ABSTRACT
The connection between the fictional Daphnis and the historical Julius Caesar has greatly illuminated the relationship between Virgil’s historical reality and his poetry. The Virgilian story of Daphnis begins when two shepherds, Mopsus and Menalcas, meet to make music among the hazels and elms. In Eclogue 5, Virgil erects a literary tomb for Daphnis that, in its poetic inscription, horticultural elements, and architectural form, adheres to 1st BCE trends in funerary material culture. The tomb that Virgil constructs for Daphnis in Eclogue 5 can be read as a continuation of that character’s story begun in Theocritus’ first Idyll, or as a narrative prop that solidifies Daphnis’ allegorical representation of Julius Caesar. Despite sharing the same name and the same general situation as his Theocritean counterpart and primary model, Virgil’s Daphnis departs from all other previous depictions of that same character in Hellenistic literature.
