Quamvis lapis omnia nudus Limosoque palus obducat pascua iunco(212),
with the ideal mountain-land of pastoral song--
Maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae(213).
A further inconsistency has been suggested between the time of year indicated by the 'shade of the spreading beech' in the first line, and that indicated by the ripe chestnuts at line 81(214). The truth of the poem consists in the expression of the feelings of love which the old possessors entertained for their homes, and the sense of dismay caused by this barbarous irruption on their ancient domains:--
Impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit? Barbarus has segetes? En quo discordia civis Produxit miseros(215)!
Virgil's feeling for the movement of his age, which henceforth becomes one of the main sources of his inspiration, has its origin in the effect which these events had on his personal fortunes, and in the sympathy awakened within him by the sorrows of his native district.
The ninth Eclogue, written most probably in the same year, and in form imitated from the seventh Idyl--the famous Thalysia--of Theocritus, repeats the tale of dejection and alarm among the old inhabitants of the Mantuan district,--
Nunc victi, tristes, quoniam fors omnia versat(216),--
and touches allusively on the story of the personal danger which Virgil encountered from the violence of the centurion who claimed possession of his land. The speakers in the dialogue are Moeris, a shepherd of Menalcas,--the pastoral poet, who sings of the nymphs, of the wild flowers spread over the ground, and of the brooks shaded with trees,--and Lycidas, who, like the Lycidas of the Thalysia, is also a poet:--
Me quoque dicunt Vatem pastores, sed non ego credulus illis. Nam neque adhuc Vario videor nec dicere Cinna Digna, sed argutos inter strepere anser olores(217).
After the account of the fray, given by Moeris, and the comments of Lycidas, in which he introduces the lines referred to in the previous chapter, as having all the signs of being a real description of the situation of Virgil's farms--
Moeris sings the opening lines of certain other pastoral poems, some his own, some the songs of Menalcas. Two of these--'Tityre dum redeo' and 'Huc ades O Galatea'--are purely Theocritean. Two others--