The 63-line poem (the shortest of the Eclogues) begins with an address to the Muses. The first few lines have been referred to as the "apology" of the poem; the work, much like Eclogue 6, is not so much concerned with pastoral themes, as it is with cosmological concepts, and lines 1–3 defend this change of pace.Steenkamp 2011, p. 101. In line 4, the speaker references the Cumaean Sibyl, claiming it as a source for his unfolding prophecy concerning the magnus ordo saeclorum, or "great order of the ages". The following lines (ll. 5–10) reference a myriad grouping of ideas: Hesiod's Ages of Man; the concept of a magnus annus, or the "Great Year" that begins a great "golden" age; the Italian idea of saecula; Plato's idea that there is a periodic rule of Saturn; and finally "eastern messianic" views similar to those found in the Sibylline Oracles, a collection of supposed oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state.Miller 2009, p. 255.
