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Urbem quam dicunt Romam: Vergilian Pastoral and Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma1

Ian L. Silva

Although pastoral elements can be identified from the earliest beginnings of Greek
literature, in Homer and Hesiod, and later on, especially in Theocritus, originator of the genre, it
is primarily from Vergil and his Eclogues that our enduring sense of the pastoral derives. In this
remarkable first book of poems we see Vergil adapt and transform the bucolic mode of the Idylls:
to the Theocritean display of the country and its pleasures as a creative realm apart from urban
spaces Vergil contributes a whole array of qualities that, taken together, at once expand and
deepen the genre. Chief among these innovations is a sense of the personal and the historical. In
Vergilian pastoral, contemporary political events appear in the background as a cause of the
divergent fates of the shepherds that populate the countryside. The Vergilian mode also invites
comparisons between this pastoral dynamic of the personal and the political, on the one hand,
and the recoverable facts of Vergil’s own autobiography, on the other. Such elements appear
most prominently at the beginning of the collection, in Eclogue 1, and at its close, in Eclogue 9
(which in one reading of the structure of the collection can be seen as the conclusion of the book
before the coda of Eclogue 10). Together, these poems open up a discourse on the status of the
individual as he exists in the pastoral space while the vagaries of historical fortune bring either
peace and stability or violence and exile. Inevitably, this kind of Vergilian pastoral focuses much
more on the latter outcome, in which individual shepherds lose their physical land and together
with it their mental (or, if you will, their spiritual) ease. In the Eclogues, then, Vergil sketches
out the beginnings of the theme of exile that will form such a crucial part for his own later
writings (particularly the Aeneid) and the writings of a host of others, from Ovid to Dante to
Joyce. Not surprisingly, this Vergilian influence reaches beyond the 20th century and literary
works in a strictly European context to include other media that have become increasingly

1
Translations from Vergil come from Goold’s revised Loeb editions, with modification; the Suetonius passage is
taken from Rolfe’s edition in the same series.

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popular and effective as modes of artistic expression within the 21st century. Most recently,
Alfonso Cuarón’s 2018 film Roma deploys devices and themes of the kind we have just
described that are unmistakably Vergilian. The objective of this paper will be to amplify the
aforementioned qualities of Vergil’s pastoral poems and to bring them to bear on an analysis of
Cuarón’s Roma.

1.
While Vergil eloquently signals his predecessor Theocritus at the beginning of Eclogue 1, the
rest of the poem—the opening of his pastoral collection—concerns itself with strikingly new
pastoral themes. The poem consists of a dialogic exchange between two rustic figures,
Meliboeus and Tityrus, and takes place in an undisclosed landscape in the countryside that is
experiencing turmoil due to powerful outside forces. Meliboeus opens the dialogue with a quick
summary of his and Tityrus’ current, disparate fates: nos patriae finis et dulcia linquimus arva. /
nos patriam fugimus; tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra / formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas
(“We are leaving 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”, vv. 3-5). As
Meliboeus goes on to lament, undique totis / usque adeo turbatur agris (“there is such unrest on
all sides of the land”, vv. 11-12). This allusion to territorial unrest, the result of which has been
Meliboeus’ expulsion from his fields, finds its cause only toward the end of the poem: impius
haec tam culta novalia miles habebit, / barbarus has segetes (“a godless soldier will hold these
well-tilled fallows, a brute these crops” vv. 70-1). The unfortunate Meliboeus is thus a victim of
land confiscation, of the sort that occurred after the Battle of Philippi in 42 B.C., when Octavian
was faced with rewarding his loyal veterans with land in Cremona and, eventually, in Vergil’s
own homeland, Mantua. Tityrus, on the other hand, has retained his land by petition: he has
travelled to Rome, where a certain iuvenis (“young man”, v. 42) whom he earlier referred to as a
deus (“god”, vv. 6-7) has granted him his libertas (“freedom”, v. 27) and the ability to keep his
fields. Such, then, in brief, are the basic circumstances of Eclogue 1. Contrary to what the
mellifluous opening of the poem might lead readers to expect, the pastoral world of Meliboeus
and Tityrus, remote from the tumultuous city though it may be, still feels the effects of the
political upheavals of Rome.

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 For our present analysis, the reaction of Meliboeus to his own plight and to Tityrus’
prosperity carries the most interest. For much of roughly the first half of the poem, Tityrus
informs his interlocutor concerning how he gained his freedom and retained his land. The
remainder of the poem, however, features Meliboeus’ impassioned reaction to their disparate
situations. In response to Tityrus’ report of the iuvenis who has allowed him to maintain his
pastoral lifestyle, Meliboeus delivers what for their beauty and sensitivity could be termed the
most pastoral lines in the poem:

Fortunate senex, ergo tua rura manebunt,

et tibi magna satis, quamvis lapis omnia nudus
limosoque palus obducat pascua iunco.
non insueta gravis temptabunt pabula fetas,
nec mala vicini pecoris contagia laedent.
fortunate senex, hic inter flumina nota
et fontis sacros frigus captabis opacum.
hinc tibi, quae semper, vicino ab limite saepes
Hyblaeis apibus florem depasta salicti
saepe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro;
hinc alta sub rupe canet frondator ad auras:
nec tamen interea raucae, tua cura, palumbes,
nec gemere aëria cessabit turtur ab ulmo.

Fortunate old man! So these lands will still be yours, and large enough for you,
though bare stones cover all, and the marsh constrains your pastures with slimy
rushes. Still, no strange herbage shall try your breeding ewes, no baneful infection
from a neighbor’s flock shall harm them. Fortunate old man! Here, amid familiar
streams and sacred springs, you shall enjoy the cooling shade. On this side, as of
old, on your neighbor’s border, the hedge whose willow blossoms are sipped by
Hybla’s bees shall often with its gentle hum soothe you to slumber; on that, under
the towering rock, the woodman’s song shall fill the air; while still the cooing
wood pigeons, your pets, and the turtle dove shall cease not their moaning from
the elm tops. (vv. 46-58)

I quote the lines in full because they point to Vergil’s poetic acuity. For he shows here what we
have always everywhere felt to be so, that what we have loved and lost becomes dearest to us
upon reflection. The landscape he describes grows grand before his poetic fancy, for in spite of
the “bare stones” (lapis…nudus, v. 47) and the “marsh” (palus, v. 48), Meliboeus envisions what
he describes imaginatively as an ideal realm. On account of this amplification, he twice calls his
companion a “fortunate old man” (fortunate senex, vv. 46, 51). Particularly after the second
apostrophe to Tityrus at v. 51, Meliboeus conjures up verbally the enjoyments he will no longer

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possess in reality: the cooling shade, the gentle hum of Hyblaean bees, the song of the woodman,
and the cooing of wood pigeons and turtle doves. The passage is powerfully sensory, bordering
on the sensual. For a brief moment, Meliboeus takes us out of the present, with its grueling labor,
mishaps in love, and disruptive land confiscations, and places us in the realm of the imagination,
the purely pastoral.
In the lines that follow, Tityrus’ response to this passage wrenches us out of the pastoral
dream as his series of adynata, or “impossibilities”, portrays a world that is both strange and
foreign. His reference to the exsul (“exiled man”, v. 61) is a moment of impassioned insensitivity
to his compatriot’s doomed fate. The word clearly disturbs Meliboeus. He now envisions
possible realms of banishment with the same intensity with which he imagined Tityrus’ peaceful
pastoral existence. He asks himself—vainly, we feel—en umquam patrios longo post tempore
finis / pauperis et tuguri congestum caespite culmen, / post aliquot, mea regna, videns mirabor
aristas? (“Ah, shall I ever, long years hence, look again on my country’s bounds, on my humble
cottage with its turf-clad roof—shall I, long years hence, look amazed on a few ears of corn,
once my kingdom?”, vv. 67-9). This anticipated nostalgia leads to a condemnation of the
political circumstances that have led to the present crisis: en quo discordia civis / produxit
miseros (“See where strife has brought our unhappy citizens!”, vv. 71-2). Given the context,
Vergil invites us to read such discordia (“strife” or “civil war”) as that which in his own time
brought down upon himself and his own compatriots similar calamities.
In Eclogue 9, several of the features of the first eclogue reemerge as Vergil brings his
collection to a close. This poem again consists of a dialogue between two rustic speakers,
Lycidas and the older Moeris, as they walk together into town. The two interlocutors’ speech
focuses on the power of song and the singer’s intimate relation to place (we recall that Eclogue 1
begins with Tityrus singing the woodland Muse patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi [“lying under
the canopy of spreading beech”, vv. 1-2]). In response to Lycidas’ opening question Quo te,
Moeri, pedes? (“Where are you heading, Moeris”, v. 1), Moeris explains that he is transporting
kids to the person who now possesses his lands:

