue 9.Footnote 23 In this case, the onomastic acronym is confirmed by Cinna's name at the end of the line in which the word game is contained. If authentic, then, the dedicatory acronym to Maecenas that I identify in Eclogue 6 is one of two known onomastic acronyms in the Eclogues.
Vergil names his patrons much more frequently than he explicitly names himself. In the Georgics, Vergil regularly addresses two patrons, Maecenas (G. 1.2, 2.42, 3.42, and 4.2) and Octavian (addressed in G. 1.25 and 2.170, though he is mentioned several other times throughout the Georgics). The Eclogues contain a slightly larger array of dedicatees: Eclogue 4 contains a dedication to Asinius Pollio (4.8–17);Footnote 24 Eclogue 6 begins with an address to Varus (6.6–12); and Eclogue 8 opens with a dedication to an unnamed patron—either Pollio, as has traditionally been assumed, or Octavian (8.6–12). The identity of the dedicatee in the Eighth Eclogue has remained a subject of significant contention since G. W. Bowersock first challenged the traditional interpretation by proposing Octavian rather than Pollio as Vergil's addressee.Footnote 25 Adkin, on the other hand, balances the two interpretations and offers a compelling argument that the addressee of the Eighth Eclogue is intentionally ambiguous and leaves open the opportunity to interpret either (or indeed both) Pollio or Octavian as the poem's dedicatee.Footnote 26 Cairns in particular has made a strong argument for the centrality of Pollio as the patron figure guiding the Eclogues as a collection—including Eclogue 8, as well as other poems explicitly dedicated to other individualsFootnote 27—but I would suggest that the amount of interpretive effort required to erase Octavian entirely from the reader's consciousness indicates that even if Vergil did intend Pollio as the central patron of the Eclogues, he still left room for ambiguity. It seems probable that Vergil at least had Octavian in mind—and meant his readers to do the same—when writing the dedication in Eclogue 8.
If we are to accept that an acronymic dedication to Maecenas exists in Eclogue 6, the publication date of the Eclogues is of central interest, and while the identity of the addressee of the Eighth Eclogue remains an open question, it nevertheless has significant implications for the dating of the publication of the Eclogues. Those who understand Asinius Pollio as the dedicatee of Eclogue 8 settle on a publication date of 39 BCE, whereas those in favour of Octavian place the date at 35; we know from a reference in Horace's Satires (1.6.54–5) that Vergil had joined Maecenas's circle by around the spring of 37,Footnote 28 though it is not clear from this reference how long Vergil had known Maecenas or had been under his patronage. As Mayer observes, if the dating of the Eclogues’ publication is as late as 35, ‘the absence of Maecenas from the Eclogues is … striking and calls for explanation’.Footnote 29
Regardless of whether the Eclogues were published in 39 or 35, it seems that if Vergil was in Maecenas’ circle by 37, he likely knew Maecenas for at least a short period before his first publication.Footnote 30 We also know that some ancient readers approached the Eclogues with the expectation of finding a coded reference to Maecenas: Servius notes on Ecl. 5.55 that certain people interpreted Stimichon as an allusion to Maecenas, and he suggests Maecenas as a possible agent behind the orders expressed in non iniussa cano in Ecl. 6.9. Furthermore, Vergil makes clear from the very beginning of the Georgics that Maecenas is the patron behind his second major project, and for reasons that will become clear over the course of this article, it is quite reasonable that Vergil could indeed be referring in Ecl. 6.69 to the patron sponsoring the Georgics, where the poet names Maecenas outright within the first two lines of the poem. My aim is not to engage in broad speculation about why Maecenas was not named explicitly in the Eclogues, nor do I intend to paint a detailed picture of the nature of Vergil and Maecenas’ relationship between the writing of the Eclogues and the publication of the Georgics. Rather, I hope to demonstrate that Maecenas’ name does indeed appear in the form of a dedicatory acronym that reveals a parallel between an encoded relationship between Vergil and Maecenas and the explicit relationship between Linus and Gallus in Eclogue 6, and that is intentionally placed within a passage that links the Eclogues and Georgics in a discourse on patronage, genre, and Vergil's poetic genealogy.Footnote 31
With the issue of the probability that Maecenas’ name could reasonably appear in some form in the Eclogues behind us, we may now proceed to the dedicatory acronym in Ecl. 6.69 itself. The four letters of the acronym begin four significant words: Calamos and Accipe both represent characteristic words of Vergilian word games—particularly those involving dedication and poetic lineage. En, which Adkin calls ‘hintful’,Footnote 32 directs the reader to pay attention to the centre of the acronym, a trigger that the full hortative en accipe compounds, as it interrupts the grammatical structure of the main clause to fix the reader's focus on the sentence's dedicatory register. The reader can understand en accipe in the centre of the acronym not only as an injunction to Gallus within the text, but also as an encouragement to perceive the wordplay, with the sense: ‘Here, look!’Footnote 33 Finally, Musae is not only the beginning of Maecenas’ onomastic but also marks the starting point of Vergil's poetic lineage as he conceives of it both in this passage and elsewhere, and the word intensifies the metapoetic sense of the line.
