while reading vergil eclogue 3 today, i was surprised to come across the following couplet (ll.64-65):
Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella,
et fugit ad salices et se cupit ante videri.
[Galatea attacks me with an apple, playful girl,
and she flees to the willow grove and desires that she be seen before (she enters it).]
why my suprise? well, because i didn’t know that pelting one’s beloved with fruit was a conventional courtship signal in the ancient world. but it was (see coleman’s commentary p.118). compare, e.g., theocritus Id.5.88-89.