ABSTRACT
Attentive readers of the Sixth Eclogue will have to deal with a number of old and often contested issues of a widely different nature in the poem's important introductory part (1–12). As most of these have been treated or at least been touched upon in some way or other by Wendell Clausen in his commentary, the last authoritative one to appear, his interpretations will often be discussed in the following; not in the sense, however, that I have a special bone to pick with an edition that is so eminent and rewarding in many regards. It is regrettable nonetheless, particularly in this passage, that Clausen has paid so little attention to Ernst A. Schmidt's magisterial analysis from 1972:
