L'Art d'aimer
Gargara is likewise used as an expression of proverbial fertility in Ovid's "Ars Amatoria", Seneca's tragedy "The Phoenician Women", and as late as the 5th century CE in the odes of Sidonius Apollinaris. Macrobius in his "Saturnalia" (early 5th century CE) devoted a chapter to the question of what had given Virgil the idea of using Gargara this way in the first place, concluding that it was an inference firstly from Mount Ida's reputation for being well-watered in Homer, secondly from Mysia's general reputation for fertility, and thirdly from the use of γάργαρα ("gargara") in Old Comedy to express an immense quantity of anything.