Incipiunt mollique iugum demittere clivo,
Usque ad aquam et veteres, iam fracta cacumina, fagos,
Omnia carminibus vestrum servasse Menalcan[151].
There seems no motive, certainly none suggested by the Sicilian idyl, for introducing the hills gradually sinking into the plain, unless to mark the actual position of the place referred to. The only hills in the neighbourhood of the Mincio to which these lines can apply are those which for a time accompany the flow of the river from the foot of the Lago di Guarda, and gradually sink into the plain a little beyond ‘the picturesque hill and castle of Vallegio,’ about fifteen miles higher up the river than Mantua. Eustace, in his Classical Tour, finds many of the features introduced into the first and ninth Eclogues in this neighbourhood, though the wish to find them may have contributed to the success of his search. A walk of fifteen miles seems not too long for young and active shepherds, like Moeris and Lycidas, while such expressions as
Tamen veniemus in urbem;
Aut si nox pluviam ne colligat ante veremur[152],—
seem inapplicable to the shorter distance between Pietola and Mantua.
The ‘sacri fontes’ which are spoken of in Eclogue I., the existence of which is further confirmed by the
Non liquidi gregibus fontes, non gramina deerunt[153]
in the description from the Georgics (ii. 200), of the pastoral land which Mantua lost, are more naturally to be sought in the more picturesque environment of the upper reaches of the river than in the level plain in the midst of which Mantua stands[154]. The accurate description of the lake out of which the Mincio flows—