O Lycida, vivi pervenimus, advena nostri

(quod numquam veriti sumus) ut possessor agelli
diceret: “haec mea sunt; veteres migrate coloni.”
nunc victi, tristes, quoniam fors omnia versat,
hos illi (quod nec vertat bene) mittimus haedos.

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 O Lycidas, we have lived to see the day—an evil never dreamed—when a
stranger, holder of our little farm, could say: “This is mine; be gone, old tenants!”
Now, beaten and cowed, since chance rules all, we send him these kids—our
curse go with them! (vv. 2-6)

Moeris’ situation at the beginning of this poem recalls Meliboeus’ towards the conclusion of
Eclogue 1: in the miles (“soldier”) and the barbarus (“brute”) of the first eclogue we recognize
the advena possessor (“foreign holder”) of the ninth. Yet from the outset of this poem, Moeris
clearly defines his mood as a result of circumstance: he is tristes (“cowed”, v. 4) because he is
victi (“beaten”, ibid.). Lycidas, for his part, (as with Tityrus in general in Eclogue 1) responds
with lines of a brighter tone:

Certe equidem audieram, qua se subducere colles

incipiunt mollique iugum demittere clivo,
usque ad aquam et veteres, iam fracta cacumina, fagos
omnia carminibus vestrum servasse Menalcan.

Yet surely I had heard that, from where the hills begin to rise, then sink their ridge
in a gentle slope, down to the water and the old beeches with their now shattered
tops, your Menalcas had with his songs saved all. (vv. 7-10)

As he describes the threatened landscape, Lycidas hopefully implies here that its hills and
streams and beech trees depend on song. That is, the song of a Menalcas can have power over the
changes wrought by the wider world. Yet Moeris insists that the case is otherwise: the ability to
create song depends heavily on landscape, but song itself is powerless in the face of violence. As
proof, Moeris quotes part of a song by Menalcas which he sang to Varus: Vare, tuum nomen,
superet modo Mantua nobis, / Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae, / cantantes
sublime ferent ad sidera cycni (“Varus, your name, let but Mantua be spared us—Mantua, alas!
too near ill-fated Cremona—singing swans shall bear aloft to the stars.”, vv. 27-9). As Vergil
was well aware, Mantua was not spared, and Menalcas’ verses proved no match for Varus’
political office. In the tantalizingly autobiographical Catalepton 8, Vergil addresses the villula
(“little villa”, v. 1) to which he now brings himself and his loved ones, in primis patrem
(“especially my father”, v. 5). He describes the property as a pauper agelle (“poor little farm”, v.
1), conceding that such a modest plot must be for him and his father Mantua quod fuerat
quodque Cremona prius (“what Mantua had been, and before that Cremona”, v. 6). The poem