Identifying a Network of Vergilian Wordplay
The MAEC- acronym and its surrounding passage contain numerous verbal overlaps with other known Vergilian word games, and these overlaps can help us both affirm the intentionality of the dedicatory acronym and better understand its significance. An intertextual correspondence between the introduction to the dedicatory acronym in Ecl. 6.69 and the signature that Carter identifies in Aen. 12.587–8 offers one such parallel:
ut Linus haec illi divino carmine pastor
floribus atque apio crinis ornatus amaro…
Ecl. 6.67–8how Linus, the shepherd with divine song,
his hair adorned with flowers and
bitter parsley…
… inclusas ut cum latebroso in pumice pastor
vestigavit apes fumoque implevit amaro.Footnote 34
Aen. 12.587–8… like when a shepherd tracks down bees
enclosed in shadowy pumice and fills it with
bitter smoke
These two lines in Aeneid 12, which contain Vergil's last known signature in the epic, clearly resemble the two lines in Eclogue 6 that introduce our dedicatory acronym (6.67–8). In Aen. 12.587–8, Carter observes, Vergil's autograph appears in the PU- of pumice, the VE- of vestigavit, and the -MARO of amaro. Carter's signature has pumice pastor in the final two feet of the first line; Ecl. 6.67 has carmine pastor in precisely the same spot, and the position of amaro is the same (parallel with pastor at the end of the previous line) in both passages. The signature in Aen. 12.587–8 contains apes immediately before the caesura in its second line, where Ecl. 6.68 has apio. Of course, the Vergilian signature in Book Twelve of the Aeneid postdates the remarkably similar two-line passage in Ecl. 6.67–8, so if Vergil conceived the two passages as functioning in conversation, Aen. 12.587–8 must be recalling Ecl. 6.67–8 and not the other way around. I will return to the relationship between the signature that Carter has found in Aeneid 12 and the dedicatory acronym I identify in Eclogue 6 in greater depth after a more thorough examination of the latter, but for now, we should note that the key word aMARO is likely serving in both passages as a subtle prompt to recognize the author in the text.Footnote 35 It is even tempting to take the whole word amaro as suggesting ‘a Maro[ne]’ (‘by Maro’), which would work similarly to the boustrophedon signature Castelletti identifies in the opening of the Aeneid (A STILO MAR V);Footnote 36 if correct, this interpretation of amaro in Ecl. 6.68 and Aen. 5.587 would further strengthen the sense of Vergil's authorial presence in the passages.
There are numerous other linguistic overlaps between the hidden dedication to Maecenas and the key words that mark verbal games and signatures as such across Vergil's corpus. Calamos, which supplies the C of MAEC- in Ecl. 6.69, also appears in the first known acrostic in Vergil's corpus, FONS (Ecl.1.5–8).Footnote 37 Expanding on Clauss’ analysis of the acrostic in Eclogue 1, Castelletti observes that calamo (Ecl. 1.10) functions both as a clue to the wordplay in the surrounding passage and as an explanation of its significance:Footnote 38 the word, especially when coordinated with Musae, contributes to the metapoetic resonance of the passage and opens the possibility of wordplay somewhere nearby.Footnote 39 When combined with deus (Ecl. 1.7)—which Castelletti claims refers primarily not to Apollo or Octavian, but rather to Vergil's model for his word games, Aratus—calamo signposts an authorial awareness of genreFootnote 40 and aligns the opening of the Eclogues with an exploration of Vergil's poetic genealogy and the generic choices involved in presenting a poetic lineage. The calami of Ecl. 6.69 function similarly to the calamus agrestis of Eclogue 1 and participate in Vergil's exploration of his poetic genealogy even more directly: in Ecl. 6.64–73, Vergil describes passing down the calami as the mechanism of extending poetic lineage.
