^mm: 
 
The Outdoor Life 
 in Greek and Roman Poets 
 
j^O^^^ 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK . BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
The Outdoor Life 
 
 in 
 
 Greek and Roman Poets 
 
 AND KINDRED STUDIES 
 
 BY 
 
 THE COUNTESS 
 EVELYN MARTINENGO CESARESCO 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1911 
 
30\-5 
 
 TO DEAR MEMORIES 
 
 253208 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 This book grew out of my own life south of the 
 Alps. I have walked with Virgil in his fields, and 
 listened with Theocritus to Sicilian folk-songs. The 
 poets of the Old World became for me not dead 
 poets but living men — living observers of things I 
 could observe myself every day. Antiquity was 
 not past but present. 
 
 To the sketches of outdoor life as revealed in the 
 poetry and in a few portions of the prose literature 
 of ancient Greece and Italy, I have added some 
 studies of subjects connected with the scheme of 
 the book which I always hoped to complete in its 
 present form, though the chapters were published 
 separately in the Contemporary Review. My thanks 
 are due to the Editor for allowing me to reprint 
 them. 
 
 Satb, Lago di Gar da. 
 
 Vll 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Peasant of Ancient Greece 
 II. Husbandry in the Greek Dramatists 
 
 III. The Attic Homestead 
 
 IV. The Last Greek Peasant 
 V. Nature in the Earlier Roman Poets 
 
 VI. A Prose Source of the GeorgicS 
 VII. Virgil in the Country 
 
 VIII. TiBULLUS AT his FaRM 
 
 IX. Ovid and the Natural World 
 X. The Roman's Villeggiatura 
 XI. Nature in the Last Latin Poets 
 XII. Transformation 
 
 XIII. The Divine Pastoral 
 
 XIV. PuER Parvulus .... 
 XV. The Modern Pastoral in Italy 
 
 I 
 25 
 39 
 59 
 79 
 96 
 IZ5 
 144 
 
 157 
 176 
 199 
 217 
 
 23s 
 246 
 
 267 
 
 IX 
 
lies sejour des Dieux ! Hellas, m^re sacr^e, 
 Oh ! que ne suls-je ne dans le saint archipel, 
 Aux siecles glorieux ou la terre inspiree 
 Voyait le Ciel descendre a son premier appel ! 
 
 Leconte de Lisle. 
 
THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE 
 
 One summer day there was a young Greek who 
 tended his few sheep and fewer goats near the 
 Fountain Pirene. His manner of dress, the short 
 crook with which he vainly tried to catch one of his 
 scampering herd to obtain a draught of milk for the 
 stranger, above all, his simple face, enclosed in long 
 fair hair parted down the middle, might have 
 belonged to two thousand years ago. On that face 
 the excitements of millenniums had left no more 
 trace than on the faces of the drooping-eared sheep. 
 A little lower down, but still at some distance above 
 the village of Old Corinth, is the homestead of a 
 small peasant proprietor, a friend of the guide who 
 had gone with me to the top of the hill, and since 
 our efforts to get milk from the goatherd had failed, 
 we threw ourselves on the hospitality of this humble 
 lord of the soil. June is the most beautiful month 
 in Greece, because in June the oleanders are in flower, 
 but if you walk to Acro-Corinth on a June morning 
 
 I B 
 
2 tHE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE i 
 
 you will be rather thirsty by the time you come back. 
 It is true that I might have drunk deep of the 
 Muses' spring, but I preferred to taste not, for the 
 prosaic reason that ice-cold water after a hot walk is 
 one of the best recipes for taking a fever. We sat 
 under the mulberry-tree before the door of the 
 cottage, and our peasant host, after washing the 
 glasses two or three times in our presence (which is 
 always done by the Greek people before offering you 
 to drink), set before us good' wine, with the strong 
 resinous flavour that makes the wine far more refresh- 
 ing from the astringent qualities of the resin, though 
 it is not at first pleasant to the taste, excellent whole- 
 meal bread, two kinds of cheese, and ripe mulberries. 
 While we were eating, the peasant occupied himself 
 with looking through my opera-glass, which so 
 diverted and surprised him that he called his wife out 
 of the house to share in the amusement. When we 
 left I pressed on him a piece of paper money, which 
 he had evidently neither expected nor was much 
 pleased at receiving ; but his face brightened when I 
 offered him my hand, which he did not kiss as a 
 peasant in the unfrequented parts of Italy probably 
 would have done, but shook in the perpendicular 
 fashion represented on the ancient stelae. Greece is 
 the only country, as far as I have noticed, where the 
 peasants habitually shake hands among themselves, 
 and every time that I have seen them do it I seemed 
 
I THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE 3 
 
 to see a scene from one of those monumental bas- 
 reliefs which show the wife bidding a quiet good-bye 
 to the husband, the daughter to the mother, and so 
 on through all the ties of kindred — surely the 
 happiest way of commemorating the dead in marble, 
 the most tender and true and free from exaggeration. 
 The Greek peasant of the present time, whose condi- 
 tion has been described by a competent authority as 
 superior to that of any similar class in the world, is 
 an " object-lesson " in the study of the peasantry of 
 ancient Hellas. This is not merely the impression 
 of a passing traveller, but is borne out by the testi- 
 mony of all who have lived long in rural Greece. If 
 a biography ought to have a portrait at the begin- 
 ning, my Corinthian acquaintances may be taken as 
 faithful portraits of the husbandmen and herdsmen 
 some account of whom I shall endeavour to glean 
 from the early Greek poets. 
 
 The most radiant scene is that nearest the dawn. 
 Whether the description of the shield of Achilles was 
 a part of the original Iliad or a brilliant interpola- 
 tion of a later date, it must be considered our earliest 
 glimpse of European agriculture. How full of life, 
 how full of sun it is ! The rich, deep-ploughed 
 glebe, across which many ploughmen guided their 
 teams, hastening to see who could first reach the 
 boundary from which they started, where they were 
 met by an overseer who at the end of each turn 
 
4 THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE i 
 
 handed them a cup of sweet wine ; the ripe, glowing 
 cornfield where the reapers plied the sickle, the 
 binders gathered up the sheaves, and the master, 
 standing king-like amongst them, looked on in silent 
 content, while under the trees servants were prepar- 
 ing a meal of basted meat sprinkled with white barley 
 for all employed ; the vineyard glorious with purple 
 grapes, which were gathered into woven baskets and 
 then carried away by young maidens and youths 
 whose dancing feet kept time to the sweet, pathetic 
 song of a boy who accompanied his clear voice on 
 the harp ; the smiling cottages, the fair meadow 
 flecked with snowy sheep, the kine lowing near the 
 music-making brook : golden it is, a golden life in 
 spite of catastrophes introduced less for the sake of 
 antithesis than from regard of truth. It is these 
 catastrophes which allow us to believe the rest. The 
 armed men who fall upon the piping shepherds and 
 their happy flock, the lions which carry off the bull, 
 represent the elements of natural strife inherent in 
 " the unhappy constitution of a world in which living 
 beings subsist by mutually devouring each other." 
 But the conclusion is not Schopenhauer's ; instead of 
 ** the consequent dread and distress of all that has 
 life " there is the passionate y^j/V^/^ vivre while it lasts. 
 Life is lovely, is worth living, though to-morrow we 
 die ; is worth drinking at full draughts ; the whole is 
 better than the half 
 
I THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE 5 
 
 The rural background, which is kept in view by 
 means of similes through the whole Iliad^ shows the 
 poet's intimate familiarity with country sights and 
 incidents. The forest fire rushing along the tops of 
 mountains, the winged nations of wild geese, swans, and 
 cranes uttering shrill cries as they swoop down upon 
 the moist meadows, the insects swarming round the 
 shepherd's hut in the first warm days when the pails 
 brim over with milk, the various herds of goats, 
 cunningly separated by the goatherd if by chance 
 they mingle — these and a hundred other images in 
 the Iliad and Odyssey recall the common open-air 
 things of everyday observation. Beautiful and attrac- 
 tive girls are called *' oxen-finders," because their 
 dowry, or rather their purchase-money, was paid in 
 oxen. There is frequent mention of bird-snaring ; 
 nets are placed in the underwood so that thrushes 
 and doves, flying towards their nests, are entangled 
 in them (cruel sport !) ; again, the vultures, circHng 
 overhead, cause the small birds to beat down upon 
 the nets spread by the bird-snarer. Boys and 
 countrymen go bird-nesting, the eagles and vultures 
 make shrill lament over the loss of their unfledged 
 nestlings. How early the inarticulate appeal of 
 creatures mourning for their young reached the hearts 
 of poets is shown again by the touching story in the 
 Iliad of the young sparrows, not yet able to fly, 
 huddled together in a row on the topmost branch of 
 
6 THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE i 
 
 a plane-tree, when a snake creeps up to devour 
 them, which also catches the mother as she flutters 
 close round, twittering piteously, a martyr to her 
 love. 
 
 In the Odyssey the important episode of the swine- 
 herd Eumaeus throws a flood of light on the economy 
 of a large estate. Eumaeus was the son of an island 
 king, or petty chief, but was kidnapped by his nurse, 
 a Phoenician slave-woman, who escaped with him on 
 board a Phoenician ship. She died on the voyage, 
 and the ship having been carried by the wind to 
 Ithaca, the sailors sold the boy to Laertes. Eumaeus 
 was already able to walk alone, but, according to the 
 habits of the time, he was still considered in want of 
 maternal nourishment. He was at once made a pet 
 of by Laertes* wife, who brought him up with her 
 own youngest daughter, and only when he grew to 
 be a youth did she send him to work in the fields, 
 without, however, showing him by doing so any 
 slight, or diminishing her affection, which lasted till 
 she died of grief for the absence of Odysseus. Hence- 
 forth he is to be regarded as a typical farm-servant, 
 and neither the fact of his alleged noble birth, nor 
 that of his nominal slavery, alters the case in the 
 least. Though a man " lost half his manhood the 
 day he became a slave," the position did not imply 
 the evils and the ignominy we attach to the name. 
 Freedom was lost — an immense loss to a Greek — but 
 
I THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE 7 
 
 otherwise the slave labourer and the free labourer 
 were treated exactly alike. Sir Richard Jebb noted 
 that there is not a single Homeric instance of a slave 
 having an unkind master. 
 
 When Odysseus set out, Eumaeus was already 
 working on the estate, and, in particular, he was 
 taking care of swine. It was thought a good and 
 respectable occupation, and I repeat there was no 
 harshness or caprice in sending one to it who had been 
 kept in the house as a spoilt child. This is worth 
 insisting on, because it is characteristic of the point 
 of view from which manual work was seen. On 
 the estate were many upper farm-hands in the same 
 position as that held by Eumaeus. Each of the 
 twelve herds of cows, the twelve flocks of sheep, the 
 eleven herds of goats, had a responsible guardian, 
 with a staff of men and lads working under him. 
 Every day the fattest goat and the fattest of the 
 swine were brought home for the master's table. 
 Eumaeus was not without the power of making some 
 private profits, though these were not large ; he 
 bought a serving-man out of his own money, or 
 rather its equivalent, since coinage was not known to 
 Homer. He also built of his own accord a hand- 
 some swinery for the accommodation of the pigs, and 
 a house for his own, with a portico under which he 
 could sit and a neat paling all round. This work 
 was the result of industry more than of outlay, as he 
 
8 THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE i 
 
 seems to have collected and conveyed the stones, cut 
 down the wood, and done the building himself. 
 
 Odysseus, on returning to his domain, finds 
 Eumaeus sitting under his portico, employed in 
 making himself a pair of ox-hide shoes, which proves 
 that he wore shoes. What followed is " known to 
 every schoolboy," but it must not be missed out here ; 
 a lecturer on anatomy cannot suppress the backbone 
 because every one knows what it is like. Eumaeus 
 sees nothing in his master but a miserable-looking 
 old beggar, but he remarks that, even had the beggar 
 been more wretched, he would have done his best to 
 entertain him, since all beggars and strangers are of 
 Zeus' sending. It is his boast that, badly off though 
 he is, he has still enough to give to the poor. A 
 stranger or a mendicant (though of these last there 
 are few) meets to-day with exactly the same hospit- 
 able reception wherever he goes in Greece, as my own 
 experience testifies. Sometimes, too, he runs the 
 same danger that Odysseus ran of being made short 
 work of by the watch-dogs, which, with true dog- 
 dislike of tramps and dog-indifl^erence to Zeus, set 
 upon the intruder and frightened Eumaeus out of 
 his wits lest they should call down the vengeance of 
 Heaven by tearing his guest into small pieces on his 
 very threshold. Later Odysseus* own old dog 
 recognises him in spite of time and in spite of rags, 
 and wags his affectionate tail as he breathes out his 
 
I THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE 9 
 
 life on the dung-heap — immortal tribute to dog-love 
 which some writers have sought to set aside, saying 
 that there was nothing else to indicate that Homer 
 had a just appreciation of dogs. As if that was not 
 enough ! 
 
 Eumaeus is evidently a good deal afraid of his 
 own half-wild dogs ; he does not trust to his voice 
 to warn them oiF, but takes up stones to throw at 
 them. Yet even they can be affectionate towards 
 those whom they know — when Telemachus appears 
 they fawn round him, instead of barking. 
 
 The dogs having been driven away, Eumaeus 
 invites Odysseus into the house and prepares for him 
 a seat of rushes, over which he throws a thick goat- 
 skin. He would be able to entertain his guest in a 
 far better style (he now explains) if he were not at 
 the mercy of a worthless lot of young profligates 
 (the suitors), his own master having long since left 
 home, never to return. But for this, he would have 
 received before now a nice house and three acres and 
 a wife — a ** long- wooed wife," whbse bride-price he 
 is not himself, perhaps, able to pay, or it may be 
 that slaves were not allowed to marry until they 
 were, if not freed, at least placed on an independent 
 footing. Good masters, says Eumaeus, always 
 provide in this manner for their faithful servants ; 
 a very enlightening remark. Enlightening, also, is 
 the poignant regret which he expresses that, in con- 
 
lo THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE i 
 
 sequence of the reigning disorder at the palace and 
 of Penelope*s seclusion, he cannot have access to his 
 mistress and receive her advice and kind words and 
 little useful presents, as the custom is. The Greek 
 great lady acted the same part in Homer's time as 
 the English lady of the manor acts with her cottagers 
 to-day. 
 
 Eumaeus proceeds to prepare the mid-day meal. 
 He kills two young pigs, and dresses them for 
 cooking. He roasts them on the spit, basting them 
 thoroughly with white meal, and after mixing a cup 
 of sweet wine (wine was always drunk with water) 
 he invites the stranger to partake. These are not 
 the prime fatted swine which have to be reserved 
 for the suitors — to Eumaeus' intense disgust — they 
 are only the common young pigs which are at the 
 disposal of the swineherds. By the evening, Eumaeus, 
 though not trusting himself to believe the statement 
 of his guest that Odysseus is alive and well and will 
 soon return, and though still feeling by no means 
 sure that he is not being imposed on by a practised 
 humbug, has, nevertheless, got into the highest state 
 of excitement. When the swine are driven home at 
 sunset and are entering their sties with a tremendous 
 grunting, he casts scruples to the winds and orders 
 the best of the herd to be slaughtered as a feast for 
 all. Long have they toiled for the swine of the 
 white tusks while others feasted ! They have a fine 
 
I THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE 1 1 
 
 supper, washed down with red wine, while bread is 
 served round by Mesaulius, Eumaeus' own man. 
 After much talk they decide to go to rest and the 
 host makes a bed for Odysseus near the fire, and 
 covers him with a large, thick cloak ; of these, he 
 has the two necessary for a change and no more, 
 which he explains to his visitor, intimating that in 
 the morning, before leaving, he must put on again 
 the rags in which he came. Never quite assured 
 about his guest's character, he thus cautiously guards 
 against one of those little mistakes of a loan for a 
 gift which have been known to take place (especially 
 in the matter of books) at a considerably later date. 
 The younger swineherds also sleep indoors, but 
 Eumaeus, putting on thick clothing and taking 
 with him his arms, goes out to sleep beside the 
 three hundred and sixty pigs which repose under the 
 shelter of a rock, the sows only being admitted to the 
 covered sties. 
 
 It is well to notice how, when Telemachus arrives, 
 Eumaeus *' kisses him all over," a liberty which tells 
 of the familiar terms existing between dependants 
 and their masters. Imagine a French swineherd of 
 feudal times kissing all over the son of a marquis ! 
 It might happen in Italy where the " touch me not " 
 part of the aristocratic idea never took much root. 
 In fact, it did happen to an English lady who had 
 bought some land in Romagna, and who met with 
 
12 THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE i 
 
 this kind of reception from her female dependants, 
 greatly to her dismay. In Homer labourers, servants, 
 and nurses address the grown-up members of their 
 masters' families, if they have known them from 
 their youth, as " my dear child," or " my sweet 
 light." There was no " fine gentleman " fear of 
 soiling one's hands. Telemachus helped to cut up 
 meat, and also to clean the place after the slaughter 
 of the suitors ; not an agreeable task, but better do 
 that than think that to work with your hands is 
 derogatory to your dignity. Perhaps the evils 
 once arising from fagging at English public 
 schools were balanced by the ethical good derived 
 from initiation into the sacred rite of toasting 
 sausages. 
 
 On the whole, Eumaeus, though unjustly neglected 
 in his own opinion, owing to the absence of his right- 
 ful lord, does not seem to have been so very badly 
 off even in his worst days. There are mandriani or 
 herdsmen in Italy who would be willing to change 
 with him. Before we have done with the Odyssey 
 we must glance at another agricultural type which it 
 contains, that of the prosperous peasant proprietor of 
 a fruit farm. This is what Laertes was, nor does it 
 matter that he was a roi en exil^ or to be more exact, a 
 retired king ; retired kings were as plentiful then as 
 they are now ; only the Greek could make himself a 
 genuine peasant at a moment's notice ; while king- 
 
I THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE 13 
 
 ship now, as a rule, seriously incapacitates a man for 
 any other trade. Laertes' fruit farm was a pleasanter 
 possession than most empires. It makes one in a 
 good humour simply to think of it. There was a 
 cheerful well-built house, round which were ranged 
 the farm buildings and labourers' dwellings, and 
 round these stretched the farm land. Every fig-tree 
 and olive and pear and vine was well and properly 
 tended ; the ground was well dug, there was not a 
 weed anywhere. We know without being told how 
 abundantly each tree and plant bore fruit, what an 
 air of well-being and order there was over all. 
 Odysseus finds his father alone in the vineyard, 
 engaged in hoeing a vine. To establish his identity, 
 he recalls how once as a child he followed him 
 through the orchard and teased him to give him 
 some fruit-trees for his own. Laertes made him a 
 present of thirteen pear-trees, ten apple-trees, and 
 forty fig-trees with a promise of forty rows of vines, 
 between which corn was sown as it is now. Happy 
 Odysseus ! What a modern note it is that is here 
 struck, though the modern child, with his garden- 
 plot and infant forest of chestnuts and oaks, has to 
 be contented with less grand things ! Be it small or 
 great, this first taste of property teaches that inner 
 love of plants, that interest in their growth and 
 development from day to day, which is far removed 
 from the mere capacity to admire a flower at a 
 
14 THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE i 
 
 flower-show or a fine head of asparagus when it 
 comes to table. 
 
 In the scraps of folk-lore called the Homeric 
 epigrams, one addressed to Glaucus, the head 
 herdsman, recommends that the watch-dogs be fed 
 before the gates, as they will thus be more inclined 
 to drive off intruders. Another refers to the ancient 
 custom of carrying a wooden swallow from house to 
 house and asking for largess in honour of the return 
 of Spring. It is substantially the same as the 
 Chelidonisma quoted by Athenaeus and as the 
 swallow-songs sung at present in the Greek islands. 
 I do not know that there is an older piece of folk- 
 lore on record which is still in current use. 
 
 The Homeric Hymns do not tell us much about 
 agriculture, but they are penetrated by that rapture 
 of delight in simple natural objects which was far 
 more real once than it is now. Indeed it may be 
 doubted if most of us understand it at all, though, 
 perhaps, we might understand it if we recalled the 
 absolute enjoyment felt on some day of childhood in 
 a meadow full of cowslips ; or it may be revealed to 
 us when after a serious illness we step out for the 
 first time into the pleasant air and bodily weakness 
 renders our mind less thought-bound, men da pensier 
 presa^ opening the way for the immediate play of 
 emotion which, however it came about, transports us 
 outside ourselves and fills us with the god. 
 
THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE 15 
 
 Ah ! then, we say to the passing moment, " Stay, 
 thou art so fair ! " But it does not stay; it gets into 
 the first express train and we into one starting in the 
 opposite direction. 
 
 Pan, the most captivating creation ot Greek 
 mythology, is the concrete embodiment of the feel- 
 ings awakened by the woods with their fragrant 
 undergrowth, by the wet grasses starred with 
 daffodils ; unlike the too solid gods, his kindred, 
 Pan is half human and whole elf — a whimsical, 
 radiant presence interpreting that something which 
 answers, which lives and is conscious in the silence 
 of wide spaces, the solitude of the forest recesses. 
 The pointed rocks and snowy heights of the moun- 
 tains are his ; it is he who passes over the sunlit hills 
 and scales the highest summit that commands a view 
 of flocks scattered over the slopes ; he passes quickly 
 along the rugged chain, his soft fair hair floating in 
 the wind ; or he lingers near the streams shaded by 
 thickets ; or he reclines in meadows full of crocus 
 and hyacinth and sings so sweetly that no bird 
 pouring forth his soul amongst the first leaves can 
 ever sing sweeter. This is the Pan of the Homeric 
 Hymns ^ who with little change flits through antiquity 
 till the voice on the Ionian Sea announces that Pan is 
 dead, and dead with him is the first youth of the 
 world. 
 
 Close after the Homeric liter^turQ coin^S the 
 
1 6 THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE i 
 
 work which was regarded while the ancient civilisa- 
 tion lasted as the permanent text-book and scriptures 
 of husbandry. The extraordinary reverence in which 
 it was held would make the Book of Days of 
 Hesiod interesting even if it were not of great 
 interest in itself as a document in the study of 
 archaic manners. The importance ascribed to it by 
 an imaginative race shows how fallacious it is to 
 judge a people by only one side of their character. 
 Hesiod was a verista^ a rather morose verista who 
 had not kept a single illusion. His advice is the 
 essence of plain common sense tinged a little with 
 pessimism. He makes the Boeotian peasant stand 
 before us as clearly as the Dutch peasant in the 
 " Village F6te " of Teniers. Many of his precepts 
 are no less sound now than they were in his own 
 day. Keep out of lawsuits, he says ; keep out of 
 debt. It is a dreadful thing to grow old and find 
 oneself in want. Get a youth of fifty as your 
 labourer (" un ragazzo di quarant' anni " is an ex- 
 pression I have heard used by an Italian sempstress); 
 if you have a younger man he will work by fits and 
 starts and throw his energy away on trifles ; besides, 
 he is sure to be always talking ! Choose an un- 
 married maidservant, women with children eat too 
 much (and have been known to hide something in 
 their aprons for the bairns). Give your labourer a 
 good allowance of bread, and in winter give him 
 
I THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE 17 
 
 more than in summer, because the cold sharpens the 
 appetite. The oxen, on the other hand, need less 
 hay in winter as they do less work — a point open to 
 dispute. The ox is at his best for labour at nine 
 years old, he has left off being skittish. (Now we 
 should say that he was at his best at six.) Boys are 
 handy for scaring birds. Hesiod has the genuine 
 farmer's grudging spirit about the birds' small 
 pillage. After twelve years old (no abuse of child- 
 labour here, at any rate) boys should be given 
 something to do and not allowed to sit idle on the 
 wayside tombs and public seats, or they will be lazy 
 as long as they live. This is a wise counsel, so is the 
 following : Do not go hanging about blacksmiths' 
 forges and other places of public resort ; in short, do 
 not go to the osteria. Any one who knows peasant 
 life knows what happens when a man begins to loaf. 
 An artisan may loaf and work alternately ; the 
 peasant who loafs will loaf for ever. Nature is no 
 loafer and will not wait, and who of her servants 
 waits till to-morrow finds there is no to-morrow. 
 The idle peasant, too, grows quarrelsome and ends 
 by running his knife into his neighbour ; though 
 this is an original remark of the writer's and not of 
 the poet under consideration. 
 
 Winter is a miserable time. Hesiod does not 
 seize one glimpse of the gaiety of Virgil's winter. 
 The north wind lashes the kine, the snow drives 
 
 c 
 
1 8 THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE i 
 
 along the valley, the rain soaks one to the skin. 
 Old age with his staff — the " three-footed man," bent 
 in back, his grey head bowed towards the ground, 
 always wretched, is now more utterly wretched than 
 usual. Only indoors the young daughter of the 
 house does not shiver ; her mother keeps her in lest 
 her hands should get chapped. She remains fair and 
 calm and tenderly cared for while all is wild without. 
 One would like the pretty maiden just as well if she 
 made herself warm by running in the wind and was 
 not afraid of the colour given by Jack Frost ; still 
 hers is a winning picture, one of the very few soft 
 touches on Hesiod's hard canvas. 
 
 The sensible peasant dresses warmly ; plenty of 
 homespun linen underneath, and a goatskin overcoat ; 
 good ox-hide shoes and wool socks. He fares on 
 the flesh of young oxen and kids, goats' milk and 
 wine and water are his drinks. He will do well not 
 to marry till he is thirty, when he is to take a wife 
 of fifteen. Pray heaven she may not turn out a 
 gossip ; a gossiping wife is the worst of evils. One 
 child is quite enough. It is curious to find this 
 prudent reflection at so early a date, when we should 
 have expected that children, who if they bring more 
 mouths also bring more hands, would have been 
 rather desired than otherwise. But, like the French 
 peasant, Hesiod was of opinion that a large family 
 was more trouble than it was worth, though he 
 
I THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE 19 
 
 piously adds, that if the number increases, the gods 
 may kindly provide for them after all. It is certain 
 that what he was thinking about was chiefly the 
 disposal of the property — just as it is what most 
 occupies the thoughts of the rural French — and the 
 difficulty of avoiding general ruin as well as a 
 perpetual state of loggerheads, should the necessity 
 arise of parcelling out the farm into minute lots. 
 There are also the marriage expenses to scrape 
 together. When there was a good harvest the young 
 men and maidens rejoiced, as it brought them the 
 prospect of marriage by increasing the peasant's 
 store. 
 
 Rural theft is not a novelty. Be sure, says 
 Hesiod, to have a house-dog with good teeth, and 
 feed him well, that he may ward off the *' day-sleep- 
 wake-night man," who comes to rob you of your 
 hay and other possessions. Above all, he insists, 
 work, work, work ! Do not put off till to-morrow 
 what ought to be done to-day. Do not find excuses 
 for sloth in the weather, the season, what-not. There 
 is always something to be done. Is the harvest 
 gathered, there is still wood to be hewn, ploughs 
 to be fashioned, a hundred tasks for rainy days, for 
 the winter, even for the night. Without grinding, 
 incessant work, the little proprietor comes to grief 
 with mathematical certainty. Even work he never 
 so well, the earth, " sad nurse of all that die," may 
 
20 THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE i 
 
 make a bad return. Possibly he lives in some 
 squalid malarious village where he loses his health 
 and the fruits of his toil ; only such an eventuality 
 can justify a man in risking his fortune at sea. 
 Thucydides said that an arid soil made a great 
 nation because it forced men to become sailors. 
 Hesiod did not consider the gain to the State and 
 he saw nothing but probable loss to the individual. 
 He regards it as an act of folly in any one, who is 
 moderately well off, to leave dry land out of longing 
 for speculation or greed of money — a very bad 
 quality this last, he says. Yet, even when not 
 pressed by things going wrong at home, the peasant 
 along the littoral must often have felt, then as now, 
 the fascination of maritime ventures. We remember 
 the old peasant in that most powerful of realistic 
 novels, Verga's / Malavoglia^ who risked and lost 
 his all in a cargo of lentils. To such as are 
 determined, cost what it may, to launch into specu- 
 lation, Hesiod gives the advice to begin in a small 
 way, and not stake everything in one throw. But 
 it is safer to let it alone ; le mieux est rennemi du 
 Men, content, though not happiness, is wisdom, the 
 half is better than the whole : 
 
 Chi troppo in alto va cade sovente 
 Precipitevolissimevolmente. 
 
 Renunciation, as Goethe taught, is the sole rational 
 rule of life ; it is no good having too high ideals for 
 
I THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE 21 
 
 yourself or for other people ; Prometheus was a fool, 
 and deserved his fate. One might go on for an hour 
 paraphrasing the most famous of Hesiod's sayings, 
 which, perhaps, was not his, but was already a 
 proverb. The concentrated caution of every nation 
 has produced its equivalent. In England the oftenest 
 quoted variant is that " Enough is as good as a feast," 
 which so irritated poor Richard JefFeries, and which 
 he said was so contrary to Nature's own imperial 
 spendthrift ways. 
 
 Hesiod's lucky and unlucky days are only a little 
 further elaboration of the modern Italian peasant's 
 respect for the phases of the moon : for the world 
 he would not cut down trees or dig up potatoes in 
 the first quarter nor sow wheat in the last ; he carries 
 in his head a traditional almanac marked in black and 
 white, which he consults before performing any im- 
 portant or trifling action. In Greece itself everything 
 is regulated by saints' days. Needless to say how 
 widely diffused is the old poet's belief that ill-disposed 
 persons bewitch or hypnotise cows and horses. Ac- 
 cording to Hesiod the Pleiades indicate harvest and 
 seed-time, the latter being also announced by the cry 
 of the cranes, whose periodic flight profoundly im- 
 pressed all these early observers. Theognis speaks 
 of the crane as the harbinger of the ploughing-season, 
 whose shrill voice smote his heart with the thought 
 that others possessed his flourishing fields, and that 
 
22 THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE i 
 
 no longer his mules dragged the bent yoke of the 
 plough. He had been despoiled of his property 
 while on a voyage. Hesiod had also lost his paternal 
 acres, and in the cruellest way, some manoeuvre of 
 his brother having deprived him of them ; but his 
 misfortunes did not teach him sentiment. He could 
 be generous though, since it is said that he helped 
 this ne'er-do-well brother out of the little he had. 
 We can guess a good deal from the maxim : " Better 
 trust your own brother than your friend." He 
 whose advice was to be venerated long after he was 
 dead had doubtless bestowed it without the sHghtest 
 effect on the scapegrace whom so-called friends led 
 easily astray by flattery. A Christian saint once 
 commended Hesiod's works especially to the atten- 
 tion of the young. '' What other end," asks Basil 
 the Great in a passage which is noteworthy because 
 it shows that the poet was still popular among Greek 
 populations in the fourth century — " What other end 
 can we suppose that Hesiod had in view when he 
 made those verses which are sung by everybody, if it 
 were not to render virtue attractive to young men .? " 
 Hesiod had the feelings and even the prejudices 
 of a gentleman of the old school. He had no patience 
 with those who run after the nouveau riche, but he 
 respected poverty, and would not have the good man 
 left alone in his need. This son of a petty and not 
 thriving farmer grasped the relation of decorous 
 
I THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE 23 
 
 manners to a decorous life : " Do not pare your nails 
 at table/' he said. Had he frequented sundry tables 
 d'htte in the twentieth century, he would have added, 
 " Do not eat with your knife/' Besides being a 
 realist, he was somewhat of a Puritan, and if he 
 says nothing about music and dancing in his Book of 
 Days it is to be inferred that those amusements were 
 not much to his taste. He recognised, however, 
 the position of the minstrel, and observed that the 
 quarrels and jealousies of that profession, as of others, 
 were of advantage in the long run, as they promoted 
 competition. Alas, that musicians should have so 
 early proved dis-harmonious ! Though intensely 
 orthodox, yet he saw that in matters of religion the 
 intention is everything. He tells you to take care 
 not to scoff at any poor little rustic shrine or altar, 
 raised by some simple soul on the roadside, which 
 you may pass on your way. 
 
 There is an ampler truth, a more real reality, 
 which they only possess who have been up the 
 mountain and have seen the other side. Hesiod 
 had not seen the other side of the mountain ; hence 
 he had his limits, though within these he was very 
 just. He had none of the Homeric admiration foi- 
 a dignified and fine old man ; he looked upon old 
 age as simply horrible. His most golden dream was 
 of a sleep which should overtake the vigorous man 
 in his prime. He would not have been able to 
 
24 THE PEASANT OF ANCIENT GREECE i 
 
 understand the exquisite pathos which a Greek poet 
 of a softer age and clime, Leonidas of Tarentum, 
 threw into his pictures of the wane of life : that of 
 the old fisherman who falls asleep in his reed hut 
 after his long toil, as the light fails when the oil is 
 spent ; that of the old spinning-woman, who has 
 earned her bread spinning, spinning through her 
 eighty years, and ever humming her song as she 
 span, till the withered hand sinks on the withered 
 knee, and her work and her days end together. 
 Here is another euthanasia than any Hesiod could 
 have divined : the sweet and solemn rest " when 
 that which drew from out the boundless deep turns 
 again home.'* 
 
II 
 
 HUSBANDRY IN THE GREEK 
 DRAMATISTS 
 
 In the spring when the new wine was drawn ofF, the 
 great festival of Dionysus was held with appropriate 
 hymns and songs and games. The young men 
 joined in a kind of masquerade ; there were matches 
 between the villages, and one village or one company 
 of singers or one single singer became more famous 
 than the rest. Then dialogue was introduced, at 
 first, probably, in the form of chafF bandied to and 
 fro during the intervals between the choric songs. 
 The performers were called " goat-singers " either 
 because they were dressed in goat-skins to imitate 
 satyrs, or because they contended for the prize of a 
 goat, or again, from the sacrifice of a goat to the 
 god. It strikes me that they may have gone from 
 house to house carrying a goat-skin to collect largess 
 for the festival, as the children went round with the 
 wooden swallow. So people would have said : 
 " Here are the ' goat-singers ' come back." The 
 
 25 
 
26 HUSBANDRY IN THE n 
 
 word " tragedy " is derived from a goat-song. 
 One theory has been started that the god also had 
 a winter festival when sorrowful and pathetic songs 
 were sung instead of songs of mirth. Be that as it 
 may, the local folk-f^tes of Attica prepared the way 
 for Aeschylus. The origin of tragedy (as of comedy) 
 was, as Aristotle said, " rude and unpremeditated.'* 
 It is true that, as with all the arts of Greece, we 
 must look to religion for its primal inspiration : if 
 there had not been the god there would not have 
 been the goat-singers. But the god embodied the 
 spirit of country-life, and tragedy came into existence 
 under the most rural of rural conditions. Like all 
 literature, it was born of folk-lore. 
 
 When, however, the drama became a great literary 
 and patriotic institution, it became the possession 
 of townspeople who had no great sympathy with 
 country things. Athens, the violet-crowned, was as 
 far as possible from having the significance of smoke 
 and darkness of a modern metropolis ; how far, any 
 one can still realise who stands in that alley in the 
 king's garden where, above the lovely leafage of bay 
 and myrtle, ilex and oleander, the temples of the 
 Acropolis suddenly appear against the clear sky, 
 nothing else of the outer world being visible, while 
 the faint hum of the modern city is drowned in the 
 song of nightingales. Nevertheless, morally as well 
 as materially, a town it was, in the most intense 
 
II GREEK DRAMATISTS 27 
 
 sense of the word ; and it is doubtful if the 
 Athenians would have appreciated an attempt to 
 " bring the scent of the hay across the footlights." 
 We cannot expect to learn very much about con- 
 temporary agriculture from the Greek dramatists, 
 though such hints as are to be gathered from them 
 on the subject are by no means without value. 
 
 Aeschylus was the first writer to scout the idea of 
 an early golden era, and to recognise that primitive 
 man had a life so hard and miserable that the most 
 unlucky of his descendants might own himself to be 
 better off. His description of human beings before 
 Prometheus came to their aid has been truly said 
 to be a correct account of the Stone Age. In the 
 Persians Aeschylus describes a service for the dead 
 such as in his day was certainly often performed 
 by the pastoral or village Hellenes, whose ritual the 
 poet transported among their enemies without any 
 pangs of conscience. The beautiful lines refer to 
 the libation : 
 
 Milk from the flawless firstling of the herd, 
 Honey, the amber soul of perfumed meads, 
 And water sparkling from its maiden source : 
 Here, too, the juice of immemorial vine 
 And scented fruit, rich gift of tawny olive 
 That never knows a season of decay, 
 And flowers, the little children of the earth 
 Disposed in garlands. 
 
 So fair an offering might cheer the saddest ghost ! 
 
28 HUSBANDRY IN THE n 
 
 Fain would one forget that the same people could 
 represent their heroes as gratified by the Dahomey 
 slaughter of innocent girls upon their tombs. Rites 
 of the sort mentioned by Aeschylus formed the rustic 
 obsequies both in Greece and in Italy. To this day, 
 in the island ot Sardinia, where many ancient customs 
 are preserved, flowers and simple fruits, such as nuts, 
 are thrown into the open grave. 
 
 Not remote among the landscapes of a golden age, 
 but present in the fairyland which is somewhere — 
 somewhere on this actual earth, is the country by the 
 sea of Sophocles, a dream that, out of childhood, 
 knows that it is a dream and yet delights the 
 dreamer : 
 
 . . . Where each day is matured 
 The plant of Bacchus. In the morning's sheen 
 With blooming growth the land luxuriates, 
 Then by midday the unripe fruit expands. 
 And as day wanes the clusters purple o'er ; 
 At evening all the crop is gathered in 
 And the wine draught is mixed. 
 
 In the Oedipus Tyr annus the old herdsman dis- 
 tinguishes between a " bought slave " and one bred 
 in his master's house, and in a passage spoken directly 
 after by the Corinthian messenger, there is an interest- 
 ing reference to the practice still in force of sending 
 the flocks from the plains to the mountains from 
 March to September : 
 
II GREEK DRAMATISTS 29 
 
 . . . Sure I am 
 He knows when in the region of Cithaeron 
 He with two flocks and I with only one — 
 I was his neighbour during three whole seasons, 
 From springtide e'en to autumn for six months, 
 But during winter 1 my flock drove off 
 Unto my sheep-cotes, he to Laius' stalls. 
 
 In the same play the evil ways of Egypt are 
 reproved, where men sit indoors weaving at the loom 
 and their wives earn their daily bread abroad in the 
 fields^ — one of the many proofs that in Greece women 
 were put to do no hard outdoor work, though the 
 girls helped in gathering the grapes. In one or two 
 places Sophocles speaks of horses or mules ploughing, 
 and it seems that by the better-to-do peasants or 
 landowners they were preferred to oxen. The colts 
 were allowed to run wild till they were of an age to 
 work, when the advent of their servitude was marked 
 by their manes being cut short, a barbarous operation 
 against which Sophocles* generous spirit revolted. 
 " I mourn for my tresses," runs one of his fragments, 
 '' as doth a filly who, caught and carried off by the 
 herdsman, hath her chestnut mane shorn from her 
 neck by a rugged hand in the horse-stables, and 
 then, turned into a meadow with limpid brooks, sees 
 her image clearly reflected with all her mane disgrace- 
 fully shorn ofi^. Who, however ruthless, would not 
 pity her, as she crouches afirighted, driven mad by 
 shame, groaning for her vanished mane ^ " Horse- 
 
30 HUSBANDRY IN THE n 
 
 breeding must have presented serious difficulties in a 
 country so generally arid as much of Greece was even 
 then ; the best horses were brought over from Asia 
 Minor, and the race deteriorated after a few genera- 
 tions. That Athens could all the same be addressed 
 as the '* breeder of horses/' shows that the conviction 
 of the national importance of the horse induced the 
 Athenians to overcome all obstacles, and also, prob- 
 ably, that the country people of Attica were led to 
 give great care and attention to horse-breeding by 
 the high prices offered for good animals. 
 
 Far from the early Greek mind was the contempt 
 for the cultivator which generated a vocabulary of 
 ugly names, boor, clout, clodhopper, with many more, 
 and turned vilain into villain. But the amenities 
 of civilisation and the overwhelming weight attached 
 to purely intellectual development tend towards 
 the depreciation of the peasant whose philosophy is 
 not of the Schools, and Euripides perhaps gave 
 expression to a growing sentiment when he made his 
 Hector say, as Homer's Hector would not have 
 
 said : 
 
 Full prone the mind of rustics is to folly. 
 
 But in justice to Euripides it should not be 
 forgotten that he created one beautiful peasant type ; 
 a type that has grown into a literary race of high- 
 minded peasants or serfs whose derivation often 
 passes unnoticed. Euripides never drew a more 
 
II GREEK DRAMATISTS 31 
 
 distinct character, though the touches are few, than 
 that of Auturgus, to whom Aegisthus married 
 Electra in the hopes that the slur of so unfitting an 
 alliance might prevent her from getting her rights 
 as Agamemnon's daughter. Clytemnestra would 
 have probably objected to her being killed ; the 
 next best thing, Aegisthus thought, was to marry 
 her below her rank. But Auturgus defeated the 
 device by becoming simply the respectful protector 
 of the royal maiden. He is called " old,'' but it is 
 clear that he was not much more than middle-aged 
 as he is not past doing hard and incessant work. 
 Though poor, he comes of a noble stock, a statement 
 that does not affect his position as a true peasant 
 any more than the kidnapping story about Eumaeus 
 made him less of a swineherd. Very likely it was 
 all true. How many illustrious names are owned 
 by Italian peasants ; nay, in how many cases it is 
 known that only two or three generations ago a 
 peasant family which now lives on polenta would 
 have been recognised as equals by the highest in the 
 land. Something fairer in the skin, something more 
 gracious in their mien, is all that is left to distinguish 
 them from the great mass of cultivators. For the 
 rest, their feelings, their manners, their appearance 
 are of these. Auturgus is a peasant through and 
 through. He has the austere gravity impressed by 
 a life spent close to nature, watchful of the fated 
 
32 HUSBANDRY IN THE n 
 
 return of her signs, face to face with the solemn 
 sequence of her seasons. Gently he chides Electra 
 for working at all ; he would not have her toil, she 
 was not trained for it. She answers that it is her 
 pleasure to help him as far as she can ; the labourer 
 coming home tired, likes to find all in order in his 
 house. So he consents to her fetching the water if 
 such be her will ; the spring is not far off. As for 
 him, at earliest dawn he will yoke his oxen and go 
 to plough ; idle wretches who are always invoking 
 the gods never earn a livelihood. As soon as he is 
 assured of the respectability of the two strangers, 
 who are really Orestes and Pylades, he asks them 
 into his house ; what there is, is at their service ; a 
 woman can easily improvise a little feast. There is 
 enough in the cottage for one day, at least, and if 
 the food be simple, hunger is a good sauce. He has 
 a fine indifference to their seeing his poverty, and 
 that genuine instinct of hospitality which is satisfied 
 when you know that you have offered of your best. 
 " Di quello che c' e non manca niente," as they say 
 in Tuscany. So Auturgus passes from the scene, 
 true peasant and true gentleman — a combination 
 not rare some thousand years ago, not rare now. 
 
 Two of the comedies of Aristophanes deal more 
 or less directly with agricultural affairs, the Achar- 
 nians and the Peace. In the former, the hero, Di- 
 caeopolis, though a citizen of Athens, is, before all 
 
II GREEK DRAMATISTS ^3 
 
 things, a country farmer. His heart is with his 
 farm, for which he longed, " which never said * buy 
 fuel,' or ' vinegar,' or * oil,' but of itself produced all 
 things, and the * buy ' was absent." In this play 
 there is one of the hits against Euripides because 
 his mother sold watercresses ; Aristophanes thought 
 it degrading to work for your bread. Tired of the 
 Peloponnesian War, which had gone on for six years, 
 Dicaeopolis negotiates a private peace for himself 
 and his family. He is the '* peace- at-any-price " 
 farmer, who excites great indignation among his 
 more patriotic or Chauvinist fellow-countrymen 
 ('' Marathon men " and other old growlers), but 
 who goes his way unheeding. He buys eels and 
 all sorts of delicacies from the enemy, who may 
 traffic with him alone. He is perfectly content, and 
 indiiFerent to the sufferings of his neighbours ; nay, 
 he takes a positive pleasure in enjoying what they 
 are without. 
 
 If there were peace, sigh the Acharnian chorus, 
 ** then would they plant a long row of vines, young 
 fig-trees, and olives, all round the estate. What use 
 to plant now for the spoiler ? " 
 
 While Dicaeopolis is greedily watching his con- 
 traband thrushes and other dainties being cooked, 
 another and the saddest victim of the war comes in 
 who has something worse to rue than the lack of eels 
 or hares : the eternal victim, the husbandman. In 
 
 D 
 
34 HUSBANDRY IN THE n 
 
 all Greek tragedy there are few things more tragic 
 than this sudden entrance of misery into a farce. 
 The Boeotians have carried off the poor man's team, 
 his land lies fallow : 
 
 I'm ruinated 
 Quite and entirely, losing my poor beasts, 
 My oxen, I've lost 'em, both of 'em. — Frere. 
 
 His eyes are dim with weeping for his oxen. In 
 vain he begs for the least drop of peace, which he 
 seems to think a kind of quack medicine, kept in 
 bottles. With the ineffable egotism of the Sybarite, 
 Dicaeopolis bids him be off " to weep somewhere 
 else." He goes, repeating, " Woe's me for the 
 oxen which tilled my ground." 
 
 Trygaeus, in the Peace, is a much superior person 
 to Dicaeopolis, who, living long in towns, had suc- 
 ceeded in mixing up the mania for luxury of the 
 vulgar citizen with the stolid narrowness of the most 
 benighted provincial. Trygaeus is the country- 
 dweller in the strictest and the best sense. He has 
 learnt, from his stake in the country, to love the 
 fatherland and understand its interests. He, too, 
 desires peace ; not, however, for himself alone, but 
 for all the sore-tried land. He risks a great deal to 
 accomplish his purpose, embarking on a novel and 
 daring exploit on behalf of all the Greeks. He 
 risks coming to a bad end and becoming a subject 
 for a tragedy by Euripides — dreadful fate 1 That 
 
II GREEK DRAMATISTS 35 
 
 he went to heaven on the back of an unpleasant 
 beetle does not lessen his moral virtue. 
 
 When he is engaged in getting Peace out of the 
 hole in which she was imprisoned, all sorts of people 
 try to aid him, but only the husbandmen succeed. 
 In reward, they are sent oiF to till their fields, and 
 Trygaeus follows to break up the long desolate 
 earth of his little farm and return to the old, sweet, 
 inexpensive pleasures, cakes of dried fruits, figs and 
 myrtles and sweet new wine, and the violet-bed near 
 the well, and the desired olives ! 
 
 Peace alone, says Aristophanes, is the end of all 
 who lead an agricultural life. Little do the talkers 
 in the towns, who get up wars, know of the wretched- 
 ness they bring the husbandman ! Lions at home, 
 foxes in battle, they contrive to save their skin and 
 their chattels, while the peasant loses both. But 
 with peace, how enviable is the country lot ! How 
 pleasant is it to far merenda (the Italian word ex- 
 presses the sense exactly which " picnic " does not) 
 some autumn afternoon, when the soft providential 
 rain is falling on the sown fields, and the wood 
 sawn in summer crackles on the hearth. You 
 will call your wife to roast some kidney-beans and 
 bring out some figs and a thrush, and a bit of 
 hare, and call in a neighbour to share the simple 
 feast, and remember to reserve a bit for the old 
 father, and send the maid to call the man from the 
 
36 HUSBANDRY IN THE n 
 
 field, for to-day is wet and he cannot hoe or strip 
 off the vine-leaves. 
 
 When Trygaeus goes home he finds that war has 
 lasted so long that the boys know only war-like 
 songs, but he would have the old songs back, such 
 as, *' Thus they feasted on the flesh of oxen.'* 
 The poet complains more than once that the ** old 
 songs '' are being forgotten. "The Shearing of the 
 Ram," for instance, of Simonides, which everybody 
 once knew, was out of fashion with the jeunesse dorie. 
 The craze for progress had penetrated even into the 
 country ; a theme illustrated in the Clouds^ the 
 comedy which has never been entirely cleared from 
 the tragic suspicion of having been instrumental in 
 causing the death of Socrates. Strepsiades, who began 
 with driving goats, dressed in a leather jerkin, is the 
 pattern of the enriched peasant, dense in intelli- 
 gence; a sort of Attic prototype of Verga's "Don 
 Gesualdo " ; the fore-doomed victim of his spend- 
 thrift relations. Phidippides, the graceless but super- 
 ficially sharp-witted son, who even in his sleep 
 dreams about horses, and whose only care is to waste 
 his father's store, gathers from the new theories 
 taught in the Thinking-shop a mass of arguments 
 to defend his conduct which so enrages his father, 
 who had sent him there in the hope of reforming 
 him, that he ends by burning the place down. 
 
 If Aristophanes has given some unlovely pictures 
 
11 GREEK DRAMATISTS 37 
 
 of country-folk, when he paints Nature himself, he 
 never fails in that lyric ecstasy which is what made 
 him an immortal poet and not simply a comic 
 dramatist. The heavenly gift in him was precisely 
 the appreciation of natural things — the song of birds, 
 the flowery meads, the season of spring when the 
 plane-tree whispers to the elm. Appreciation carried 
 to the point where it becomes interpretation, counts 
 for ninety per cent in poetic genius. 
 
 Up to a certain point there is a great uniformity 
 in the Greek view of nature when it is considered 
 that, measuring by time, we might expect as much 
 divergence as between the views of Chaucer and 
 Wordsworth. It is always curious to reflect that, 
 while Roman poetry is nearly crushed into a century, 
 the Greek covers, from first to last, a space as large 
 as modern literature. Throughout the whole period 
 may be observed a positive enjoyment of pure beauty 
 that was much keener, as I have said once before, 
 than any the modern world knows of. The narcissus 
 does not give the joy to us that it gave the ancient 
 Greek, in spite of the narcissus farms in the Scilly 
 Isles. That spontaneous and unanalysed joy is the 
 permanent keynote of the Greek nature-song. But 
 the keynote may be the same while the tune is 
 different, and a change did appear latterly in the 
 Greek way of looking at natural phenomena ; the 
 tendency grew to associate them with human rather 
 
38 HUSBANDRY IN GREEK DRAMATISTS n 
 
 than with divine affairs. The heavenly bodies, for 
 instance, instead of compelling thoughts of godhead, 
 become the hands of a clock which bid man go about 
 his daily tasks, as in this very modern passage from 
 the Rhesus of Euripides : 
 
 Whose watch is it ? Who is it takes my place ? 
 The earliest signs are setting, the seven Pleiades 
 Show in the sky. The eagle through mid heaven 
 Flees. Why delay ! Rise from your beds to watch ! 
 Awake ! The moon's bright splendour see ye not ! 
 The dawning, yea, the dawning close approaches. 
 And this is one of the forerunning stars. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 
 
 Xenophon's work on agriculture lacks the divine 
 afflatus of the Georgics and the patient, compre- 
 hensive research of Varro's De re rustica ; its more 
 modest scope is shown by the name he gave it : the 
 Oeconomicus^ or as Etienne de la Bo^tiet rendered 
 it, La Mesnagerie — a capital word that has gone 
 down in life ! Xenophon traced the rule of the 
 farm on rather general lines ; he starts from the 
 principle that, in the main, agriculture is made up 
 of common sense and diligence. To critics who 
 blame him as unscientific, I would submit that in 
 Southern farming, at least, these two qualities will 
 carry the cultivator farther than the most beautiful 
 steam - plough. The standpoint from which he 
 viewed the agriculturist was not without elevation, 
 though it did not strike him, as it struck Virgil, 
 that the husbandman was a sort of high priest. But 
 neither did he regard him as the mere servant of 
 private and selfish ends. The landed proprietor was 
 
 39 
 
40 THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD m 
 
 the pillar of Society, and agriculture the life-blood 
 of the State ; the fields grew more than corn — 
 they grew men. This was his point of view. 
 Cultivating the land becomes a source of pleasure to 
 its possessor, of prosperity to his house, of health to 
 his body, which it fits for all the duties of the free 
 man. The Earth gives both the necessaries and the 
 charms of life. The lovely and fragrant garlands 
 with which we deck the altars are bestowed by her. 
 She yields a thousand varieties of nourishment, she 
 feeds the war-horse, she toughens the sinews of the 
 soldier. The soil inspires its tillers with the will to 
 die in its defence. How hospitable is the country 
 to its guests ! How joyous the blazing fire on 
 the hearth in winter, the cool, shady groves in 
 summer ! What more inspiring than a rural 
 religious/^/^ ? What life is pleasanter for the workers, 
 more delightful for the wife, more salubrious for the 
 children, more generous for friends ? The land 
 which brings forth its increase in proportion to our 
 zeal in cultivating it, teaches the primal law of 
 justice. We learn from husbandry to do to others 
 as we would that they should do unto us. The 
 wise husbandman encourages his labourers not less 
 than a general his soldiers, " for hope is as necessary to 
 slaves as it is to free men." (In the army Xenophon 
 was called " the soldier's friend " ; he knew what 
 could be done with men by moral influence.) 
 
Ill THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 41 
 
 No writer was ever more sincere ; he adorns 
 nothing and speaks from his own experience, which 
 is that of a man of the world who has made no 
 excursions into the clouds. He does not put 
 his own hand to the plough, but he is a firm 
 believer in the axiom that it is the master's eye 
 which soonest fattens the horse. It is absurd to 
 own an estate and know nothing about its manage- 
 ment. Nevertheless, he does not counsel perpetual 
 attention to business ; he would have agreed that 
 " no play '' makes very dull boys. He looked upon 
 the pleasures of a country life as not less actually 
 profitable than its duties. What was the chase ? 
 A nursery for strategists. What was riding across 
 country .f* A school for cavalry. Four hundred 
 years later the Latin writer on agriculture, Columella, 
 criticised sport as folly and waste of time ; Xenophon 
 could not have imagined life in the country without 
 it, but he ennobled the pastime by the skill he 
 brought to it. He aimed at excellence in all he 
 attempted. He was the finest rider of his day and 
 his little treatise on horsemanship has won the praise 
 of every writer on the subject from then till now. 
 The Attic phrase of " handsome and good " suited 
 him both in its metaphorical and its literal sense, for 
 he was distinctly an homme du bien^ and his good 
 looks were famous. Besides his love of open-air 
 athletics he had other Anglo-Saxon characteristics. 
 
Ill 
 
 42 THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 
 
 such as the colonising instinct joined to affection for 
 home and the taste for adventure without the tastes 
 of the adventurer. But he possessed the defects of 
 his qualities : he had no idealism or " inwardness " ; 
 the problems of mind did not interest him ; he left 
 the Incomprehensible to take care of itself. What 
 interested him in Socrates was the man, and it is the 
 man that he makes known to us. But for Xenophon 
 we might have missed in Socrates that moral 
 perfection which Goethe rated the highest of all — the 
 reverence for those below us. Xenophon's Socrates 
 not only talks affably to all sorts of people ; he can 
 actually draw instruction out of them. How 
 gracious he is in the scene of the performing children ! 
 How courteously he addresses the showman, how 
 readily he appreciates the cleverness ofthe little dancing 
 girl ! So far from despising the exhibition of a poor 
 little troop of wandering jugglers, he says seriously 
 (*' after reflection ") that the child's skill in throwing 
 up and catching her hoops and dancing in time to the 
 music has confirmed a conclusion to which he has 
 been coming for a long time, namely, that women 
 are nowise inferior to men save in physical strength 
 and perhaps, a little, in mental balance. They can 
 learn all things, if properly taught, as quickly and 
 as well as men. When, afterwards, the child performs 
 a blood-curdling feat of jumping head downwards 
 into a circle of swords, he gently remarks that this 
 
Ill THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 43 
 
 isj no doubt, very dangerous, but what possible good 
 is there in it ? Is there beauty in contortion ? 
 Would it not be less hurtful to the pretty children 
 and more pleasing to the spectators if they danced 
 to the flute dressed as nymphs or graces ? The 
 Sicilian showman, humanised for the moment, as 
 were all who came within Socrates' influence, acts on 
 the hint and improvises the little pantomime with 
 which the banquet ends. 
 
 When the question of training women comes up 
 in the OeconomicuSy Socrates makes no plea for educat- 
 ing their higher faculties, and this has been supposed 
 to prove that he was indiff^erent on the matter. But 
 he was not in the habit of proposing alterations in 
 the existing conditions of life ; he took men just as 
 they were, believing that their souls, or moral part, 
 could be improved through their minds, or intellectual 
 part, rather than by any change in outward circum- 
 stance. Still, it cannot be doubted that since he 
 admired Aspasia's mental attainments, he would have 
 been glad if her sisters, who thought themselves so 
 much better than she, had not been so far behind her 
 in humane culture. He granted that women could 
 learn, and Plato's thoroughly revolutionary views on 
 women's education are only the logical development 
 of this principle. Plato wished girls and boys to 
 be taught everything alike, even to fencing and 
 riding. He admitted that the very best men were 
 
Ill 
 
 44 THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 
 
 superior to the very best women, but since many 
 women are more gifted than many men, why should 
 not they have an equal chance? No one would 
 dispute this now, but it must have sounded mid- 
 summer madness at Athens, whose women had no 
 place in society at all. Theoretically they might go 
 to the theatre when tragedies were performed, but 
 it seems unlikely that the ladies of the upper classes 
 often went there. They had na opportunity of join- 
 ing in conversation with the other sex except in the 
 case of their nearest relations ; this continued to be 
 the case down to a late period. Cornelius Nepos 
 remarks that what is thought respectable in one 
 place appears quite the reverse in another ; so while 
 every Roman brought his wife to the feast, such an 
 act would excite horror in Greece. There seems to 
 have been no equivalent to the tea-gardens (without 
 tea) of Turkish cities, where you may see the veiled 
 ladies laughing and chattering among themselves as 
 though they had never a care. A mild form of 
 amusement, but better than none. 
 
 The Greek little girl was happy. She was the 
 pet still more of her father than of her mother. 
 She had dolls with jointed limbs which possessed 
 their proper names, their outfits, their baby-houses 
 and furniture. She played at numberless games, 
 but the favourites were ball and knuckle -bones. 
 A lovely Tanagra figure shows the Greek girl playing 
 
,11 THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 45 
 
 at this last universal game, which is also represented 
 as the sport of Niobe's daughters in a well-known 
 fresco found at Pompeii. I am still looking for a 
 part of the world where it is not played ; I, myself, 
 once played a match with a gipsy child at Granada 
 and lost it. When the Greek girl reached the mature 
 age of seven she was expected to offer her toys to 
 Artemis, a sacrifice recalled in some pretty lines in 
 the Anthology. But I think that the goddess gave 
 back at least the ball — a game of ball was recom- 
 mended by Greek physicians as the best exercise 
 after the bath. Artemis herself lives for ever as 
 the eternal girl, following the stag on the mountains 
 and the wild boar along the wind-swept summits, 
 but coming back tq lead the dance, beautifully 
 dressed, and not disdainful of feminine tasks, for is 
 she not known as Artemis of the golden distaff? 
 
 Sophocles described the young girl rejoicing in 
 the flowery meads of her youth, till the maiden 
 becomes wife and mother and learns to know the 
 painful watches of the night, spent in anxiety for 
 husband and children. It would have been well for 
 her if such anxiety, the common lot of all, had been 
 the sole cause of trouble to the Athenian wife. It 
 seems that ill-assorted unions were rather frequent at 
 Athens, and if her home was unhappy, what had she 
 to fall back on ? A man, as Medea says, whose 
 home was unpleasing to him, could go abroad and 
 
46 THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD m 
 
 enjoy the company of his friends, " but we must look 
 for happiness to one alone." 
 
 From the very beginning, from the Homeric 
 Age, the Greek had known what it was that made 
 a happy marriage. " May the gods grant thee a 
 husband and a home and a mind at one with him," 
 Odysseus says to Nausicaa, *'for there is nothing 
 nobler than when man and wife are of one heart and 
 mind in a house, a grief to their foes and to their 
 friends great joy : but their own hearts know 
 it best." 
 
 It often happened that marriages were made up 
 by third persons who described inaccurately the 
 affianced couple to one another ; a fraud for con- 
 demning which Socrates praises Aspasia. Mischief 
 was the result. The bridegroom was not extremely 
 young ; thirty was thought to be a suitable age for 
 a man to marry at, but the bride was sometimes a 
 mere child, as we see from the charming little romance 
 of " The Wife of Ischomachus," for the better under- 
 standing of which I have strayed into these few 
 remarks on Athenian womanhood. It forms by far 
 the most original feature in the Oecortomicus, and 
 though it must be taken with several grains of salt, 
 it is still the best description we have of a Greek 
 interior. 
 
 Socrates observed that while the wife's power in 
 the household is only second to the husband's, she is 
 
THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 47 
 
 the last person to whom he speaks openly about his 
 aiFairs, of which she commonly knows less than his 
 most casual acquaintances. This may be said to be 
 the text of the story which follows. Of Ischomachus 
 nothing is known except a shadowy mention in 
 Plutarch, but from what we do know of Xenophon 
 it is impossible to doubt that, in this instance, he is, 
 if not telling his own story, at least ventilating his 
 own ideas. Socrates is supposed to meet Ischomachus 
 in the portico of the Temple of Zeus the Liberator. 
 He asks him how it is that he has a healthy colour 
 and time to spare, though all Athens declares that 
 his estate is the best managed in Attica. To this 
 Ischomachus replies, that he can go where he likes, 
 because his wife is perfectly qualified to manage 
 everything at home. Socrates enquires if this ines- 
 timable helpmeet learnt her duties from her father 
 and mother. Ischomachus answers that this was 
 impossible ; when he married her she was scarcely 
 fifteen — what could she have learnt but how to spin 
 and card the wool and give it out to the maids ? 
 She had been brought up to have simple tastes ; that 
 was a good foundation, but all the rest she had learnt 
 from him. Then Socrates begs him to tell him all 
 about it — he would sooner listen than see the finest 
 horse-race. And so would we. 
 
 In Greek marriages, love was post-nuptial ; the 
 wooing began with the wedding instead of ending 
 
48 THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 
 
 with it. The little bride was very timid, very shy ; 
 the first thing to be done was to gain her confidence. 
 Ischomachus prudently did not begin his lectures till 
 the honeymoon was waning. He simply prayed the 
 gods to grant him the wisdom to teach and his 
 bride the heart to learn all those things that were 
 needed to make their union holy and happy. She 
 joined willingly in the prayer, which he thought a 
 good sign for the future. Then he waited till they 
 had got to know each other and to speak familiarly 
 on different subjects. Even when the schooling 
 begins in earnest, behind the teacher there is still the 
 lover. Nothing flatters a very young girl so much 
 as to speak to her seriously of serious things ; for 
 the rest, the wife of Ischomachus would have shown 
 but little wit had she failed to seize what there was 
 of elevated, pure, and true in the picture presented 
 to her of a woman's r61e. The prosaic details and 
 the narrowness of the canvas should not blind us to 
 the fact that the Greek conception of marriage lies 
 at the very root of all Western civilisation. 
 
 After the interval allowed for " becoming ac- 
 quainted," Ischomachus asks his wife whether she 
 begins to understand why he married her. She 
 most certainly knew that there would have been no 
 trouble in finding another wife for him, another 
 husband for her. Why did he choose her ? Why 
 did her parents choose him ? Was it not because it 
 
1,1 THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 49 
 
 appeared to both sides that they were truly fitted for 
 each other, and also fitted to serve the higher objects 
 of matrimony as heads of a household and founders 
 of a new family ? If the Divine Powers gave them 
 children they would join together to bring them 
 up aright, and the reward would not fail them of 
 having good children to bless their old age. But 
 even now, without waiting for that sacred bond, all 
 they possessed was in common. All that was the wife's 
 she had already given, and now he does the same, he 
 gives her all that is his. It is no more a question of 
 which of the two furnished the most, but it is well to 
 realise that the one who manages best the common 
 store is the one who brings the most valuable 
 contribution to it. '* But how can I help } What 
 can I do?" asks the young wife; "you manage 
 everything ; my mother only told me that * I was to 
 do what was right.'*' Ischomachus says that he 
 received the same advice from his father ; but that 
 husband and wife did not do right if they neglected 
 to watch over the property and to improve it. " But 
 how," the wife asks again, " can she help } " 
 Ischomachus says that this is the task marked out 
 for her alike by the gods and by the laws. Each has 
 an allotted share ; to the man fall heat and cold, 
 long journeys and wars ; to the woman household 
 duties. The first of all these is the care of children 
 — to which end the gods have implanted in woman's 
 
 E 
 
50 THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD m 
 
 heart an infinite need of loving little creatures. 
 Next comes the care of the household ; to point which 
 moral Ischomachus extols the queen-bee, though a 
 somewhat closer knowledge of natural history would 
 have made him select that far more intelligent house- 
 keeper, the mother-wasp. He develops the idea that 
 marriage is a divine institution in view to the children, 
 a social institution in view to the property. Your 
 duty to God is to bring up your children well ; your 
 duty to the State is to foster and not waste your 
 substance. Of course the conception of thrift as a 
 national virtue is absolutely correct, but its practical 
 application is foreign to English ways of thought. 
 Frugal living and a strict look-out over expenditure 
 suggest a tinge of meanness to the English soul. 
 Ischomachus saw nothing mean in saving since it 
 enabled him to give nobly to religion, to help his 
 friends in their need, and to contribute munificently 
 to the embellishment of the city. It would be 
 useless to rehearse all the items of domestic economy 
 which Ischomachus impresses on his docile pupil. 
 She is charged with the care not only of the provisions 
 for the table, but also of the farm produce which is 
 brought to be stored at home or to be employed for 
 spinning and weaving. The counsels of prudence 
 are summed up in the admonition : "To see that we 
 do not spend in a month what ought to last for a 
 year.'* One piece of advice touches a higher note ; 
 
THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 51 
 
 "There is one thing," says Ischomachus, "which, 
 perhaps, you will not think very pleasant ; it is, that 
 when one of your slaves is ill, you ought to look 
 after him yourself and do all you can for his 
 recovery." " Ah ! " she cries, " there is nothing 
 that I shall like to do more than this ; they will love 
 me for it ! " — an answer with which Ischomachus 
 was justly delighted, and which evoked from him the 
 most beautiful little speech that any husband ever 
 made to any wife : " But the sweetest reward will be 
 when, having become more perfect than I, you have 
 made me your servant ; when as youth and beauty 
 pass, you will not fear to lose your influence, because, 
 in growing old, you will become a still better 
 companion to me, a better helper to your children, a 
 more honoured mistress of your home." 
 
 Ischomachus tells his wife that she should take 
 the trouble to instruct stupid or backward slaves in 
 their tasks ; they may then become in time capable 
 and devoted servants, priceless treasures in the house. 
 He goes more fully into the management of slaves 
 when he deals with the farm bailiff. He says that 
 like other animals men are influenced by rewards and 
 punishments. Noble souls are excited to do their 
 utmost by the desire of praise, ignoble ones by 
 convincing them that virtue pays. The first thing 
 to secure is the good-will of your dependants : with- 
 out this, very little can be done with them. But they 
 
52 THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 
 
 soon become attached to the master and his house if 
 he treats them kindly, and if, whenever a stroke of 
 good fortune befalls himself, he gives some advantage 
 to them. This is, I think, the earliest hint of 
 " sharing profits " ! For the rest, Xenophon declares 
 (for certainly it is he who speaks) that he has 
 known good masters with bad servants, but never a 
 bad master with good ones. It is disappointing to 
 remark that, elsewhere, he writes unsympathetically 
 of the "licence" accorded to Athenian slaves, who 
 were never allowed to be struck, and who wore 
 no distinctive class dress, so that " any one might 
 take them for free citizens.'* Xenophon preferred 
 the harsh practices in force at Sparta, which is only 
 another proof that it is impossible to guess a man's 
 public policy from his private disposition. 
 
 The dominant passion of Xenophon (if we take 
 Ischomachus as his interpreter) was order. He grows 
 lyrical in praise of the beautiful neatness of a man-of- 
 war, and the passage might have been written to-day ! 
 This is the model which Ischomachus holds up to 
 his wife for imitation. How admirable is a tidy 
 linen-press or china-closet ! Nay, how lovely are 
 symmetrically arranged saucepans ! Here the author 
 has a suspicion that somebody will laugh, and perhaps 
 he was laughing himself. A young wife wedded to 
 such a martinet must have undergone various bad 
 quarters of an hour ; yet when she is really disturbed 
 
Ill THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 53 
 
 at the loss of something that was not in its right 
 place, her mentor made haste to discover that he 
 was himself to blame for it. 
 
 The most serious reproof that the wife of Ischo- 
 machus ever received was on quite a different score. 
 One morning she appeared with her girlish brow 
 whitened with lait d^iris^ rouge upon her cheeks, 
 and a pair of high-heeled shoes on her feet. She 
 was only following the fashion of the day. Athenian 
 ladies, in spite of the seclusion in which they lived, 
 had a perfect mania for cosmetics and gauds ; they 
 painted their necks and faces, darkened their eye- 
 brows, and wore a profusion of jewels. Self-adorn- 
 ment was even encouraged by the law which punished 
 any woman who was observed to be carelessly dressed. 
 It has been thought that artificial embellishments 
 became the vogue because real beauty, so common 
 among the men of Athens, was rare among the 
 women. Curiously enough, in modern Athens there 
 are far more handsome men than women, although 
 the most beautiful girls I ever saw were two sisters 
 moving in Athenian society ; but their family sprang 
 from the isle of Paros. 
 
 When Ischomachus saw his wife disguised as 
 above described, instead of telling her that she never 
 looked so well (which was what she expected in her 
 poor little heart), he began to ask the most irritating 
 Socratic questions. How would she like it if he 
 
54 THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD m 
 
 brought her a quantity of pinchbeck silver and 
 imitation jewelry? " Oh ! do not say such dreadful 
 things," she exclaims. '' Could I love you as I do if 
 you were to act like that ? " When she sees the gist 
 of his argument, which he pushes home with relent- 
 less logic, she takes the lesson in good part, and only 
 asks what she is to do to really become better looking 
 instead of only seeming so. As an alternative to 
 cosmetics, Ischomachus proposes plenty of exercise, 
 but alas ! it is to be all indoors. Running about the 
 house and offices to see that all is right, and lending 
 a hand to kneading the bread, hanging out the 
 clothes, and making the beds. This is the way to 
 get a good complexion and a good appetite, and the 
 maid - servants are encouraged when they see that 
 their mistress is not above joining in their work. 
 So ubiquitous a mistress would not be exactly 
 popular below stairs in a modern house. Women, 
 says Xenophon, are worth very little who are too 
 fine to do anything but sit all day with crossed 
 hands ; which is true ; still, it might have occurred 
 even to him, that the routine proposed for the wife was 
 cramped and dull compared with the vigorous out- 
 door life which he assigns to the husband. Ischo- 
 machus gets up early, and if he has no business to 
 transact in the town, his groom brings round his 
 horse and leads it before him to his farm (which, we 
 may suppose, was about three miles out of Athens). 
 
Ill THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 55 
 
 He walks the distance on foot for the sake of a 
 " constitutional.*' When he gets to the place he 
 watches the sowing or reaping or whatever rural task 
 is going on, and afterwards he mounts his horse and 
 rides away over hedges and ditches and hills and 
 dales — the sort of country one would cover in war- 
 time — never stopping at obstacles, but taking care 
 not to lame the horse if he can help it. On his 
 return the groom rubs down the horse and then 
 takes it back to the town, carrying with him a 
 basket of whatever farm produce is needed for the 
 kitchen. Ischomachus walks home at a brisk pace 
 and dines, neither too generously nor too meagrely, 
 so that he feels well and active for the rest of the 
 day. 
 
 An Italian proverb bids us praise the sea and keep 
 to the land ; many poets have praised the country and 
 lived in towns. But Xenophon was not a poet, and 
 he meant what he said when he gave the palm to a 
 country life. He was glad to say good-bye to towns 
 for good and all. Athens could never have been 
 the same to him after the death of Socrates, which 
 was the first news that met him on his return from 
 conducting the retreat of the Ten Thousand. Nor 
 did he like the whole trend of Athenian policy. It 
 is sad to feel that you have grown foreign in your 
 own land. Later, he was banished from Athens, but 
 even when the decree of banishment was revoked 
 
T' 
 
 56 THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 
 
 and he might have gone back, he did not do so. 
 His one desire was to live out his days on the 
 beautiful estate which Sparta had presented to him, 
 where he took up his abode with his wife and two 
 little boys when he was still in the prime of life. 
 It seems that he was once compelled by the tide 
 of war to leave this estate, but there is reason 
 to hope that he regained possession of it and was 
 able to remain there till he died at the age of 
 ninety. It was in this delightful retreat that he 
 wrote nearly all his works, giving thus a practi- 
 cal illustration of one merit of country life not 
 noted in his treatise — the leisure it affords for 
 literary pursuits. 
 
 Scillas, the spot where Xenophon's property was 
 situated, not only lay in one of the prettiest parts of 
 Greece, but had the great advantage of being within 
 a few miles of Olympia, where every five years all 
 the most distinguished Hellenes assembled for the 
 celebration of the Olympian games. On one occasion, 
 amongst the visitors was Xenophon's old friend, the 
 Warden of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, to 
 whom, years before, he had entrusted a certain sum 
 of prize-money on the eve of a campaign ; if he 
 died the money was to be offered to the goddess, if 
 he lived it was to be restored to himself. This 
 money the Warden brought with him, and with it 
 Xenophon purchased some land near his own estate, 
 
,11 THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD 57 
 
 rich in streams, fish, and game, which he consecrated 
 to Artemis. He raised an altar and had a statue 
 made just like that at Ephesus, only smaller and of 
 cypress wood instead of gold. Here, once a year, 
 all the rich and poor, men and women, of the country 
 round were invited to attend a festival, their wants 
 being supplied "by the goddess"; barley -meal 
 bread, meat from the sacrificed animals, wine, and 
 sweetmeats forming the bill of fare, supplemented by 
 wild boar, antelope, deer, and all sorts of game, the 
 spoils of a great hunt organised by Xenophon's sons 
 and his sporting neighbours some days in advance. 
 Was there ever a happier fete^ where each laid aside 
 his sorrows, his heart-burnings, his little jealousies, 
 his money-making, to rejoice in the sweet air glad- 
 dened by the sun and in the presence of an unseen 
 Power that hears and guards ! 
 
 For Xenophon the gods controlled the events 
 of life and had knowledge of the past and future. 
 They could easily be made our friends ; they only 
 asked of us offerings of their own gifts, a grateful 
 heart, and no conscious concealment of the truth 
 when we called upon them to witness our word. 
 This was his religion and it served him both in bright 
 hours and grey. He was performing a religious 
 sacrifice when the message was brought to him that 
 his son Gryllus had fallen. Xenophon took the 
 garland from his head, but when the messenger 
 
58 THE ATTIC HOMESTEAD m 
 
 added " nobly/* he put it on again, saying, " I knew 
 that my son was mortal." Here we see the antique 
 spirit at its best : self-restraint in adversity ; pre- 
 ference of noble conduct to happy fortune ; recogni- 
 tion that the gods rule wisely. 
 
IV 
 THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 
 
 We had not lost our balance then, nor grown 
 Thought's slaves, and dead to every natural joy. 
 
 Empedocles on Etna. 
 
 Failing further discoveries, we must attribute to 
 the sweet singer of Syracuse an entirely new literary 
 treatment of the peasant. Though the embryo of 
 the idyll is to be found in the old pastoral stories of 
 divine love affairs, as Theocritus himself implicitly 
 states, yet he was the first to treat the countryman 
 as a poetical personage who possesses inherent charm 
 and interest. He touched his mpral qualities rather 
 with humour than with pathos, but he neglected 
 none of the traits which make the young Southern 
 peasant a beautiful feature in the landscape. He 
 first understood his relations with Nature — a Nature 
 not the sad nurse to all that die, but the bounteous 
 mother of all that live. At the same time, he drew 
 what he saw and not what he imagined. He did 
 not dress up lettered poets as shepherds, or the 
 
 59 
 
6o THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 
 
 ladies of Versailles as shepherdesses. His rustics do 
 not discuss politics or theology, the favourite themes 
 of generations of succeeding swains. He idealised 
 in the sense that he took what was attractive and 
 left the rest ; but what he took was true, not false 
 — real, not artificial. It is the distinguishing trait of 
 his charming poems that with their wild-flower 
 fragrance they have a flavour of true rusticity. 
 Many pastoral poets since have been elegant and 
 some have been rustic, but the combination of the 
 two characteristics never again has attained to quite 
 the same perfection as that reached by the inventor 
 of the idyll. 
 
 Theocritus appears to have owed some obligations 
 to the poet Stesichorus, whose countrymen at Catania 
 have thought to compensate for the loss of all his 
 works by naming after him their finest street, which 
 they are sure is also the finest street in the world. 
 It is pretty certain that he owed more to folk-songs. 
 The very form of his amoebaeic poems was taken 
 from the toss-and-throw ditties sung at village fetes, 
 and it is still in use at country song-tournaments in 
 Sicily. Livy believed it to be of Etruscan origin, 
 but does not give his reason for doing so. The 
 harvest-song of the Tenth Idyll is a real folk-song, 
 and one which has a venerable origin, since the 
 " songs of the god Lityerses " (at first elegies for 
 the son of King Midas who was killed in single 
 
THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 6i 
 
 combat with a mysterious stranger) were relics of 
 the sacrifice to the growth-genius, and of the pro- 
 pitiatory rite at the seeming death of Nature. Else- 
 where the story was told of a certain Bormus who 
 left his reapers to fetch them water to drink and 
 was never seen again. The theme of the song of 
 Theocritus is less romantic, but its name tells its 
 ancestry. Every kind of trade and occupation in 
 Greece and her islands had a singing accompaniment : 
 there were millstone songs, weaving songs, songs of 
 nurses, songs of baking-women, songs of bathing- 
 men, songs of labourers going to their work, songs 
 of shepherds and goatherds. There is not the least 
 doubt that such verse existed from the earliest times, 
 and it is not fanciful to suppose that the songs of 
 the shepherd and the goatherd were finer than the 
 mere work-songs, many of which were only meant 
 to secure regularity in the performance of a given 
 action. The care of the flocks and herds afforded 
 endless leisure in lovely surroundings : what could 
 more invite inspiration.^ This poetry, which only 
 asked for the " simple worship of a day," was 
 found, already beautiful, by the poet who gave it 
 immortality. 
 
 We know the scenery of the Idylls : it is that 
 scenery of the pure South which comes upon the 
 traveller one day as a sudden surprise after he 
 thought that he knew all about Southern Nature. 
 
62 THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 
 
 Any one who has driven from Sorrento on the Bay 
 of Naples to Positano on the Bay of Salerno will 
 understand what is meant. At a particular point 
 where the road, edged with grey-green aloes, reaches 
 the crest of the mountain and where a new horizon 
 opens before us, we forget the familiar loveliness of 
 the Sorrento orange - groves in our wonder, our 
 bewilderment, at this new vision ; air and sea are 
 incomparably clearer ; rocks grow painted ; if the 
 vegetation is scarcer, it is also more vivid in hue ; 
 the sun seems to have taken off a veil. Wherever 
 there is this nature the peasant of to-day will remind 
 you of his prototype of over two thousand years 
 ago. He has piped and sung and wooed and 
 wed through the religious changes, the political 
 convulsions, that have gone on around him as he 
 did all these things when Theocritus took his 
 likeness. They were no piping times of peace 
 when the Idylls were written : Carthage and Rome 
 made Sicily the battle-field between East and West. 
 It was, however, one of the rare periods during 
 which the Syracusan people were perfectly contented 
 at home under the rule of a wise prince, and their 
 domestic tranquillity may have contributed to pro- 
 duce the psychological moment for the birth of 
 pastoral poetry. 
 
 An Idyll generally attributed to Theocritus, 
 though the authorship has been, perhaps with reason. 
 
THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 63 
 
 contested — *' Hercules the Lion - slayer, or the 
 Wealth of Augeas " — gives a minute description of 
 a latifundium^ of which the counterpart could doubt- 
 less have been found in Sicily during the reign of 
 Hieron. Part of the land is laid out in vast corn- 
 fields, some thrice, some four times ploughed ; here 
 the vineyards turn to the sun, there the orchards, 
 while the rich pastures sloping towards the river 
 suffice for countless sheep and heads of cattle. 
 Yonder, sacred and undisturbed, is Apollo's grove 
 of wild olives. The husbandmen are lodged in 
 spacious dwellings. Hither often comes their master 
 the king, accompanied by his son, for even princes 
 deem that their house is safer if they look to it 
 themselves. There is the usual incident of the dogs. 
 The old husbandman drives them away, not by 
 throwing stones, but by merely lifting them from the 
 ground, and by reproving with his voice. '* Strange," 
 he muses, " what an intelligent creature is this which 
 the gods have made to be with men ; if only it knew 
 how to distinguish whom to bark at from whom not, 
 there would not be a beast to match it." To say the 
 truth, Hercules in his lion-skin might look rather 
 disreputable to even a wise dog, though his guide 
 would be too polite to admit it. It was the lion-skin 
 which afterwards caused a bull to run at him, whose 
 powerful head he easily bent to earth, catching the 
 horns, as the usage is with the Proven9al peasants in 
 
64 THE LAST GREEK PEASANT iv 
 
 their sports, which date back to the time when 
 Provence was Greek. 
 
 In the later Idyllists the wild-flowers of Theocritus 
 become beautiful garden flowers. Bion and Moschus 
 observed Nature truly, but they put themselves in it, 
 not the real peasant. It was recognised that in spite 
 of all the affinities between natural things and human 
 moods, man in the highest sense stands apart from 
 Nature ; hence the poignant cry : 
 
 Alas ! when mallows perish in the gardens, 
 The crisp-green parsley and the hardy anise, 
 They live again, and grow another summer ; 
 But we, the great and strong, the sons of wisdom, 
 When first we die, unknown in earthly hollow 
 Sleep a long boundless sleep that hath no waking. 
 
 Alford. 
 
 We find a last key to the feeling of Greek 
 antiquity about country things in the precious 
 collection called the Anthology, Here peasants 
 become real again, but in the workmanship there is 
 no rusticity ; there is the utmost detachment from 
 rusticity. These gems, so small and so perfect, could , 
 only have been made by people who were not only 
 highly cultivated but also highly literary ; people 
 who weighed poetry entirely by quality ; with whom 
 four lines might create a reputation. They are the 
 handiwork of men who, seated at the banquet of all 
 that a great race had performed, arrived at the 
 appreciation of the simple by the knowledge of the 
 
THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 65 
 
 complex. They indicate a "return to Nature," 
 inspired less by the old joyous instinct than by the 
 finely trained sense of artists. They are full of the 
 love of a beautiful home. Leonidas of Tarentum, 
 when he thought of his Italian birthland in glorious 
 Athens, felt still that exile from it was worse than 
 death. The Greeks of Magna Graecia, of Byzantium, 
 of Alexandria, did not leave a national epic or a great 
 tragedy ; they had not the wild exuberance of growth 
 that is needed for the first, nor did they breathe 
 an air charged with dramatic electricity, such as 
 that breathed by Sophocles or Shakespeare. We 
 remember their civilisation by the roses of the 
 Anthology as the Romans remembered the great 
 city of Poseidonia by the roses of Paestum. 
 
 The position of that city, between the blue plain 
 of the sea and the green plain of the land, betokens a 
 race which did not hunger after heights, as did the 
 Greeks of Greece. These Greeks of Italy, in spite 
 of their one great star-gazer, were not constantly 
 looking up, but they were constantly looking 
 down — looking at the things at their feet. 
 They lacked the mental virginity of Homer, who 
 could speak sincerely of "godlike swineherds," and 
 they were without the affectation which uses such 
 terms insincerely. Nor did they see the peasant 
 chiefly in the transfiguring season of his youthful 
 love. He interested them most when he was old. 
 
 F 
 
66 THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 
 
 The charming story of the two old fishermen who 
 discuss their dreams in the Twenty -first Idyll of 
 Theocritus bears some resemblance to the poems of 
 humble life in the Anthology ; but while it is 
 pervaded by a quiet laughter they are steeped in the 
 pur dictame of tears. The Anthology is a true book 
 of Pity and Death. 
 
 Here is the tomb of the shipwrecked sailor ; 
 there, that of the farm labourer, " a common Hades 
 under sea and land.'* Eumelus, the fowler, who 
 never kissed the hand of a stranger for food, made 
 his living with bird-lime and sticks. Now, at ninety, 
 he is dead and has left to his children bird-lime, birds, 
 and sticks. One without a name will not complain 
 because he is untended when dead ; but it grieves 
 him that the plough turns up his bones. The cows 
 come, wretched, of their own accord to their shed 
 from a mountain covered with snow. Alas ! their 
 master lies dead at the foot of an oak, struck by 
 lightning. How forlorn that vision of the unled 
 cows trooping alone down to the home that was 
 desolate ! The following by Antipater of Byzantium 
 seems to me the most pathetic thing in all poetry : 
 ** A single heifer, and a sheep with wool like hair, 
 was the wealth of Aristides ; by these he kept off 
 hunger from his door. But he failed in both. A 
 wolf killed the sheep and labour pains the heifer, 
 and the herd of poverty perished, and he, having 
 
THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 67 
 
 twisted a noose to his neck with the string that tied 
 round his wallet, died piteously by his cabin where 
 there was no lowing." 
 
 Agriculture is not a calling that leads, as has 
 been supposed, to the possession of a quiet mind. 
 Calligines, the countryman, consults a soothsayer 
 about the coming summer and the harvest ; he gets 
 the answer : "If there be rain enough and not too 
 much ; if the plants be richer in fruitage than in 
 leafage ; if frost visit not the furrows nor hail the 
 wheat ; if fauns eat not up the crop — then, unless, 
 after all, locusts descend on the land, a good harvest 
 may be hoped for." There are as many ** ifs " now, 
 with a good many more thrown in. Fauns, dear 
 creatures, are dead, along with the gods ; but to-day 
 that part of the prophecy would run, " If trespassing 
 goats do not get at the crop " ; and maybe the 
 depredations were then also committed by goats, 
 and not by the guileless fauns after all, for the goat 
 is an ancient animal and wise, and quite capable of 
 arranging in a manner that blame due to him should 
 fall on the head of the innocent. 
 
 The pious ploughman sets apart certain "holy 
 unsown enclosures " for Pan, and the old shepherd 
 dedicates to him his crook now that he can work no 
 more, though he is still able to play on his reed-pipe. 
 Another old shepherd, Cleitagoras, laid to rest on 
 the mountain-side, prays that the sheep may bleat 
 
68 THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 
 
 over him, while a shepherd, seated on a rough rock, 
 gently pipes to them as they feed.-^ In this, which 
 is by Leonidas of Tarentum, there is the radiance, 
 not the gloom, of pathos ; and that same radiance 
 illuminates the epitaph from an unknown source, in 
 which the dear Earth is asked to receive into her 
 bosom old Amyntichus, who had laboured so long 
 for her, planting olives and vines and corn, watered 
 by well- cut channels, and herbs and fruit-trees. 
 " Lie gently on his head and cover him with flpwers 
 in the spring." A thought is present here which 
 must have struck whoever has watched a rustic 
 funeral: the cultivator alone does not go into a 
 strange bed. He has been ever at one with Nature, 
 a complement to the earth he tilled, not a strange 
 wandering being on it. He is going to be part of 
 it now, and it seems sweet and hospitable, not cold 
 and foreign. 
 
 ^ A traveller noticed in the new cemetery at Keropi, behind Hymettus, this 
 epitaph, which is exactly in the'spirit of the Anthology : " Here lies Georgios — 
 after living seventy-five years — buried under his own wondrous oak." We think 
 also of the folk-song of the dying Klepht who orders that his grave may be 
 made *' high and large," 
 
 " And to the right a lattice make a passage for the day, 
 Where the swallow, bringing spring-tide. 
 
 May dart about and play. 
 And the nightingale, sweet singer, 
 Tell the happy month of May." 
 
 I was always puzzled by this " high and large grave " till I saw the " chapel- 
 tombs " dotted over the hill-sides in parts of Greece, and yet more frequently in 
 Corsica. No human habitation is near, no sown field ; only the asphodel and 
 the fragrant herbs cropped by some wandering flock. I have actually seen a 
 swallow going in and out of the window of one of these tombs. 
 
THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 69 
 
 But these exquisite poets did not only see man 
 in the country ; sad enough it would have seemed 
 to them if only man were in it. They had the 
 tender love for all creatures which some people 
 think is a modern invention. What would be the 
 Anthology without the cicada, " that never knows 
 old age " ? The gentle poets who could pause on 
 their way to liberate a cricket from a spider's web 
 sympathised even with beasts of prey. Who can 
 find a prettier "lion-story" than that told by 
 Leonidas of Alexandria ? How, in a fearful night of 
 storm and hail, a solitary lion went to the hut of 
 some goatherds up in the mountains, his limbs 
 already stiffened with cold. The goatherds crouched 
 together, calling upon the gods, regardless of the 
 goats ; but the lion stayed through the storm and 
 then went away, having done no harm to man or 
 beast. Like peasants to-day in some shrine of the 
 Madonna, so they hung upon an oak a picture of 
 the event as an ex-voto thank-offering to "Zeus, 
 who is in the hill-tops.*' But the honour is still 
 with the lion. 
 
 What dog has had a more touching epitaph than 
 the words inscribed by a Greek poet on the monu- 
 ment to his favourite : " Laugh not, you who pass, 
 though this is the grave of a dog : 1 have been 
 wept for " ? 
 
 The hen which cradled her nurslings under her 
 
70 THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 
 
 wings till she was frozen to death, as still she tried to 
 protect them from the wintry snow ; the young 
 cow which, while ploughing, looks anxiously back at 
 the calf that follows her along the furrows — are they 
 not pitiful and gracious images ? It is clear that 
 some of the writers felt a scruple about animal sacri- 
 fices. Sometimes that scruple takes a pious form, as 
 when Zeus " the Ethereal " is besecched to spare the 
 bull, " the ploughing animal," that bellows a suppli- 
 ant at his altar ; elsewhere it reveals a nascent scepti- 
 cism. Hercules needs a sheep every day to keep 
 away the wolves : does it much matter to the sheep 
 if it be eaten by wolves or sacrificed to Hercules ? 
 Hermes is praised for being satisfied with offerings 
 of milk and honey. Addaeus of Macedon made 
 immortal the husbandman Alcon, who, when his 
 ox was worn out by the furrow, forbore to lead it 
 to the slaughtering - knife through respect for its 
 labours, but turned it into a meadow of deep grass 
 where it showed its content by lowing for its freedom 
 from the plough. There are in Crete many Alcons 
 still whom nothing will induce to kill their four- 
 footed fellow-workers when they are weak with age. 
 However unjustly poets are suspected of paint- 
 ing fancy portraits, so it is only fair to the Greek 
 countryman — before we leave him — to see how he 
 looks in the cold light of prose. Happily the task 
 is both easy and agreeable ; Dion Chrysostom has 
 
THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 71 
 
 given us the very thing we want in the plain, un- 
 varnished tale of "The Euboean Hunter," which he 
 declares to be " all true." For the sake of the story 
 we must take him at his word ; in a certain sense, 
 doubtless, it is truer than truth — what is told of an 
 individual belongs to a class. This heightens its 
 value as a document. He describes an adventure 
 which may be supposed to have happened about the 
 end of the first century a.d. Overtaken by a storm 
 the fishermen on whose boat the narrator had 
 embarked, were obliged to take refuge on the wild 
 coast of Euboea. The fishermen went to join others 
 of their trade, while Dion Chrysostom walked along 
 the lonely shore in the hopes of seeing some passing 
 ship which would take him up. He had been a long 
 time employed in this manner when he suddenly saw 
 at his feet a stag which had thrown itself down from 
 the cliff; the waves beat against its still breathing 
 body. Then he thought he could distinguish the 
 barking of dogs, but the noise of the waves prevented 
 him from hearing distinctly. Nevertheless he 
 scrambled up the steep bank in the direction from 
 which the sounds came, and before long he saw the 
 dogs running to and fro in search of the stag that 
 had disappeared. At the same time, he saw a man 
 with a long beard and hair which, thrown back from 
 his forehead, fell gracefully on his shoulders. His 
 dress and semblance betokened a hunter. " Stranger," 
 
72 THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 
 
 asked the man, " have you seen a fugitive stag ? " 
 Dion Chrysostom shov^ed him the place where the 
 creature lay and helped him to drag it out of the 
 water. Then followed an invitation to pass the night 
 in the hunter's dwelling, not far away. There was 
 no chance of embarking that day, it would be sheer 
 madness ; the storm showed no signs of abating ; and 
 the misty mountain-tops announced the continuance 
 of foul weather. When the hunter had heard how 
 the stranger came to be there, he bade him thank 
 the gods that he was alive ; there was not such a 
 dangerous spot on all the coast ; it was a veritable 
 sailor's grave. "You look like a townsman," he 
 added ; " you are so thin one would think that you 
 must have something the matter with you" — a 
 personal and hardly complimentary remark character- 
 istic of the peasant 1 
 
 Dion Chrysostom followed him willingly. He 
 had not much to fear, for he had nothing but an old 
 cloak : poverty is sacred and no one touches the 
 destitute. As they walked towards the dwelling- 
 place, the hunter told his new acquaintance who 
 were the folk with whom he was going to lodge. 
 They were only two, himself and his brother, with 
 their respective families. Their fathers had been free 
 citizens though poor ; they kept the oxen of a 
 rich proprietor whose wealth had been his misfortune ; 
 it was even said that he was killed by order of the 
 
IV THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 73 
 
 king because he was too rich — at any rate, as soon as 
 he was dead his goods were confiscated by the State, 
 the herds and flocks with the rest. The ox-herds, 
 their occupation gone, lingered in the mountain 
 valley where the cattle were led in summer, and where 
 they were grazing at the time of the catastrophe. 
 It was a charming place, with good water. Here the 
 two men decided to live on, supporting themselves 
 chiefly by hunting, which they were able to pursue 
 because two of the dogs that had gone with the sheep 
 and cattle when they were driven down the mountain, 
 came back to their old masters. At first they were 
 unused to the chase, but by careful training they 
 became capital hunting -dogs, and from pursuing 
 only wolves or suspicious-looking men, they learnt to 
 follow every sort of game. One point in the train- 
 ing was to feed them on flesh instead of on bread. 
 
 By and by the old people died, but not before 
 each had given his daughter in marriage to the son 
 of the other. These, with their children, were the 
 present occupiers of the huts to which Dion was 
 conducted. 
 
 One of the brothers had never been to the town ; 
 the other went there once with his father when they 
 were still the rich man's servants, and once on a far 
 more eventful occasion, the exciting incidents of which 
 he proceeds to relate to his guest. 
 
 It happened that their peace was disturbed by an 
 
74 THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 
 
 unbidden visitor, who was no more or less than a 
 tax-collector ! He demanded money, to which they 
 replied that they had none, or they would have 
 placed it at his service ; they pressed on him two fine 
 deer-skins, which he took, but insisted that one of 
 them should go back with him to the town. So 
 the hunter saw again what he had seen as a child : 
 many big houses, a wall with towers, many ships 
 in the harbour. What struck him most were the 
 crowds and the noise — it was enough to deafen you. 
 The tax-collector took him before the magistrates, 
 and said, laughing, " Here is the man you sent me 
 to find ; he has nothing in the world but a hut and 
 an empty sheepfold." The magistrates did not 
 answer ; they were about to go to the theatre, and 
 the hunter went with them. There he found a worse 
 crowd than all the rest, which was behaving in what 
 he thought a most extraordinary manner ; it did 
 nothing but scream applause or disapproval. Some 
 of the speakers made long speeches, some only spoke 
 a few words, some were howled down as soon as they 
 opened their lips. At last there was silence, and the 
 hunter was led before the assembly. 
 
 Then a man whom he had never seen sprang to 
 his feet and pointed to him " as one of the wretches 
 who have stolen the lands of the Republic ; feeding 
 their flocks, planting vineyards, keeping slaves, oxen '' 
 — in short, making thousands a year and not paying 
 
THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 75 
 
 one penny of taxes ! Of course the impostor dressed 
 up to look poor, but let no one be deceived. And 
 there was something more to say ; these knaves, 
 these scoundrels, were also wreckers who lighted 
 beacons on the cliffs to lure mariners to their doom ! 
 At this diatribe the populace became so much excited 
 that the hunter almost feared for his life. However, 
 another citizen got up and said that in his opinion 
 the cultivation of waste lands was a merit rather than 
 a crime. A violent wrangle followed between the 
 first and second speakers, and then the hunter was 
 called upon to make his defence. 
 
 He said simply that all the magnificent possessions 
 mentioned by his accuser were purely imaginary ; 
 they had none of them, but what they had sufficed 
 for their simple wants. If they could give anything 
 that the State would like to have, it might take it 
 and welcome. Somebody asked, " What can you 
 give ?'* *' Four splendid deer-skins," was the answer, 
 which provoked shouts of laughter. There were a 
 few other skins of bear and goat, but they were too 
 common to offer ; there were also some excellent 
 smoked hams and dried quarters of venison, and a 
 few bushels of beans and barley. Mockery and 
 scorn met this inventory, even after the addition of 
 eight goats, a lame cow and her pretty calf, two 
 hunting-knives, a few farm tools, two clean and tidy 
 huts with a wife and children in each. The hunter 
 
76 THE LAST GREEK PEASANT iv 
 
 speaks calmly and respectfully ; only at the end, 
 when he refutes the charge of their being a nest of 
 wreckers, is he roused to indignation. 
 
 Then some one else gets up whom he fears to be 
 a fresh enemy, but this new orator states that he 
 now plainly recognises in the hunter the very man 
 who rescued himself and his father three years before, 
 when they were shipwrecked on that terrible coast, 
 and at the point of death with hunger and cold. He 
 took them to his hut and warmed and fed them, and 
 his wife rubbed their stiffened limbs with grease as 
 there was no oil. The poor folks kept them for 
 three days, giving them two fine deer-skins at parting, 
 and as if all this were not enough, the man who 
 stood there at the bar of the assembly took off his 
 daughter's covering to wrap round the speaker, who 
 was still suffering from exposure, while the young 
 girl clad herself in some poor rags, without a 
 murmur. After the gods, it was to him that he 
 owed his own and his father's life. 
 
 This speech produced an indescribable effect : 
 the assembly grew frantic with enthusiasm. The 
 moment would have been solemn if the hunter had 
 not gone across to his former guest and kissed him 
 and his father, who stood near him, on their faces. 
 At this the public laughed so much that the good 
 man understood that "in town people do not kiss 
 on the face.'* Gravity having been restored, it was 
 
IV THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 77 
 
 decided to grant the men undisturbed occupation on 
 the land around their huts, and to confer a tunic and 
 a mantle on the hunter " who had stripped his own 
 daughter to cover a citizen's nakedness," as well as a 
 hundred drachmae for his household needs, which 
 his first defender volunteered to pay out of his own 
 purse. But the hunter would not take the money, 
 nor did he wish to take the tunic and the mantle, 
 though he ended by accepting them as they were 
 speedily procured and thrown over him. He was 
 with difficulty persuaded not to put his deer-skin on 
 the top of the other garments. 
 
 Such was the tale of the hunter. Dion Chrysostom 
 adds to it a little idyll which he describes himself as 
 having witnessed while he was the hunter's guest. 
 A handsome youth comes in with a hare which he 
 presents with a kiss to his pretty cousin, the hunter's 
 younger daughter. The Philosopher understands 
 the situation at a glance, and determines to try to 
 do the young people a good turn. Having elicited 
 what he had already guessed — that youth and maiden 
 were engaged to be married — he asks. Why put off 
 the happy day } After a few idle objections, it is 
 confessed that there is no real reason for delay except 
 that they have neglected to prepare the victim which 
 must be offered to the gods on the occasion of a 
 marriage. " Oh, if that's all," cries a small boy, " the 
 victim has been ready for ever so long ; it is just 
 
78 THE LAST GREEK PEASANT 
 
 out there, behind the hut." The children all run off 
 and come back cutting capers round a fat little pig, 
 which the young man had bought in the village with 
 the skin of a baby wild boar. They had been feeding 
 it up for months, and the only person who knew 
 nothing about the matter was the head of the house, 
 who, poor man, had racked his brains to account for 
 most mysterious gruntings. He takes the deception 
 good -humou redly, and two days later the simple 
 marriage rites are performed. The air is still and 
 all the stars have come back into the sky. How 
 different, says the story-teller, were these rustic 
 nuptials from the sordid marriages of the rich, with 
 their contracts and signatures and bargains and 
 duplicities, and the bickerings and quarrels that 
 often arose even on the wedding-day ! 
 
V 
 
 NATURE IN THE EARLIER ROMAN 
 POETS 
 
 Sentiment is the fairy moss, the silvery lichen, 
 which grows on the old walls — not unfrequently on 
 the tombstone — of interest. One cannot help feeling 
 respect for the unflinching directness of the people 
 that raised an altar to the god Stercutus. Those 
 who laid the foundations of Rome's greatness grasped 
 the fact that Italy is an agricultural country, and 
 that if you look to the crops, the heroes will take 
 care of themselves. Hence the paramount importance 
 and dignity ascribed to agricultural pursuits in the 
 early days of the Republic, and the favour and 
 support accorded to the cultivator of the soil. 
 Whoever knows anything of Italian agriculture 
 must have been struck by the care with which the 
 Roman laws of the old period provided against 
 the very troubles which beset the modern land- 
 owner. 
 
 He will certainly have personal experience of the 
 
 79 
 
8o NATURE IN THE v 
 
 mischief done by (i) ladri campestri, the petty 
 thieves who live by small but constantly repeated 
 depredations ; (2) intentional damage in harvest- 
 field or vineyard ; (3) loss caused by goats and 
 other animals which pasture in the lanes and acquire 
 great agility in jumping hedges. The shepherds 
 who lead their flocks from the plains to the mountains 
 in spring and from the mountains to the plains in 
 autumn, manage to maintain them for several weeks 
 in each season almost without cost. It is done partly 
 on the wayside grass, but this does not suffice. 
 There are peasants, too, who keep two or three 
 animals when their plot will only support one — for 
 the rest they must trust to heaven. I have seen a 
 sheep trained to take a hedge like a hunter. (4) 
 Encroachments of neighbouring proprietors on any 
 spot not often visited by the owner. The Roman 
 law looked to all these cases. He who wilfully 
 injured another's crops, or cut them down during the 
 night, was punished with crucifixion, or, if he were a 
 minor, he was consigned to the injured proprietor 
 to work as a slave till the loss should be recuperated. 
 A person who intentionally set fire to the fields or to 
 the grain was burnt alive ; if he did it by accident 
 he was flogged. The theft of agricultural imple- 
 ments was punished with death. You had a right 
 to kill any one who removed your landmark. 
 Monstrous as some of these penalties were, the spirit 
 
EARLIER ROMAN POETS 8i 
 
 which ran through such legislation was more con- 
 sonant with rural prosperity than that which inspires 
 the tender-hearted Italian juries who practically 
 refuse to convict under any of the above heads 
 because the delinquent is a povero diavolo^ and what 
 can you expect ? 
 
 Besides the summary method placed in the hands 
 of the proprietor of defending his boundaries, these 
 were further protected by the god Terminus, whose 
 temple was on the Tarpeian rock and who was 
 represented without arms or legs because he never 
 moved. When it was proposed to build a temple 
 to Jupiter on the Tarpeian rock, the other gods, 
 who had their seat there, gracefully made way, but 
 Terminus refused to stir. The country people on 
 his annual festival covered their boundary stones 
 with flowers and sacrificed to the god. 
 
 Wise, and in the highest degree civilised, were 
 the Roman laws which promoted the opening of 
 markets and fairs, and prohibited any assembly that 
 might interfere with farmers on market-days ; which 
 allowed liberty to the grower to get the highest 
 price he could and discouraged monopolies; which 
 kept the public roads both safe and in excellent 
 condition, thus facilitating the transport of produce. 
 
 Then came the too easy acquisition of wealth, the 
 importation of Egyptian corn, the multiplication of 
 slave-labour, the increase of large holdings and the 
 
 G 
 
82 NATURE IN THE v 
 
 consequent conversion of much arable land into 
 pasture. No attempt can be made here to gauge 
 the effects of these changes on the Italian peasantry. 
 We often read of the Italian peasant class being 
 swept away, but if this happened, it showed a 
 remarkable faculty for resuscitation. Perhaps a 
 love of eccentricity made De Quincey argue that, 
 " there was not one ploughman the less at the end 
 than at the beginning," but his paradox may not 
 be farther from the truth than the theory of whole- 
 sale extirpation. Enough peasants were left to be 
 the chief transmitters of the old Italian blood which 
 was to tincture all the northern deluges, and so to 
 bear out Virgil's prophecy that the name of Italy 
 would survive every conquest, and that, by a fated 
 law, only those invaders came to stay who merged 
 their own language and character in the native speech 
 and birth-stamp of the people of the land. 
 
 Through all changes the idea remained, the idea 
 of the paramount importance and dignity of agri- 
 culture. The figure of the hero who, after saving 
 his country, returned to till his fields, had taken 
 hold of the Roman mind as the type of true virtue, 
 and the quality of a nation's ideals is as important 
 as the quality of its realities. When Trajan made 
 it a law that those who aspired to occupy public 
 office must possess a third of their substance in land, 
 he was wisely yielding to the influence of one of 
 
V EARLIER ROMAN POETS 83 
 
 the continually recurring waves of popular opinion 
 in favour of husbandry. However much the 
 agriculturist was sacrificed, first to faction and 
 then to despotism, this opinion never really altered. 
 The taste for country things, of which all the 
 Roman poets were in some degree interpreters, 
 was built upon the national conviction of a national 
 necessity. 
 
 The account given by Lucretius of the first steps 
 of humanity was as good science as he could make 
 it. No line, no word is thrown in for the sake of 
 poetic effect ; though the story is avowedly con- 
 structed by guesswork, the guesses are based on 
 carefully weighed probabilities. 
 
 The type of his primitive man and woman is to 
 be looked for, not among contemporary savages 
 (who may have been descending all the while that 
 we have been ascending), but among our fellow- 
 creatures, the beasts of the field. Each animal in its 
 natural state follows the law which is fitted to 
 perpetuate its species. It is not the enemy of its 
 kind ; it has its own method of keeping its person 
 and its nest or lair clean ; the males do not ill-treat 
 the females ; parents bring up their ofi^spring even 
 at a great sacrifice to themselves ; those species in 
 which the male is obliged to find food for the 
 female after the birth of the young ones are mostly 
 monogamous, and as long as the contract lasts it is 
 
84 NATURE IN THE v 
 
 faithfully observed. In the time of courting every 
 creature seeks to be admired by its mate. Here 
 are the materials which Lucretius used. 
 
 If, he says, the human race in its infancy had not, 
 as a rule, respected the weak and watched over the 
 woman and the child, it would very soon have come 
 to an end. He describes the discovery of language 
 much in the same way as a biologist of the present 
 day would do ; all creatures make different noises 
 under different circumstances ; the Molossian dogs 
 make one sound when they growl with fury, another 
 when they bark in company, another when they 
 howl in lonely buildings, a fourth when they shrink 
 from a blow, a fifth when they tenderly lick and 
 fondle their whelps, pretending to snap at them or 
 swallow them up, and whining in a low, soothing 
 note. Man, having a voice and tongue well adapted 
 to language, soon developed a rude form of articulate 
 speech. Then his education progressed rapidly. 
 The pretty, winning ways of children were what 
 first softened and civilised the wild human heart. 
 Men learnt the uses of fire, of which a flash of 
 lightning or the friction of dead branches was the 
 origin ; stone weapons were invented and animals 
 were tamed ; it occurred to one man to clothe 
 himself in a skin, not, alas ! to his advantage, for 
 his fellows, filled with envy, set upon him and killed 
 him, and in the struggle the skin was spoilt and 
 
V EARLIER ROMAN POETS 85 
 
 rendered useless to any one. So, perhaps, began 
 human strife ! Originally beauty and strength were 
 what gave the chiefship, but, by and by, wealth 
 began to interfere with that natural selection. Man 
 applied himself to the vast undertaking of cultivating 
 the earth : the forests retreated up the mountains ; 
 vineyards and olive groves and cornfields appeared 
 in the plains and valleys. The great invention of 
 how to work in wool substituted a better sort of 
 dress for skins. At first men, doubtless, spun as 
 well as delved, " since the male sex are far superior 
 in art and ingenuity in whatever they turn their 
 hand to," but the sturdy labourers jeered at their 
 stay-at-home brothers, and called them out to help 
 them in the fields : thus it was that women became 
 spinsters. 
 
 About this time Lucretius placed his Golden Age, 
 in which no privileged beings lead an impossible life, 
 but real rustics taste the joys of simplicity. Here 
 the real is beautiful, but it does not cease to be the 
 real ; there is as much reality in an arum lily as in a 
 toadstool. In fine weather, when the young men 
 had satisfied their hunger, they laughed and jested 
 under the trees, dancing with stiff, awkward steps 
 and crowning their heads with flowers and leaves. 
 Then they sang, imitating the liquid voices of birds, 
 and they found the way to make music on a reed. 
 The sweet, plaintive notes of the pipe were heard 
 
86 NATURE IN THE v 
 
 through all the pathless woods and in secret haunts 
 and divine resting-places. 
 
 This generation, which had no empty cares nor 
 emptier ambitions, could be called happy, if men 
 could ever be called so. But of all writers Lucretius 
 was most conscious of the elemental world-pain which 
 none can escape. No day passes into night, no night 
 passes into day, that does not hear the cries of the 
 new-born infant mixing with the wails of the 
 mourners by their dead. Nor is man alone in his 
 sorrow ; while the calf bleeds before some lovely 
 temple, the mother, vainly seeking her child, wanders 
 hither and thither through the wood, leaving the 
 print of her hoofs upon the moist ground. Then 
 she stands still and fills the air with her laments, and 
 then hurriedly she returns to the stable to see if by 
 chance it is not there. Nor do fresh pastures, nor 
 the sight of other calves console her, for she nowhere 
 beholds the loved form. 
 
 With the exception of Dante no poet has the 
 restrained descriptive power of Lucretius, or, perhaps, 
 in the same degree, the art of choosing suggestive 
 words. A few lines bring a natural scene or a 
 person before our eyes so forcibly that no detail 
 seems to be wanting. His similes produce the 
 illusion of making a direct appeal to our eyes. 
 Take, for instance, that of the flock of grazing sheep 
 and frisking lambs scattered over the down " which 
 
EARLIER ROMAN POETS 87 
 
 in the distance appears to be only a whiteness on a 
 green hill." Or take the portrait of the old 
 countryman whom we all have met : 
 
 And now, shaking^ his head, the aged peasant laments 
 with a sigh that the toil of his hands has often come to 
 nought, and as he compares the present with the past time, 
 he extols the fortune of his father and harps on this theme, 
 how the good old race, full of piety, bore the burden of their 
 life very easily within narrow bounds, when the portion of 
 land for each man was far less than now. — Sellar. 
 
 When we speak of Nature we are generally 
 thinking of the desert, the Alps, the ocean, the 
 prairie — Nature without man. This is what was 
 rarely thought of by the poet of antiquity. Lucretius, 
 almost alone, contemplated Nature as detached from 
 man, of whose powerlessness he had a sense which 
 was more Eastern than European. He allowed, 
 indeed, that a human being might rise to a moral 
 and intellectual grandeur that exceeded all the 
 magnificence and the power of external Nature. 
 This great admission, clothed in words of singular 
 solemnity, is contained in the passage in which he 
 says that, rich and beautiful as is the land of Sicily, 
 there is nothing in it so sacred, wonderful, and 
 beloved as its philosopher — his master, Empedoclcs. 
 But men in the aggregate, what were they ? Specks, 
 atoms. Was it surprising that they should have 
 been seized with fear and trembling in presence of 
 
88 NATURE IN THE 
 
 the shining firmament, the spiral lightning, the storm 
 at sea, the earthquake ; or that such sights should 
 have inspired them with the idea of the gods ? So 
 these frightened children fell on their faces and 
 turned their veiled heads towards a stone ; useless 
 rites, idle actions, devoid of real piety, since real 
 piety consists in viewing all things with a serene 
 mind. 
 
 Man's business was to cheerfully accept his posi- 
 tion as an atom. Even the awe which filled Kant 
 when he looked at the starry sky would have been 
 held by Lucretius to be a relic of superstition. He 
 meant his teaching to console ; life, he argued, which 
 is full of so many inevitable ills, would be made 
 more endurable were supernatural terrors away ; but 
 men preferred to keep their fears sooner than to lose 
 their hopes. His conception of Nature as a living 
 power, a sole energy informing the infinitely various 
 manifestations of matter and spirit, was like some 
 great mountain wall rising thousands of feet above 
 us — grand but unfriendly. He excluded from it the 
 spiritual passion which vitalised the later monism. 
 He would have excluded emotion from the universe, 
 but he could not keep it out of his own heart — a 
 heart full of human kindness, sensitive affections, 
 power of sympathy. The clashing of such a tempera- 
 ment with the coldest and clearest intellect that ever 
 man possessed, was enough to work madness in the 
 
EARLIER ROMAN POETS 89 
 
 brain without the help of the legendary love-philtre. 
 The total impression left by De rerum natura is 
 that of the earth as a stepmother who grudges the 
 bread which, with pain and grief and by the sweat of 
 his brow, the husbandman seeks to extract from her. 
 The poetry of the Ego, lyrical poetry in its 
 modern sense, sprang into life full-grown with 
 Catullus. Even his allusions to Nature are personal ; 
 they are to Nature in its relation with his own state, 
 his own feelings, as when he likens his ill-requited 
 love to a wild flower which has fallen on the verge 
 of the meadow after it has been touched by the pass- 
 ing ploughshare. Anacreon had written love-songs, 
 and some poets of the Anthology had touched inti- 
 mate chords that awaken perennial responses, but 
 Catullus was the first to fling himself tout entier into 
 his poetry for better, for worse ; sometimes supremely 
 for better, sometimes very much for worse. Favoured 
 by an age when republican austerity had disappeared 
 in licence, and by the toleration of a forgiving 
 Caesar, he made poetry the medium of his loves, 
 passions, friendships, joys, griefs, hates, spites ; the 
 impartial mouthpiece of what was highest and lowest 
 in him. He was the first to be utterly reckless in 
 his choice of subjects ; one thing was as good as 
 another as long as it moved him. He looked on 
 poetry as a vent, not as a profession or as a road to 
 fame. It is impossible not to suppose that most of 
 
90 . NATURE IN THE v 
 
 his poems were improvisations. Could he have 
 made his individual intensity general, he might have 
 been the great tragic dramatist whom Rome never 
 produced — as one may guess from the terrible Atys, 
 He remained, instead, a poetical idler, whose small 
 amount of recorded work, almost a miracle (the 
 chance survival of a single 'Copy) has preserved to 
 sure immortality. 
 
 He was the first, if not to feel, at all events to 
 express, the modern " wander madness," the longing 
 for travel for its own sake, the flutter of anticipation 
 in starting for new scenes and far-off " illustrious 
 cities.'* His fleet pinnace scoured the seas like the 
 yacht of a modern millionaire, to end its days, at 
 last, in the clear waters of the lovely lake to which 
 its master returned with the joy in home-coming 
 which stay-at-homes can never know, and which is 
 the sweet, unmerited reward of faithlessness. Here, 
 wedged in between the moist and leafy landscapes of 
 northern Italy, he found an enhanced memory of the 
 scenes he had left — the Sea of Marmara, the Isles of 
 Greece. The same colour of the arid earth ; the 
 same silver olives, the same radiant light and sun, 
 with waters still more translucently blue than those 
 of southern seas. It is easy to imagine that the 
 " all-but-island Sirmio " had been the Elysium of his 
 childhood, his first glimpse of a southern fairyland, 
 so that the charm of earliest associations combined 
 
V EARLIER ROMAN POETS 91 
 
 with the delightful feeling of possession in rendering 
 it so dear to him. He had gone there as a boy with 
 that brother whose loss he was one day to mourn in 
 helpless sorrow among the olives under which they 
 both had played. The poem to Sirmio is the most 
 ideally perfect of all "poems of places," and the 
 truest. Two thousand years are annihilated by 
 CatuUus's beautiful lines ; they have the eternal 
 novelty of Nature herself. The blue lake of Garda 
 laughs in its innumerable ripples as it laughed with 
 the household of the young poet in joy at his return. 
 Those who have heard the wavelets lap the stones 
 of Sirmione with a musical rhythm will be always 
 tempted to interpret the much-disputed epithet of 
 " Lydian " in the sense of " softly sweet in Lydian 
 measures " — the sense of " Lydian hymns,'* " Lydian 
 harmonies." It would seem that Tennyson so 
 interpreted it. Certainly, Lydian was a term more 
 commonly applied to music than to anything else. 
 But among scholars ** golden " (from the golden 
 stream of Lydia) has more advocates. In a pictur- 
 esque sense this would not be ill-adapted. Sirmione 
 is the one spot from which the lake does look, at 
 times, actually golden, because it there takes the 
 sunset rays when the sun is close to the horizon ; in 
 the higher, mountain -girt regions "argentine" — 
 the grarC tazza argentea of Carducci — suits it better. 
 For the theory that Lydian means " Etruscan " (the 
 
92 NATURE IN THE v 
 
 Etruscans believing themselves to have come from 
 Lydia) there is this to be said : unquestionably there 
 were Etruscan colonies on the lake ; the name of the 
 village of Toscolano bears living witness to the fact 
 and there are other proofs. Scaliger did not know of 
 these colonies though his father was born on the lake 
 of Garda and should have heard of Toscolano. The 
 great Latinist ridiculed the idea of the "Tuscan 
 lake," and made a suggestion of a clerical error in 
 which many have followed him. But the waters will 
 remain " Lydian " to the end ! 
 
 Of all peninsulas, Sirmio, and of islands, 
 Loved gem ! those either placed in still lake waters. 
 Or lashed each side by Neptune's mighty billows, 
 How gladly, how delightfully I hail thee ! 
 From Thynia and Bithynian plains scarce deeming 
 I can have 'scaped, and reach thee now securely. 
 Oh, what so blest, as to be freed from troubles 
 When the mind lays aside its load, and wearied 
 Of foreign wanderings, we regain our homestead 
 And rest upon the couch so long desired ; 
 This, this, the full reward of all my labours. 
 Hail, pleasant Sirmio, kindly greet thy master ; 
 Rejoice ye, too, calm lake, glad Lydian water, 
 Laugh, and let all the household join the laughter. 
 
 Between the Tiburtine and Sabine territories, not 
 far from Rome, Catullus had another estate, to 
 which he addressed some merry verses that show him 
 in what was certainly his normal mood — gay and 
 paradoxical, with a stinging tongue which he took 
 no pains to control. For some reason he wished 
 
EARLIER ROMAN POETS 93 
 
 the farm to be known as " Tiburtine,*' and it made 
 him very angry to hear it called " Sabine." The 
 occasion of the verses was a visit he paid to it when, 
 as he asserts, he had been given a bad cold by having 
 to listen to the terrible composition of an acquaintance 
 named Sextius. Coughing and sneezing, he fled to 
 his villa, doctored himself with nettle and basil, and 
 was soon expressing his best thanks to the *' Tiburtine 
 farm " for making him well. 
 
 The two pretty poems to " The Garden God,** 
 attributed to Catullus, though there exists no proof 
 that he wrote them, would hand down to us, were 
 other record wanting, the memory of an essentially 
 popular cultus which was never looked upon by 
 educated people otherwise than as a harmless super- 
 stition. When Venus caused Priapus to be exposed 
 in the mountains, ashamed of being known as the 
 mother of such a fright, she closed the doors of 
 heaven upon him beyond recall. He never became 
 a proper orthodox god. Shepherds, however, were 
 reported to have saved his life, and peasants set up 
 his altars. At one time his worship seems to have 
 been accompanied by gross licence, but it had lost 
 this character among the Roman husbandmen of the 
 Republic. It retained indeed a crude symbolism. 
 The lore of peasants is not all fit for ears polite, as 
 would be remarked if everything that folk-lorists 
 collect were published. The peasant tongue does 
 
94 NATURE IN THE v 
 
 not know — how should it know? — the virtue of 
 reticence. But the uppermost feeling of the Roman 
 ploughman for his garden god was a sympathy of 
 the poor of the earth for the poor of heaven. Some 
 sorry saints have got into the calendar by a similar 
 mental process. 
 
 The Priapus of the CatuUian poems becomes 
 likeable from his faithful care of the cot in the 
 marshes, thatched with rushes, where the poor 
 owners, the father and the son, thrive so well because 
 of their piety towards their protecting fetich, whom 
 they privately treat just as if he were a real god. 
 Besides the little offerings of the earliest spring 
 flowers, of green unripe wheat ears, yellow violets, 
 pale gourds, fragrant apples, and purple grapes, a goat 
 (*' but say nothing about it") has sometimes stained 
 its altar with his blood, notwithstanding the risk of 
 offending the higher deities to whom the living 
 sacrifice was reserved. Grateful for which attentions 
 the garden god bids the boys be off to pilfer the rich 
 neighbour, obligingly adding, " This path will lead 
 you to his grounds." 
 
 It is possible that one other element entered into 
 the cultus of Priapus : some grain of the deep-rooted 
 tendency to associate monstrosity with divinity, 
 which seems to have begun with the syllogism — 
 the monstrous is abnormal, the divine is abnormal, 
 therefore the monstrous is the divine. Greece saved 
 
V EARLIER ROMAN POETS 95 
 
 the Western world from that awful heresy by formu- 
 lating the great truth at the basis of all truth, that 
 the divine is normal, is beauty, is law. But the 
 natural man inclines to backsliding, and not even to 
 this day in the regions that have inherited the light 
 of Greece is the contrary opinion wholly dead. 
 
VI 
 
 A PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS 
 
 Varro was the Admirable Crichton of the Romans. 
 He was easily first in the knowledge of all arts, all 
 sciences ; music, painting, the stage, had no more 
 acute critic ; a profound student of history and 
 language, he had the passion for antiquity of a 
 scholar of the Cinque Cento — since "antiquity" 
 already existed with all its sweet, real, and unreal 
 pleasures. He also had the serious curiosity about 
 astrology and kindred subjects which became so 
 general among the men of the Renaissance. Besides 
 all this, he was theologian - in - chief of the old 
 religion, and of his many lost works the sixteen 
 volumes in which he treated mythical, philosophical, 
 and popular theology are those which we must most 
 deplore. They would have supplied a want, felt by 
 every student, by furnishing a clear exposition of the 
 educated Roman's attitude towards the faith of his 
 fathers. Their value to us would have been the 
 greater because they were written in an outspoken 
 
 96 
 
VI PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS 97 
 
 age ; not the time of Augustus, when you were not 
 respectable unless you were orthodox, but the 
 time of De rerum natura and the Atys. Varro was 
 born one hundred and sixteen years before Christ, and 
 lived to ninety. He dedicated his great theological 
 work to Julius Caesar. 
 
 He was skilled in navigation and tried in war ; 
 the fact that he was the first to leap on board the 
 enemy's ship when conducting a naval expedition won 
 him a rostral crown. He was past eighty when he 
 wrote the only one of his books that has come down 
 to us intact, the elaborate treatise De re rustica, 
 which probably suggested to Virgil the idea of writ- 
 ing the Georgics. A small portion of a work on the 
 Latin language is the only other surviving specimen 
 of Varro's contributions to literature, a poor salvage 
 out of nearer seven than six hundred volumes of 
 prose and verse ! 
 
 His enormous literary activity is partly explained 
 by his early retirement from public affairs, in which, 
 as a young man, he made an important start, but 
 unfortunately not on the winning side. A partisan 
 of Pompey, he bowed to the inevitable by rendering 
 submission to Caesar, but henceforth his public career 
 was closed. Caesar appreciated his talents and was 
 disposed to be friendly to him ; one day, however, 
 Antony took a fancy to some of Varro's property and 
 managed to have it confiscated in his own favour by 
 
 H 
 
98 PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS vi 
 
 reviving the memory of his connection with Pompey. 
 The object having been obtained, Varro was amnestied, 
 and still rich, he enjoyed a happy and diligent old age, 
 cheered by a wife who was much younger than himself, 
 and, while Cicero lived, by his intimate friendship. 
 
 For his wife, whose name was Fundania, he under- 
 took to put his long experience in agricultural matters 
 into a permanent form. She desired to cultivate a 
 recently acquired estate on the most scientific 
 principles, and as Varro could not count on remaining 
 for many years at her side, he wrote this treatise so 
 that when he came to die she might still have a guide. 
 Though the Roman "new woman" was making rapid 
 progress and the wall between the proper and 
 the improper was getting daily thinner, Fundania 
 was probably by no means a rare instance of a matron 
 who, besides attending scrupulously to her household 
 duties, was able to manage her own property down 
 to the minutest details. The normal slips out of the 
 ken of posterity because it is the normal. There 
 is not the least doubt that the Lesbias in every age 
 were far less numerous than the Fundanias. Italian 
 married women have been called indolent and 
 frivolous, but a great many, like Fundania, them- 
 selves administer the land which came to them as 
 their dowry. The husband advises, perhaps, but he 
 does not interfere, and such land is generally in good 
 order. 
 
VI PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS 99 
 
 By way of opening, Varro rather frigidly invokes 
 the gods who preside over agriculture, Jupiter and 
 Tellus, the sun and moon, Ceres and Bacchus, Robi- 
 gus and Flora, Minerva who gave the olive, and 
 Venus who cares for gardens, Lympha who bestows 
 the heavenly rain, and Bona Eventu, without whom 
 nothing prospers. He then goes on to draw up a 
 list of those authors, " Greek and our own," whose 
 works his wife may study with advantage for light 
 on any points which by chance he forgets to mention. 
 Even Fundania, enthusiastic agriculturist as we know 
 her to have been, and good Greek scholar as she 
 doubtless was, must have looked with some terror at 
 the list of Greek authorities. For the Romans, as 
 for the men of Dante's time, the Greeks were 
 essentially color che sanno, not in philosophy alone, 
 but in physical science. The Greek books recom- 
 mended to Fundania were forty-seven. Xenophon's 
 work we possess, but nearly all this vast library has 
 perished ; so also has the great work in seventy- 
 eight books of the Carthaginian Magos, which was 
 considered of such value that it was translated into 
 Latin by decree of the Senate. The Carthaginians 
 were excellent farmers, and during their long 
 dominion in Sardinia they made that island the 
 granary of Carthage, an end obtained, however, by 
 imported slave-labour, which was the secret, more 
 often than people are inclined to admit, of the 
 
loo PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS vi 
 
 wonderful productiveness in ancient times of lands 
 now sterile. 
 
 Varro does not go on, as he promised, to enumer- 
 ate the Latin authors ; perhaps the passage in which 
 he did so is lost, or he thought it sufficient to refer 
 to them separately, here and there, in the course of 
 his treatise. Columella, whose work on agriculture 
 became almost as famous as Varro's own, and who 
 had the courage to write a poem intended to fill the 
 gap left by Virgil on gardening, belongs to a much 
 later date. In Varro's time the best Roman writers 
 on farming were the two Sasernas and the elder Cato, 
 whose essay, De re rustica^ was regarded with 
 unbounded respect. The writer had passed into an 
 ideal region in which he held all the higher a place 
 because the world had moved so far and fast away 
 from him. Virgil's debt to Cato has been frequently 
 pointed out, while his obligations to Varro were 
 ignored. The most esteemed of contemporary 
 model farmers was an accomplished Roman aristocrat 
 of the name of Scrofa, to whom Varro pays many 
 compliments, though he makes some fun of his 
 infelicitous patronymic, still perpetuated in the family 
 of the Marquis Scrofa of Florence. 
 
 Varro' s treatise is written in the form of con- 
 versations, and begins not without a certain dramatic 
 effectiveness. He was invited, he says, by the 
 Guardian of the Temple of Tellus to keep the feast 
 
VI PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGTCS loi 
 
 of seed-sowing, but on reaching the place he found 
 that his host had been called away on public business. 
 Several of his friends were there already waiting, and 
 when Varro arrived they were engaged in contem- 
 plating the map of Italy which was painted on the 
 wall. As they gaze at the map, the friends, who 
 were all persons well known to Roman society, speak 
 in praise of their fruitful mother-country. If the 
 eulogy is less glowing than Virgil's, it is not less 
 convinced. What country in the world has so 
 favourable a geographical position } (** L*Italie 
 parait faite pour conqu6rir Tunivers,'* wrote Gibbon 
 in his French journal.) The north is more healthy 
 and more fertile than the south (the " South " here 
 standing for Asia, and the " North " for Europe) ; 
 only you must not be too far north or you get to 
 the Arctic pole, where there is a six months* night 
 and a sea covered with ice. Varro's father-in-law, 
 Fundanius, observes that as even in Italy, where 
 night and day last so short a time, he is obliged in 
 summer to take a siesta at noon, what would one do 
 in a place where the nights and days each lasted six 
 months.? After this sally, there is more praise of 
 Italy. What useful product is there which it does 
 not produce ^ Is it less rich in vines than Phrygia, 
 to which Homer gave the name of ** vine-bearing," 
 or less abounding in corn than Argos, which he 
 called "wheat -bearing " .? What wine approaches 
 
I02 PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS vi 
 
 that of Falerno ? What oil equals the oil of 
 Venafro ? Where are there harvests like those of 
 Campania and Apulia ? Do not the fruit-trees which 
 cover Italy make it seem one immense orchard ? If 
 you travel through the world, do you find a country 
 in better cultivation ? 
 
 Other friends come, and among them the above- 
 mentioned Scrofa. Once or twice some one says, '' I 
 am afraid the Guardian of the Temple will return 
 before we have done talking." The conversation 
 flows on the more naturally because it is not eloquent ; 
 one thing leads to another, and off and on it is 
 enlivened by a mild joke. It is surprising that the 
 habit of writing in dialogue did not sooner develop 
 into the novel. Varro gives each of his personages 
 little distinctive marks by which you may know him, 
 and by which, no doubt, he was recognised by those 
 who did know him. 
 
 Leaving generalities, he puts forth the opinion 
 that a splendidly cultivated estate (such as the one 
 owned by Scrofa on the Via Sacra) is a far pleasanter 
 sight than a profusely decorated house, and that when 
 you go into the country you look for well-filled 
 barns and not for the picture-galleries of Lucullus. 
 A discussion follows as to whether the scope of 
 agriculture is utility or pleasure, and whether in a 
 treatise on farming, tillage alone should be considered, 
 or flocks and herds as well. It is argued rather 
 
VI PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS 103 
 
 speciously that stock-raising is only an accessory and 
 sometimes even injurious, as in the case of goats, which 
 injure vines and olives. Hence the sacrifice of a goat 
 to Bacchus, as he was supposed to see with pleasure 
 its destruction, but never to Minerva, as her antipathy 
 for it was so great that she disliked to see it at all. 
 A goat was sacrificed only once a year at Athens from 
 the fear that it might injure the wild olive which had 
 taken root of itself within the precincts of the 
 Acropolis. Varro remarks that authors introduce all 
 sorts of extraneous matter into their works on agri- 
 culture. The Sasernas, both father and son, interpret 
 the term so freely that they class making pottery or 
 working a silver mine under the head of Agriculture, 
 because it has to do with the agro — the soil. One of 
 the speakers interposes, " You laugh at the Sasernas 
 out of envy, picking out their weak points instead of 
 appreciating the many good parts of their books.'* 
 But bad examples are infectious, and they all begin to 
 recall the miscellaneous information garnered by these 
 two respectable authorities. This is one item : " To 
 remove superfluous hair : boil a yellow frog in water 
 till the liquid is reduced to two-thirds ; then rub the 
 skin with it." '' As for me," says Varro, " I have 
 found a point which I am all the more ready to quote 
 because it concerns the health of Fundanius, for I 
 often see him knitting his brows from twinges in his 
 toes." ''Speak out directly," cried Fundanius ; "I 
 
104 PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS vi 
 
 would much rather hear how to cure my corns than 
 how to plant a pear orchard." Here is the pre- 
 scription : " When the pain is felt, we can cure the 
 person who feels it, provided that at that moment he 
 is thinking of us." (" Well, I am thinking hard of 
 you ; cure me ! " says Fundanius.) The magic- 
 worker must repeat twice nine times : 
 
 Terra pestem teneto, 
 Salvus hie maneto 
 (Earth take the pain, 
 Let health remain) 
 
 — one of those Roman popular jingles which prove 
 that there were rhymed folk-songs before rhyme was 
 admitted into literature. At the same time the 
 operator must touch the earth and spit on it, and it is 
 essential that it should all be done fasting. A few 
 years ago there was an old man at Bath who cured 
 warts much in the same way. He would take no 
 money in payment, but was willing to accept a pound 
 of tea. 
 
 In justice to the much-laughed-at Sasernas, Varro 
 afterwards said that the same sort of folly was to be 
 found in other authors ; even the great Cato gave 
 recipes for making two kinds of cake, and advised 
 those who wished to have a good appetite to eat a 
 raw cabbage soaked in vinegar (sauerkraut ^) before 
 and after every meal. He means himself to avoid 
 such frivolities. Agriculture is an art and a science. 
 
VI PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS 105 
 
 and there is none more important. Culture makes 
 the earth more pleasing to see while it raises its 
 money value. The first is a statement which no 
 Roman would have dreamt of contesting except, 
 perhaps, Lucretius, whose ** divine resting-places" 
 can have been scarcely a ploughed field ; but in 
 Lucretius there was a grain of Orientalism which 
 would have enabled him to understand the mysterious 
 attraction of the wilderness for the solitaries of 
 Palestine. Lucretius would not have said as Socrates 
 said : *' I am fond of learning something, and the 
 hills and the trees cannot tell me anything, but the 
 men in the city can." For which reason Socrates 
 walked in the town and not in the country ; though, 
 if Nature had nothing to give him, he had something 
 to give her, whereunto is witness the lovely myth he 
 invented for the grasshoppers, and again that other, 
 still more lovely, of the swans ! The ordinary Roman 
 had moved far away from the Attic love of towns ; 
 he liked a rural walk, above all, if it lay across his 
 own property. He could even appreciate a wood, 
 but his appreciation stopped short of the waste. 
 There must have been then, as now, hillsides clad 
 in the fragrant verdure of heath and lentisk and 
 arbutus and myrtle, which makes the uncultivated 
 lands of Corsica and Sardinia a garden of Eden to 
 the modern beholder ; but either Roman eyes could 
 not see their beauty, or the Roman mind wilfully 
 
io6 PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS vi 
 
 rejected the idea that the unproductive could be 
 beautiful. If aesthetically faulty, this principle is 
 morally admirable. What fine sobriety is shown in 
 the derivation of the names of the noblest families of 
 Rome from the cultivation of particular kinds of 
 grain, as the Fabii, Pisones, Lentuli, Cicerones, etc.! 
 What a difference from Malatesta and Malacarne 
 and Pelavicino ! 
 
 Varro has the good sense, however, to place even 
 productiveness in the rear of salubrity. It is wiser 
 to choose a healthy situation than a fertile one' if 
 you cannot have both. The cultivation of unhealthy 
 lands is a game of chance in which the speculator 
 stakes life and fortune. Nevertheless, science and 
 money may mitigate the unhealthiness of a site. 
 When Varro commanded the fleet at Corfu there 
 was an epidemic so severe that the houses were full 
 of sick and dead, but he ensured the safety of his 
 men by making new^ windows towards the north, 
 and closing those in the direction whence came the 
 pestilential air. The natural quality of the air varies 
 from the heavy, oppressive air of Apulia to the 
 light, healthy air of Mount Vesuvius. Cato said 
 that the best situation was at the foot of a mountain, 
 with a south aspect. If you are obliged to build on 
 low-lying ground, turn the face of the house away 
 from the marsh. In dry weather marshes breed 
 imperceptible animalcula, not to be seen by the eye, 
 
yi PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS 107 
 
 which penetrate into the human body through the 
 nose and mouth, and cause many dangerous diseases. 
 " What am I to do then/' asks Fundanius, " if I 
 inherited such land, to preserve it from these malign 
 influences ? " The practical answer is, *' By all means 
 sell it, and if you cannot sell it, do not live there." 
 Which makes one think of the answer of a young 
 man at an examination of veterinary students in 
 Lombardy. When asked what he would do with a 
 horse which had such-and-such a complaint, he 
 replied, " I should sell it at once " ! 
 
 A high position, Varro points out, is always more 
 healthy than a low one, because the least wind blows 
 infection away from a height, and if there be noxious 
 organisms, whether bred in 'the vicinity or wafted 
 thither, the vivifying rays of the sun dissipate them 
 and the dryness makes them perish. For Varro it 
 may be claimed that he was a forerunner of Pasteur 
 and of Ross ; the minute insects, so small that the 
 eye could not see them, which spread disease, were 
 a fine guess for ages before the microscope. It is 
 almost disappointing not to find him advising his 
 friends to boil their drinking water, especially as he 
 might have taken the hint from Herodotus, who 
 mentions that Cyrus, the great king of Persia, when 
 on the march, only drank boiled water, which was 
 carried after him from place to place in silver vessels. 
 So true is it that there is nothing new under the sun. 
 
io8 PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS vi 
 
 The farm-buildings form an essential branch in 
 rural economy. The barn should be large enough 
 to contain the whole harvest. Varro's dislike of 
 gorgeous country-seats is endorsed by Fundanius, 
 who declares that it is better to build on the principle 
 of " our ancestors," who thought it enough to have 
 a simple farmhouse with a handy kitchen and large 
 cellars for oil and wine (the best were those con- 
 structed with slanting, paved floors, as the new wine 
 often burst the Spanish tuns and even the Italian, 
 jars). In short, it was once sufficient for a country- 
 house to possess what was required for the homestead, 
 while now it was expected to be imposing and elegant 
 and to rival those of Metellus and Lucullus, " to the 
 great scandal of the Republic." People study to 
 have dining-rooms east for summer and west for 
 winter, and never heed where the apertures of the 
 wine and oil cellars are placed, though much depends 
 on that, as wine needs cool and oil needs warmer air. 
 
 The English practice of planting trees round an 
 estate — which is never seen now in Italy — was in 
 favour with the Romans. Varro mentions that his 
 wife has planted pines round her Sabine property, 
 and that he has planted cypresses round some land 
 he owns near Vesuvius. Some prefer elms, which 
 are the best if suited to the soil ; others choose 
 whitethorn hedges or a ditch or a low wall to mark 
 the boundaries. In planting trees or vegetables it 
 
VI PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS 109 
 
 is well to remember their natural antipathies ; olives 
 object to oaks, vines to cypresses and to cabbages ! — 
 a prejudice which the modern vine seems to have 
 outlived, as one frequently sees rows of cabbages in 
 a vineyard. 
 
 Before buying an estate it is prudent to find out 
 whether there are many thieves in the neighbour- 
 hood ; much land is rendered useless on this 
 account. Rural theft makes part of Sardinia un- 
 livable. What to plant should be regulated by your 
 distance from a town ; if near one, a great deal 
 may be made out of gardens ; violets, roses, and 
 other flowers can be easily sold at a good profit. 
 Those who live in remote places should have among 
 their slaves some who can do a little carpentering and 
 other artisan's work. 
 
 The soil was cultivated by slaves or by free 
 peasants or by both. The free peasants either 
 worked on their own small properties, helped by 
 their children, or on the land of others, working 
 for hire at certain periods, such as vintage and hay- 
 harvest. There was another class of labourers called 
 obaeratty which seems to have also existed in Egypt, 
 but what they were is not explained. Varro counsels 
 the employment of hired men rather than one's own 
 slaves to cultivate unhealthy land, and even on healthy 
 land to perform the more fatiguing tasks, such as 
 fruit-picking, vintage, and harvest. They ought to 
 
no PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS vi 
 
 be strong, not under twenty-two years old, with an 
 aptitude for agriculture. Ask them what they did 
 when serving their former master, and what sort 
 of cultivation is practised in the place they came 
 from ; in this way you can find out their degree of 
 intelligence. 
 
 The steward or bailiff should be strictly honest, 
 possessed of some instruction, and not too young. 
 He should be practically skilled in rustic labour, 
 and not only in its theory. He must never employ 
 violence when words suffice. The slaves should not 
 be too bold or too meek ; it is better not to have 
 too many of the same nation, as it is a source of 
 dissensions. Encourage the head ones with hope of 
 reward, such as gifts of money or a wife taken from 
 the slaves serving with them ; this attaches them to 
 the estate. The slaves reckoned the best and who 
 cost most are the Epirotes ; they are always married. 
 If you wish your slaves to take a pleasure in their 
 work, show consideration for the heads and for all 
 who do well, and consult them about the work to be 
 done ; this will make them think that they are less 
 despised. They will work the better if you give 
 them good food and good clothing, and exempt them 
 from the harder labour. The memory of any little 
 kindness will help them to endure hardships, and give 
 them affection for their master. Be sure that there 
 is a covered shelter near the threshing-floor, where 
 
VI PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS 1 1 1 
 
 the men may rest during the hot hours. There is 
 reason to think that the spirit which inspired these 
 good counsels was, on the whole, general. It is not 
 worth while to inquire whether it was utilitarian or 
 humane ; love is often egotism, and virtue, as La 
 Bruyere said, *' loses itself in interest." It is a wise 
 rule to treat human qualities objectively, and it is 
 agreeable to believe that there was nothing extra- 
 ordinary in the recorded case of a master who had 
 made himself so beloved by his slaves that when he 
 died they raised a monument to him out of their 
 own savings. 
 
 All the time that this long discussion is going 
 on the friends are still expecting the return of the 
 Guardian of the Temple, one of whose freedmen at 
 last appears on the scene, bathed in tears. He begs 
 pardon for the long delay, and asks them to be 
 present next day at the funeral. " What 1 whose 
 funeral V they exclaim, rising from their seats. Be- 
 tween his sobs the freedman relates that his master 
 has been stabbed to death ; the assassin escaped in 
 the crowd, but some one said it was done by mistake. 
 The servant took his master home and called a doctor, 
 but in spite of their efforts he soon breathed his last. 
 This is why the man did not come with the news at 
 once, for which he again begs to be forgiven. Varro 
 concludes : *' We accepted his excuses and descended 
 from the Temple, more struck by the events to 
 
112 PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS vi 
 
 which humanity is exposed than surprised by that 
 which had just happened in Rome." 
 
 It seems that Varro really intended to break off 
 here, but the convenient friends who "wish for a 
 little more " were equal to the occasion, and, like a 
 true author, Varro did not need very much begging. 
 The promise to write, after all, on the animals of the 
 farm was made at the house of a common acquaint- 
 ance, who was ill. In true Italian fashion his numerous 
 visitors were about to begin an interminable discus- 
 sion in the sick-room, but mercifully (as one must 
 think) for the invalid, the talk was interrupted by 
 the arrival of the doctor. Next time, however, that 
 Varro met his friends they reminded him of the en- 
 gagement, and there was nothing to stop the copious 
 flow of conversation which was let loose forthwith. 
 
 He opens with a protest. In the good old days 
 people divided their lives by seven days out of nine 
 in the country, and they then could be strong and 
 robust without the gymnastics now introduced from 
 the Greeks, and hardly sufficing to keep in order the 
 sinews of the degenerate Roman. Nearly all the 
 heads of families were gone to live in town, leaving 
 behind waggon and scythe, and preferring to use 
 their hands for applauding in the theatre or the 
 arena rather than to turn them to account in furrows 
 or vineyard. Hence they have to import wheat from 
 Africa and Sardinia and wine from Cos and Chios. 
 
VI PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS 113 
 
 The same country which saw shepherds found a town 
 and teach their children tillage, now sees the de- 
 scendants of those founders converting arable land 
 into pastures — an act of avarice contrary to all laws, 
 human and divine, for the nourishment of man ranks 
 before that of brutes. 
 
 After this exordium, which sounds rather as if it 
 came from a Socialist agitator, Varro confesses that 
 live stock may be useful for eating off the hay, and 
 also because of the manure. He once possessed many 
 sheep in Apulia and horses in the province of Rieti ; 
 and when he commanded the Greek squadron during 
 the pirate war (he means the squadron in Greek 
 waters) he often conversed with the masters of vast 
 flocks of Epirus. His experience, therefore, is both 
 extensive and practical, which does not always follow, 
 as you may have a lyre and not know how to play it, 
 and ,you may keep flocks and be ignorant of the 
 shepherd's art. He describes the evolution of man 
 from a fruit-eating animal to the pastoral stage, when 
 he tamed wild creatures. The sheep, he thinks, was 
 man's first conquest, from its double service of wool 
 and of milk, and from its gentle nature, easily sub- 
 dued. In fact, the moufflon, or wild sheep of Corsica, 
 a very shy animal, becomes perfectly tame if born in 
 captivity, as may be seen at Monte Carlo, where the 
 moufflons kept in the garden are happy to eat bread 
 from the hands of visitors. 
 
114 PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS vi 
 
 Even now all domestic animals exist somewhere 
 in a wild state : sheep in Phrygia; goats in Samothrace 
 and in the isle of Capraria called after them ; wild 
 pigs in all parts, if the wild boar is a pig ; wild 
 bulls in Dardania, Media, and Thrace ; wild asses in 
 Phrygia and Lycaonia ; wild horses in some parts of 
 Spain. The value of fleeces caused them to be called 
 " golden " in the old stories. An ardent if rash 
 philologist, Varro embraces the theory that Italy took 
 its name from its fine cattle. He gives a prominent 
 place to the ass as a farm animal ; there should be 
 three asses, he says, to every pair of oxen. They 
 turned mills, carried manure, and could be put to do 
 anything. The best ones came from Rieti, and a 
 very good one might cost a sum which would buy 
 a modern race-horse. He insists, unheeded to this 
 day, on the necessity of dry stables and sheepfolds. 
 Damp gives sheep a disease of the hard part of the 
 foot as well as spoiling the wool. The stable 
 windows should be to the south, and the slanting 
 floor should be kept clean by changing the litter 
 every few days. He mentions that goats are 
 always ailing, especially when kept in large herds. 
 Goats should never be allowed to enter the planta- 
 tions owing to their destructive habits. 
 
 Next, dogs are considered. They should be few, 
 but of good race, and shepherds' dogs are the best. 
 The dog is more attached to the shepherd than to 
 
VI PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS 115 
 
 the flock. A Roman bought some flocks in Umbria 
 and stipulated that the dogs but not the men were 
 to be included in the sale. The shepherds were to 
 lead the flocks to their destination in the woods of 
 Metaponto in Magna Graecia, and then, secretly 
 and without the dogs seeing them start, they were 
 to return to their own country. This was done, 
 but a few days after the men departed the dogs 
 disappeared, and it came to be known that they 
 reached Umbria safely, though they had no food 
 but what they could find in the fields. Yet, says 
 Varro ironically, none of these shepherds had done 
 what Saserna prescribes in his book on agriculture : 
 *' Whoever wishes to make a dog follow him gives 
 him a cooked frog.'' (N.B. — Dogs will not eat the 
 " green fat " of turtle, and it is doubtful if they 
 would eat cooked frogs, though the present writer 
 has never tried.) The prudent husbandman feeds his 
 dogs well on bones and what is left on the plates, or 
 soup made from bones, or barley bread in milk. If 
 they are hungry they wander and even turn on their 
 master. They should wear a leather collar with 
 spikes as a protection against wolves or other 
 enemies — a custom still observed in the Campagna, 
 where the dogs, which are very dangerous if met in 
 lonely places, are the direct descendants of those of 
 Rome. 
 
 The men in charge of large flocks and herds in 
 
ii6 PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS vi 
 
 the open should be robust and full-grown, and they 
 must always go armed. For small flocks which 
 return to the fold at night, youths or even girls will 
 suffice. They should be under a capable overseer, 
 of a certain age, as befits one in authority, but not 
 too old, for old men, like children, cannot climb 
 mountains or cover long distances. They should be 
 supple, quick, light, and strong, not only to follow 
 the cattle but also to hold their own with wild beasts 
 and brigands. Gauls are very good, especially for 
 taking care of beasts of burden. It is best to 
 marry the shepherds, as they will not then seek 
 their love far from the homestead. If possible, the 
 wives should accompany them to the hut or cabin 
 when they go to the forest or waste lands. These 
 women should be robust and active, but not ugly. 
 In Liburnia you may watch these shepherds' wives 
 carrying wood with one or two children at the 
 breast. In Illyris (Albania) they help the men in 
 everything ; you often see a woman cease from her 
 work and retire for a few moments, after which she 
 reappears with a new baby which she seems to have 
 found on a tree. In that country girls wander about 
 choosing whom they will and going where they 
 choose up to twenty years of age, nor is it thought 
 a reproach to them if they bear children. The head 
 shepherd or overseer should know something of 
 medicine, to be able to look after the sick when the 
 
VI PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS 117 
 
 doctor is far oiF, or in slight illness when he can be 
 dispensed with. 
 
 Varro is called away (so he tells us) by a pressing 
 reminder of an invitation to a garden-party. Not 
 long afterwards he and Senator Q. Axius went to 
 vote for the nomination of the Aedile. They intended 
 to wait to accompany their candidate home when the 
 election was decided, and as the sun was hot they 
 went under the shelter raised for the public. There 
 they found a host of friends and they were soon all 
 talking about what forms the subject of the third 
 part of Varro's treatise, the minor produce of the 
 farm, which, as he shows, may add materially to the 
 income to be derived from it. 
 
 A simple rural life was Varro's unchanging ideal, 
 and he always goes back to the text, " We owe the 
 earth to Divine Nature, the towns to human 
 industry," which is the same as to say, " God made 
 the country and man made the town.'* But while 
 condemning the extravagant luxury of great cities 
 he was too sharp a man of business not to see that 
 the farmer might turn it much to his profit. The 
 succession oi fetes and banquets in Rome ensured the 
 fortune of any one who could provide a large quantity 
 of delicacies at a given moment. The owner of a 
 single uccellanda^ or bird - snaring place, sold the 
 thrushes which he took in one season for ^^500. The 
 ancient Romans had the same passion as the modern 
 
ii8 PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS vi 
 
 Italians for small birds, which survived, nevertheless, 
 in undiminished numbers till now, when the 
 possibility of quick transport, combined with the 
 enormous demand for them/or English tables^ threatens 
 several species with extinction. Speculators in small 
 birds kept thousands in aviaries to have them ready 
 when they were in most request. Varro gives 
 minute instructions for the arrangement of these 
 aviaries. They should be near a river with little 
 running streams flowing through them, and high 
 hedges should shield them from the wind — a wise 
 precaution, as there is nothing that birds suffer 
 from so much as a draught. Each aviary was 
 partitioned into courts, the most privileged court 
 being reserved for nightingales and other songsters ! 
 At Tusculum, LucuUus had a dining-room built 
 in the middle of an aviary, so that he saw the 
 live thrushes flying around whilst he was eating 
 the cooked ones. " But," said Varro, " he had no 
 imitators.** 
 
 Spending for the mere sake of spending already 
 amounted to a mania. Hortensius, who was re- 
 ported to water his plants with wine, was the first to 
 serve up peacocks in a sumptuous repast when he 
 was appointed augur, " for which he was more 
 applauded by the dissolute than by people of 
 worth"; yet many followed his example, and the 
 price of peacocks rose to such a point that an Qgg 
 
VI PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS 119 
 
 was worth 3s. 4d., and a peacock could be sold for 
 £2^ more than the value of a sheep. Here was the 
 farmer's opportunity. 
 
 Then, as now, wild boars were plentiful in the 
 Pontine Marshes and the Maremme. On an estate 
 which Varro bought in the neighbourhood of 
 Tusculum the wild boars and the roebucks assembled 
 at the sound of a horn to eat the food thrown down 
 to them from a terrace. Some one present remarks 
 that he has seen a still more interesting thing at 
 Q. Hortensius' place near Laurentum, where a forest, 
 fifty acres in extent, was enclosed by a wall and given 
 the name of Wild Beast Nursery. Lying on couches, 
 on a raised spot, they dined in the forest, when all 
 at once Quintus called " Orpheus," and a slave 
 appeared dressed in a long white robe, with a lyre 
 in his hand, the image of his prototype. At a sign 
 from the host, "Orpheus" sounded a horn, and 
 hundreds of deer, wild boars, and other forest 
 creatures assembled beneath. It was a finer sight, 
 adds the narrator, than the combats of wild beasts 
 in the Arena. 
 
 Doubtless Varro was aware of what his friend 
 Cicero thought about the shows of the Arena : 
 
 The remainder of our diversions consisted in combats of 
 v^ild beasts, which were exhibited every morning and after- 
 noon during five days successively ; and, it must be owned, 
 they were magnificent. Yet, after all, what entertainment 
 
I20 PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS vi 
 
 can possibly arise to an elegant and humanised mind, from 
 seeing a noble beast struck to the heart by its merciless 
 hunter, or one of our own weak species cruelly mangled by 
 an animal of much superior strength ? ^ 
 
 After reading these words it seems surprising 
 that in a much later age so highly cultivated a man 
 as Symmachus could fail entirely to see the pathos 
 of the fact that the Saxon prisoners, whom he had 
 counted on for the next day's gladiatorial show 
 (because they were strong and courageous), killed 
 each other overnight rather than fight to make a 
 Roman's holiday. But in that late time the Roman 
 pagan had an idea that these spectacles were wrapped 
 up in some way with the greatness of Rome, which, 
 they feared, the softer Christian sentiment would 
 undermine, and so they clung to them with renewed 
 enthusiasm. They might have remembered that in 
 Greece, though efforts were made to acclimatize 
 these shows (especially at Corinth), they never became 
 really national. Lucian tells that when it was pro- 
 posed to start them at Athens, a wise philosopher 
 stepped forward and said : " Men of Athens, before 
 you pass this motion, do not forget to destroy the 
 Altar of Pity ! " Their final disappearance was the 
 first moral victory of Christianity, and a great one. 
 It is sad that bull-fights remain, but fortunate that 
 when a Socialist deputy tried to introduce this blot 
 
 * Cicero to Marcus Marlus, a.u. 698. 
 
VI PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS 121 
 
 on civilisation into new Rome, Italian public opinion 
 raised such a shout of indignation that the project 
 was promptly abandoned. 
 
 Fish was in great demand at Rome, and incredible 
 sums might be made by fish-ponds or wasted on 
 them. The humble fish-pond of the people, supplied 
 with rain-water and replenished by fish taken out of 
 rivers or lakes, brought in large returns. The 
 aristocratic fish-pond, furnished by Neptune and 
 constructed with elaborate art, was more apt to 
 empty pockets than to fill them. It cost a fortune 
 to build it, to stock it, and to feed the fish. One 
 possessor of such a fish-nursery made nearly ;^200 
 a year by it, but it cost the whole profit to keep it 
 up. They were expensive toys rather than serious 
 investments. Varro once saw a sacred tank in Lydia 
 containing fish which came to the edge at the sound 
 of a flute and which no one was allowed to touch ; 
 the fish of the Roman noble are, he says, nearly as 
 sacred. Hortensius, who had spent a mint of money 
 on his salt-water fish-tanks at Bauli, was found out 
 in buying all the fish for his table at Pozzuoli. He 
 fed his fishes himself, and was much more anxious 
 lest they should be hungry " than I am about my 
 asses, which bring me in a good profit," Varro 
 scornfully remarks. Half the fishermen of the 
 place were employed in catching small fish to give 
 to the big ones, and salted fish was provided when 
 
122 PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS vi 
 
 the sea was too rough for the boats to go out. 
 Hortensius would make you a present of a team of 
 mules sooner than of a single one of his mullets. 
 Lucullus gave carte blanche to his architect to ruin 
 him if he could manage, by means of subterranean 
 passages, to contrive a sort of tide in his tanks at 
 Baiae, so as to keep the water cool in summer, when 
 fishes in confinement suffer much from the heat, as 
 I have been told at the Naples Aquarium, a beautiful 
 and wonderful place, surpassing the dreams even of 
 a Roman fish-maniac. 
 
 Varro speaks of some one who was more anxious 
 about his sick fishes than about his sick slaves ; but 
 the story of the Roman " who fattened his lampreys 
 on his slaves " belongs to after-times. Like other 
 stories which are told for the benefit of youth, it 
 lacks exactitude. This seems to have been the truth : 
 a millionaire freedman of the name of PoUio Vedius 
 was entertaining Augustus at supper when a slave 
 broke a crystal goblet ; Pollio, enraged, ordered 
 him to be thrown to the fishes ; the slave appealed 
 to the Emperor, who asked his host to pardon him, 
 but Pollio refused. Augustus then pardoned the 
 man himself, and had all Pollio's crystal goblets 
 broken and the fish-pond filled up. 
 
 Bee-culture held an important place among the 
 farmer's minor cares. Varro believed, as Virgil did 
 after him, that bees could be obtained from a 
 
VI PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS 123 
 
 slaughtered ox. He thought that honey was derived 
 from certain plants and wax from others ; the fig 
 yielding honey and the olive wax, while bean-flowers, 
 lavender, and almond-blossom were rich in both. If 
 the soil does not produce naturally the bees' favourite 
 flowers, especially thyme, which gives the honey the 
 spicy flavour so much appreciated in the kind im- 
 ported from Sicily or Corsica, they may be planted. 
 The Romans hated the indomitable Corsican, of all 
 their slaves the only one who could not, or would 
 not, live in servitude, who died like a wild bird in 
 a cage. But they had discovered that Corsican 
 honey surpassed even that of Syracuse or Hymettus, 
 and it does so still. The plan suggested by Varro 
 has been tried by English bee-keepers, with the 
 result, in one instance at least, that the bees obstin- 
 ately shunned the plot planned for them to seek 
 unlawful bliss among a neighbour's bitter-tasting 
 lime-flowers. Bees range over immense distances, 
 and, even were miles of thyme planted, how supply 
 the multitudinous sweets of Nature's alchemy ? How 
 give the fragrance of the macchia^ by which Napoleon 
 recognised Corsica in the dark when he was being 
 taken to Elba } 
 
 Varro says that bees, " birds of the Muses," can 
 be assembled or scattered by music, in which, perhaps, 
 we may see the origin of the famous tin kettles 
 which the English villager brings into action when 
 
124 PROSE SOURCE OF THE GEORGICS vi 
 
 his bees are swarming. There is no allusion to the 
 belief that bees desert a house if not told when the 
 master dies, but we hear that Roman bees disliked 
 solitude. They also disliked an echo, and were said 
 to fly away from a place where there was one. In 
 spite of imperfect knowledge, Varro had closely 
 observed their ways, their industry, their love of 
 only what is clean and sweet, their " cities," as he 
 calls them, and their government, about which he 
 makes few mistakes, except that he supposes the 
 queen to be a king. 
 
 The Friends in Council were still pleasantly 
 talking when their candidate for the office of Aedile 
 came on the scene with the news that he was elected. 
 After congratulations, they accompanied him to the 
 Capitol and thence each went to his own house. 
 So the treatise ends with a little touch recalling 
 that ever-present public life which wound itself in 
 and out of all the Roman citizen's interests and 
 occupations. 
 
VII 
 VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 lo toglier6 il poeta dalle scuole degli eruditi, dalle academie dei 
 letterati, dalle aule dei potenti, e lo restituiro a te, o popolo di agrlcoltori 
 e dl lavoratori, o popolo vero d' Italia. Egli e sangue vostro e vostra 
 anima ; egli h un antico fratello, un paesano, un agricoltore, un 
 lavoratore italico, che dalle rive del Mincio sali al Campidoglio e dal 
 Campidoglio all' Olimpo. — G. CaRducci. (Per la inaugurazione d* un 
 monumento a Virgilio.) 
 
 To Virgil the problems of existence appeared in a 
 less complex form than to the great Roman poet who 
 preceded him. Like Lucretius, he was drawn to 
 the conception of Nature as a divine force, but he 
 shaped it in his own intellectual mould. He could 
 not think of such a force except as beneficent, and 
 thus the tilling of the soil became to him a holy 
 ministry, a kind of sacrament. The cultivator was 
 the priest who gave the gift on the altar to the 
 people. He co-operated in a divine scheme of which 
 man, nay, and the very gods, were the inevitable 
 instruments. 
 
 The idea that the cultivator of the soil is, in a 
 way, acting a consecrated part, was not confined to 
 
 125 
 
126 VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 Virgil ; it is noticeable, for instance, in that beautiful 
 essay of Cicero on old age, of which Montaigne said, 
 " il donne Tapp^tit de vieillir." After declaring that 
 nothing contributes so much to a happy old age as 
 the management of a country estate with its well- 
 ordered vineyards, olive-groves and plantations, 
 Cicero answers the possible objection, ** What is the 
 good of all this when you are too old to hope to see 
 your labours fulfilled and rewarded ? " in the noble 
 words : " If any one should ask the cultivator for 
 whom he plants, let him not hesitate to make this 
 reply : ' For the immortal gods who, as they willed 
 me to inherit these possessions from my forefathers, 
 so would have me hand them on to those that shall 
 come after.' '* 
 
 To rejoice in the good things of Nature, the 
 beautiful earth, the glorious sun, the fruitful fields, 
 was for Virgil almost an act of worship ; had he been 
 told that a preacher would arise who turned from the 
 genial light as from a snare, he would have charged 
 him with blasphemy. The view of the visible world 
 filled him with pious exultation ; but besides being a 
 religious man, Virgil was an artist, and Nature 
 delighted him because it is such excellent art. In 
 looking at a meadow he felt what Balzac felt when 
 he said, " Oh ! voil^ la vraie litt^rature ! II n'y a 
 jamais de faute de style dans une prairie." 
 
 Virgil's own origin (not differing much from that 
 
VII VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 127 
 
 of Shakespeare) had a lasting effect in determining 
 his character. He never became a thorough towns- 
 man ; even in his appearance there was said to be 
 something countrified. All his life he felt keenly 
 the loss of his father's farm on the Mincio. The 
 Civil Wars which ended with the fall of the Republic 
 at Philippi, were the cause of the confiscations in 
 which Virgil's property was involved. Cremona 
 having backed Pompey, its territory was given to the 
 soldiers who fought against him and in favour of 
 Augustus. The plaga del Mantovano^ being near at 
 hand, had the same fate meted out to it. Scholars 
 have not yet decided the exact locality of the poet's 
 estate, though every villager of Pietole is ready to 
 stake his life on Dante's accuracy in placing it in 
 that commune. Tradition in such cases is not to be 
 lightly set aside, but strong reasons have been 
 advanced for thinking that the farm lay farther away 
 from Mantua and nearer to where the Mincio leaves 
 the Lake of Garda. This situation gives the scenery 
 of the Eclogues with the gentle hills so often 
 described in them. There is no doubt that Virgil 
 was thinking less of Sicily th^n of his childhood's 
 home when he wrote those early poems, in several of 
 which he alludes to his own troubles under what 
 must have been then a transparent disguise. It 
 seems that, touched by his songs, Augustus inter- 
 vened to save '* all that land where the hills begin to 
 
128 VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY vn 
 
 decline and by an easy declivity to sink their ridges 
 as far as the water and the old beeches whose tops 
 are now broken '* ; but that, either because it was 
 difficult to make an exception in his favour or from 
 some other cause, the Imperial benevolence was 
 speedily revoked. He describes the neighbours 
 bewailing the loss of him : " Who would now be 
 their poet ? " The farm hands know snatches of his 
 verses, just as Verdi's peasants at Busseto sang his 
 airs as they followed the plough. 
 
 If Virgil ever did hear any of his lines repeated 
 by peasant folk, one may be sure that he was better 
 pleased by it than by many a loftier sign of popularity. 
 He evidently listened with pleasure to folk-songs ; 
 he would never have spoken with scorn^ like the old 
 poet Ennius, of *' the songs of fauns and bards of 
 ancient times." He makes the long-haired bard 
 lopas sing of the sun and moon, rain and lightning, 
 the seasons, man, and cattle, at the banquet of 
 Dido. He notices the wife singing over her house- 
 hold tasks and the shepherd youths whose high voices 
 send a thrill of passion through the summer nights. 
 Any one who is familiar with the Italian folk-songs of 
 to-day must fancy that he catches in the exquisite 
 songs of Damon and Alphesiboeus something more 
 than the popular spirit — almost the words, here and 
 there, of folk-poets of long ago. 
 
 Virgil observed and remembered, and even when 
 
VII VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 129 
 
 he is most conventional there is an undercurrent of 
 truth,' of experience. In the first place, his enjoy- 
 ment is so sincere that even an artificial setting could 
 not make the substance of his picture false. He 
 actually thought that a town mansion crammed with 
 bric-a-brac bought or looted (which made a Roman 
 house of that period almost as impossible to turn 
 round in as an English house of this) was a less 
 agreeable place to live in than a plain farm interior, 
 surrounded by the luxury of the countryside. 
 
 Who was ever dull in the country that had eyes 
 and ears — if there was nothing but the birds, who 
 could be dull ? Virgil knew them well ; he watched 
 the winged legions as they hastened to the woods 
 at dusk ; he took attentive note of the larks and 
 kingfishers, the chattering swallows skimming over 
 the pools before rain, the wood-pigeon cooing itself 
 hoarse, and the sweeter turtle-dove in its airy elm. 
 He has been blamed for making the nightingale 
 bemoan her lost young which the cruel ploughman 
 had taken unfledged from the nest, because, it is 
 objected, the nightingale does not sing after the 
 eggs are hatched ; but if the objector would take 
 the train to Mantua in June he would hear nightin- 
 gales singing so loudly in the woods through which 
 the railway passes, as it nears the morass, that they 
 drown the noise of the engine. Climate and 
 environment have much influence on birds' singing. 
 
 K 
 
I30 VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 Italians often say that the robin is not a singing-bird ; 
 and though he sings in my garden, in many places 
 he is a bird of passage and does not stay long 
 enough to sing. Nightingales stop singing sooner 
 in northern than in southern climes ; and the English 
 critic, though right as to his own birds, was wrong 
 as to VirgiFs — a point worth mentioning, trifling 
 as it seems, for the reason that it shows how difficult 
 it is to decide offhand upon the reality or unreality 
 of the whole class of Bucolics unless you know the 
 country which inspired them. A more grounded 
 reproach against this particular passage would be 
 that it is not mourning which makes the nightingale 
 pour out his passionate soul in song — it is hope, 
 desire, pain, perhaps, not regret. But the error 
 belongs to the legend-weaver, to the child-man to 
 whom all the songs of birds sounded sad ; who, in 
 Sclavonic lands, interpreted even the cuckoo's cry 
 to mean a dirge. 
 
 Virgil has one bird-picture which now, at least, 
 is more English than Italian, that of the rooks 
 bustling among the branches of the tall trees and 
 cawing joyfully because the rain is over, happy in 
 their nests and little ones. The rookery remains in 
 England, with certain other free, wild things inter- 
 mixed closely with cultivation that give a sense of 
 the unexpected to the English wold for which in 
 Italy one has to go to the pathless Maremme or the 
 
VII VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 131 
 
 bare, mysterious deserts of the south. It is surpris- 
 ing, by the bye, not how many, but how few 
 suggestions of a wilder nature can be found in 
 Virgil's rural poetry. The land under cultivation 
 (according to some calculations a larger area than 
 at present) must have exhibited the same signs of 
 orderly arrangement, of minute utilisation of the 
 smallest spaces, that a well-cared-for Italian estate 
 exhibits to-day. Probably it was in the north of 
 Italy, then as now, that farming was most scientifi- 
 cally practised ; we know that the chief irrigatory 
 canals date from Roman times. As VirgiFs landscape 
 is north Italian with the background which we feel 
 even when we do not see it, of the " aerial Alps," 
 so his peasant is essentially a north Italian contadino. 
 Let us inquire what kind of life he led. 
 
 The luxuries which the Virgilian husbandman 
 allows himself in the way of food are fruit, chestnuts, 
 and pressed curd, the modern mascherpone. A salad 
 or a drink made with pounded garlic and thyme 
 refreshes him after moving the sweet hay through 
 the precious hours when the morning star shines 
 in the sunrise. At noon he sleeps under a tree 
 while the herds low not far off. When the smoke 
 rises from the village and the shadows lengthen on 
 the hills, he returns to the house where the girls 
 are carding wool and the wife is boiling down sweet 
 wine, which makes an excellent drink. She finds 
 
132 VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 time to ply the shuttle between her other occupa- 
 tions, singing as she weaves to make the toil less 
 tedious. There is always indoor work for women 
 to do where they spin the clothes of the family. 
 Only when the indestructible frieze made from the 
 peasants' own fleeces is replaced by shoddy cotton 
 are women set to do men's work out of doors. 
 That never-ending spinning wa§ a bond of union, 
 too, between all classes ; " quando Berta filava," 
 say the Italian peasants, remembering the queen 
 who spun. I have seen a coat made from what 
 was possibly the last piece of cloth spun by noble 
 Italian hands ; it came to Lombardy in the middle 
 of the last century, a gift from a Sardinian countess. 
 When VirgiFs husbandman takes his evening 
 rest, his sweet children come round him, the girls 
 modest and fair to see, the boys willing to work, 
 not spendthrift, observant of religion, reverent 
 towards age. He himself is a careful observer of 
 feast-days ; on them he abstains from all hard labour, 
 only doing such light tasks as can offend no god, 
 raising a fence, snaring birds, washing sheep, or 
 driving the ass to the town with a load of apples, 
 and bringing back some needful tools. Winter is 
 his long rest-time ; then he invites and accepts 
 invitations to little-costing gaieties. Yet in winter 
 there are numberless small things to be done ; 
 storing olives, acorns, and bay-berries — those that 
 
VII VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 133 
 
 have been picked, for some always fall on the ground, 
 and under every old bay- tree there is a little forest 
 of young ones — a true detail. (What, one would 
 like to know, were bay-berries used for then ? Now 
 they are made to yield a strong poison.) Hunting 
 hares and netting roebuck are other winter employ- 
 ments ; and if the peasant wants amusement, he goes 
 to watch the herdsmen in their wrestling matches. 
 He has also the most charming of toys — a bit of 
 garden, half kitchen-garden half flower-bed. It 
 is the orto of the modern peasant, with its sage and 
 rosemary, its lettuces and leeks, its purple iris {Spade 
 di Sanf Antonio) and virgin lilies. 
 
 A peasant who is old and past hard work may 
 even devote himself wholly to a garden. Thus did the 
 ancient Corycian peasant turn a few poor abandoned 
 acres that had been thought good for nothing into 
 the sweetest place in the world. Around he set a 
 fence of thorns, inside he sowed a few vegetables, 
 and planted simple flowers. At night he could set 
 something on his table, a salad, a few onions, two 
 or three pears, and he felt possessed of the riches 
 of kings. His roses, sweet as Paestum's, were 
 before any one else's ; his fruit was the earliest to 
 ripen. And how well his bees flourished ; what a 
 rich store of frothing honey they furnished ! Happy 
 old man ! 
 
 The husbandman had Nature always with him. 
 
134 VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 He lived with her beauty, and to live with the beauty 
 of Nature was worth all the fine houses with door- 
 posts set with tortoise-shell and cornices inlaid with 
 gold — so Virgil thought. Yet the farmer's son 
 knew too much of agriculture to imagine that all 
 was bliss in Arcadia. In the first place, there was 
 insecurity of tenure with a vengeance. You might 
 lose your land by sheer confiscation, as Virgil himself 
 had done ; or you might be shipped off bodily to 
 the torrid sands of the contemporary Massowah, or, 
 just as bad, to Britain, '' totally separated from the 
 rest of the world." In that case, even if your home- 
 stead was not sequestered before you left, ten to one, 
 if you ever chance to come back, you will find some 
 brutal soldier in possession of the fields you tilled 
 with so much love. A strange man meets you with 
 the words, " These are mine ; get you gone, old 
 tenants ! " The present of kids which Moeris sends 
 the new master will neither soften his heart nor will 
 it carry with it the bad luck which the sender would 
 very gladly convey with it. Of human redress there 
 is none, and Virgil does not propose recourse to the 
 Black Art. He kept the charms, of which he had 
 an extensive knowledge, for the service of lovers, 
 who in the Roman provinces and in the Tuscany 
 weave the self-same incantations in a.d. 191 i. Even 
 the were-wolves, spoken of by the poet, have their 
 descendants in the Cam guasti which frighten children 
 
VII VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 135 
 
 who go out after dark in Umbria. Virgil was 
 interested in charms because he had the soul of a 
 folklorist, but though he believed firmly in dreams 
 and omens, it may be doubted if he took witchcraft 
 very seriously. He would have been the first to be 
 surprised at finding himself converted into a wizard 
 in the Middle Ages. 
 
 Even if left, by a wonder, in peaceful possession 
 of his farm, Virgil's farmer has still his full share of 
 cares and ills. He suffers from dishonest farm- 
 servants ; from the hireling who neglects the flock 
 because he is a hireling, and who robs the lambs of 
 the milk which should be theirs. Then he is worried 
 by cranes and wild geese, and noxious weeds, thistles, 
 and wild oats, by mildew, wolves, mice, moles, weevils, 
 and harvesting ants, which, "fearful of an indigent 
 old age,'' take a toll upon his store. Also he thinks 
 that he loses somehow by toads in which he is mis- 
 taken. Furthermore, drought affects his crops, and 
 if not drought, then thunderstorms bringing the 
 horrid hail which rattles and dances on the roof, 
 and ill can the vine leaves protect the grapes against 
 it. A tremendous wind blows up, tearing the corn 
 from the ground and whirling it in the air ; rain 
 follows, a solid black blank of water which, when it 
 bursts, washes away the crops, and blots out in a few 
 minutes the patient toil of the year. Virgil must 
 have seen that sight often in Northern Italy, where 
 
136 VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 the cold air from the Alps meets the hot exhalations 
 from the Po in one spot or another, with fearful 
 consequences, on almost every summer day. No one 
 can tell what it is who has not seen it. Once, on the 
 evening of such a storm, all our peasants at Rovato 
 were eating small birds, sixty of which had been 
 found killed. Another time, I went to Roccafranca 
 the day after a temporale which will be remembered 
 for years ; the factor and his wife described to me 
 how they had watched the crashing downfall of hail, 
 consisting of large pieces of jagged ice, for ten 
 minutes ; not more. Then it ceased, the thunder 
 grew faint, and they went out to see acres on acres 
 of hay ready for the scythe ironed as flat as though 
 a steam-roller had passed over it, while the swelling 
 wheat-ears, severed with a certain neatness from their 
 stalks, were scattered in all directions. " We cried," 
 they said. It was not their loss, it was ours ; but 
 they had witnessed the patient human labour 
 bestowed upon these fields where there would be 
 no harvest, and the tragedy of the thing struck them 
 more keenly than it did me. " And the nightin- 
 gales ? " I asked ; for a pair of nightingales nest 
 every year close to the house, arriving on the same 
 day in March. The nightingales, I was told, had 
 sung all the night as if nothing had happened ; the 
 dense foliage of the magnolias must have shielded 
 them. 
 
VII VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 137 
 
 In the south of Italy such storms rarely occur ; 
 Virgil's experience of them doubtless dated from his 
 Mantuan farming days, as he seems to suggest by 
 the personal note which he brings into the descrip- 
 tion. 
 
 There is much in the Georgics about the 
 intelligent care needed in cultivating the vines, 
 though the vine-dresser of those days had not to 
 be constantly abroad with his sulphur-sprinkler and 
 with the host of chemical messes on which his 
 successor depends in striving with diseases then 
 undreamt of. Nor do the olives appear to have been 
 subject to the decay (though it is an old disease) 
 which necessitates lopping and incision, leaving the 
 tree saved but maimed. The ground round the 
 trunks was broken up by the plough, but the 
 practice came in later of enriching it with rags, 
 unfragrant bales of which, of Oriental origin, disturb 
 the nerves of the sanitary reformer in his holiday 
 on the Riviera. What Lucretius so plainly foretold 
 has come to pass — the virgin soil yielded abundantly 
 if only scratched, but every generation has a heavier 
 toil in supplying that which has been taken away. 
 
 If the plants of the earth were healthier and more 
 vigorous in VirgiFs time than they are now, no 
 modern cattle-blight was ever more destructive than 
 the very horrible rinderpest or influenza recorded in 
 the third Georgic. Some commentators have thought 
 
138 VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 that Virgil introduced this episode because Lucretius 
 had made similar use of the plague of Athens. It 
 can hardly be doubted, however, that it was based on 
 the tradition or recollection of a real fact. The 
 disease took the form of a mysterious malarious 
 epidemic, coming with unseasonably warm weather, 
 and affecting even the fishes, as influenza in the first 
 year of its appearance affected the trout and carpioni 
 of the Lake of Garda. There is one touch in the 
 narrative of which every one has felt the pathos 
 though not every one has recognised the truth — I 
 mean the reference to the ox that mourns for its 
 yoke-fellow and loses spirit and pines away. Our 
 bifolco bears out VirgiFs correctness. Nor is it 
 strange if we come to think of it ; the effect of 
 sorrow or even of dulness on animals as on savages, 
 when they feel it^ is far more fatal than it is on civilised 
 man. The many stories of dogs and birds that died 
 of grief may well be true, as most people can recall 
 some instance to the point. I knew a parrot which 
 hopped into the room where its master lay dead (he 
 was an old French physician) ; after looking at him 
 for some time, it hopped back again to its perch, 
 refused food, and in three days was dead. Self- 
 starvation is not always necessary ; the Maoris die 
 when they determine that they have lived long 
 enough, even if forced to eat. There is probably a 
 psychological state of passive abandonment which 
 
VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 139 
 
 kills very soon, but it is hardly ever reached by man 
 when he ceases to be primitive, except w^hen his 
 vitality is lovt^ered by illness and he ** gives himself 
 up for lost " — the results of which every doctor 
 knows. 
 
