recall Ovid’s lines: 

nec de plebe deo, sed qui caelestia magna
sceptra manu teneo. (Met. I. 595.)

Again, the line: 

    Dove la costa face di se grembo;

which occurs alike in the play (V. i.) and in the Purgatorio (VII. 68), supplies evidence, as do similar borrowings in the Gerusalemme, of Tasso’s study of Dante.

The prologue introduces Amore in pastoral disguise, escaped from the care of his mother, who would confine his activity to the Courts, and intent on loosing his shafts among the nymphs and shepherds of Arcadia.  In the form of this prologue, which became the model for subsequent pastoral writers in Italy[173], and in the heavenly descent of the principal characters, we may see the influence of the mythological play; while the substance both of the prologue and of the epilogue, or Amore fuggitivo, in which Venus comes to seek her runaway among the ladies and gallants of the court, is of course borrowed from the famous first idyl of Moschus.  Again the topical element is not absent, though it is less prominent than some of the earlier work might lead us to expect.  In the poet Tirsi—­

              allor ch’ ardendo
    Forsennato egli erro per le foreste
    Si, ch’ insieme movea pietate e riso
    Nelle vezzose ninfe e ne’ pastori;
    Ne gia cose scrivea digne di riso,
    Sebben cose facea digne di riso—­(I. i.)

we may, of course, see the poet himself.  In Batto too, mentioned together with Tirsi, it is not unreasonable to recognize Battisto Guarini, whom at that time Tasso might still regard as his friend.  Again, it is usual to identify Elpino with Giovanbattista Pigna, secretary of state at the Estense court, and one with whom, though no friend of the poet’s, it was yet to his advantage to stand well.  The flattery bestowed is not a little fulsome: 

              Or non rammenti
    Cio che l’ altrieri Elpino raccontava,
    Il saggio Elpino a la bella Licori,
    Licori che in Elpin puote cogli occhi
    Quel ch’ ei potere in lei dovria col canto,
    Se ’l dovere in amor si ritrovasse;
    E ’l raccontava udendo Batto e Tirsi,
    Gran maestri d’ amore; e ’l raccontava
    Nell’ antro dell’ Aurora, ove sull’ uscio
    E scritto:  Lungi, ah lungi ite, profani? 
    Diceva egli, e diceva che gliel disse
    Quel grande che canto l’ armi e gli amori,
    Ch’ a lui lascio la fistola morendo;
    Che laggiu nello ’nferno e un nero speco,
    La dove esala un fumo pien di puzza
    Dalle tristi fornaci d’ Acheronte;
    E che quivi punite eternamente
    In tormenti di tenebre e di pianto
    Son le femmine ingrate e sconoscenti. (I. i.)

He who sang of arms and love is of course Ariosto—­

    Le donne, i cavalier, l’ arme, gli amori,
    Le cortesie, l’ audaci imprese io canto—­