upon his return from Athens? Such a treatment of a woman of social
station would be in line with the customs of the "new poets," Catullus,
Calvus, and Ticidas, rather than of the Augustans, Gallus, Propertius,
and Tibullus. Vergil himself used the motive in the second _Eclogue_ (l.
46), a reminiscence which, doubtless with many others that we are unable
to trace, Messalla must have recognized as his own.

The pastoral which Vergil had translated from Messalla is quite fully
described:

Molliter hic _viridi patulae sub tegmine quercus_
Moeris pastores et Meliboeus erant,
Dulcia jactantes alterno carmina versu
Qualia Trinacriae doctus amat iuvenis.

That is, of course, the very beginning of his own _Eclogues_. When he
published them he placed at the very beginning the well-known line that
recalled Messalla's own line:

Tityre, tu _patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi_.

What can this mean but a graceful reminder to Messalla that it was he who
had inspired the new effort?[3]

[Footnote 3: Roman writers frequently observed the graceful custom of
acknowledging their source of inspiration by weaving in a recognizable
phrase or line from the master into the very first sentence of a new
work: cf. _Arma virumque cano_--[Greek: Andra moi ennepe] (Lundström,
_Eranos_, 1915, p. 4). Shelley responding to the same impulse paraphrased
Bion's opening lines in "I weep for Adonais--he is dead."]