 Apart from that great epidemic, it would appear 
 that animals were as liable to suffer then as now. 
 Life has even, says the poet, entailed our misfortunes 
 on the bees, of which he gives a deplorable account 
 in their sick condition. The Georgics is one of the 
 most faultless of poems ; but perhaps a reader here 
 and there has privately regretted that so much stress 
 is laid upon the details of these animal plagues. 
 But Virgil was resolved not to soften any of the lines 
 of his picture, not to " retouch " the photograph ; it 
 was a matter of conscience with him to be sincere. 
 In spite of these drawbacks he deliberately held that 
 the proprietor of a moderate-sized estate (he objected 
 to a large acreage) was a person greatly to be envied. 
 " Happy the husbandman if he only knew it ! '* 
 Life is best judged by its compensations, and of 
 compensations, both on the lower and the higher 
 plane, the agriculturist has more than the followers 
 of other callings. His work is its own reward. If 
 Hesiod's cry was '* Work, work, work," Virgil added, 
 '' Yes, and in that work you will find the best return 
 that human existence can give." The poem of the 
 Georgics is a hymn to labour. If rightly read, we 
 
I40 VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 see in it also a hymn to patriotism. The old connec- 
 tion between the love of the land and the love of 
 our land, which is so near the root of the matter, and 
 which yet is so far from the thoughts of the town- 
 bred or nomadic politicians who are inclined to claim 
 a monopoly of the patriotism of the twentieth 
 century, was to Virgil an absolutely real fact. Man 
 in his simplicity gets to love the familiar features of 
 the landscape round him as he loves the familiar 
 faces which he saw when he was a child. Then steps 
 in the reflection, " Here my fathers died, and here 
 my children will live when I am dead " ; and to this, 
 again, is added, if he have even the smallest piece 
 of ground which he calls his own, the immeasurably 
 strong instinct shared by all creatures, to defend their 
 own nest, their own lair, against all comers. This 
 is the beginning of patriotism, and though it may be 
 called narrow or selfish, it was as good a thing for a 
 man to think of his country thus as to think of her 
 as a scantily dressed female figure on a monument. 
 Virgil himself combined the pride of empire in its 
 loftiest sense with the strong primitive love of his 
 birth-land which he had inherited from his yeoman 
 forefathers. The inspired Vates of the Roman race, 
 he was yet an Italian first ; he was indeed the first 
 poet of an United Italy. 
 
 ** Rich in crops and rich in heroes," so he described 
 his country, and he was contented to sing of crops 
 
VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 141 
 
 and of heroes. He was quite as serious about the 
 first as about the last, quite as sure of the majesty 
 of the argument. He called the husbandman the 
 prop of the State. The story that he wrote the 
 Ge orgies at the request of the Maecenas with the fixed 
 purpose of attaching retired soldiers to the land 
 awarded to them is not likely to be true ; but the 
 appearance of the work was much more than a mere 
 literary event. Its success was immediate and im- 
 mense. Augustus had it read to him four times 
 running. Though Hesiod was venerated by all 
 generations of Greeks, it is not possible to imagine 
 him writing his Book of Days in the age of Pericles. 
 That he was archaic was one reason why they admired 
 him. It pleased them to picture their remote 
 ancestors being instructed by the rude old poet in 
 
 Ploughing and sowing and rural affairs, 
 Rural economy, rural astronomy, 
 Homely morality, labour, and thrift. 
 
 But their affection for these excellent things became, 
 little by little, somewhat platonic. While the 
 aesthetic aspects of a country life always appealed to 
 the Greeks they were not wrought (if we accept 
 Xenophon) to much enthusiasm by its practical 
 duties. On the other hand, Virgil found an audience 
 not only ready to admire his work as a great poem, 
 but also to take a lively interest in it as a farm 
 manual. Nor has this engrained Italian interest in 
 
142 VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 agricultural operations ever died out. There is, for 
 instance, a month in the year when the most highly 
 cultured Italians in Lombardy think by day and 
 dream by night of silkworms. Some years before 
 his death, I called in June on the doyen of Italian 
 literature, Cesare Cantu. The delightful old man 
 greeted me with his charming cordiality, and began 
 to show me the books which lined his pleasant 
 apartment in the Via Morigi (Milan) ; but before 
 long came the inevitable question, " E come vanno i 
 bachi ? " and literary conversation had to retreat from 
 the field. Another time I was at Athens at the same 
 season. I had been conversing with the Italian 
 Minister about the Acropolis Museum, Eleusis, 
 Marathon, when he exclaimed with a look of ecstatic 
 pride, " Come and see my cocoons ! " The " ruling 
 passion " had induced him to educare (as the Italian 
 phrase is) a quantity of silkworms in the centre of 
 Athens, and there were the cocoons, the finest I ever 
 saw, neatly arranged on tables in the lower quarters 
 of the Italian Legation. One more modern instance. 
 At a great reception at Milan the Duchess Melzi 
 met Count Alfonso Visconti di Saliceto — last direct 
 descendant of the ruling house of Visconti, and him- 
 self a survivor of those Lombard aristocrats who 
 carried their valour to the farthest ends of Italy in 
 the wars for freedom. Holding out her hand, the 
 grande dame greeted her old friend with the cryptic 
 
VII VIRGIL IN THE COUNTRY 143 
 
 exclamation, ** Settanta-cinque ! " It simply meant 
 that one ounce of silkworms' eggs purchased from 
 him had produced seventy -five kilogrammes of 
 cocoons. The Count said, as he told the story, 
 ** Nothing in the world could have given me so 
 much pleasure ! " 
 
 It was among people who had this sort of unsenti- 
 mental taste in country concerns that " II cantor dei 
 bucolici carmi " found an appreciation, not only 
 fervid, but also intelligent and sympathetically 
 critical. 
 
VIII 
 
 TIBULLUS AT HIS FARM 
 
 The country is the workshop of the many, the 
 playground of the few. To some it has been and it 
 will ever be less a playground than a hospital ; the 
 refuge from all the forms of disillusion : deceived 
 love, disappointed ambition, political discouragement, 
 simple ennui. Men fly the tedium of crowds for 
 solitude, at once narcotic and intoxicant, which sends 
 the soul to sleep and wakes it to delightful dreams. 
 Only the hermit in his mountain cell quite knows 
 the meaning of the word excitement. Such things 
 were always true, but they were not always rendered 
 an account of. The poet of antiquity who most 
 consciously " returned to Nature " to comfort his 
 sad heart with her healing sights was the Romano di 
 Roma, the Rome-born TibuUus. 
 
 Another poet had taken far from towns the 
 burden of an infinite sorrow, but not for comfort ; 
 not even venusta Sirmio could assuage its master's 
 all too real and too irremediable wound. The heart- 
 
 144 
 
TIBULLUS AT HIS FARM 145 
 
 ache of TibuUus was also real to him, but it was 
 self-centred and to a certain degree self- sought, 
 unless we are to accept the results of temperament 
 as inevitable. He was haunted by a gentle but 
 persistent melancholy, which pervades his poetry like 
 a Leitmotif. Death had less a particular than a 
 universal meaning for him ; he does not seem to 
 have felt the sharp edge of any severe loss ; his 
 father probably died before he was grown up, and 
 his mother and sister lived to close his eyes. But, 
 as if in prevision of his own early end, he was for 
 ever aware of the presence of death, and he made 
 no Stoical boast of indifference to it — he was very 
 human. In his happiest time of love his cry is " Let 
 me behold thee when my last hour is come, let me 
 hold thee with my dying hand " ; he bids Delia to 
 his funeral, which, in his imagination, he distinctly 
 sees. When that was written he was in excellent 
 health, and was in possession of many of the best 
 gifts of fate — great talents, a handsome person, hosts 
 of friends, among whom was Horace, who thought 
 him particularly fortunate. Though a good deal of 
 property which he ought to have inherited was 
 confiscated, he was placed above the need of presents 
 from patrons, so that he could preserve a perfect 
 independence in his friendships with men of high 
 position ; an advantage of which those who had it 
 not, could, no doubt, keenly appreciate the value. 
 
 L 
 
146 TIBULLUS AT HIS FARM vm 
 
 Of external causes for his low spirits two have been 
 discerned : the infidelities of the woman he loved 
 and could not help loving, knowing well her un- 
 worthiness, and, again, the soreness he felt as an 
 aristocratic Roman patriot at the downfall of freedom, 
 in which he drew no consolation from the larger 
 vision of a great Italy that shone on VirgiFs pro- 
 phetic eyes. But if those things helped to give him 
 a distaste for the world, the secret of his melancholy 
 must be chiefly looked for in a mind without 
 ambition, almost without aspirations ; full of vague 
 regrets, wide sympathies, aesthetic sensibilities ; prone 
 to self-analysis, impressed with a sense of surrounding 
 mystery, but not with the desire to penetrate it. 
 Tibullus was the child of a tired age, of a century 
 sick with many of the intellectual maladies of our 
 own. 
 
 The principal part of the property remaining to 
 him lay at a place called Pedum, on the spurs of the 
 Apennines (not far from Palestrina), where the poet 
 had spent much of his childhood. The situation is 
 still delightful, and then presented a pleasant mixture 
 of cultivated land and woods. At this Pedum farm 
 he gained the intimate knowledge of peasant-folk 
 which enabled him to draw a series of country scenes 
 that combine the pious beauty of Millet with some- 
 thing of the crude humour of Teniers. Take one 
 of these, the forecast of a prosperous year. Laurel 
 
VIII TIBULLUS AT HIS FARM 147 
 
 boughs crackle in the sacred fire, and farmers rejoice 
 and thus interpret the omen : granaries will be full, 
 and the vats not large enough to contain the wine 
 when the rustic has trodden out the grapes and 
 sated himself with the sweet inebriating must. New 
 children will be born, and the little boy, the treasure 
 of the house, will catch his father's ears and kiss 
 him ; nor will the old grandfather tire of watching 
 his little grandson and prattling with the child in 
 broken words. It is strange that before the coming 
 of the master-teacher of **rart d'etre grandp^re,'* 
 the two poets who best understood the charms of 
 babyhood were two young bachelors — Catullus and 
 Tibullus. 
 
 The rustics of Tibullus are not impossible 
 innocents, but it is with a tolerant eye that he 
 observes their excesses. He is more amused than 
 shocked when they take more than is good for 
 them. Once, indeed, he gives a little word of 
 reproof. The incident is in this wise : a peasant 
 owner goes with his wife and children to a picnic in 
 the Holy Grove. They have a "real good time" ; 
 prayers to the gods are succeeded by a feast al fresco ^ 
 and nothing occurs to mar their enjoyment. But 
 when the dusk comes and they drive back in the 
 cart, thoroughly tired as workers so easily are with 
 pleasure, the peasant, being not very sober, begins 
 to disagree with his wife. After they get home the 
 
148 TIBULLUS AT HIS FARM 
 
 quarrel thickens ; spiteful words are bandied to and 
 fro, the wife has her ears boxed, and, alas ! her locks 
 cut off. Then she cries, and in the end he cries, too, 
 to see the work of his mad hands : 
 
 We fell out, my wife and I, 
 And kissed again with tears. 
 
 A satisfactory ending ; but, says Tibullus, how 
 much better it would have been to have only pulled 
 her hair down and not to have cut it off! 
 
 The most touching rites of rural piety were those 
 connected ' with the humble family worship of the 
 paternal Lares — the souls of the righteous departed 
 who were appointed or permitted to watch over the 
 living. How the Italian people clung to a belief in 
 a present and familiar guardian — one who had lived 
 on earth and who could sympathise with their small 
 necessities — may be still seen in the niche with an 
 image over the cottage door, or the shrine with a 
 picture in the corner of the cornfield. If the 
 peasant is extremely prosperous, a white cloth edged 
 with lace, which hangs down in front, is placed 
 before the picture or image, and on the cloth stand 
 two high-backed vases containing artificial flowers. 
 If the worshipper is very poor, the flowers are 
 real, and a disused meat-tin, picked up out of the 
 road, serves for a vase. The florid visage of the 
 Australian ox on the label looks down, not alto- 
 
VIII TIBULLUS AT HIS FARM 149 
 
 gether incongruously, from many such a rustic 
 altar. 
 
 The attitude of the peasant's mind to his Lares is 
 transparently clear ; but what was that of the mind 
 of a highly cultivated man like TibuUus, who 
 belonged to a society which was rapidly ceasing to 
 believe at all, even in the august Immortals? It 
 might be difficult to find an analogy in Italy, but it 
 can be easily found in Russia. The educated Russian 
 who has travelled, feels the same for the family Icon 
 as the Roman poet felt for the family Lares. He 
 feels, in the first place, that this is an institution 
 connected with the sacred ties of kinship and even 
 with national life and sentiment ; that such an institu- 
 tion is very touching and interesting .and is much more 
 worthy of encouragement than of contempt ; that, 
 for the rest, if there be a Power that hears, all 
 aspirations and the peasant's humblest sacrifice will 
 find their way to It — sa pri^re suit plus longue que 
 lui ; that, lastly, there is such a thing as Luck, and 
 the Icon brings luck, never mind how. This point 
 of view is sincere, within its limits quite as sincere as 
 some graver assumptions of belief. It is, moreover, 
 a matter of common observation that Aherglauhe 
 flourishes at the time when serious religious con- 
 victions are increasingly shaken. 
 
 It was to the paternal Lares, at whose feet he ran 
 about as a child, that TibuUus's thoughts travelled 
 
ISO TIBULLUS AT HIS FARM vm 
 
 when he was starting to accompany his friend and 
 captain, Messala, in the expedition between the 
 Garonne and the "rapid Rhone." It was to them 
 that he addressed the simple prayer to be preserved 
 in the hour of battle. " Be it no shame," he said, 
 " that you are fashioned out of an old trunk, for 
 even so you inhabited the abode of my old 
 grandfather. The men of those days kept better 
 faith when a wooden idol stood in a small shrine and 
 received poor offerings. The deity was propitiated 
 if one gave it a libation from the new vintage or set 
 a crown of corn-ears on its sacred head. Whoever 
 had had his wishes fulfilled, carried offerings to the 
 god with his own hand, followed by a little girl 
 bearing fine honeycomb " (Kelly). If he escape, 
 he too will honour the Lares ; a pig shall be offered 
 up to them, which he will follow clad in white and 
 crowned with myrtle. And then he inveighs against 
 the horrors and stupidity of war, with the open 
 disgust of a man who could prove himself not only 
 brave, but exceptionally valorous, on occasion. Let 
 others make a boast of martial deeds : it is enough 
 for him to listen, as he drinks, to the stories told by 
 the garrulous old soldier, who traces his camp on the 
 table with his finger dipped in red wine. What folly 
 it is to seek death in war ; is it not always near, 
 approaching with noiseless feet ? In the next lines 
 we seem to hear not only the note of Tibull]us's 
 
VIII TIBULLUS AT HIS FARM 151 
 
 sadness but the sigh of all antiquity at the gate of 
 death : " There are no fields of harvest below, no 
 cultivated vineyards, but fierce Cerberus and the 
 Stygian ferry-boat. A pale crowd, with fleshless 
 chaps and burnt hair, wander by the gloomy 
 marsh." 
 
 How much to be preferred to military glory is the 
 lot of the man who grows old in his cottage, with 
 his children round him ! He follows his sheep, his 
 son looks after the lambs, and when he comes home 
 tired, his wife prepares warm water to refresh him. 
 " May such a lot be mine ! " Tibullus had his 
 prayers fulfilled so far that he escaped scatheless, and 
 with no little glory, from the Aquitanian campaign, 
 in which he served Messala as aide-de-camp, 
 but the year after, when on his way to Asia with 
 the same commander, he fell ill with a fever at Corfu, 
 that undermined his once strong constitution. One 
 of his most beautiful elegies was written when the 
 fever was at its worst and he had almost abandoned 
 hope. What had he done to merit death ? He had 
 hurt no one, nor had he spoken " mad blasphemies 
 against the gods." His hair was black, and creep- 
 ing age had not come upon him. Unlike many 
 ancient poets, Tibullus did not hate old age; he 
 had a tender wish to grow old and to relate the 
 events of his youth to the young. He begs his 
 friends to offer up sacrifices for his recovery, and 
 
152 TIBULLUS AT HIS FARM vm 
 
 whether he lives or dies, at least to remember 
 him. 
 
 TibuUus minutely describes the Ambarvalia or 
 Spring Festival, when the fields were purified, a 
 ceremony resembling the blessing of the field and of 
 the beasts which is still in force under the religion 
 whose Founder was born twenty-six years after this 
 elegy was written. The rite, says Tibullus, had been 
 handed down to them from the old time, and it was 
 good and seemly to perform it. After the work of 
 the year comes this solemn day of rest ; it is a 
 Sabbath for all, the furrows rest, the ploughman rests, 
 the unharnessed oxen rest, with garlanded heads, 
 before their full manger ; the woman puts not her 
 hand to the spindle. The holy lamb is led to the 
 altar, followed by the folk wearing crowns of olive. 
 The greater deities are then invoked, Bacchus with 
 his grapes, Ceres with her corn-ears : " Gods of our 
 native land, we purify our fields, we purify our hinds; 
 repel, ye gods, all evils from our boundaries. Let 
 not our crops cheat the labours of the harvest with 
 deceitful blades nor the slow-footed lamb fear the 
 swift wolves. Then the sleek rustic, cheered by the 
 plenteousness of his fields, will heap large logs on the 
 blazing hearth ; and a crowd of born thralls, a good 
 sign of a thriving farmer, will sport, and erect 
 bowers of twigs before the altar." 
 
 Another interpretation of the words given here 
 
VIII TIBULLUS AT HIS FARM 153 
 
 as *' bowers of twigs" is that they mean "baby- 
 houses " made in play by the slave children of the 
 house. Dark as is the blot of slavery upon ancient 
 civilisation, one is always being reminded that the 
 slaves (especially those who, like these children, were 
 born on the estate) were well cared for, and, as a 
 rule, kindly treated. 
 
 Tibullus praises the rural gods for having 
 instructed men in all the arts of peace : how first to 
 cover the little log-hut with thatch, how to break oxen 
 for the plough, how to put wheels to the cart. And 
 he praises the husbandman for having been the first 
 civiliser, the first to graft the apple, to irrigate the 
 garden, to press out the juices of the golden grape, 
 even to invent the elements of music and poetry. 
 It is well to notice how usually the ploughman, not 
 the shepherd, is the central figure in the Latin poetry 
 of the country ; it was more bucolic than pastoral. 
 Thus Tibullus points to the labourer as he who first 
 sang rustic words in determinate measure to relieve 
 him from the weariness of his long toil at the plough. 
 It was the labourer, too, who began to compose airs 
 to the oaten pipe in the rest-time after meals, which, 
 on the proper days, he sang to the garlanded images 
 of the gods. The Roman peasant is not here repre- 
 sented as piping to his divinities ; but pipers were 
 very early employed in the temples, perhaps soon 
 after the introduction of the pipe from Asia. They 
 
154 TIBULLUS AT HIS FARM vm 
 
 seem to have been also engaged to attend funerals ; 
 Augustus cut down the number that might be so 
 employed to ten, and forbade the pipers to eat in the 
 temples. This led to a sort of strike ; the pipers 
 left Rome in a body, but were brought back by a 
 stratagem, which is related by Livy and Ovid. 
 When they reappeared they were masked, to which 
 Ovid ascribes the origin of people '* wearing strange 
 dresses and chanting merry sayings to old-fashioned 
 airs on the Ides of June," practices suggestive of the 
 Carnival. With regard to piping in the temples, it 
 would be interesting to know whether the custom of 
 the Abruzzi peasants of playing on fife and bagpipe 
 before the shrines of the Madonna (as they used to 
 do during the Christmas week at Rome) does not 
 date back to some prae-Christian practice. These 
 rude musicians have handed their art down from 
 father to son from time immemorial, till it has 
 become an instinct with them to throw a devotional 
 meaning into their wild notes which even the human 
 voice rarely succeeds in expressing. 
 
 TibuUus recalls how, of old, the villagers assembled 
 once a year to sing the praise of Bacchus, when the 
 leader of the best chorus or the best individual singer 
 received a goat as a " not-to-be-despised reward.'* 
 This tends to show that the "goat -prize" theory 
 was the one in favour at that date to account for 
 the word " tragedy." 
 
VIII TIBULLUS AT HIS FARM 155 
 
 In spite of his criticism of war, the poet had more 
 than once a thought of returning to the camp, the 
 only active life open to one who preserved a haughty 
 detachment from the politics of the day, giving no 
 word either of eulogy or blame to that head of the 
 State whom his brother poets were saluting as divine. 
 Sometimes, without doubt, a secret voice whispered 
 to him that he was meant for a nobler part than that 
 of pouring out upon worthless objects the treasures 
 of a love which could not help forgiving. But the 
 personal ambition or impersonal enthusiasm that 
 might have spurred him to sustained action was 
 lacking ; he knew his weakness perfectly ; he turned 
 himself inside out and examined the contents with a 
 half-contemptuous smile. In theory he always held 
 to the same rule of life — to enjoy while you may, 
 while there is time : 
 
 Be merry ! Sec, the steeds of night advance, 
 And yellow stars enweave their wanton dance ; 
 
 After them, silent Sleep with sombre wings 
 And dreams of dark, mysterious countenance. 
 
 But like the Persian poet, of whom he often 
 reminds us, he knows only too well that a light heart 
 is not to be had for the asking. Those dark dreams 
 of his, which were probably a real experience, as he 
 more than once alludes to them, cast their shadow 
 over his most sunlit waking hours. 
 
 So we leave this Roman knight, taking a last look 
 
156 TIBULLUS AT HIS FARM vm 
 
 at his handsome form as, in a simple dress, fore- 
 stalling Tolstoi's Levine (and Tolstoi himself) by 
 two thousand years, he followed the ploughing oxen, 
 or turned up the soil with a fork, or carried home 
 a strayed lamb in his bosom. 
 
IX 
 
 OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD 
 
 Intelligent children, who are always impressed by 
 the vague terror and majesty of Scandinavian 
 mythology, are seldom attracted by the more definite 
 and circumscribed myths of Greece and Rome. 
 They consider them wanting in seriousness, a grave 
 defect to the childish mind. They put them aside 
 as dead and cold. There are accomplished scholars 
 who have given years of patient study to the 
 elucidation of these myths and who yet end where 
 the children end ; though they know the most minute 
 details about the outward dress of Greek legends, 
 the soul utterly escapes them. Not all the learning 
 of the Schools can help so much to reveal the inner 
 meaning of the ancient stories as a few summer days 
 spent in a Greek island, where we sit among the 
 asphodel and walk in glades of olives which ascend 
 by solemn aisles from sea to mountain-top. There 
 we may gain the comprehension which is not thought 
 but feeling. Poets have sometimes gained it without 
 
 157 
 
158 OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD ix 
 
 any such help by the light that is within them — the 
 light of imagination. But the plain man who has 
 not that gift cannot do better than to take his classics 
 to the Mediterranean ; for instance, to Benizza, in 
 the island of Corfu, the spot which to the present 
 writer more than any spot till now visited in Hellas, 
 or Sicily, or Magna Graecia, realised the youth of 
 the world, 
 
 . . . when God 
 By man as godlike trod. 
 
 To be taught all that such a place can teach we must 
 be alone. No human voice must break upon the 
 silence, which is so complete that the chirp of an 
 insect or the note of a bird seems to have the volume 
 of a full orchestra. There we may read, or more 
 wisely recall in our minds without reading, a book 
 Latin in tongue but mainly Greek in inspiration, the 
 Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidius Naso. And if the 
 noonday sun give us the desire to sleep, our dreams 
 will be peopled by a fairy masque of gracious living 
 creatures : Daphne the laurel, Cadmus and Hermione 
 the gentle snakes, Arachne the spider. Narcissus 
 youth and flower, Progne the swallow, Cyane the 
 fountain, Galatea the summer sea, Naiad and Dryad, 
 dancing faun and flute-playing satyr, what are they 
 but materialised impressions, the truth of which can 
 never change ^ 
 ^ The primitive man did not seek to inquire into or 
 
IX OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD 159 
 
 to explain natural phenomena, but to give a local 
 habitation and a name to the emotions which those 
 phenomena called forth in him. The great appear- 
 ances and operations of Nature, the sun and moon, 
 the progression of the seasons, the alternation of day 
 and night, he associated with supernatural forces 
 which could command him, but which he could not 
 command, although he might in some measure 
 propitiate them. For these he felt admiration 
 deepening into fear. On the other hand, the in- 
 numerable and familiar manifestations of Nature 
 with which he was brought into immediate contact 
 inspired him with another sentiment, which may be 
 summed up in the word fellowship. He was inclined 
 to view life as a continual shaking up of being into 
 new kaleidoscopic pictures, a general interchange of 
 parts that present new forms while retaining their 
 original elements. According to this theory, not 
 only animals, but trees, flowers, rivers, rocks become 
 pregnant with personality. Man did not cut himself 
 adrift from the other species or from inanimate 
 objects. He reached by intuition the idea of the 
 unity of Nature, to which all modern science tends ; 
 only, as has been said, in developing that idea he 
 depended not on reason but on emotion. 
 
 Nothing is more natural than that the primitive 
 mind should have supposed a close kinship between 
 all forms of life ; but if we think over it, we shall 
 
i6o OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD ix 
 
 always see a kind of mystery in its inability to dis- 
 tinguish between life and no life, its unconsciousness 
 of that ultimate gulf which seems so absolutely 
 impassable to our average intelligence, and before 
 which the hardiest man of science still stands doubt- 
 ing. This is a point on which backward races throw 
 a great deal of light. A recent observer states, for 
 instance, that to the Indian of South America "all 
 objects, animate and inanimate, seem exactly of the 
 same nature, except that they differ in the accident 
 of bodily form." Again, it is quite sure that children 
 are constantly lapsing into ignorance of the existence 
 of any hard and fast line of division. A little girl 
 may know that her doll does not feel, but she believes 
 that it does feel ; her knowledge resting on the 
 assertions of persons whose word she is accustomed 
 to accept, while her belief rests on an instinct, old as 
 man, to think spirit or spiritual powers into matter. 
 To the brief announcement of a child*s death from 
 burning during a very cold winter, the newspapers 
 added, "She was warming her doll.'* Poor little 
 martyr ! I myself recollect the anguish exhibited by 
 an Italian peasant child during an operation performed 
 on her doll ; to adjust an injured limb the scissors 
 had to be used and at every snip the child, who was 
 nevertheless trying to control her feelings, turned 
 white as marble and uttered a stifled sob. What she 
 thought I do not know, but she felt instinctively that 
 
IX OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD i6i 
 
 the doll was suffering pain. An identical instinct is 
 at the bottom of all fetichism, image-worship and 
 magic, whether black or white, in which matter is 
 employed as a vehicle. 
 
 Ovid's Metamorphoses and in a less degree his 
 Fasti are valuable not only as story-books and poems, 
 but as documents for the history of ideas. Ovid was 
 a collector of traditions on a vast scale. He had 
 an incomparable knowledge of legends, prejudices, 
 customs, rites ; if he embellished more than the 
 Folk-lore Society would strictly approve, there is 
 reason to think that he never invented. His own 
 state of mind in reference to the stories he retold 
 probably varied from that of the pious Catholic who 
 relates the pretty tale of St. Francis and the wolf to 
 that of the legend-loving sceptic who eagerly seizes 
 on the fable of St. Martha and the Tarrasque. The 
 former abstains from negation ; he even wishes to 
 believe and very likely he succeeds. The latter 
 re-echoes Voltaire's regretful lines : 
 
 On court, helas ! apr^s la verite ; 
 
 Ah ! croyez-moi, I'erreur a son merite. 
 
 Ovid wrote at a time when the mania for everything 
 Greek had touched its high- water mark in Rome, and 
 he was influenced by the prevailing taste, but even 
 more, it may be guessed, by his own travels in Greece 
 and Sicily, still an entirely Greek land, though a 
 Roman conquest. He drank in the Greek spirit 
 
 M 
 
1 62 OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD ix 
 
 at its source, a spirit partly, but never wholly, 
 acclimatised among the people of Italy. When he 
 was miserably languishing in exile he fondly looked 
 back to his journeys over azure waves and to his 
 sojourn in Sicily, not far from the twin springs, 
 Anapus and Cyane : " Here a large portion of the 
 passing year was spent by me. Alas ! how unlike is 
 that region to the Getic land ! " 
 
 Ovid was almost morbidly affected by climate and 
 natural surroundings. He had that nostalgia of the 
 South from which Southern Italians, including those 
 who are only partially educated, suffer severely when 
 obliged to live even in the north of Italy. A cook 
 from the south, who had gone to a place near Udine, 
 wrote to me that he was going to leave his situation ; 
 he had nothing to complain of in his master and 
 mistress, but the " paese " was " totally impossible to 
 live in." It is not that their health generally suffers ; 
 they can bear the cold well ; it is their spirits that 
 give way. Ovid writes from Tomi (which was 
 somewhere on the Black Sea) that he is sorry to have 
 offended the inhabitants by what he has said about 
 their country ; they have been always kind and 
 hospitable, but how can they expect him to praise 
 their climate ? It makes even health hateful to him ; 
 all the year round it is cold ; spring brings no 
 flowers, nor does summer see " the naked bodies of 
 the reapers " ; the soil yields chiefly wormwood ; 
 
IX OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD 163 
 
 there are no singing birds, except, perhaps, in the 
 distant forest ; what streams there are, are of 
 brackish water. 
 
 Of his own birthplace, Sulmo, he preserved the 
 tenderest memories. It was a small place, but healthy, 
 with a wonderful wealth of running streams, which 
 kept it fresh and green in the August heats. These 
 rivulets were also used for artificial irrigation. 
 Sulmo yielded corn, but the grape was its chief 
 produce, the vines being supported by elms and 
 trained in garlands from tree to tree in the manner 
 that still gives all that district and the neighbourhood 
 of Naples an air of superb luxuriance in the vintage 
 season, the only right time for visiting the South of 
 Italy. Ovid recommended an active interest in 
 agriculture as the best " remedy for love.'* What 
 healthier occupation for mind and body than to 
 watch the ploughing and sowing, the goats on the 
 rocks and the bees on the yews ; or better still, to 
 use the spade ourselves in planting the well-watered 
 garden and the pruning knife in grafting fruit-trees ? 
 He may have played at grafting in his orchards 
 near Rome, but in spite of his good advice, he 
 leaves us suspecting that he was less of a practical 
 agriculturist than a dreamer of dreams among the 
 woods and brooks. We fancy him roving as a 
 pensive boy to whom trees and flowers and all kinds 
 of creatures told their secrets. 
 
1 64 OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD ix 
 
 He was always putting himself into the place of 
 plants and animals, and thinking how one would 
 think in their position. This was evidently a habit 
 of mind with him, not a mere storyteller's device. 
 Probably he was quite young when he wrote the 
 long poem expressive of the feelings of a walnut-tree, 
 which has sometimes been supposed to be a veiled 
 satire, but without any good reason. The un- 
 fortunate walnut-tree, growing as it does by the side 
 of the road, sees its young fruit pelted with a hail- 
 storm of stones by horrid boys, who use the nuts to 
 play games, several of which Ovid describes. The 
 tree is hurt by cruel wounds that mutilate its 
 branches, and by injuries to its bark which leave the 
 wood bare. Instead of having its fruit gathered in 
 due season and stored by the thrifty wife of the 
 husbandman, it beholds its produce scattered, unripe 
 and worthless, on the ground. What business 
 have people to inflict such treatment on a respectable 
 tree which yields both fruit and shade ? 
 
 In the Treatise on Fishes^ said to have been 
 written towards the end of his life at Tomi, Ovid 
 points out that all animals have a vague dread of an 
 unknown death, against which they defend themselves, 
 if they are strong, by their superior strength ; if 
 they are weak, by expedients and stratagems such as 
 that of the octopus of assuming the colour of the 
 place where it lies. No one seems to have given 
 
IX OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD 165 
 
 Ovid the credit of observing this habit of" protective 
 coloration/' on which Darwin and all recent 
 naturalists place so much stress. With the same 
 sympathetic penetration, he declares — and who will 
 deny it ? — that the horse that wins the race is 
 perfectly aware of his victory. Does he not hold his 
 head much higher than the others when he is led 
 forth to receive the applause of the crowd ? ^ 
 
 Ovid's love of animals is characteristically shown 
 in his elegy on Corinna's parrot. Perhaps he wrote 
 the elegy because Catullus had written a lament on 
 Lesbia's sparrow, but we are almost persuaded that 
 Ovid shed a real tear over the parrot, while one 
 suspects that Catullus left the weeping to Lesbia. 
 How affectionately he recalls its friendship with the 
 turtle-dove ; such a friendship exists at the present 
 time between a parrot and a white pigeon dwelling 
 at Sorrento. And how kindly the poet would 
 believe, " if there is any believing in matters of 
 doubt," that there is a blest abode for innocent 
 feathered souls in the world beyond, where the parrot 
 will make the birds wonder and admire by speaking 
 human words. Here on earth what love can do for 
 him has been done ; "a grave as little as his body 
 covers his bones." 
 
 The belief in an interchange of parts between 
 
 1 A horse which ran in the riderless races once popular in Tuscany, always 
 kicked its competitors when nearing the goal j by this means it won many 
 races. 
 
1 66 OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD ix 
 
 man and beast, whether by the regular process of 
 the transmigration of souls, or by the violent one of 
 the working of an arbitrary spell, must modify the 
 thoughts, if not the conduct, of men in respect to 
 animals. We know, as a matter of fact, that it does 
 largely modify both thoughts and conduct. It does 
 not make men always humane ; but no one who 
 held it would say that he may beat his donkey, perche 
 non k crisnano, *' because it is not a human being," 
 for that is the meaning of cristiano in the peasant 
 speech of Italy. " Spare the snake, sir, it too has 
 but one little life," said the Indian servant to his 
 English master, who was attacking a cobra. Ovid, 
 naturally pitiful, was quick to seize this point of view 
 (though he might have drawn a line at cobras). He 
 saw that arguments could be deduced from the 
 doctrine of metamorphosis against animal sacrifices, 
 for which he felt a strong repugnance. Some poets 
 of the Greek Anthology touched lightly on the same 
 subject ; but Ovid returns to it persistently. We 
 cannot help asking whether the Roman priesthood 
 could have heard a fundamental institution of 
 orthodoxy so openly attacked without becoming 
 hostile to the raiser of such inconvenient questions. 
 
 If some blood must be spilt, Ovid would have the 
 " idle swine " pay the cost. The sow rooted up the 
 young corn with her snout and thus offended 
 Ceres ; the goat, also, had misbehaved by nibbling 
 
IX OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD 167 
 
 the vine-tendrils. " But what didst thou, O ox, and 
 what did ye, O gentle sheep, to deserve a like fate ? " 
 In another place Ovid partly throws the sheep over- 
 board ; a sheep, he says, was guilty of eating up the 
 consecrated plants (rosemary, myrtle, tamarisk) 
 which a good old woman had been accustomed to 
 sacrifice to the rural deities. But he is faithful to 
 the ox, the animal which should be held sacred by 
 man, since it ploughs his fields. " Take the knife 
 far from the ox ; a neck fitted for the yoke ought 
 not to be smitten by the axe. Let him live, and 
 many a time may he labour on the hard soil.'* 
 
 In the last book of the Metamorphoses Pytha- 
 goras is made to ask, " How can you kill for food 
 the lowing calf, or the kid that cries like a child, 
 or the bird that has fed out of your hand? " This 
 plea is one of simple humanity, but the philosopher 
 reinforces it by urging that in the body of any slain 
 beast may have dwelt the soul of your father, your 
 brother, or, at least, of man. Ovid is delighted to 
 be able to bring a character on the scene who can 
 argue thus. We are not told, however, that Sulmo's 
 poet was a vegetarian. Was he then insincere ? 
 Not more so than we all are to-day or to-morrow. 
 In our dual lives our real self lives rather in what 
 we feel and do not, than in what we do and 
 feel not. 
 
