The popularity of Virgil's Ecolgues was due to two factors. First, their novelty in introducing the pastoral to Roman literature (much earlier seen in the Greek); and second, the circumstances around the composition of the poems.
The shepherds were his mask which allowed him to express the political circumstances covertly alluded to.

The First Ecologue was not written first, but placed first in the published collection. It shows Virgil's love of country life and is an allegory. His contemporaries were well aware that in 42 BC, after the Battle of Philippi, the district of Cremona, and the district of Mantua were expropriated by the government to provide farms for veterans of the victorious army. The former owners were evicted and Virgil lost his paternal estate.

The First Ecologue depicts an evicted sheperd, envying the good fortune of Tityrus, who escaped eviction by appealing to the youthful god in Rome.

Virgil was compensated by appealing to Octavian.


Ecologue I

You, Tityrus, lie under your spreading beech's covert,
wooing the woodland Muse on slender reed,
but we are leving our country's bounds
and sweet fields.
We are outcasts from our country;
you, Tityrus, at ease beneath the shade,
teach the woods to re-echo "fair Amaryllis".

O, Meliboeus, it is god who wrought
for us this peace-
for a god he shall forever be to me;
often shall a tender lamb from our folds
stain his altar.
Of his grace my kine roam,
as you see, and I, their master play
what I will on my rustic pipe.


Ecologue III

Sing on, now that we are seated on the soft grass.
Even now, every field, every tree is budding;
now the woods are green, and the year is at its fairest.
Begin, Damoetas; then Menalcas, must follow.
Turn about you shall sing;
Singing by turns the Muses love.


Dicite, quandoquidem in molli consedimus herba.
et nunc omnis ager, nunc omnis parturit arbos,
nunc frondent silvae, nunc formosissimus annus.
incipe, Damoeta; tu deinde sequere, Menalca;
alternis dicetis; amant alterna Camenae.


Ecologue IV

Now is come the last age of the song of Cumae;
the great line of the centuries begins anew.
Now Virgo returns, the reign of Saturn returns;
now a new generation descends from heaven on high.
Only do thou, pure Lucina, smile on the birth of the child,
under whom the iron brood shall cease,
and a golden race spring up throughout the world!
Thine own Apollo now is king!


Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas;
magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;
iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto.
tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum
desinet ac toto surget gens aurea mundo,
casta fave Lucina: tuus iam regnat Apollo!


In the Ninth Ecologue, two rustics are bewailing their treatment at the hands of strangers and how one of them, Menalcas, attempted to save the district of Mantua from expropiation by addressing a poem to Varus.
It had been Virgil himself who made this vain appeal, another reference to current events.


Ecologue IX

O Lycidas, we have lived to see the day-
an evil never dreamed- when a stranger,
holder of our little farms, could say:
This is mine; begone ye old tenants!
Now, beaten and cowed, since chance rules all,
we send him these kids-
our curse go with them!


Yet surely I had heard that
from where the hills began to rise,
then sink their ridge in a gentle slope.
Your Menalcas had with his songs saved all..

... Nay, these lines, not yet finished,
which he sang to Varus: Varus, thy name,
let but Mantua be spared us- Mantua, alas!
too near ill-fated Cremona -
singing swans shall bear aloft to the stars.!

... I, too have songs;
me also the shepherds call a bard,
but I trust them not.
For as yet, I sing nothing worthy of
a Varus or a Cinna, but cackle as
a goose among melodious swans.


Horace eulogized Virgil's work as molle atque facetum - that is, delicate and witty. Evidently his comtemporaries enjoyed his sense of humor.