Account him; many a young lamb from my fold
Shall stain his altar. Thanks to him, my kine
Range as thou seest them: thanks to him, I play
What songs I list upon my shepherd’s pipe.[52]
In the dialogue that follows, Tityrus, who represents Virgil himself, speaks of his visit to Rome and his meeting with Augustus:
There, Melibœus, I beheld that youth
For whom each year twelve days my altars smoke.
Thus answered he my yet unanswered prayer,
“Feed still, my lads, your kine, and yoke your bulls.”[53]
The fourth Eclogue, addressed to Pollio, and written in the year of his consulship (40 B. C.), celebrates in prophetic and lofty language the birth of a child. As the child grows the world is to become better, until the golden age of peace and good-will among men shall come again. This poem was, curiously enough, long supposed to be an inspired prophecy of the coming of Christ. Who the child really was is uncertain, but there is some evidence that Gaius Asinius Gallus, Pollio’s son, is meant. The lofty tone is struck with the very opening of the poem: