# The Eclogues — Character guide

> Key figures in The Eclogues by Virgil.

- [Daphnis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/daphnis.md): Daphnis is the pastoral world's lost center: a singer so beloved that woods, rivers, and even Libyan lions answer his death with grief, and his mother tears her hair at the news. A sorceress in a later song tries to drag
- [Tityrus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/tityrus.md): Tityrus sits in beechen shade while his neighbor Meliboeus trudges into exile, and the contrast is the whole first Eclogue. He admits he was a fool who measured imperial Rome by Mantua, and that only in the city did he f
- [Meliboeus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/meliboeus.md): Meliboeus opens the Eclogues not with song but with banishment: his goats are failing, his ewe has left her young on the rocks, and the raven croaked from the blasted oak. He envies no one, he says, but he wonders aloud 
- [Alexis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/alexis.md): Alexis is the absent center of Corydon's song, a young master whose beauty makes the shepherd rehearse baskets of lilies, baskets of narcissus, and every rustic gift he can imagine. He never speaks, never arrives, and th
- [Corydon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/corydon.md): Corydon is the pastoral lover at his most exposed: he offers Alexis a hundred baskets, a thousand lambs, and his own shaggy beard, and gets nothing back. He knows he is being foolish, calls himself a rustic, and keeps si
- [Palaemon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/palaemon.md): Palaemon is the third voice in the third Eclogue, called in to settle a duel of verses between Damoetas and Menalcas. He listens, weighs, and then declines to crown one over the other, saying both deserve the heifer and 
- [Damoetas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/damoetas.md): Damoetas stakes his skill and a prize heifer against Menalcas in an amoebean contest of pastoral song, judged by the herdsman Palaemon. His verses swing between tender longing for Phyllis and proud boasts about his patro
- [Menalcas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/menalcas.md): Menalcas moves through several eclogues as the collection's most persistent singer, trading verses with Damoetas, defending his farm through poetry, and lending his remembered songs to Moeris and Lycidas. His reputation 
- [Pollio](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/pollio.md): Pollio stands at the edge of the pastoral world as the powerful patron whose attention the shepherds court, offering livestock and honeyed oaks in return for his favor. He is both a reader of their verses and a figure wh
- [Silvanus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/silvanus.md): A rustic god of the woods, appearing in pastoral songs and landscapes.
- [Silenus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/silenus.md): Silenus is the collection's wild card, a sleeping, wine-soaked satyr whom the shepherds bind and rouse into singing of creation, myth, and the origins of things. His song pulls the pastoral frame open onto vast, strange 
- [Gallus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/gallus.md): Gallus is the collection's most personal sorrow, a fellow poet transplanted into Arcadia and left languishing under a rock while nymphs, Silvanus, Pan, and even Apollo come to console him. He refuses comfort, insisting t
- [Mopsus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/mopsus.md): A shepherd who sings a lament for Daphnis in a singing contest with Menalcas.
- [Moeris](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/moeris.md): Moeris meets Lycidas on the road to town, visibly displaced, and tells him the grim news that Menalcas's song did not in fact save the farm, and that he himself barely escaped a violent quarrel. He remembers fragments of
- [Lycidas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/lycidas.md): Lycidas is a self-deprecating singer who calls himself a goose among swans yet cannot stop urging Moeris to remember Menalcas's songs. He presses for the poetry that once made the countryside bearable, even as Moeris ins
- [Damon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/damon.md): A shepherd who sings a tragic song of unrequited love and despair.
- [Amyntas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/amyntas.md): A young shepherd mentioned as a rival or beloved in pastoral songs.
- [Phyllis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/phyllis.md): A shepherdess loved by Menalcas, mentioned in pastoral songs.
- [Pan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/pan.md): The god of the wild, invoked by shepherds and associated with Arcadian music.
- [Amaryllis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/amaryllis.md): A shepherdess loved by Tityrus, who finds favor with her in his songs.
- [Phoebus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/phoebus.md): The god Apollo, patron of poetry and music, invoked by shepherds.
- [Augustus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/augustus.md): The Roman emperor, referenced as a divine figure granting peace to Tityrus.
- [Orpheus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/orpheus.md): The mythical musician, mentioned as a singer of surpassing skill.
- [Apollo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters/apollo.md): The god of music and prophecy, appearing as an inspiration to poets.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_eclogues_se/characters