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(the authenticity of which remains, admittedly, in question) shows with reference to Vergil, both
the man and the poet, the deeply felt ties to the homeland, inasmuch as the new space must as
much as possible mimic the old.
Through the voices of Meliboeus and Tityrus, Lycidas and Moeris, in Eclogues 1 and 9
respectively, Vergil creates a world that even in its small-scale fictionality allows for a discourse
to take place on the political, moral, and aesthetic issues of the day. Particularly with Meliboeus,
Vergil’s portrayal demonstrates a deep sympathy for his experience of the loss of his patria. We
recall Suetonius’ anecdote in his Vita Vergili: Bona…cuiusdam exsulantis offerente Augusto
non  sustinuit accipere (“When Augustus offered him [sc. Vergil] the property of a man who had
been exiled, he could not bring himself to accept it”, 13), the implication being that Vergil’s
personal acquaintance with exile so affected him that he would refuse what, we are given to
understand, any Roman would eagerly accept. On the other hand, through Tityrus Vergil gives us
a view of the grandeur of Rome, which tantum alias inter caput extulit urbes, / quantum lenta
solent inter viburna cupressi (“has reared her head as high among all other cities as cypresses do
among the bending osiers”, Ecl. 1, vv. 24-5), and of its ruler who is like a god. In Eclogue 1 the
big and the small confront one another, together with the possessor and the dispossessed, the real
and the imaginary, the fortunate and the wretched. With Lycidas and Moeris, the consequences
of the loss of land are elaborated, in particular the fading out of pastoral song and the liberty and
creativity that foster it. We feel the two goatherds here to be closer to one another in
circumstance as compared with Tityrus and Meliboeus, yet in mood the melancholy frame of
mind that Moeris betrays in his speech offsets the balance with Lycidas, creating a tension that
drives the poem. Ultimately, Moeris’ ties to the land are such that the severance he experiences
precludes him from the spontaneity of song and even from the courtesy between shepherds
which we feel to be the sine qua non of the pastoral way of life.

2.
Many of the aforementioned themes that Vergil explores in the Eclogues reemerge mutatis
mutandis in Cuarón’s Roma. Dramatically set in early-1970s Mexico, the film centers on the
experience of its main character Cleo, a live-in domestic worker, and the middle-class family that
employs her in their home in the Colonia Roma district of Mexico City. Throughout its 135-
minute runtime, the director patiently follows a short but intense period in the life of Cleo.

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Although the focus is on Cleo as protagonist, we see her life unfold in the context of the family
she works for, with Sra. Sofía, the matriarch of the family, forming her dramatic counterpart. As
Cleo goes about her demanding work cleaning house, washing clothes and dishes, preparing
meals, and seeing to the physical and emotional needs of the family’s four children, she becomes
romantically involved with a young man called Fermín, who quickly abandons her when he
learns that she is pregnant with his child. At the same time, Sra. Sofía’s relationship with her
husband, Sr. Antonio, rapidly deteriorates as he disappears with his younger mistress. While
most of the film takes place in Mexico City, two prominent scenes, at the film’s midpoint and
end respectively, take place away from the city, the first at a family friend’s hacienda in the
countryside, the second in coastal Tuxpan. Meanwhile, in the background of all this are several
references to the political moment in Mexico—then under the leadership of the Partido
Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)—culminating in a highly-charged scene depicting the events
of El Halconazo (known also as the Corpus Christi Massacre), in which a government-trained
paramilitary group known as Los Halcones attacked and killed large numbers of student
demonstrators. By the end of the film, Cleo has given birth to a stillborn girl and Sra. Sofía has
separated from her husband, with Cleo’s bond with the family strengthened after she saves two
of the children from drowning in the sea in Tuxpan. In spite of this moment of unity, the film
comes to an end back in the family home in Colonia Roma, where Cleo resumes her domestic
duties, simultaneously part of and not part of the family she works for.
In its overarching structure, Roma plays with the same dynamics we see in the Eclogues,
in particular the interplay between the personal and the historical. In the former case, we observe
the lives of the film’s characters, especially Cleo and Sra. Sofía, in intimate detail as they face
the challenges of work, family, and turbulent relationships. Yet Cuarón takes care to place such
dramas in a wider, seemingly impersonal context. A striking instance of this occurs early on in
the film, in the scene of departure between Sra. Sofía and her husband, Sr. Antonio, that takes
place in the street outside the family home. Sra. Sofía’s fears of her husband’s true motive for
departing—his affair with another woman—can be read in her concerned expression. As Sr.
Antonio drives away, the camera pans to follow his departing car which has to slow down as it
faces an oncoming marching band. Sra. Sofía now walks in front of the camera into the path of
the opposing band to gaze incredulously at her husband driving away; at this point, the camera
angle abruptly shifts to show Sra. Sofía holding back tears as the young men with their military