We find another buzzword characteristic of Vergilian signatures and word games in the A of MAEC-: accipe, Adkin has demonstrated, appears in or near Vergil's autographs and acrostics with surprising regularity, often (and less surprisingly) coinciding with passages that deal with dedications and patronage.Footnote 41 Adkin observes that ac[c]i[pe] coincides with acrostics in dedicatory contexts in precisely the same form twice in the Eclogues. One occurs in Vergil's dedication to Pollio in Eclogue 8 (6–13): the acrostic reads tu si es, ac[c]i[pe] and is confirmed both by the accipe explicitly expressed at the end of Ecl. 8.11 and by the signal within the acrostic at 8.11 a te principium—‘first from you’—that the word game begins at tu at 8.6.Footnote 42
More importantly for our purposes, Adkin observes that precisely the same phenomenon that appears in Ecl. 8.6–13 occurs immediately after our dedicatory acronym in Eclogue 6: after accipe (6.69), the following three lines spell out AC[H]i- vertically.Footnote 43 While the two accipe acrostics that Adkin identifies admittedly present some challenges, there are good reasons to take them seriously, especially given that both are confirmed by the verb accipe either in or right after the acrostic.Footnote 44 Adkin suggests that the dedication in this passage of Eclogue 6 is from Linus/Vergil to Gallus (rather than to Varus, the poem's explicit dedicatee, who Adkin notes is ‘mentioned right before the acrostical laesis’ of 6.14–24).Footnote 45 The dedicatory acronym that I have identified in 6.69, though, offers an opportunity to describe this system of dedication within Eclogue 6 with greater precision. Ecl. 6.64–73 makes it reasonably clear that Linus is dedicating his calami to Gallus. However, we can understand the passage more clearly if we remove the slash Adkin places between ‘Linus/Vergil’Footnote 46 and identify four actors participating in two separate but related moments of patronage and dedication, namely Linus and Gallus alongside Vergil and Maecenas.Footnote 47 The former pair is identified explicitly within the poem—as is the accipe that links them in a relationship of patronage; the latter pair, along with their own linking AC[H]i-, hides in the wordplay embedded in the passage.
We can better understand Vergil's regular use of accipe in and around word games by considering how Vergilian acrostics, acronyms, and wordplay intersect not only with the key word accipere, but also with the broader themes of patronage and dedication that the verb connotes. The frequency with which Vergil's word games (more broadly, not only those containing accipe) appear in dedicatory contexts—especially in the Eclogues and Georgics—is astounding. The acrostic/acronym DE-CA-TE in Ecl. 4.9–11 appears within a dedication to Pollio;Footnote 48 the acrostic LAESIS runs both up from Ecl. 6.14–19 and down from 6.19–24 in Vergil's (half-hearted, Adkin suggests) dedication to Varus;Footnote 49 the acrostic in Ecl. 8.6–13, which I have just discussed, is located in a dedication to an unnamed patron;Footnote 50 although the form of its surrounding passage is not strictly dedicatory, the acronym UNDIS in Ecl. 9.34–8Footnote 51 celebrates Varius and Cinna, and, as we have seen, Cinna's name appears in the form of an enjambed onomastic acronym in 9.34–5—if not fully dedicatory, the passage nevertheless celebrates the individual whose name is both explicitly expressed and contained within the word game.Footnote 52 Verbal games appear in dedicatory contexts in the Georgics, too: G. 2.44–7, a dedication to Maecenas, includes the acrostic FIAS, which, as Adkin notes, functions in a similarly ‘hortative’ fashion to the dedicatory acrostics that contain accipe;Footnote 53 and the first two lines of Georgics 1, in which Katz has identified a Vergilian autograph, introduce Vergil's first explicit dedication to Maecenas.Footnote 54 The acronym in Eclogue 6 follows precisely this pattern: accipe—strengthened both by the ‘hintful en’ that flags the verb for the reader and by the acrostic AC[H]i- that follows in the next three lines—not only forms the verbal centre of the dedicatory acronym I have identified in Ecl. 6.69, but also contextualizes the concealed dedication in a discourse of patronage that is, in turn, embedded within a more explicit exploration of poetic genealogy in Ecl. 6.64–73.
Predecessors, Poets, and Patrons: Reading Ecl. 6.64–73 with G. 1.1–2
The Vergilian autograph that Katz has identified in the dedication to Maecenas at the beginning of the Georgics—the first explicit dedication to Maecenas in Vergil's corpus—is paradigmatic of the tight connection between poetic genealogy, genre, and patronage with Vergilian verbal games and signatures:
Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram
vertere, Maecenas, ulmisque adiungere vitis
conveniat…
Verg. G. 1.1–3What makes fields happy, under what star it is fitting,
Maecenas, to turn the earth and to join elms with vines…
The basic signature appears in the enjambed terRAM / VERtere, where -ram is appropriately read backward to abbreviate Vergil's cognomen. The verbal game and network of meaning, though, is much broader in these two short lines: in the opening of Georgics 1, Katz argues, we find a creative translation of the beginning of Aratus’ Phaenomena, in which Vergil combines a complex autograph with an outline of his poetic lineage and his generic project. Drawing on Servius (ad G. 1.1), Katz observes an allusion to Hesiod in the first line of the poem, with the first phrase (Quid…segetes) corresponding to ἔργα (‘works’) and quo sidere to ἡμέραι (‘days’); the second phrase is also Aratean in its reference to stars, and so quo sidere functions as a bridge between the Hesiodic first line and the enjambed Aratean terram / vertere that follows.Footnote 55 Finally, terram / vertere links Vergil and Aratus, as the phrase adopts and reworks (a play on vertere) Aratus’ themes, contains Vergil's autograph precisely where Aratus’ appears in the Phaenomena, and joins the Vergilian autograph to the act of translation within the single word vertere.Footnote 56
Katz's summary of the complex poetic genealogy that is packed into the first line and a half of the Georgics clarifies the network of relationships that Vergil cloaks in allusion and wordplay:Footnote 57
Quid faciat laetas segetes = Hesiod; quo sidere = both Hesiod and Aratus; terram / vertere = both Aratus and Vergil; and Maecenas = himself—who is receiving this poem from Vergil, who received it from Aratus, who received it in turn from Hesiod (and the latter two got their material from on high, be it from Zeus or the Muses).
Katz revises this summary slightly in a later article: if Vergil was aware that his cognomen shared its first two letters with Maecenas’, ‘vertere becomes even more of a pivot between terram / “marret” and Maecenas, and the phrase “Maecenas = himself” […] should rather read “Maecenas = Vergil and himself”’.Footnote 58 Vergil deftly and succinctly embeds a rich set of both physically and conceptually interlocking themes within the short passage: an overview of the poetic genealogy of the Georgics through the references to Hesiod and Aratus, a statement on Vergil's project in the Georgics in relation to his poetic predecessors through vertere, and a hint towards the role of Vergil's patron through the line and a half that build to Maecenas’ name in the middle of 1.2.
This complex and compact word game at the opening of the Georgics offers the most fruitful parallel to the dedicatory acronym MAEC- that I have identified in Ecl. 6.69, and the correspondences between the two dedications will help us both to understand better the significance of the word game in Eclogue 6 and to contextualize the dedicatory acronym within a broader schema of Vergilian wordplay across his corpus. G. 1.1–2 and Ecl. 6.64–73 appear to be in direct conversation, and they present several notable points of connection both in technical form and in the ways in which they address Vergil's poetic genealogy, the genre of his poetic projects, and the role of patronage in the development of those projects.