 The prettiest episode in the pretty story of 
 
1 68 OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD ix 
 
 " Philemon and Baucis " was certainly an embellish- 
 ment due to Ovid's tender heart. The story itself, 
 though its origin has never been traced, was no 
 doubt traditional ; it is a variant of the class that 
 deals with receiving divine visitors unawares, a class 
 as old as Homer and as modern as the beautiful 
 mediaeval legends in which the visitor is Christ. In 
 the light of a description of humble life, " Philemon 
 and Baucis " is not to be surpassed ; it will bear to be 
 told once again. 
 
 Jupiter and Mercury in the shape of men craved 
 admittance at a thousand doors, but every one was 
 bolted against them. Then they came to a very 
 small cottage, thatched with straw and reeds. A 
 pious old woman and her old husband had lived here 
 since first in youth they were united, and made their 
 poverty light by sharing it. It was the same thing 
 if you asked for masters or servants ; the whole 
 household was but two. When the heavenly guests 
 knocked at this door they were made kindly welcome. 
 Baucis, the old wife, kindled the embers, and set a 
 pipkin on the fire full of herbs from their carefully 
 watered garden ; her husband meanwhile cut off a 
 little piece from the rusty side of bacon which hung 
 from the beam. Warm water was offered to the 
 guests to refresh their limbs, and a couch was spread 
 with those coarse cloths which were yet kept " for 
 best " and generally stowed away. Baucis busied 
 
IX OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD 169 
 
 about the house as fast as her trembling old body 
 would go ; she steadied the broken leg of the table 
 by putting a potsherd under it, and then began to 
 place the repast before the guests. For gustatio or 
 hors-d'ceuvres^ fragrant wild berries, radishes, curdled 
 milk and eggs cooked in the embers (the uova sudate 
 of the Lombard peasant) ; for piece de resistance, 
 bacon and boiled herbs ; for dessert, dried figs, nuts, 
 dates, plums, apples, grapes, and white honeycomb. 
 Each course was served with welcoming looks which 
 told of no lurking niggard feeling or indifference. 
 
 The wine, too, had been poured out and the old 
 couple remarked that the goblet into which they 
 poured it refilled of itself as soon as it was emptied. 
 When this had happened once or twice, they began 
 to feel (especially Philemon) frightened out of their 
 wits. The modesty of the unprepared entertainment 
 they had given to visitors who could cause such a 
 singular occurrence dismayed them to the last degree, 
 and by a simultaneous impulse they ran in search of 
 the single goose that guarded their cottage. But 
 their legs were slow with age and its wings were 
 swift, and, after a keen pursuit, the bird flew straight 
 towards the Immortals, who commanded that it 
 should be spared. So Ovid made a present to Jove 
 of the kindliest trait ever recorded of him. 
 
 The gods led their humble friends up a safe hill, 
 and then submerged the inhospitable village, sparing 
 
I70 OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD ix 
 
 only their cottage, which was transformed into a 
 beautiful temple. When the old couple were asked 
 what boon they desired, they replied that they only 
 wished to serve their divine guests as priests in the 
 temple while they lived, and when their hour came, 
 to die together. So it was ; for, after a long life, as 
 one turned into an oak the other became a lime tree, 
 and they had no pain of parting, neither did one look 
 upon the other's tomb. How much truer and more 
 touching is this conclusion than that which an 
 inferior storyteller would have resorted to, and which 
 actually figures in some modern versions of the story, 
 namely, the transformation of Philemon and Baucis 
 into young people ! 
 
 Anecdotes of humble but generous hospitality 
 were once so popular because such incidents were 
 within the experience of every traveller. Even now 
 it is not needful to go far from the beaten track in 
 order to match the old stories with new ones. If 
 you have been talking to a Montenegrin peasant by 
 the wayside, he will probably ask you, with his grand 
 air, to step into his house to take coffee, and in 
 Greece there is hardly a cottage where the stranger 
 would not be made welcome. Indeed, the ill-luck 
 of the gods in meeting with closed doors is rather 
 surprising. The same thing once happened to me, 
 though through nobody's fault. A friend and I were 
 benighted on the Col di Barranca ; between one and 
 
IX OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD 171 
 
 two o'clock in the morning our light failed and we 
 knocked at every building we could discern in the 
 almost complete darkness with the hope of getting it 
 renewed. I cannot forget the dreary effect of 
 receiving no response. It was in the late autumn, 
 and these buildings, occupied by herdsmen in 
 summer, were one and all deserted. 
 
 Resembling the story of Philemon and Baucis in 
 some respects, but varied with delicate art, is Ovid's 
 telling of the peasant hospitality given to Ceres 
 during her search for Proserpine. Ovid treated the 
 legend of Proserpine twice at considerable length ; 
 in the Fasti and afterwards, with greater skill, in 
 the Metamorphoses. The most romantic of all 
 classic myths, it attracted him by its appeal to human 
 sympathies, its swift movement, and its picturesque- 
 ness. What scene ever made so charming a picture 
 as that of Proserpine and her girl companions in the 
 meads of Enna } The Greek genius which invented 
 so many things, invented the type of joyous, healthy, 
 active girlhood, fearless and fancy free, which nearly 
 went out of the world till it came back with Shake- 
 speare. Ovid could see the beauty of that type, and 
 his maidens hurry and scurry in their innocent sport, 
 full of true life and careless rapture ; this one 
 plucking marigolds, that one wild hyacinths, others 
 amaranth and thyme and rosemary and many a 
 nameless flower, while she, the fairest, gathers the 
 
172 OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD ix 
 
 fragile crocus and white lilies. Girls and flowers, 
 which are most a part of Nature ? 
 
 Ceres, after she misses Proserpine, goes through 
 the whole island asking if any one has seen a girl 
 passing. When it gets dark, she crosses over to 
 Greece and lands at Eleusis, the name of which, 
 meaning " an arrival," still recalls her coming. 
 There lie the ruins of the temple where her mysteries 
 were celebrated, to the eye some of the least striking 
 remains in Greece, but powerfully suggestive to the 
 mind. The inverted torches on the broken columns 
 tell us of those with which the goddess lighted her- 
 self through that night journey. Eleusis, then, 
 according to Ovid, was nothing but the farm of the 
 old man Celeus, who, in the Greek version, was a 
 king ; but Ovid understood that poetic effect would 
 gain by giving him a humble station. 
 
 Ceres meets this old peasant, who is carrying home 
 acorns and blackberries and dry logs to feed his fire. 
 His little daughter drives two goats down the 
 mountain side. At home his baby lies sick in the 
 cradle. The little girl asks the goddess, who has 
 assumed the form of an old woman, *' What are you 
 doing here, mother, all alone in the hills ? " How 
 the word " mother " pierces her heart ! The old 
 man begs her to rest under his poor roof ; at first 
 she refuses ; then she yields to his prayer. *' How 
 much happier are you than I> who have lost my 
 
IX OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD 173 
 
 daughter ! " she says. But she discovers that her 
 good old host has also his troubles ; the house is in 
 mourning, his little son now lies past hope of 
 recovery. Then the divine visitor kisses the child 
 on its mouth, and the colour comes back to the white 
 cheeks and strength to the wasted body. All the 
 household rejoices, father, mother, and little sister, 
 for they are all the household. 
 
 The tale of the commonest grief and gladness was 
 never more feelingly told. 
 
 A good deal may be gleaned from Ovid's works 
 about rural ceremonies and beliefs which were 
 peculiar to Italy. On the Calends of May fell the 
 festival of Pales, goddess of the shepherds, who was 
 unknown in Greece. One of the customs connected 
 with it was the time-honoured and long-surviving 
 rite of jumping over or through the fire. The sheep- 
 folds were garlanded ; a fire made of rosemary, pitch- 
 tree, laurel, and Sabine herbs brightly cackled on the 
 hearth, millet cakes and warm milk are offered to 
 Pales, who is begged to protect the cattle and those 
 that tend them ; to pardon trespasses and short- 
 comings ; to mediate with the higher powers ; to 
 drive away disease from men and flocks and from the 
 dogs also, and to give plenty through the year. 
 
 Another peculiarly Latin folk-worship was that of 
 the Lares. The Greeks who, at least in towns, did 
 little more than sleep at home, could not have 
 
174 OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD ix 
 
 entered into the intense Roman sentiment of the 
 hearth. In Ovid*s time the Lares became established 
 and endowed ; he says that there were a thousand at 
 the street corners in Rome, where Augustus had set 
 them up in company with his own genius, appointing 
 a body of priests to look after their worship. His 
 encouragement of this domestic and hitherto purely 
 popular superstition is characteristic of his policy in 
 religious matters. The Lares held their own at the 
 Crossways till they were rather succeeded than ousted 
 by Christian saints. Ovid mentions that the original 
 Lares were represented with a dog, the typical house- 
 guardian, at their feet ; and he makes the observa- 
 tion that " Crossways are dear to dogs as well as to 
 deities." 
 
 Again, the FSte des Morts was an essentially Roman 
 observance. Ovid will not condemn costly offerings 
 to the dead, but it is plain that he prefers the little 
 simple, rustic gifts of faithful love : 
 
 C'est TofFrande des moindres choses 
 Qui recde le plus d'amour. 
 
 A wreath laid upon the tomb, scattered fruits, a few 
 grains of salt, corn soaked in wine, and the earliest 
 violets, with these the dead are content. It is said, 
 remarks Ovid, that departed forefathers have been 
 known to revenge themselves in a disagreeable way 
 for neglect on the part of their ungrateful descendants, 
 but upon that he expresses his own incredulity. 
 
IX OVID AND THE NATURAL WORLD 175 
 
 It is his way to pick and choose between what to 
 accept and what to reject of the traditional lore of 
 which he had so vast a knowledge. He shrinks from 
 the idea of human sacrifice, and he therefore will not 
 accept it as accounting for the curious Roman custom 
 of throwing thirty images of old men stuffed with 
 rushes into the Tiber. The act was performed by 
 the Vestal Virgin from the Sublician bridge. Ovid 
 would refer it to the wish of some wholly imaginary 
 Greeks to have their bodies committed to the Tiber, 
 so that its stream might bear them homewards. 
 Thus, in the Middle Ages the dwellers on the Rhone 
 placed their unattended dead in the river, which bore 
 them to the sacred Alyscamp. In spite, however, 
 of this confirmation of the possible correctness of 
 Ovid's theory, there is very little doubt that the 
 Roman old men had a sacrificial significance. They 
 probably belonged to the family of puppets still, here 
 and there, devoted to fiery or watery elements (as the 
 North Italian Vecchia of Mid-Lent), all of which are 
 remotely reminiscent of immensely ancient rites of 
 propitiation to the genius either of growth or of 
 fruition. 
 
X 
 
 THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 
 
 The summer palace of some Oriental king should be 
 considered, perhaps, the first villa : such a palace as 
 the Generalife must have been, in the days of its 
 splendour, a dream of fair women, bulbuls, and roses. 
 But in the more modest though still delightful 
 modern sense, the country pleasure-house is a dis- 
 tinctly Roman invention. The villa of the private 
 citizen could not have become an institution any- 
 where unless good and secure roads made access to it 
 easy. This condition was fulfilled under the Roman 
 government to an extent which must seem surprising 
 when we think of the frequent civil convulsions 
 which flooded Italy with dispossessed peasants and 
 disbanded soldiers. The roads were generally safe 
 and almost always good. It was not dangerous to 
 live in an isolated house, though no doubt it was 
 common to have not less than two or three families 
 of free peasants or slaves either lodged in a wing of 
 the master's dwelling or close by it. Thus the villa 
 
 176 
 
THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 177 
 
 became possible, but it was the idiosyncrasy of the 
 race that caused it to develop into an established 
 feature of Roman life. The Greek would never 
 have been able to understand the Roman citizen's 
 need of rural retirement. 
 
 It was probably well back in republican times 
 that the Roman began to look upon a house out of 
 town as rather a necessity than a luxury. As wealth 
 increased and with it restlessness, the custom of 
 having two or three houses became more and more 
 general. Lucretius describes, with his fine irony, 
 the man of fashion who, terribly bored in his splendid 
 town mansion, sets off suddenly for his villa as if it 
 were on fire and he going to put it out ; but when 
 he arrives there he begins at once to yawn or goes to 
 sleep, or even re-orders the horses and returns in an 
 equal hurry to the city. By the Augustan age the 
 two or three villas had grown to be five or six in the 
 case of rich and fashionable people, and they were 
 often as elaborate in their appointments as the house 
 in town. In other instances they preserved most of 
 the original simplicity of the farm-house. Horace, 
 for his own time, and Martial and Pliny the Younger, 
 for the later period of Trajan, give us abundant in- 
 formation about both kinds of Roman villeggiatura. 
 
 If Virgil remained always a man of the country, 
 in spite of living mostly in cities, no amount of 
 country life could make Horace other than a man- 
 
 N 
 
1 78 THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 
 
 about-town. When he speaks of the country it is 
 not as Virgil or as Tibullus spoke of it ; he knows 
 nothing of Nature's mysteries, nothing of the eternal 
 sentiment of the field-tilling, nothing of the religion 
 of the plough. He is not one of the initiated, but 
 he enjoys and, within his limitations, he appreciates. 
 The country is good for his health and for his 
 appetite. It gives him a rest from the hundred 
 thousand requests and questions with which he is 
 importuned as he walks the streets of Rome. The 
 friend of Maecenas is supposed to be able to arrange 
 any little affair, to know all the news before it is 
 divulged ; in vain he pleads inability or ignorance. 
 It was all very flattering, and Horace is the last 
 person not to be flattered by it, but too much of it 
 becomes tedious. The whole day goes by frittered 
 away in trifles, and on such days he ardently desires 
 his rural retreat where sleep and leisure and the 
 Greek poets fill up the tranquil hours and the 
 evening brings a supper fit for the gods — beans and 
 bacon, washed down by wholesome wine, which costs 
 nothing since it is made on the estate. A friend or 
 two, staying in the house, enliven the board, but the 
 discourse does not run on other people's houses, or 
 on somebody's dancing ; serious themes are discussed, 
 such as the nature of good, and what constitutes true 
 happiness ; till, for a break, an old neighbour tells 
 the story of " The Town and Country Mouse," or 
 
THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 179 
 
 some other ever-young ancient tale. When Maecenas 
 was going to dine with him, Horace told him he 
 must not expect Falernian or Formian vintages ; 
 there would be only the humble Sabian wine which 
 he had sealed up in a Grecian cask with his own 
 hands, in commemoration of some popular triumph 
 of the illustrious friend to whose generosity he owed 
 the estate where it was grown. 
 
 The poet preferred the rusticity of the Sabine 
 farm to the Rome-out-of-town life at Tibur, where 
 he also had a villa. Tibur in the season provided 
 more society than the capital itself; people ran to 
 and fro between the houses of acquaintances as they 
 do between the villas on the Lake of Como. In the 
 Sabine valley the real business of the country occupied 
 every one around, if not altogether the poet. In 
 one ode he laments that there will be soon no real 
 country ; mansions and parks and ornamental waters 
 replace simple cottages like his own " white country- 
 box " ; banks of myrtle and violets encroach on the 
 olive groves ; the elms, which supported the vines, 
 are cut down to plant plane-trees or shady laurel- 
 walks ; ploughed fields disappear in lawns. In this 
 ode it is by chance mentioned that the Romans then 
 liked to build their houses facing north, the contrary 
 to the present preference. " Chi paga per il sole 
 non paga per il dot tore " is a proverb which shows 
 the faith put in a sunny aspect by the Romans of 
 
i8o THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 
 
 to-day. Horace regrets the time when stately public 
 buildings were raised, but each man was content with 
 a poor place for his personal habitation. But the 
 Italian private citizen was already the greatest lover 
 and builder of palaces in the world out of Persia. 
 
 Horace was in all things the poet of moderation 
 (the only one). He could honestly disclaim earth- 
 hunger, and declare that he never went round his 
 fields longing to make crooked boundaries straight 
 by adding a bit here and enclosing an angle there. 
 Perhaps the fact proves him an amateur ; was there 
 ever a man really bred to possess land who was quite 
 free from this form of madness? Of his father's 
 farm in Apulia he seems to have preserved no 
 pleasant childish memories ; he remembers how poor 
 the soil was, and he never expresses pain that it went 
 the common way of confiscation. His father, a 
 freedman, eked out his livelihood as a tax-gatherer ; 
 it must have strained his every resource to send his 
 son, well provided for, to be educated in Rome 
 instead of placing him in a provincial grammar 
 school, as most of his richer neighbours did with 
 their sons. 
 
 Yet Horace knew the charm that comes from 
 possession ; the charm of saying " my own fields, my 
 own oxen." He loved the Sabine farm for every 
 reason, but most of all because it belonged to him. 
 He loves it so well that he trembles sometimes lest 
 
THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA i8i 
 
 he should lose it, but he is consoled by the reflection 
 that surely no evil eye will be cast upon so modest a 
 domain. The estate lay under Mount Lucretilis, 
 about thirty miles from Rome, in a valley which is 
 easily identified, and which used to be visited by so 
 many English pilgrims that the peasants were long 
 convinced that Horace was an Englishman. The 
 poet had five families of free husbandmen and eight 
 house-slaves. The homestead was managed by a 
 steward or fattore^ who gave his master plenty of 
 trouble. He had been a slave in Rome, fed on 
 rations, and hard worked, but instead of rejoicing at 
 his improved position, he pined for the tavern and 
 music-hall, and neglected the oxen and let the sluices 
 overflow. 
 
 All his life Horace had wished for a piece of land 
 which contained a garden, a stream, and a coppice, 
 and in the Sabine valley he found all three. To take 
 a nap, after his brief meal, on the grass by the 
 stream was to him that exquisite combination of 
 mental and physical ease which man is foolish to 
 despise because it is an enjoyment within the reach of 
 every other animal as well as of himself. He clearly 
 considered both his Sabine farm and his villa at 
 Tibur healthier than the capital, especially in the 
 autumn, " when every father and mojther turns pale 
 with fear for their children " ; it may be doubted if 
 Rome was so exempt from malarial fever at that 
 
1 82 THE ROMANES VILLEGGIATURA x 
 
 time as it is generally thought to have been, or that 
 it was ever so free from it as it is now. Once, when 
 he had promised Maecenas to be away only five days, 
 Horace remained at Tibur through all the month of 
 August, and he begs his " dear friend," if he would 
 have him keep well, to let him stay yet longer and 
 even pass the winter out of Rome by the seaside (he 
 was probably thinking of Tarentum). 
 
 Yet was not there a spice of truth in the taunt 
 which his servant Davus addressed to the poet, that 
 when he had been too long in the country he grew 
 moped to death ? We are almost invited to suspect 
 that there was ; the town was, after all, the life of 
 his life. One may be sure, by the by, that the 
 worthy Davus himself hated seclusion as much as 
 any Italian servant does to-day. Tibur he may have 
 endured ; there he could far conversazione with the 
 servants of other villas, but at the Sabine farm with 
 whom could he have due chiacchiere except with the 
 steward — another martyr? By immortalising the 
 amusing criticism of Davus, Horace shows that he 
 was the first to observe that " no man was a hero 
 to his valet." 
 
 In the story of Alphius the Usurer, who resolved 
 to turn countryman, but ended by trying to put out 
 on the Calends the money he had gathered in on the 
 Ides, we see a man who, whatever his education, has 
 a most superior power of appreciating the attractions 
 
X THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 183 
 
 of the country. The picture he gives of them is the 
 best known, the most popular that exists ; even now, 
 when the habit of Latin quotations is gone, few 
 orators can get through a speech on a rural subject 
 without the lines : 
 
 Beatus ille, qui procul negotiis, 
 
 Ut prisca gens mortalium, 
 Paterna rura bobus exercet suis, 
 
 Solutus omni faenore, etc. 
 
 When it comes to the point, however, of abandon- 
 ing the *' something he does in the City," he will 
 never find the courage to consummate the sacrifice. 
 We all know Alphius ; how he looks at every 
 advertisement in the paper of " a desirable Eliza- 
 bethan residence with grass land sufficient for three 
 cows " ; how he corresponds with the advertiser and 
 even goes regularly to examine eligible freeholds ; 
 and we know that he will die as he has lived in the 
 umbrageous recesses of his back office. There are 
 people who go through their whole lives nursing and 
 cockering an ambition which is not insincere, but is 
 completely unreal. It forms the recreation of their 
 dull hours, the romance soaring above their sordid 
 pursuits ; it is dressed up to look so exactly as if it 
 were alive that only a man's most intimate friends 
 are aware that he would be alarmed and distressed 
 beyond words if he were to-morrow called upon to 
 turn it from fiction into fact. 
 
184 THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 
 
 The vine-tendrils hanging from tree to tree, the 
 lowing cattle, the honey in the comb, the sheep 
 yielding their thick fleeces to the shearer, the gliding 
 waters, the warbling birds, the holy and healthy sun- 
 tanned peasant bride, who piles up the logs for her 
 tired husband's return and milks cows and sets out 
 the evening meal of lamb or kid with olives, 
 mallows, and a jar of wine — who observed them 
 more lovingly than Alphius the Usurer ? And 
 sweet it is, he adds, while he sups, to watch the sheep 
 hastening home to the fold and the weary oxen 
 dragging from the fields the inverted ploughshare. 
 Very sweet, no doubt, but to-morrow he will be 
 back at money-lending. 
 
 Horace made only one real study of a husband- 
 man, but it is remarkable for original insight. With 
 few but sure touches he fixes the type of the peasant 
 who, after all, has the best right to represent his 
 class ; a type far removed from the open-mouthed 
 yokel to be so well described by Calpurnius, who 
 would not have missed the show in the Arena for all 
 the kine of Lucania. The Ofellus of Horace has a 
 profound contempt for the luxuries of great cities. 
 His predominating quality is a serious patience ; 
 his single passion is thrift. He is the peasant who 
 paid the French war indemnity out of his savings ; 
 the rustic of whom Euripides wrote : 
 
THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 185 
 
 No showy speaker, but a plain, brave man. 
 
 Who seldom visited the town or courts ; ^ 
 
 A yeoman, one of those who save a land. 
 
 Shrewd, one whose acts with his professions squared ; 
 
 Untainted, and a blameless life he led. 
 
 Ofellus is not, like Melibaeus, consumed by helpless 
 rage at injustice which he cannot fight against. He 
 has realised the fact that man may command his 
 conduct, not his circumstances, and having acquired 
 this knowledge, he lets the learning of the Schools 
 alone. It is a fact that Nature herself is constantly 
 repeating to the tillers of the soil ; they live with 
 her in a primitive relationship which allows no 
 artificial screen to hide her might and their im- 
 potence. A fatalist at heart, Ofellus rises superior 
 to fate. Wealth could give him nothing he cares 
 to have, and he has the sense to see (in which he 
 departs, somewhat, from his modern brother) that 
 wealth is an entirely idle word except in so far as it 
 stands for what it can give. When he owned the 
 land which he now cultivates for the spendthrift 
 soldier who turned him out, he and his children 
 lived no more luxuriously than they do now. No 
 meat was eaten in the house on work-days except a 
 piece of smoked bacon, served with pot-herbs. If 
 a friend came to see him, why, he prepared a reason- 
 able feast, for he was no miser ; but a chicken or a 
 
 1 The Italian peasant will say when he wishes to impress you with his 
 respectability : " I was never in a law-court even as a nvitnesi" 
 
1 86 THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA x 
 
 kid, with figs and grapes and his own pure wine (of 
 which a libation was duly offered to Ceres), made up 
 the bill of fare — not turbot or oysters brought at a 
 ruinous expense from Rome. Now that he and his 
 sons work for hire, their labour places them above 
 want and permits them to lead much the same life 
 as before. Fortune can hurt him no more, while 
 she may easily hurt the spoiler* by robbing him of 
 his ill -acquired acres ; nay, who knows (though 
 Horace does not say so) that Ofellus will not again 
 become the owner of his land if he save long enough 
 while the other wastes ? 
 
 This contribution to the long tale of confisca- 
 tion is characteristic of the poet who at the age 
 of twenty -five (when the satire was written) 
 looked on life already with a calm, unemotional 
 eye, strictly resolved to walk round windmills, not 
 to charge them. His was the wit of a contented 
 heart, as Heine's was the wit of a broken heart. 
 He had not eaten his bread with sorrow, and he 
 did not know the heavenly powers, but what he 
 did know of life and Nature he could express 
 with a felicity that left little more to be said. 
 Horace's feeling for the country had no depths or 
 heights ; it is the feeling of every Roman, from 
 the senator to the tradesman, from the consul to 
 the money-lender. 
 
 The commonness of the taste rendered it a 
 
X THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 187 
 
 sort of bond of union between all classes. How 
 deeply it was ingrained is proved by its continued 
 existence under conditions not, on the face of things, 
 favourable to it. The increasing mania for sensa- 
 tional and often bloodthirsty spectacles, and the still 
 more ominous increase of unbridled self-indulgence, 
 would seem incompatible with the enjoyment of the 
 country ; yet Martial, who wrote when the vines of 
 Vesuvius were freshly covered with ashes, makes us 
 feel that rural scenes and life were as much appreci- 
 ated as ever. It is true that he somewhere hints 
 that the master may carry corruption among his 
 dependants, as the French seigneur was accused of 
 doing among his vassals ; an idea which would have 
 repelled Horace, who always dwelt on the pure 
 morality of the peasantry. There are, however, 
 several rural descriptions in his Epigrams that are 
 wholly pure and bright. We gather that, Spaniard 
 though he was, he took a sound Roman interest in 
 agriculture. He viewed it from the farmer's point 
 of view, which, then as now, was not invariably 
 exhilarating. Martial complains of over-cheapness ; 
 the husbandman was left to feed on his own produce, 
 and as there was more than he could eat, much lay 
 running to waste. There were places where wine 
 sold for less than water; corn, depreciated by the 
 Egyptian trade as it is now by importations from 
 America and India, sold for 8d. a bushel. Even 
 
1 88 THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 
 
 when the harvest was abundant, the cultivator made 
 next to nothing. \ 
 
 But in spite of discouraging statistics, farming 
 was a pleasant occupation for the proprietor who 
 was a little of a capitalist. There is a secret satisfac- 
 tion in being your own provision merchant. What 
 a fool is a man like ApoUinaris, exclaims Martial, 
 '' who has a lovely country-seat and never goes near 
 it," leaving the bailiffs and caretakers to fatten on 
 the riches of the rare fish-ponds and all the other 
 plenty ! Martial himself proposed to give a country 
 banquet composed of lettuces and leeks, eggs cut in 
 slices, cabbage, chicken, and a ham which has already 
 appeared three times at table. If any one should 
 scorn the menu, let him, after an uninterrupted spell 
 of town-life, go straight to a very homely farm- 
 house, by preference belonging to him. How excel- 
 lent he will think his first meal. He will say that 
 everything tastes alike in towns, while this dish of 
 eggs and bacon, cooked over a wood fire, has a 
 flavour denied to the French chefs "faisans de Boheme, 
 sauce P^rigueux." The illusion may not last long, 
 but as long as it lasts it is complete. Martial laughs 
 at his friend Bassus, who plays pretty at farming and 
 owns a vast town-house out of town where nothing is 
 to be had. Poultry, vegetables, and fruit are all 
 brought from the city, and the garden, full of laurels, 
 will certainly never put temptation in the way of the 
 
THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 189 
 
 local pilferer. With this gorgeous mansion he con- 
 trasts Faustinas' real rural homestead at Baiae. There 
 you will not see a park laid out with groves of myrtle, 
 plane-trees, and clipped box-hedges. Utility reigns 
 supreme, but it is that utility which charms. Close- 
 pressed heaps of corn fill every corner, and the wine- 
 casks are put out to air, smelling strongly of the old 
 vintage. Hither, in the late autumn, the rough 
 vine-dresser brings the ripe grapes. From the valleys 
 comes a sound of the bellowing bulls. The farmyard 
 muster roams at large — cocks and hens, geese and 
 peacocks, even pheasants and partridges, which seem 
 to have been reared at home ; the turrets are loud 
 with pigeons ; the pigs run after the steward's wife ; 
 the lamb bleats as it follows its mother. ** Young 
 house-bred slaves, sleek as milk, surround the fire.'* 
 The steward does not go idling about or playing 
 games ; his amusements are useful — he fishes, or nets 
 birds, or goes a-hunting. When work is over, 
 friends and neighbours look in and partake of a 
 cordial but informal hospitality ; there is enough and 
 to spare for all. The cheerful-faced rustic comes to 
 pay his respects, nor does he come empty-handed ; 
 he carries white honey, or conical cheeses, while tall 
 girls, daughters of honest husbandmen, bring their 
 mothers' offerings in osier baskets. These were 
 presents, not tributes. There was slavery, not serf- 
 dom. The free peasant might be dispossessed by 
 
I90 THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 
 
 the State, but he was not browbeaten, still less was 
 he knouted by the lord of the manor. 
 
 We think of the little gifts of the English villagers 
 to a popular squire, or, rather, to his wife — the 
 gleaning-cake, the basket of damsons, the guinea- 
 fowls' eggs, the elderberry wine, not to speak of 
 pen-wipers, kettle-holders, and mysterious card-trays 
 made of cloves and acorns. The giver understands 
 almost as well as the receiver that the gift is value- 
 less in itself, but valuable as a piece of symbolism. 
 And what it symbolises is not subjection but free- 
 dom ; the right of the freeborn freely to manifest 
 their goodwill. 
 
 If the rustic offerings spoken of by Martial mark 
 one kindly custom, another is revealed by the drop- 
 ping in of neighbours to share the evening meal. 
 We must suppose that Faustinus was a rich and 
 well-educated Roman, yet, like Horace before him, 
 he welcomed the society of his provincial neighbours ; 
 he could doubtless " talk of veals," as Dr. Johnson 
 recommended a curate to learn to do, the young 
 man having complained that in his part of the country 
 calves (which were there called " veals ") formed the 
 staple conversation. Apart from common interests, 
 there was then in Italy, as there is now, a sort of 
 mental unity between all classes, an intellectual 
 common ground independent of position or education. 
 
 " Of all the nations of Europe," wrote Charles 
 
X THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 191 
 
 Lever in 1864, "I know of none, save Italy, in 
 which the characters are the same in every class and 
 gradation. The appeal you would make to the 
 Italian noble must be the same you would address to 
 the humble peasant on his property. The point of 
 view is invariably identical ; the sympathies are 
 always alike. . . . To this trait, of whose existence 
 Cavour well knew, was owing the marvellous unani- 
 mity in the nation on the last war with Austria. 
 The appeal to the prince could be addressed and 
 was addressed to the peasant. There was not an 
 argument that spoke to the one which was not re- 
 echoed in the heart of the other. In fact, the chain 
 that binds the social condition of Italy is shorter 
 than elsewhere, and the extreme links are less remote 
 from each other than with most nations of Europe." 
 It is impossible to speak of the Roman villa with- 
 out mentioning the name of Martial's benefactor, 
 Pliny the Younger, to whom we owe such full and 
 glowing accounts of his various country-houses, that 
 some homeless letterato once spitefully said that he 
 gave the idea of an auctioneer anxious to dispose of 
 the property. Pliny has a formal right to figure 
 among Roman poets, though we possess none of the 
 verses which his wife sang so sweetly (the wise 
 woman ; no wonder that he adored her). They were 
 sung at Rome, too, and even at Athens, which pleased 
 the author, who confesses that he also hummed them 
 
192 THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 
 
 to himself now and then, which perhaps means rather 
 frequently. One would like to hear the music of 
 the drawing-room ballad of the Roman world. 
 Pliny does not explain who wrote it ; it may have 
 been the rule, as in Elizabethan times, to write verses 
 for well-known airs so that every one could sing them. 
 He speaks modestly about his poems, but it is certain 
 that he cherished a carefully watered little hope of 
 their pleasing posterity. It is probably well for his 
 fame that we are excused from passing judgment on 
 them ; he was too good an orator to be a good poet. 
 Montaigne could forgive Cicero for writing verses, 
 but not for publishing them. Still, this literary 
 employment of the leisure of eminent Romans is 
 always interesting to remember. 
 
 Poet or no poet, he is the very prince of eulogists 
 of the country-house. It was the beginning and the 
 end of his dearest pleasures, the port whence he 
 started, the haven to which he returned. Wherever 
 he was, his thoughts wandered to his father's mansion 
 at the end of the lofty avenue in a suburb of Como 
 — " Your delight and mine," as he calls it in a letter 
 to Canerius Rufus. It is well worth remarking how 
 from his earliest youth this Italian gentleman was 
 deeply impressed with the duty of the cultured and 
 well-off resident in a country town or rural village 
 to make its interests his own, to endeavour to benefit 
 his local neighbours, both the poor and those of a 
 
X THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 193 
 
 higher but yet not affluent class. His first essays 
 at the bar were made in pleading the suits of the 
 people of Tifernum-on-Tiber (his mother's place), 
 with whom he had been a great favourite in his boy- 
 hood. When honours and comparative wealth came 
 with his appointment as Consul he thought im- 
 mediately of building a temple for them at his own 
 expense, *' not to be outdone in affection " ; and on 
 its completion he took a long journey to be present 
 when it was consecrated. At Como he founded a 
 school, so that the fathers of families might not be 
 obliged to send their sons to Milan to be educated, 
 and he sought the help of Tacitus for finding good 
 masters. He was always encouraging his father-in- 
 law, who was a munificent giver, in works of public 
 utility. That he was kind to his dependants is shown 
 by many traits ; he could well apply to himself 
 Homer's line, " He had a father's gentleness for his 
 people." When his slaves died he wept ; his only 
 consolation was that he had enfranchised them so 
 that they died free. He sent his servant Zosimus, 
 who was threatened with consumption, to pass the 
 winter in Egypt, and on his return, better but not 
 well, he arranged for him to go to a place in the 
 south of France, where he might try the milk-cure. 
 He gave a farm worth ;C8oo to his old nurse. 
 
 In addition to his inherited palace, Pliny built two 
 villas on the lake of Como — one higher up, which he 
 
 o 
 
194 THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 
 
 called the ** Tragedy," from which you could see the 
 lateen sails of the fishing-boats skimming the lake at 
 dawn ; the other, " Comedy," on the extreme edge 
 of the shore, so that one could fish from one's bed.^ 
 The Como property had the ineffable charm of early 
 associations ; it afforded fishing, hunting, and boating, 
 and its sweet tranquillity invited study ; but Pliny's 
 most enviable country-seats were at Laurentum and 
 in the Tuscan Apennines. In addition to these he 
 had a pied-h-terre at Tusculum and villas at Tibur 
 and Praeneste. Still he did not pass for a millionaire. 
 The house in Tuscany was built in an amphitheatre 
 of mountains, covered with ancient trees and skirted 
 by a belt of precious vineyards, below which, again, 
 were pastures. The land abounded in song-birds, 
 flowers, and springs of fresh water. Here the house 
 was turned to the south ; from the loggia you saw on 
 one side large and fruitful fields, on the other well- 
 kept lawns, roses from Tarentum, Pompeian fig-trees, 
 and whatever Italy could provide of best. In a cool 
 court a perpetual jet of water freshened the air. A 
 friend wrote to Pliny to dissuade him from going to 
 his Tuscan estate in summer, as he thought that it 
 must be unhealthy ; Pliny answered that, although 
 the coast (the Maremma) is not only unhealthy but 
 pestilential, there was no fear of illness in his high 
 
 1 The intermittent fountain, about which he was so curious, still rises near 
 what is called (but without historical warrant) the " Villa Pliniana." 
 
