In Virgil's seventh Eclogue, Meliboeus relates a singing contest that Corydon and Thyrsis undertook. Upon beginning their songs, Corydon invokes the Libethrian nymphs (21), and Thyrsis invokes ‘Arcadian shepherds’ (25–6). Scholars have previously interpreted Thyrsis’ Arcadian shepherds as people,Footnote ¹ but here I suggest that they should be interpreted as divinities.Footnote ² In support of this assertion, I rely on the expectations of the capping style (which requires that Thyrsis ‘cap’ Corydon's invocation of Libethrian nymphs),Footnote ³ Virgil's description of the setting and the characters present, an epigram by Erucius (an intertext for this poem), the Greek and Roman literary tradition that developed especially in relation to gods associated with Arcadia, and Thyrsis’ quatrains, which can be profitably interpreted if we assume that Arcadian gods have heard Thyrsis' prayer and are now inspiring his song.

Given his depiction of the setting and the characters present, Virgil does not encourage his reader to imagine that there are any Arcadian shepherds that Thyrsis can call on for aid. Daphnis is present in line one, and, within the bucolic tradition, he is not an Arcadian. Excluding Daphnis and the competitors, moreover, the only person present that Meliboeus mentions is himself. Meliboeus does not mention his ethnicity, but there is no reason to assume that he is an Arcadian, since Virgil situates this poem in northern Italy (13). Meliboeus probably stresses the ethnicity of Corydon and Thyrsis because ‘he’ (that is, Virgil's construction of him) thinks that the people to whom he speaks, his internal audience (unmentioned), as well as we readers, his external audience, will find it surprising that Thyrsis and Corydon are Arcadians, since the competition is set in northern Italy.Footnote ⁴ As Virgil sets the scene, only Corydon and Thyrsis are Arcadians, and, given that Arcadian Corydon is Thyrsis' competitor in this contest, there are no Arcadians present to come to the aid of Thyrsis. The suggestion that Thyrsis invokes divinities, then, explains why Arcadian Thyrsis calls on Arcadian shepherds: he invokes the gods by their appropriate sedes, so that they will hear his prayer, and, since Thyrsis is an Arcadian, Thyrsis expects that his native gods will come to his aid.

As previous scholars have noted, Eclogue 7 shares striking similarities with an epigram by Erucius (Anth. Pal. 6.96).Footnote ⁵ Just as one of Erucius' characters is named Corydon, so too is there a Corydon in Virgil's eclogue. Just as Erucius’ epigram is in a bucolic setting, so too is Virgil's eclogue. Just as Erucius uses the phrase ‘both Arcadians’ (Ἀρκάδες ἀμφότεροι, 2), so too does Virgil (Arcades ambo, 4). Just as Erucius’ Glaucon and Corydon sacrifice an animal and dedicate its head and horns to a divinity, so too Virgil's Corydon, via Micon, sacrifices the head of a boar with long antlers to a divinity (29–32).Footnote ⁶ The most important similarity for the argument made here, however, is Erucius’ reference to Pan as a ‘herding/pastoral god’ (νομίῳ … θεῷ, 6) in the context of ‘the two Arcadians’, since, I suggest, this resonates with Virgil referring to Pan as a pastor in Arcades pastores. Readers familiar with Erucius, or the ‘common source’ on which Virgil and Erucius draw, would know that the ‘two Arcadians’ (Ἀρκάδες ἀμφότεροι/Arcades ambo) are closely linked with ‘pastoral’ Pan (νομίῳ … θεῷ) in literary history.Footnote ⁷

Although we may think of Pan primarily as a god who accompanies shepherds, considerable evidence within the literary, material and linguistic record shows that the Greeks and the Romans constructed Pan as a shepherd himself. As M. Jost notes, ‘his usual attributes of syrinx and lagobolon (a device for catching hares) mark him out as a shepherd’,Footnote ⁸ and, as R. Beekes observes, πᾶν ‘is often identified with Skt. Pūṣ-án- [m.] “god who protects and augments the herds”’.Footnote ⁹ As a god who protects and augments the herds, Pan is the ‘divine’ pastor, who oversees and furthers the functions of ‘human’ pastores. Pan's Greek name, ‘certainly derived from the root *pa(s) and mean[ing] guardian of the flocks’,Footnote ¹⁰ is cognate with the Latin pascere. Virgil expects his readers, then, to recognize the presence of Pan in pastores for several reasons: the reference to Arcadia, the cognate pastores, the necessities of the capping genre (in other words, the audience expects Thyrsis to call upon gods greater than Corydon's Libethrian nymphs) and the subject matter of Thyrsis' songs (that is, in comparison with Corydon's quatrains, Thyrsis' quatrains are crass and their relative crassness encourages the audience to infer that Pan, being less refined than the Libethrian nymphs, has heard Thyrsis' prayer and is now inspiring Thyrsis' song).