As Ross has persuasively demonstrated, a—if not the—central and unifying theme of Silenus’ eclectic song in the Sixth Eclogue is that of ‘poetic genealogy’, a helpful revision of J. P. Elder's more general description of a ‘House of Inspiration’ in the poem.Footnote 59 The initiation of Gallus in Ecl. 6.64–73, which contains both our dedicatory acronym and the acrostic AC[H]i-, is the focal point for Ross’ argument and for Vergil's exploration of poetic lineage in Eclogue 6.Footnote 60 The stemma of divinities and poets that Ross identifies in Ecl. 6.64–73 can be summarized as follows: Apollo, along with his chorus of Muses, is the ‘founder’ of the lineage (Phoebi…chorus omnis, 6.66); next come Linus and Orpheus, the ‘mythical, semi-divine singers’ whom Vergil has already placed into a single generation in Eclogue 4; Hesiod follows, inheriting the Orphic pipes that ‘represent what may be considered “scientific poetry”’;Footnote 61 a fourth generation of implied participants (who have been named or at least suggested earlier in the Eclogues) derives from Hesiod: this generation includes the Alexandrians; and last comes Gallus, who ‘receives from Linus the pipes on which Orpheus and Hesiod had played’—and which the former two received from Apollo and the Muses.Footnote 62
Thus goes the poetic genealogy of Eclogue 6 by Ross’ analysis, and he goes on to demonstrate that the way Vergil conceives of and depicts the poetic line leading down to Gallus is likely not of Vergil's invention, but rather one he derived from Gallus’ own poetry.Footnote 63 Because so little remains of Gallus’ poetry, it is difficult to say how much of his material Vergil transformed or reworked. Ross’ argument that Vergil's Linus derives from a now-lost reinterpretation of the character by Gallus is compelling but does not exclude the possibility that Vergil added his own touch to Linus’ character in Ecl. 6.64–73.Footnote 64 Vergil seems to gesture both to his contribution to Linus’ character and to his alignment with Linus in his poetic genealogy through the passage's wordplay: the description of Linus as apio…ornatus amaro (6.68, where -maro likely gives a subtle hint towards Vergil's authorial hand in the passage) can, as I have discussed above, be interpreted as a pun on a Maro[ne]. The character of Linus, which Vergil derived from Gallus, would thus be ornatus a Maro[ne]—that is, ‘embellished’, or perhaps even ‘furnished’, by Vergil's own hand. We can also take the -maro of amaro as the subject of dixerit in 6.69: in this case, Vergil is figured as the speaker of the phrase containing the dedicatory acronym to Maecenas, and his connection to Linus (the expressed subject of dixerit) is strengthened.
Implicit in Vergil's adoption of Gallus’ motifs and characters, as well as his alignment of his own name with Linus’, is a sense of self-insertion into the poetic lineage described in Eclogue 6. The metapoetic force of the passage cannot be overstated: in choosing to describe the initiation of Gallus into a poetic lineage using, and perhaps reworking, Gallus’ own style and themes, Vergil positions himself as next in line, the inheritor of a poetic tradition passed down from Apollo to Linus and Orpheus to Hesiod to the Alexandrians to Gallus. The initiation scene is as much Vergil's initiation as his forebear Gallus’. Furthermore, by simultaneously aligning himself with Linus in order to point to his dedicatory acronym to Maecenas, Vergil reinforces the connection between poetic lineage and patronage.
The focus of Gallus/Vergil's initiation is a movement towards what Ross broadly terms ‘scientific poetry’—that is, not a particular school of poetry, but rather a more general ‘poetry of science’ whose focal point is knowledge of and ‘Orphic charm’, or power, over nature.Footnote 65 In Eclogue 6, the movement towards this new scientific poetry remains balanced by its pastoral context, and Silenus’ song largely serves to connect old and new in a unified poetic lineage;Footnote 66 Vergil's signals towards a more Aratean (and, by heritage, Hesiodic) style of scientific poetry for the most part remain gestures, just as his gestures towards epic projects in both the Eclogues and Georgics remain but teasers until they are finally realized in the Aeneid. We cannot help looking towards Vergil's next poetic endeavour in the Georgics, where he finally undertakes the project of ‘a poetry of science’ towards which he points in the Eclogues;Footnote 67 indeed, the scene of Gallus’ (and Vergil's) initiation into a lineage of ‘scientific’ poets marks perhaps the most concentrated and specific look forward to the Georgics within the Eclogues. Furthermore, in Ecl. 6.64–73, Vergil makes clear that any movement on his part from pastoral to scientific poetry, now or in the future, will be not an entirely spontaneous transition, but rather a choice that is deeply rooted in, inspired by, and reflective of the long poetic heritage into which he has been initiated.
