Balbilla, who was inspired by Sappho, also incorporated conventional poetic themes, such as a love of music and a fondness for the Muses. The first and second epigrams describe the account of Memnon, a fabled Ethiopian king who was murdered by Achilles at Troy and immortalized by Zeus. The third epigram praises the musician Thamyris who challenged Apollo to a song contest that ended with Thamyris being punished by having all his singing birds killed by a plague. His sin was pride, which angered the muses. Julia Balbilla was a Roman poet whose work survives only in fragments. But she is important because she represents an early stage in the development of Latin poetry: no longer was it composed exclusively in iambic verse; now Italian poets were beginning to use other metrical systems too. Balbilla's work shows that even though Latin was becoming the official language of Rome, many different cultures were still influencing each other through literature. In addition to her own poems, Balbilla has been identified as the author of two works by Vergil. One of these is a book of enigmas titled "Homeric Questions", which may be the work mentioned in the Aeneid when Venus asks Vulcan if he knows any women who will inspire Vergil to write more elegies (a genre of poetry). If so, this would make her the first known female translator or adapter of another language's work.