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 [pg 141]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].