jan 1, 38 BC - Vergilius "Eclogues"

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§ 8.1 Eclogue VIII:

I’ll sing the Muse of Damon and Alphesiboeus,
at whose match the cattle marvelled, forgetting to graze,
at whose song the lynxes were stupefied,
and rivers, altering, ceased their flow,
Damon and Alphesiboeus’s pastoral Muse.
But you, my Pollio, whether you pass mighty Timavus’s crags,
or travel the shores of the Illyrian Sea – will the day ever come
when I’ll indeed be free to tell of your deeds?
Will I be free to carry your songs to all the world,
worthy alone of Sophocles’s tragic muse?
From you was my beginning, in you I’ll end. Accept the songs
begun at your command, and let the ivy twine
among the victor’s laurels circling your brow.
Night’s cool shade had scarcely left the sky, that time
when the dew in the tender grass is sweetest to the flock,
as Damon, leaning on his smooth olive-staff, began.

DAMON:
‘Lucifer, arise, precursor of kindly day, while I,
shamefully cheated of my lover Nysa’s affection,
complain, and call, still, to the gods, in the hour of my death,
though their witnessing these things has been no help to me.
My flute, begin the songs, of Maenalus, with me.
Always, Maenalus has melodious groves and sounding pines,
always, he listens to the loves of shepherds,
and to Pan, who first denied the reeds their idleness.

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