As soon as he finally arrives at his new poetic project (the Georgics), Vergil reaffirms the poetic genealogy set out in Eclogue 6 and, once again, positions himself and his work at the receiving end of that lineage. The lineage set forth in condensed form in G. 1.1–2 mirrors what we encounter in more explicit terms in Eclogue 6: at the opening of the Georgics, we find a poetic tradition that has passed from Hesiod to Aratus and finally to Vergil, and Maecenas with him. Both G. 1.1–2 and Ecl. 6.64–73 function as riddles—short but rich passages densely packed with allusions and woven with verbal games and metapoetic clues for the discerning reader to decipher. In the end, these clues point to the author himself. At the end of each genealogical overview is the ‘next step’: a new genre of ‘scientific poetry’, projected but not entirely realized in Eclogue 6; promised and then actually undertaken at the opening of the Georgics.
To summarize the most significant points of connection between the explicit dedication to Maecenas in the First Georgic and the dedicatory acronym concealed in Eclogue 6:Footnote 68
(1) Both passages address Vergil' poetic genealogy in similar—and similarly compact—terms.
(2) Eclogue 6 introduces the idea of an attempt at ‘scientific poetry’ by sketching Vergil's poetic genealogy; the Georgics then pick up the genre, once again citing its Greek origins at the beginning of the first poem.
(3) Both overviews of Vergil's Hellenistic forebears play out through word games of the very sort for which several of those poetic predecessors were known.
(4) Both short outlines of Vergil's poetic lineage contain Maecenas’ name in some form—directly in G. 1.2 and as an acronym in Ecl. 6.69—and Vergil flags them as dedications to a real patron in the same form as the patron's name is written: explicitly in the continuing dedication at the beginning of the Georgics and as an acronym/acrostic in the following lines of Eclogue 6 through AC[H]i- in Ecl. 6.70–2.Footnote 69
(5) Both hidden ‘Maecenas’ onomastics appear backward, beginning at the ends of their respective lines (terrAM in G. 1.1; -CEAM in Ecl. 6.69).
Points of overlap between the acronym in Ecl. 6.69 and other known Vergilian verbal games should also be re-emphasized. As I have demonstrated, the coincidence of verbal games with themes of dedication and patronage is not unique to Ecl. 6.64–73 and G. 1.1–2 but is in fact a regular feature of known Vergilian wordplay: the verb accipe, which Adkin has shown to be common to several instances of wordplay in Vergil's corpus, appears not only explicitly in Ecl. 6.69, but also follows the dedicatory acronym as an acrostic in 6.70–2; and the passage surrounding the MAEC- acronym is rife with verbal echoes of key words from other word games (e.g. calamo after the acrostic of Ecl. 1.5–8 and the close parallels with the signature in Aen. 12.587–8). The numerous linguistic and thematic overlaps of the acronym that I have identified in Ecl. 6.69 and so many previously identified Vergilian signatures, acronyms, and acrostics point not only to the legitimacy and intentionality of the MAEC- acronym but also to the presence of a thematic network of lineage and patronage across the collection of Vergilian word games.
In addition to the formal and thematic parallels that unite Ecl. 6.64–73, G. 1.1–2, and other instances of Vergilian wordplay in a discourse on the relationship between patronage, genealogy, and a movement toward ‘scientific’ poetry, the thematic connections between poetic lineage, genre, and patronage that persist within the Eclogue collection can also help to explain the presence of the MAEC- acronym within a scene of poetic initiation in Eclogue 6. Throughout the Eclogues, discussions of patrons are tied to issues of genre—or, to put it more broadly, of the kind of poetry that poets are permitted and choose to write and sing. The deus iuvenis of Eclogue 1 allows Tityrus to play the songs that he wishes to (ludere quae vellem calamo permisit agresti, 1.10); Pollio loves Damoetas’ songs in Eclogue 3, despite their bucolic nature (Pollio amat nostram, quamvis est rustica, Musam, 3.84); Vergil's generic choices in the proems of Eclogues 4 and 8 are enmeshed with his treatment of his patron(s); questions of what songs the poet is allowed and elects to sing are clearly active in the recusatio in the dedication to Varus at the opening of Eclogue 6; and the negotiation between pastoral and love elegy in the final Eclogue is tied directly to the poem's dedicatee, Gallus. Vergil's engagements with questions of genre are also, of course, heavily reliant on his representation of poetic predecessors—Gallus’ initiation in Eclogue 6 provides an example of this tendency to invoke individual figures (either by name or by reference to key words in their works) as representatives of generic models. As we have seen in the signature embedded in G. 1.1–2, these connections between patrons, genre, and poetic lineage are not just isolated to the Eclogues but also continue into Vergil's next work.