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hats and trumpets march by to the stately rhythm and strident calls of their drill music. The band
appears once more performing its matutinal march in the last scene of the film. This time, the
camera shows a similar view of the street outside the family home as the same marching band
approaches and Sra. Sofía, returning from the momentous events in Tuxpan, emerges into view
from behind driving the damaged “Galaxy” and parking it on the curbside. In these two scenes,
the director juxtaposes the unique and highly personal misfortunes of Sra. Sofía and the repeated,
dispassionate cycles of the military marching group.
A similar effect occurs when Sra. Teresa, Sra. Sofía’s mother, has their driver take herself
and Cleo shopping for a crib in anticipation of the approaching birth of Cleo’s child. As it turns
out, the three of them drive through the city as student demonstrators begin to fill its streets on
the fateful day of June 10, 1971, that would become known as El Halconazo. The driver points
out that they can proceed no further on account of the demonstrators. “Ay, Dios”, replies Sra.
Teresa from the back seat of the car as she glances up from her newspaper: “No los vayan a
golpear otra vez”. Sra. Teresa’s casual “otra vez” briefly alludes to the Tlatelolco massacre of
October 2, 1968, a few years prior to the dramatic date of our film. Prescient words. Moments
later, from the second-story window of the furniture store overlooking the street where the
protestors are demonstrating, we see the violence of the Tlatelolco massacre repeat itself. As
Cleo and Sra. Teresa inquire about a crib, their driver rushes into the store and heads for the
window; from this vantage point, the camera pans slowly across the window surveying the chaos
in the street below where groups of young men begin beating and then firing upon the
demonstrators. The visual counterpoint of the slow, deliberate camera movement and the rapid,
chaotic scattering of the crowd is jarring. Much of the film features similar long, single takes,
mostly of domestic scenes, in which the viewer can savor every detail of the shot. Here, such
dispassionate camera work clashes with the passionate intensity of the violent outburst which, as
Sra. Teresa unknowingly points out, seems to follow inevitably on the heels of the 1968
massacre. The overlap between this glimpse of a wider socio-political calamity and Cleo’s
individual situation comes when Fermín, father of her child and member of the paramilitary
group, bursts into the department store with a band of Halcones in pursuit of fleeing
demonstrators. Cleo’s personal world of domestic duties, friendship, and romance is thus shown
to be inextricably linked to the larger movements of history.

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 While the aforementioned scene portrays viscerally the violence resulting from mounting
tensions between advocates for social change and an increasingly authoritarian government, most
of the film addresses such conflict indirectly. The film’s midpoint finds Cleo traveling with the
family to their friend’s hacienda in the countryside for the New Year. This constitutes one of two
scenes in which the action takes place outside of the city: the people, the landscape, and the
sounds all change. It is here that we detect a mode and an approach most similar to that of
Vergilian pastoral. As the midnight celebrations go on, a fire breaks out in the surrounding
woods. While members of the household start to form a chain to carry pails of water in order to
quell the flames, a costumed figure from the party, a minor character called Ove Larsen, slowly
makes his way towards the center of the frame. Once there, he removes his mask and begins
singing the opening verses of a Norwegian folksong, “Bardomsminne frå Nordland” (“Childhood
memory from Nordland”), in which the first-person speaker of the song tells of nostalgia for a
distant, idealized land. The shot stays with Larsen until he reaches the refrain of the song: “Å eg
minnest, å eg minnest, / Å eg minnest so vel dette land” (“Oh I remember, oh I remember, / Oh I
remember so well this land”). In the next shot, a new day dawns as the camera pans across the
charred landscape, before jumping to another wide pan of the ploughlands in a valley in which
the children of the various families at the hacienda are playing. The scene portrays visually the
nostalgia for the innocence of childhood and the locus amoenus (“charming place” or
“pleasance”) in the preceding folksong. The sun shines through the surrounding distant
mountains, revealing the grain that has been bundled into sheaves; the laughter of the children
mingles with the familiar sounds of the countryside, so different from those of the city.
Attending the children are Cleo and her friend Benita, a domestic worker from another family.
As the two of them walk up a hill and approach the foreground of the shot, Cleo surveys the
panoramic landscape with a smile and says to her companion, “¿Sabes? Se parece a mi pueblo.
Claro, allá está seco, pero se parece”. She continues, closing her eyes and abandoning herself to
the moment and the memory: “Y así, igual, hacen los animals…. Y así suena…. Y así huele.” In
a film that largely takes place in the metropolis of Mexico City, with its distinctive city sounds
and rapid movements, and looks unflinchingly at domestic tension, political violence, and the
physical and emotional trauma of an unsuccessful childbirth, this scene conjures an impossible
respite—however brief—not unlike the one evoked by Meliboeus’ aforementioned reverie in