Virgil closely links Pan and Arcadia in several of his Eclogues. In the fourth Eclogue, the narrator claims: Pan etiam, Arcadia mecum si iudice certet, | Pan etiam Arcadia dicet se iudice uictum (4.58-9). As Jenkyns notes, ‘Arcadia is mentioned [here] because it is the region traditionally associated with Pan.’Footnote ¹¹ In the eighth Eclogue, Arcadian Mt Maenalus appears closely linked with Pan (22–4), and, as Jenkyns further notes, Maenalus appears here because of Pan and his invention of reed pipes in Arcadia.Footnote ¹² In Eclogue 10, Apollo, Silvanus and Pan come to check on Gallus, as he wastes away from lovesickness, and Pan, deus Arcadiae (26), addresses Gallus, who replies to Pan and his fellow Arcadians with the vocative Arcades (31). On multiple occasions, then, Virgil closely links Pan, Arcades and Arcadia in his Eclogues.Footnote ¹³

Given that Virgil uses the plural (Arcades pastores), he encourages his audience to understand another personage, in addition to Pan, that Thyrsis calls upon for aid, and many readers will link the second pastor with Hermes, given the close connection between Hermes and Pan with Arcadia. As Coleman remarks, ‘[i]n traditional mythology Arcadia was the homeland of Hermes, the inventor of the lyre and the shepherd pipe (h.Hom. 4.2, 39-67, 511-12) and father (at least in some accounts) of Pan, the patron of shepherds and their music. It is in association with Pan and Hermes that we find the earliest hints of an idealization of the Arcadian region.’Footnote ¹⁴ Furthermore, in the eponymous Homeric Hymn, Hermes is already fashioned as a cowherd and shepherd.Footnote ¹⁵ Hermes, then, would likely be the second pastor that Virgil's intended Roman audience would assume that Thyrsis is calling upon for aid.

Thyrsis uses language that further connects him with divinities by asking for protection from the mala lingua of Codrus (28), and by referring to himself as a uates futurus (28). The reference to a mala lingua refers to the magical power of cursing,Footnote ¹⁶ and Thyrsis hopes to be protected against Codrus' mala lingua by being crowned with baccar.Footnote ¹⁷ Human beings would not be in a position to provide aid to Thyrsis against Codrus' mala lingua, but divinities would be. Moreover, humans would not be ‘invested’ in protecting Thyrsis from Codrus' mala lingua, but Thyrsis assumes that his invoked divinities would, since, as he sees it, he is a uates futurus and, as noted above, he is their fellow Arcadian.Footnote ¹⁸ As Coleman notes, ‘[t]he Greek loan words poiētēs and poiēma were already established in Latin before Ennius (Ann. 6 V). uates, the native Latin word (Var. L. 7.36), like its Celtic and Germanic cognates, had religious and prophetic as well as poetic associations … Hence the more prestigious connotations that uates sometimes has in contrast to poeta.’Footnote ¹⁹ By referring to himself as a uates futurus, an arrogant phrase according to T. Page,Footnote ²⁰ and by hoping to ward off Codrus' curses, Thyrsis further positions himself in relation to divinities.Footnote ²¹

It is somewhat recherché for Corydon to invoke the Libethrian nymphs,Footnote ²² and whether the reader conflates them with the Muses or not, the Libethrian nymphs' Heliconian voices win out over the voices of Thyrsis' Arcades pastores. As R. Egan remarks, at the end of the poem, ‘the sequence of tenses, with the perfect participle uictum followed by the present infinitive contendere, suggests that Thyrsis continued to compete even after he was defeated’.Footnote ²³ Perhaps it was obvious to Meliboeus from the beginning of the competition that a singer who calls upon Pan would be vanquished by a singer who calls upon Heliconian goddesses, and thus Meliboeus says that Thyrsis was contending in vain (frustra, 69).Footnote ²⁴ Thyrsis' ‘problem’ is that Corydon is simply a better singer, when the two are judged by the expectations of classical bucolic poetry. The presence of Daphnis within the poem and the presence of this competition within Virgil's Eclogues encourages the competition to be judged within that frame. Next time, presumably, Thyrsis should invoke more refined divinities to aid him in his competition, but, given that Virgil has named him Thyrsis,Footnote ²⁵ it would be out of his character to do so.Footnote ²⁶ Recognizing that the Arcades pastores are gods, then, does much to clarify the argument of the poem.