In Act II. Scene 1, the rejected Satyr, like the rejected Polyphemus or Amaryllis in Theocritus, complains in antitheses which recall Longos:
The woods hide serpents, lions, and bears under their green shade, and in your bosom hatred, disdain, and cruelty dwell.... Alas, when I bring the earliest flowers, you refuse them obstinately, perhaps because lovelier ones bloom on your own face; if I offer beautiful apples, you reject them angrily, perhaps because your beautiful bosom swells with lovelier ones.... and yet I am not to be despised, for I saw myself lately in the clear water, when winds were still and there were no waves.
This is the sentimental pastoral poetry of Hellenism reborn and intensified.
So with the elegiac motive so loved by Alexandrian and Roman poets, praise of a happy past time; the chorus sings in Aminta:
O lovely age of gold,
Not that the rivers rolled
With milk, or that the woods wept honeydew;
Not that the ready ground
Produced without a wound,
Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew....