Meliboeus is dead, long live Meliboeus: Confronting the spectre of crisis in Nemesianus’ Eclogue I

Nemesianus’ eclogues are an important witness to the development of Classical culture, being the last extant collection of bucolic poems before the dramatic socio-political shifts of the fourth century. Within his reuse of Virgilian and Calpurnian characters, tropes, and narrative structures, however, resides a consciousness of contemporary issues political, societal and cultural. In none of the third-century poet’s four eclogues is this more apparent than in his programmatic first. This article reads Nemesianus’ inaugural eclogue as a fictionalization of such concerns, analysing its thematic structure with a view to the poet’s historical context. Amidst the preoccupation with loss, senectitude and nostalgia, it becomes clear that Nemesianus intended his eclogues—with the first as its primary expression—to a be a poetic response to the crises of his era, one which finds recourse not in hoping for a new political golden age but in the consolatory and preservative power of a poetry oriented towards—and reverent of—the past.