Chapter 7 claims that Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe exhibits a sustained engagement with Vergil’s Eclogues and Aeneid, and, to a lesser extent, the Georgics. The introduction (Section 7.1) gathers the evidence for the novel as the composition of a Romanized member of the Mytilenean Greek elite, descended from Pompey’s freedman, Theophanes of Mytilene, and suggests that it was written at some point during the second half of the second century; this will become particularly relevant to Section 7.8 on Longus’ subversive engagement with the Aeneid (a poem celebrating the Julian—not Pompeian!—claim to autocratic rule). Sections 7.2–7.7 are concerned with setting out the features of Vergilian pastoral that recur in Longus, and which are absent from Theocritus (or at least different in degree and kind). These include: the fragility of pastoral autonomy (7.2); theft and vandalism (7.3, 7.3.1, the latter also positing a connection with Ovidian elegy); various elements of Philetas’ biography (7.4); dendronyms (7.5); Amaryllis and pastoral echo (7.6); and Tityros and pastoral succession (7.7).