In light of the close connection between patronage and generic choices, then, the idea that Vergil's exploration of poetic lineage in the initiation of Gallus might include an oblique reference to another patron figure is less surprising. Even if the location of the MAEC- acrostic within Ecl. 6.69 does not demand the inclusion of a patron figure as obviously as the autograph in G. 1.1–2 does by virtue of its placement at the opening of the Georgics, the appearance of a patron at the end of an outline of poetic predecessors is perfectly in line with the connections Vergil draws between patrons and generic choices and models elsewhere in the Eclogues. Although it might initially seem strange to point to a second patron figure within a context of poetic lineage and genre in a poem that already begins with the discussion of a patron (Varus) and generic choices (pastoral poetry: an agrestis Musa rather than tristia bella, 6.5–6), we should note that the kind of ‘scientific’ poetry hinted at in Ecl. 6.64–73 represents a potential (though not yet fully realized in this poem) generic shift, not a reiteration of the kinds of generic choices associated with Varus at the opening of the poem. That the particular generic shift and associated poetic lineage described in Eclogue 6.64–73 aligns so closely with the formulation of the opening of the First Georgic—which, of course, does include Maecenas's name at the receiving end of Vergil's poetic genealogy—suggests a more significant and intentional connection between Maecenas, Vergil, and the literary predecessors in Vergil's poetic lineage. If Ecl. 6.64–73 and G. 1.1–2 are indeed in conversation, as I argue they are, the role of Maecenas’ patronage and its relationship to the development of Vergil's poetic career must be a subject of that conversation—and a significant one at that, given its placement at the conclusion of both outlines of poetic genealogy.
Conclusions
The confluence of the numerous thematic and verbal overlaps between the acronym I have identified in Eclogue 6.69 and so many known Vergilian word games strongly suggests not only that the acronymic onomastic MAEC- in Ecl. 6.69 is intentional but also that the dedicatory acronym is participating with the other instances of wordplay in a common discourse on poetic heritage, patronage, and the generic trajectory of Vergil's career. Recognizing this network of poetic genealogy, patronage, genre, and word games can, in turn, lay the groundwork for a deeper understanding both of the nuanced ways in which Vergil explores patronage and of the implications of other individual instances of Vergilian wordplay.
While the inclusion of Maecenas’ name in the Eclogues does not provide a basis for a full historical narrative or give us licence to engage in lengthy speculation about the exact nature of the relationship between Vergil and his (future?) patron at the time of the composition of the Eclogues, the concealed dedication, its context, and its echoes in other passages provide some general leads. We might, for example, wonder about the appearance of a concealed dedication to Maecenas in a poem that already finds an explicit addressee in Varus and that focuses so heavily on patronage in its opening. Adkin suggests that Vergil's praise of Varus at the beginning of Eclogue 6 is at least ambivalent, even insincere, and that the political statement of that poem lies largely in the rededication hidden in the acrostic AC[H]i- of 6.70–2.Footnote 70 If the transferred dedication associated with the AC[H]i- acrostic is in fact to Maecenas, Vergil's future patron, and not primarily to Gallus, as Adkin suggests, the political implications of Vergil's underhanded revision of the poem's dedicatee are even stronger,Footnote 71 and the tensions with Varus that are already apparent in the LAESIS double acrostic of Eclogue 6 certainly suggest that a turn to a new patron in another word game would not be out of place in this particular poem.