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Eclogue 1. The abrupt transition to the next scene in front of the family home in Colonia Roma
shatters the moment.
While Cleo’s remembrance of her village brings a moment of innocence and calm to the
film, it is not without complications. When Cleo first arrives at the hacienda, she meets an old
acquaintance who works for another family, and the two of them carry baggage to the rooms
where the children will be lodging. The walls of the room are lined with the preserved heads of
all the dogs of the hacienda that have come and gone over the years. As Cleo’s friend relates, the
most recently deceased among them, Canela, supposedly died the previous summer from eating a
poisoned rat; yet she assures Cleo that the dog likely met its end at the hands of the villagers in a
dispute over the estate of Don José. The same friend alludes to yet another instance of violence
when she and Cleo break away from their employer’s New Year’s Eve party to have a drink
among the local villagers. This time she points out a man sitting at a table behind them whose
son was killed, also the previous summer, over another land dispute. Later in the film, after the
family has returned from the countryside, Adela, Cleo’s coworker and friend, tells her that the
government has come to her native village to seize land and that they have taken her mother’s.
Such moments depict the cold reality in which the idealized portrayal of Cleo in the countryside,
remembering sounds and sights and smells of her village, must be contextualized. This point
becomes painfully clear in the film’s last scene. The family has returned from Tuxpan, where
Cleo has bravely saved two of the children from drowning. Once home, the children are
surprised to find their rooms rearranged after the departure of their father. As the children run
through the house, Sra. Sofía exuberantly explains to them how there are going to be many
changes—and many adventures. When Paco excitedly proposes that they go to Disneyland, Sra.
Sofía explains that such a trip is out of their budget, but that they could perhaps go to Oaxaca.
Sofi, the young girl to whom Cleo is particularly close, suggests that they could even visit Cleo’s
village while there. Her suggestion betrays her love for Cleo as much as her naive innocence. As
a child, she cannot grasp the deep socio-political disturbances that now affect Cleo’s native
village and those of so many others. In the final analysis, Cleo can no longer return to her village
as it was in her childhood, with all the familiar richness of that world, except by feats of memory
and imagination. Herein lies Roma’s pang of Vergilian pathos.

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 Bibliography

Suetonius. Lives of the Caesars, Volume II: Claudius. Nero. Galba, Otho, and Vitellius.
Vespasian. Titus, Domitian. Lives of Illustrious Men: Grammarians and Rhetoricians. Poets
(Terence. Virgil. Horace. Tibullus. Persius. Lucan). Lives of Pliny the Elder and Passienus
Crispus. Translated by J. C. Rolfe. Loeb Classical Library 38. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1914.

Virgil. Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid: Books 1-6. Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough. Revised

by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library 63. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916.

Virgil. Aeneid: Books 7-12. Appendix Vergiliana. Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough. Revised

by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library 64. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918.

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