The double LAESIS acrostic is followed by the hint ‘solvite me, pueri’ (6.24). Perhaps, given the general focus on riddles in Eclogue 6 and the possible tensions with Varus, the command to ‘solve’ aspects of the poem extends not just to recognizing the LAESIS acrostic, but also to figuring out why that particular acrostic accompanies the name of the poem's expressed patron. Silenus follows solvite with a command to ‘recognize the songs that you want’ (carmina quae vultis cognoscite, 6.25), suggesting, perhaps, that multiple versions of carmina—or, rather, multiple interpretations of the poem at hand—are available to the reader who is able to engage with the poem's riddles. If the MAEC- acrostic in 6.69 is indeed one of those riddles—if it offers a patron other than Varus—it might provide a key to a better understanding of the apparent tension with Varus embedded in the LAESIS double acrostic, as well as an alternative patronage relationship.
By beginning to locate Vergilian wordplay (or at least a significant portion of Vergil's word games) within a particular register of poetic genealogy, we may also begin to gain a more nuanced understanding of the placement of other known word games and their particular significance within Vergil's corpus. The signature that Carter identifies in Aen. 12.587–8, whose connection with the MAEC- acronym I have discussed above, presents one such opportunity. Vergil's choice to insert a signature in Aen. 12.587–8 presents something of a challenge: the metapoetic overtones are weaker than we find in other known signatures and acrostics, and the specific location of the signature within Book Twelve does not seem especially remarkable. Nevertheless, these two lines in the final book of the Aeneid do indeed appear to be an intentional signature. Carter does suggest that the significance of the signature in Aeneid 12 may lie in the key words pastor, which clearly alludes to themes of the Eclogues, and apes, for which the Georgics are famous; he also remarks on the metapoetic flavor of pumice in Aen. 12.587.Footnote 72 Carter concludes that the signature may function similarly to the sphragis of G. 4.559–66.Footnote 73 This is a good start, but the allusions and implications of the signature Carter identifies are, I think, even more sophisticated and are doing more work even than Carter suggests.
We can better understand the significance of the Vergilian signature that Carter identifies in Aeneid 12 by examining it within the context of the discourse about poetic lineage, patronage, and genealogy already established between the dedicatory acronym in Ecl. 6.69, to which Aen. 12.587–8 directly refers, and the signature at the opening of the First Georgic. In addition to the direct linguistic echoes between Aen. 12.587–8 and Ecl. 6.67–8, the key to the significance of the signature in Book Twelve lies in the buzzwords that Carter has already identified, pastor and apes. Carter is right that the autograph in Aen. 12.587–8 hints at a summary of Vergil's poetic career towards the close of his great epic, but we can go further: in Aen. 12.587–8, Vergil refers to the Eclogues not only in a general way, but in fact much more specifically, by alluding to a specific pair of lines in Eclogue 6. These particular lines in the Eclogues, which themselves introduce a dedicatory acronym, look forward to Vergil's future project of ‘scientific’ poetry in the Georgics: once we reach the beginning of Georgic 1, another passage (G. 1.1–2), which also includes both a signature and an explicit dedication, simultaneously recalls and undertakes the project predicted in Eclogue 6.64–73. The signature in Aen. 12.587–8 is not just a retrospective look at a linear ascent through a hierarchy of genres. Rather, it reaffirms Vergil's ongoing reflection on the relationships between poetic lineage, patronage, and genre—including his own role within that network, as the inclusion of signatures and dedications in each passage attests.
In arguing that many of Vergil's signatures, acrostics, and acronyms participate in a common discourse surrounding genre, poetic genealogy, and patronage, I do not mean to suggest that Vergilian wordplay functions within a strict system or that the poet deployed wordplay programmatically, nor do I seek to define a single organizing principle within the network of thematically and verbally related Vergilian word games that I have explored through the dedicatory acronym in the Sixth Eclogue. Rather, I hope to have demonstrated that a network indeed emerges from the list of known Vergilian acrostics, acronyms, and signatures, and that the MAEC- acronym in Eclogue 6, because it shares so many significant features with so many other Vergilian word games, offers a unique opportunity to begin to see that network, to recognize just how many Vergilian verbal games are implicated in it, and to explore what those instances of wordplay might be saying to, and about, each other.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Antichthon's anonymous readers and editor Robert Cowan for their comments and suggestions, which greatly improved this article. All remaining errors are, of course, my own.