THE ROMANES VILLEGGIATURA 195 
 
 valley, where people attained great ages and all seasons 
 were delightful. The spring, perhaps, was the most 
 perfect time ; but there was no great heat in summer, 
 and the rather sharp winters could be borne, as the 
 house was artificially heated as well as being full of 
 sun. Of course hot and cold baths on the most 
 approved system were ready at all hours. The recep- 
 tion rooms were arranged to afford the greatest variety 
 of view ; one of them was decorated in the Pompeian 
 style, with a marble dado surmounted by wall- 
 paintings of trees and birds. Out of doors tennis 
 and riding gave the needful exercise. Pliny was 
 more proud of the riding-ground than of any other 
 thing connected with the villa ; it was surrounded by 
 old plane-trees, linked together with festoons of ivy. 
 At its extreme end it formed a semicircle, cypresses 
 taking the place of the plane-treas, and inside these 
 was a hedge of roses. 
 
 Laurentum was in Pliny's time the Brighton or 
 Newport of Rome. It was approached by two 
 pleasant roads, passing through dense woods or 
 broad, open spaces, enlivened by horses, sheep, and 
 oxen, as the Campagna is now. The distance was 
 not too great for you to run down after finishing 
 your day's business in the capital. Scipio once 
 picked up shells along that shore as an ease from 
 public cares. 
 
 Pliny's house at Laurentum was what he called 
 
196 THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 
 
 unpretentious, but comfort had been most carefully 
 studied, and even the servants' rooms were so neat 
 that guests might have occupied them. The villa 
 was flooded with air and light ; it was all doors 
 and windows. A glazed gallery led from the 
 courtyard to the dining-room ; behind were woods 
 and mountains ; in front, the Mediterranean. There 
 was a tower with a splendid view. Pliny often had 
 his dinner carried up to this tower, just as in the 
 Apennines he would dine, seated on a marble seat, 
 beside the marble basin of clear water at the end 
 of his garden. What a delicate pleasure in life is 
 shown by the little fact of these wandering meals. 
 I knew a Lombard nobleman who had the same 
 fancy ; he even once gave a dinner-party in a boat 
 moored in front of his villa on the lake of Gar da. 
 
 Chosen books to read and re-read stocked the 
 shelves of Pliny's seaside library, and here, too, 
 there was a tennis-court as well as a magnificent 
 swimming-bath. Like all Romans of that date, 
 Pliny had a passion for collecting, but he did not 
 put his most valuable treasures in the Laurentine 
 house, which he wished to keep *' modest and simple." 
 One of his best " finds," a Corinthian brass statue 
 of an old man, he sent to the Temple of Jupiter, 
 desiring only that his name and titles should be 
 inscribed on the pedestal. A modern donor would 
 not accompany the gift by that request, but, perhaps, 
 
THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA 197 
 
 he would be exceedingly disappointed if the thing 
 asked for were left undone. 
 
 Hadrian's " villa," near Tivoli, which was seven 
 miles round, and Diocletian's "retreat," the ruins 
 of which form the town of Spalato, show the Roman 
 taste for the country run wild and grown monstrous. 
 After the Empire fell, for a while terror and in- 
 security drove men to stay in towns when they 
 could not build for themselves fortified castles, the 
 antithesis of the villa. But with the first opportunity 
 the old love reappeared. In other countries the 
 castle gave birth to the exclusive country-seat where 
 the great noble lived as a king. The town-house, 
 if there was one, was a secondary affair ; often 
 there was none, as is the case to this day in Austria 
 and Hungary. In Italy, on the other hand, there 
 was a reversion to the Roman arrangement ; the 
 house in the city was the most important, but it 
 was supplemented by more or less numerous, more 
 or less splendid, villas. Not to have two houses 
 was destitution. Hence the crown of villas around 
 any characteristically Italian town ; Brescia, or 
 Vicenza, or Trento. The untravelled Italian looks 
 in amazement at the well-to-do Englishman who 
 admits that he has only one home. An ItaHan 
 " person of quality," who was obliged for the sake 
 of economy to spend all the year at his villa, might 
 complain as Browning makes him complain ; but 
 
198 THE ROMAN'S VILLEGGIATURA x 
 
 were he forced to pass twelve months in the vaunted 
 city square there would possibly be suicide instead 
 of sighs. This time the poet, who dived deep in 
 the Italian mind, only brings to the surface half a 
 truth. 
 
XI 
 
 NATURE IN THE LAST LATIN POETS 
 
 The century of the first Christian and the last 
 pagan Caesar witnessed a truce of God between the 
 old order and the new — a truce not always kept. 
 The masses were loth to keep it, but among educated 
 men the principle of tolerance found wider acceptance 
 than in any other time till our own. Congenial 
 spirits joined in intellectual marriage, at whichever 
 altar they worshipped. Equality was more advanced 
 socially than politically, reversing what usually 
 happens, for in general people persuade themselves 
 to give their religious opponents the right to exist 
 long before they are ready to ask them to dinner. 
 Such a period favoured the cultivation of poetry, 
 though not the growth of a great poetry ; it produced 
 elaboration rather than strength, scholarship rather 
 than originality, art for art's sake rather than art as 
 the irrepressible expression of a nation's manhood. 
 The one great piece of literature that bears the date 
 of the fourth century was not poetry, but prose ; it 
 is the Confessions of St. Augustine. 
 
 199 
 
200 NATURE IN THE xi 
 
 The poets of that period were impelled to write 
 about Nature — a neutral theme on which they could 
 all alike write, but what they wrote is often spoilt by 
 conceit or formalism. Sometimes, however, through 
 the husk of conventionality we catch glimpses of the 
 great undiscovered treasure of modern sentiment. 
 The poet-professor of Bordeaux, Ausonius, describes 
 scenery in his charming poem on the river Moselle, 
 very much as a modern writer with a gift for word- 
 painting would describe it. He renews the golden 
 hours when we made the excursion from imperial 
 Treves. As we read his enthusiastic verses we 
 actually breathe once more the elastic air and see the 
 swift-rushing waters coursing before us ; we pass the 
 noble cities, the smiling villas, the woods and richly 
 cultivated slopes ; we hear the gay throng of vine- 
 dressers calling to one another, and the river boatmen 
 singing mocking songs to the country-folk who 
 return home along the banks in the late evening. 
 The river abounded in fish, whose pretty sports were 
 described affectionately by Ausonius — not, alas ! 
 without a cannibalistic relish, for he was very fond of 
 good living. Where can we find a more vivid word- 
 picture of the magical effects of reflections than in 
 the following passage ^ 
 
 The blue depths give back the river's w^ooded banks, the 
 waters seem full of leaves and the stream planted with vines. 
 When the evening star lengthens out the shadow^s and casts 
 
XI LAST LATIN POETS 201 
 
 the verdant hillside on the breast of the Moselle, what glow- 
 ing hues tinge the quivering surface ! All the slopes swim 
 in the ripples which hold them suspended ; the vine-wreaths 
 — that are not there — tremble, the grapes swell beneath the 
 crystal water. The deluded boatman counts the number of 
 the young shoots as he rows his bark skifF among the Httle 
 waves to and fro across the outline of the reflections where 
 the image of the hill loses itself in the water. 
 
 Ausonius might have said with a character in 
 Balzac's Medecin de campagne : " Ah, monsieur, la 
 vie en plein air, les beaut^s du ciel et de la terre, 
 s'accordent si bien avec la perfection et les d61ices de 
 I'dme." His tenderest thoughts are linked with 
 memories of natural things. When Paulinus does 
 not answer his letters, he reminds him that all nature 
 is responsive ; the hedge rustles as the bees despoil 
 it, the reeds murmur sweetly to the stream, the 
 tremulous tresses of the pines hold converse with the 
 winds. It was a pathetic friendship, this, between 
 two men of irreconcilable temperaments — the light- 
 hearted Hedonist and the god-intoxicated saint. 
 Both were of the same religion, for it seems un- 
 necessary to have ever doubted that Ausonius was 
 nominally a Christian, though he had far less in 
 common with Paulinus than with a pagan man of the 
 world such as Symmachus. He loved him, but the 
 saying that to love is to understand is often tragically 
 wrong. Ausonius did not understand his former 
 pupil even well enough to gauge the abyss there was 
 
202 NATURE IN THE xi 
 
 between them. He looked on his abandonment of 
 the world, in which no career would have been closed 
 to him, as an inexplicable caprice. Paulinus refrained 
 from argument ; he knew that what men are they 
 are — had he not given in to something very like the 
 sacrifice of a pig to console the peasants for the loss 
 of their ancient rites ? He did not rebuke Ausonius 
 for his frivolity, but after a time he wrote no more. 
 In what seems to have been his final letter, without 
 any reference to a last farewell he takes leave of his 
 old friend and master with the promise that he will 
 cherish him even after death, " for if the soul, sur- 
 viving the dissolution of our mortal coil, is sustained 
 by its heavenly origin, it must keep its sentiments 
 and affections even as it keeps its existence : // can 
 no more forget than die^ hut must live and remember for 
 every A beautiful saying, worthy of the saint who 
 was one day to be followed to the grave by all the 
 Jews, pagans, and heretics of the remote South 
 Italian town to which he had exiled himself, and 
 where he had spread the faith by love, not hatred. 
 
 On his side, Ausonius lived out his blameless if 
 worldly life, and got a great deal of enjoyment out of 
 it. That was a good time for literary men, and the 
 Bordeaux professor rose to be Consul. He has the 
 refined taste, however, to prize beyond everything 
 the estate of moderate extent on the banks of the 
 Garonne which his father and grandfather and great- 
 
LAST LATIN POETS 203 
 
 grandfather possessed before him. A devoted son, 
 he was grieved when the day came for him to be 
 lord of his " ancestral kingdom " ; though his father 
 was old, yet he died too soon. ** When people love 
 each other," says Ausonius, with a touch of the real 
 tenderness which was his best gift, "it is so sweet to 
 enjoy things together." But this filial piety only 
 made him the more attached to his inheritance. It 
 is amusing to find him, like so many Roman literary 
 men, the hopeless victim of his steward. Philon, the 
 steward, was a Greek, who insisted on being called 
 eirlTpoTTo^. His hair was wild and his appearance 
 lamentable, but his pretensions were enormous. He 
 cursed the gods when the crops went wrong through 
 his carelessness, and, at last, occupied himself wholly 
 with trafficking, racing from market to market, from 
 village to village, and imposing alike on the buyers 
 and on his master, who seems to have had an amiable 
 weakness for being cheated. 
 
 Ausonius once wrote a description of town-life 
 which throws light on the Roman longing for rural 
 repose. The town was a minor town in Aquitania 
 to which the poet had gone on business ; he is re- 
 solved to get away as soon as he can after Easter, and 
 heartily glad he will be. Who has not pictured, as 
 he walked in the streets of Pompeii, the dignified 
 calm of an antique city.^^ No bicycles, no electric 
 tram-cars, no automobiles ; only men in togas moving 
 
204 NATURE IN THE xi 
 
 with deliberate steps. Ausonius lifts the curtain on 
 a different scene. In the midst of the clamours of 
 the mob and the vulgar rows at the street corners 
 one is seized with disgust at the seething human mass, 
 swaying up and down the narrow streets and blocking 
 up even the squares. A whirl of confused cries wakes 
 the echoes : " tene," *' feri," " due," " da," " cave." 
 Here there is an escaping pig, there a mad dog ready 
 to spring ; in another place a scrimmage with badly 
 harnessed oxen. In vain you shut yourself up in the 
 most retired nook in the house ; the cries pierce through 
 the walls. Does it not make you long for the sweet 
 leisure of a rural retreat, where you can write cart- 
 loads of poetry with no other provision than the 
 poet^s only luggage — blank paper ? 
 
 Martial gave not much better an account of Rome, 
 where he groaned over the cries of the baker at night 
 and the exasperating " two and two make four " of 
 the school children in the morning, for the Roman 
 schools were open to the streets except for a curtain, 
 and the ears of the passers-by were " assassinated " by 
 the repetition of the class lessons. 
 
 In Proven9al poetry and afterwards in the early 
 literature of France, there was a mass of verse in 
 which the spring, the dawn, flowers, and leaves were 
 played with for the mere pleasure of naming pleasant 
 things. It was a taste as old as Anacreon, a copy of 
 one of whose songs is a folk-song to-day in Provence. 
 
XI LAST LATIN POETS 205 
 
 But it was not a Roman taste, the seriousness of the 
 Roman mind rejected the use of words as pretty toys. 
 Ausonius wrote about the dawn and flowers as if he 
 had been one of the Pleiades. In spite of what by a 
 pun he called his " Italian name," he was, in truth, 
 one of those Frenchmen, before there was a France, in 
 whom Mommsen recognises all the characteristics of 
 their modern representatives. He gave Ronsard the 
 model for his most famous poem, a forgotten service, as 
 many have read " Mignonne, allons voir la Rose," but 
 few recollect where it came from. Critics have even 
 tried to rob poor Ausonius of his rose-poem because 
 it is " too good," and to bestow it on Virgil (who 
 never wrote anything in the same vein), but this 
 unkind attempt seems to have been abandoned. Here 
 is the poem : 
 
 It was the spring ; the dawn a softer breeze 
 Sent through the chill air of the passing night, 
 And Nature prophesied the golden light, 
 
 Though the mist lingered yet among the trees. 
 
 I wandered through the garden drinking in 
 The new life of the morning ; from the stalks 
 Hung the dew-laden leaves across the walks. 
 
 And the wet roses watched the day begin. 
 
 Did Dawn take from the Rose its vermeil hue, 
 Or did the new-born Day make blush the flower ? 
 Each wears the beauty of the morning hour, 
 
 To each the ruddy tint and heavenly dew. 
 
2o6 NATURE IN THE xi 
 
 Of each is Venus queen, the flower, the star, 
 
 And e'en one perfume dwells perchance in each ; 
 But roses spread their sweets within our reach. 
 
 While the dawn's sweets are lost in vaults afar. 
 
 The little life of roses lasts an hour ; 
 
 Age kills them, for they learn not to grow old ; 
 
 The bud the morning star had seen unfold 
 The evening star sees droop and fade away. 
 
 Maiden ! gather the newly opened rose, 
 
 And gather it or ere thy youth be past. 
 
 For if the rose's bloom will perish fast, 
 The bloom of maidens all as quickly goes. 
 
 Before Ronsard, Bramante, better known as the 
 architect of St. Peter's than as a sonneteer, paraphrased 
 Ausonius with or without knowing it : 
 
 Dunque, mentre che dura il tempo verde, 
 Non far come quel fior che 'n su la pianta 
 Senza frutto nessun sue frondi perde. 
 
 Che quando il corpo in piu vccchiezza viene, 
 Vih di sua gioventti si gloria e vanta, 
 Vedendosi aver speso i giorni bene. 
 
 After Ronsard came Spenser : 
 
 Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time. 
 
 After Spenser, the inimitable parson with the gay 
 pagan soul who was surely own brother to Ausonius ; 
 after Herrick, Edmund Waller, rather gruesome 
 than gay, and in the train of these immortals, a host 
 of poets and preachers with baskets full of roses and 
 an assortment of morals. 
 
XI LAST LATIN POETS 
 
 Each morn a thousand Roses brings, you say ; 
 Yes, but where leaves the Rose of yesterday ? 
 
 207 
 
 The poems of Ausonius are buried with yesterday's 
 roses, a fate that would not have distressed him 
 overmuch had he foreseen it, for he lived in the 
 present and wrote for his friends more than for 
 fame. He would have still enjoyed his morning 
 walk and the sight of the dew on the cabbages. 
 There were cabbages in that garden of his — a confes- 
 sion which honesty compels. Ausonius put his 
 cabbages in his garden and in his verses, and did not 
 think they spoilt either. It was an '* old English " 
 garden, with shrubs and roses and grass and vegetables 
 mixed together. Who first made a walled garden in 
 Europe for flowers alone ? Probably the Moors. 
 The anti-utilitarian instinct of the Oriental could not 
 endure confusing a plaisance with a potager. 
 
 At the end of the fourth century the country- 
 house was still the Roman's ideal of felicity. 
 Symmachus, the correspondent and ardent admirer 
 of Ausonius, had fifteen villas in Latium and 
 Campania. Like Pliny the Younger, his preference 
 was for Laurentum, but it seems to have been 
 forsaken since Pliny's time, as Symmachus says that 
 his villa " is not in such a wild, remote spot as people 
 think." He liked to hunt the wild boar whose 
 descendants fall to the gun of the king of Italy at 
 Castel Porziano. In summer he leaves the sea for 
 
2o8 NATURE IN THE xi 
 
 the hills, where, of course, he has several charming 
 retreats. He has been accused of not appreciating 
 Nature because he speaks of pure air and leisure for 
 reading as the greatest attractions of a country life, 
 but he took care to carry his books to the loveliest 
 places in the world. 
 
 The great administrators of the Roman Empire 
 had that love of studious ease, that conception of 
 literary work as rest^ which has characterised many 
 English statesmen and some, at least, of the British 
 pro-consuls in India, as, for instance, Mountstuart 
 Elphinstone, and more recently Sir Alfred Comyn 
 Lyall, than whom it would be difficult to imagine a 
 closer counterpart of the Roman public servant who 
 could both think and do — scholar, poet, soldier on 
 occasion, tried man of action, even the trend of his 
 mind seemed to agree with the resemblance ; he had 
 a shade of that antique melancholy which sprang 
 from a conviction of the worth of this fleeting life, 
 not from discontent with it. He was the only man I 
 have ever known who gave me the idea that he would 
 have been entirely at home in the Roman world. 
 
 Claudian, of Egyptian birth but purely Roman in 
 spirit, approached far more nearly than Ausonius to 
 the perfect style of the old poets, whose religion 
 remained for him the only faith ; it was natural 
 that he had fewer intuitions of modern sentiment, 
 but two out of his many idylls form distinct 
 
XI LAST LATIN POETS 209 
 
 landmarks in the history of rustic poetry. The 
 idyll had been successfully revived by Calpurnius 
 a hundred years before, in eleven charming little 
 poems, which show, however, the predominating 
 Virgilian influence. In these two pastorals Claudian 
 struck out a line for himself ; he excluded all make- 
 believe, all prettiness — he is simply realistic. One 
 feels sure that he met the identical old man whom 
 he describes in the following lines on some excursion 
 to the country round VirgiFs lake, which doubtless 
 he would have visited during his residence at Milan : 
 
 Blest he whose life in fields paternal spent, 
 
 With one same house as boy or man content ; 
 
 Propt now by staff on ground where erst he crawled, 
 
 Of his old home the ages are recalled. 
 
 Him has not fate through countless turmoils led, 
 
 Not to drink foreign waters has he sped : 
 
 Merchant nor soldier, waves nor wars with awe 
 
 Have scared him, nor hoarse clamours of the law : 
 
 Shunning affairs and cities howe'er nigh. 
 
 With freer glance he gazes on the sky ; 
 
 By crops, not consuls, he computes the year : 
 
 Apples show autumn, flowers that spring is near. 
 
 His field both hides and shows the solar ray, 
 
 And by the sun's round he divides the day. 
 
 From what small germ the vast oak sprang he knows, 
 
 And marks the grove that with his own growth grows ; 
 
 Deems far as Ind Verona close at hand, 
 
 Benacus' lake far as the Red Sea strand. 
 
 Yet with firm force, strong arms that never fail. 
 
 The third race sees the grandsire stout and hale. 
 
 Others may roam and distant Spain explore. 
 
 This man lives longer though they travel more. 
 
 P 
 
2IO NATURE IN THE xi 
 
 The old man is in easy though modest circum- 
 stances ; his narrow bounds are those of choice, not 
 of necessity. I knew an old gentleman who, living 
 within a few hours of Venice, had never seen the sea 
 nor wished to see it. But he died with the nineteenth 
 century; was it the last that will produce such types? 
 
 Claudian's poem on the " Gallic Mules " is even 
 more original than the one just quoted : 
 
 See the tame natives of the rapid Rhone, 
 Loose or in harness, like obedience own ; 
 A different order marks a different road. 
 They know which path to take without the goad. 
 Though each from the slack rein may distant be 
 And each from the hard yoke its neck could free, 
 Yet their hard toil with patience still they bear 
 And cries barbaric mind, with docile ear. 
 Their master's distant voice command retains. 
 The human voice sufficing 'stead of reins ; 
 When scattered this collects them, and again 
 Scatters, and makes them speed, or speed restrain. 
 "To left " the order — to the left they go ; 
 The call changed "To the right," and so they do. 
 Unforced by bonds, submissive, not afraid. 
 Servants, not slaves, nor fierce by freedom made. 
 They, like in will and like in tawny hue. 
 Dragging the creaking wain their course pursue. 
 Wonder no more that Orpheus' song could sway 
 Wild beasts, since cattle Gallic words obey. 
 
 There is other evidence that the Gauls were cele- 
 brated for their skill with mules and horses ; Varro 
 says, "Galli appositissimi maxime ad iumenta." 
 The pleased interest which Claudian takes in the 
 
XI 
 
 LAST LATIN POETS 211 
 
 doings of the clever creatures reminds one that, 
 though the Romans cannot be acquitted of in- 
 sensibility to animal suffering, they could yet be 
 charmed by any instance of superior intelligence in 
 animals. Statius told the story of a tame lion who 
 knew how to come out of its home and go back to it 
 without guidance ; when it died, the Senate and 
 people of Rome were in despair, and even Caesar 
 wept a tear. 
 
 Of the other late Latin poets in their relation to 
 outdoor life, the one most worthy of notice is 
 Rutilius, because he was more free from convention- 
 ality than the rest. Born in Gaul at the beginning 
 of the fifth century, he composed a voyage pittores que ^ 
 narrating a journey from Rome to his native country, 
 which was then convulsed by barbarian inroads. 
 " When the fatherland is tranquil," he exclaims, " it 
 is pardonable to neglect it, but in its misfortunes it 
 has a right to all our devotion." He was very sorry 
 to leave the " beloved climate " of Rome, and before 
 setting out he kissed its sacred gates. He took the 
 sea route on account of inundations in the plains, and 
 also to avoid encounters with Gothic freebooters, 
 whose devastations rendered the roads dangerous. 
 His journey seems to have been the slowest on 
 record ; either from stress of weather or want of 
 wind, or because it was hot or because it was cold, 
 the ship was always putting in to shore, and Rutilius 
 
212 NATURE IN THE 
 
 XI 
 
 and his fellow-travellers profited by the delays to 
 explore the coast. Sometimes they slept on land in 
 a slight, improvised shelter, after warming themselves 
 by a fire of fragrant myrtle branches — it was October 
 and the nights were chilly. On one of these 
 occasions they visited a town in Tuscany called 
 Falerium, famous for its beautiful white oxen, which 
 were highly prized in Rome for sacrificial use. No 
 one was indoors, for it was the celebration of the re- 
 birth of the germ after the fruit is gathered and the 
 leaves have fallen ; the hidden, mysterious renovation 
 of Nature : 
 
 The merry folk, dispersed in country lanes, 
 Solaced with joyous rites their weary hearts. 
 
 Because that day Osiris life regains 
 And life to every living thing imparts. 
 
 Keats had never read those lines ; yet he might 
 have been thinking of them when he wrote, in the 
 wonderful ode which breathes the spirit of antiquity 
 pure and undefiled : 
 
 What little town by river or sea-shore 
 Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel 
 Is emptied of its folk this pious morn ? 
 
 In exploring the country round Falerium Rutilius 
 finds a farm, a charming place with a coppice at the 
 back and a fine fish-pond, broad and deep, in which 
 you could see the fish playing about. It would 
 appear that the poet and his companions were amus- 
 
LAST LATIN POETS 213 
 
 ing themselves by stirring the water when they were 
 discovered by the owner, who resented their intrusion, 
 and declared that they were ruining his trees, his 
 pond, his fish, all that was his. A modern proprietor 
 might not be much better pleased with a party of 
 tourists who were making exceedingly free use of his 
 domain, but for the Roman the stranger was sacred. 
 This farmer (apparently a very good farmer too) was, 
 to use Rutilius* uncivil description, " a churlish Jew, 
 a sort of wild beast, unfit for human intercourse," 
 and the offended Gaul screams his invective : 
 " Wretched race, mother of all errors, which scrupu- 
 lously keeps the frigid feast of the Sabbath and has a 
 heart more frigid than its religion. They pass in 
 idleness one day in the seven to imitate the fatigue of 
 their God after the creation. The other dreams of 
 these impostors would hardly find credence with 
 children. Would to God that Judaea had never 
 submitted to the arms of Pompey nor to those of 
 Titus. The contagious superstitions of the Jews 
 have only made the more way in consequence ; 
 this vanquished nation has proved fatal to its 
 vanquishers.*' 
 
 Fatal to its vanquishers! **Qu'il est beau," 
 wrote Pascal, " de voir, par les yeux de la foi, Darius, 
 Cyrus, Alexandre, les Romains, Pompee, et H6rode, 
 agir sans le savoir pour la gloire de I'Evangile ! " 
 So do extremes meet, the cry of despair and the cry 
 
214 NATURE IN THE xi 
 
 of triumph. Rutilius reveals to us, as by a flash of 
 lightning, a pagan who was not tolerant — quite the 
 contrary. Fresh from the spectacle of a joyous 
 Nature f^te, a vision confronts him of the cold, austere 
 ceremonial of the Hebrew temple. It oppresses and 
 stifles him. The thought of the Jews is confused 
 with the thought of the Christians, whom, like other 
 Romans, he regards as simply a Jewish sect. Presently 
 he comes across some real Christians who have colo- 
 nised the isle of Capraria, near which his ship passes : 
 ** A sort of men more like owls than anything else, 
 calling themselves by the Greek name ' monk.' '' 
 They spend their lives shut up in cells " like vile 
 slaves," whether by order of destiny or by their own 
 morose temperament Rutilius does not know, but he 
 deems it folly to fly from the joys and sorrows of life 
 instead of taking its goods and putting up with its ills. 
 And in this criticism there is a certain discrimina- 
 tion, for without doubt in all times timid souls have 
 sought the cloister less to renounce joy than to shun 
 sorrow, though who can tell if sorrow did not find 
 them out? Happily for Rutilius, he soon forgets 
 Jews and monks in the excitement of a wild boar 
 hunt in the forests near Pisa ; the prize, a splendid 
 boar, is carried home with blowing of horns and 
 songs of mirth, like a stag in the Highlands. Mean- 
 while the sea rises mountains high, and the great 
 white waves break on the sands of Viareggio, on 
 
XI LAST LATIN POETS 215 
 
 which, one day, they were to throw the body of a 
 greater poet ; but the storm subsides and Rutilius can 
 continue his voyage to the Bay of Spezia, where he 
 admires " the marble hills whiter than snow " — words 
 that close his poem as it comes down to us, for 
 the rest is lost. 
 
 Antiquity was already in the article of death. 
 Its last backward look in literature was cast on the 
 peasant, the last of the faithful. Whoever was the 
 author of the Greek romance which goes by the 
 name of the Pastorals of Longus^ he puts forth 
 unconsciously a defence of Paganism where it was 
 strongest — as the interpretation of Nature to simple 
 folk whose toil it consecrated and whose minds it 
 satisfied. He shows that degeneration had not 
 invaded the country ; Daphnis and Chloe are as 
 innocent as Paul and Virginia, and far more innocent 
 than the splendid dames and knights of the great 
 cycle of Christian romance, in which not the dawn 
 of love but its sultry meridian formed the text. 
 
 But just because the Roman peasant was not 
 debased, he felt little need to raise himself; just 
 because his religion was tangibly real to him, he 
 wanted no other. No European peasant, with the 
 possible exception of the Celt, ever had the nostalgia 
 of the Unseen known to Hebrew shepherds and Arab 
 camel-drivers. 
 
 In the towns, not in the country, the Christian 
 
2i6 NATURE IN LAST LATIN POETS xi 
 
 Church found the ground prepared for it. The 
 idea of a divine brotherhood appealed to slaves ; the 
 idea of morally obligatory self-denial appealed to 
 men sick of self-indulgence, not only in the lower 
 but in the higher sense — indulgence in the appetites 
 of the mind, not only in those of the body ; the 
 presentation of a Perfect Object of loving service 
 appealed to the innate altruism of women ; the 
 promise of a peace which passeth all understanding 
 came as music to a society penetrated by the unrest 
 of an expiring epoch. And, it may be, chief among 
 the factors which prepared the great change was the 
 passionate desire to pierce the veil of death and 
 clasp hands once more : 
 
 Une immense esperance a traverse la terre. 
 
XII 
 
 TRANSFORMATION 
 
 When the violet rocks of Paxos come into sight 
 between the blue of sky and sea after leaving Corfu, 
 the traveller must be cast in an insensible mould 
 who feels no strong emotion. Here it was, close 
 by the isle of Paxos, that nineteen hundred years 
 ago Ionian sailors heard uttered by an extraordinary 
 voice the words : " Pan is dead." So important 
 was the fact thought to be, that a messenger was 
 sent to communicate the news of it to Tiberius. 
 The Emperor's astrologers, questioned as to what it 
 meant, could give no answer. Our modern ears 
 will always hear in that extraordinary voice " the 
 melancholy long withdrawing roar " of the faith of 
 antiquity. 
 
 Pan was the Shelley among the gods. Was there 
 ever a description of a god that so suited a poet as 
 the description of Pan by Euripides suits Shelley ? 
 
 When Pan was a child his father Hermes took 
 
 him into heaven wrapped in a little hare-skin. All 
 
 217 
 
21 8 TRANSFORMATION xn 
 
 the Immortals were delighted, but most of all 
 Dionysus — himself the impersonation of the highest 
 Nature-rapture. 
 
 Pan grew up and exchanged the hare -skin 
 for a lynx-skin and took to the macchia — the 
 wild, open country — dancing among the hyacinth 
 and crocus starred meadows and fiUing the air with 
 sweet laughter. And he was the joy of all, as he 
 had been of the Immortals when he was introduced 
 to them as a droll and charming child. 
 
 Around the evanescent personality of the shepherd 
 
 god floated ideas too evanescent for formulae ; he 
 
 held a place, if not in the belief, at least in the 
 
 imagination of the cultivated Greek, which was the 
 
 larger because it was so undetermined. There was 
 
 a sort of tenderness in the tone in which they spoke 
 
 of him as of early memories that have become dreams. 
 
 The most beautiful prayer that was ever spoken 
 
 outside Palestine was addressed not to Zeus, not to 
 
 Apollo, not to Pallas Athene or Artemis Virgin, but 
 
 to Pan : 
 
 O sweet Pan and ye other gods, whoever ye be, grant to 
 me to be beautiful within. 
 
 So prayed Socrates in his only country walk. 
 
 The shepherd god was the embodiment of the 
 indwelling unconscious joy of Nature. In a sense, 
 he was the embodiment of the peasant himself. 
 Antiquity was not all brightness and sunshine ; over 
 
xii TRANSFORMATION 219 
 
 the cradle of the Greek race floated the immense 
 conception of Necessity with its machine -like 
 punishment of evil, regardless of personal responsi- 
 bility and unaccompanied by the Hebrew promise 
 of an earthly reward to the just man who suffers or 
 the Christian assurance of paradise to the crushed 
 saint. And yet the natural aspiration of the Greek 
 was towards optimism, an aspiration which found 
 its goal in the Platonic vision of a perfect Universe. 
 The side of joy and sun was the side that the peasant 
 knew. For him the gods were gracious and they 
 were near. Some one divine who took an interest 
 in him, some one who lived in the temple in the 
 grove and who was pleasant with little offerings — 
 this was the Greek or Roman peasant's god. A 
 Neapolitan friar once begged of an Englishman a 
 few sous for a wayside shrine. " How can the 
 Queen of Heaven be in want of a few sous ? " asked 
 the Englishman. '' It is nof the Queen of Heaven," 
 answered the friar, " it is the poor Madonna of the 
 grotto who has hardly enough to buy oil for her 
 lamp." So did the peasant of old look upon his 
 familiar gods, and much consolation he drew from 
 his point of view. 
 
 He did not ask the gods that he might be 
 beautiful within ; he asked them just to take care 
 of him and of his crops. The prayer in early Latin 
 preserved by Cato shows us how he prayed : 
 
220 TRANSFORMATION xn 
 
 Father Mars, I pray and implore thee that thou wouldst 
 turn away from us diseases, seen and unseen, destitution, 
 desolation, distress, and violence, and that thou wouldst 
 suffer the fruits of the earth, corn, grass, and young trees, 
 to increase and thrive, and wouldst preserve shepherds and 
 their flocks in safety. 
 
 And surely this prayer also is good, and must 
 have comforted the heart that prayed. In spirit 
 it differs little from a prayer of the Athenians which 
 is quoted by Marcus Aurelius : 
 
 Send down, oh ! send down rain, dear Zeus, on the 
 ploughed fields and plains of the Athenians ! 
 
 With these may be compared the prayer of Aeneas 
 on setting sail for Italy : 
 
 We follow thee, O Holy Power, whoever thou art, and 
 once more with joy obey thy commands. Oh ! be present ; 
 lend us thy propitious aid and light up friendly stars in 
 the heavens. 
 
 We are often invited to compare the beliefs of 
 primitive peoples which have become great with 
 those of people whom we are pleased to call savages, 
 for the purpose of showing that the same rude and 
 repulsive notions are found to be common to both. 
 Instead of always pursuing this plan, we might 
 occasionally try to discover what divine spark unites 
 them, what common glimpse of moral beauty pro- 
 claims them man. Perhaps we should find this 
 golden link in their prayers ; in prayer, a great poet 
 
XII TRANSFORMATION 221 
 
 once said, it is sufficient to "look outside oneself.'* 
 It seems a long way from the ancient Roman 
 cultivator to the Hidery who inhabit certain islets 
 on the north-west coast of America, but the petition 
 of the first to Father Mars is very like the petition of 
 the last to their Sun Totem : 
 
 O thou, good Sun, look down upon us. Shine on us, 
 O Sun. Take away the dark clouds that the rain may 
 cease to fall, because we want to go hunting (or fishing, as 
 the case may be). Look kindly on us, O Sun. Grant us 
 peace in our midst, as well as with our enemies. Again 
 we ask, hear us, O Sun. 
 
 In the religion of the antique peasant the character 
 of a Nature cult still predominated. The poetic 
 attribution to the gods of human passions did not 
 touch him closely ; he was content to know that 
 they represented and governed natural forces which 
 he recognised as in the main benign — this was the great 
 point of superiority in Greek and Roman mythology 
 over the gloomy cults of Asia. The analogy of 
 kindlier and more beautiful physical surroundings 
 doubtless caused the modification — an example of 
 the power of ambient in differentiating races and 
 creeds. The peasant neither had the doubt nor the 
 indifference which disposes to a new faith. Nor had 
 he the moral cravings of a conscience which is always 
 growing. It is less philosophic scepticism than the 
 evolution of new moral ideals that works great 
 
222 TRANSFORMATION xn 
 
 religious changes. The peasant had no ideals, only 
 realities, but they were good realities — respect for 
 the old folks, love of his wife (even though he did 
 lag a little in the town), love of his children, and 
 labour, continual but not hopeless or degrading ; and 
 finally, respect for the gods, who were quite as real 
 to him as men were. The peasant world is made 
 up of the peasant who works and the peasant who 
 does not work. The peasant who gets his work 
 done by women or by imported labourers is fond 
 of fighting, like the Corsican and the Montenegrin ; 
 the peasant who does all the work himself is fond 
 of peace, like the Greek and the Roman countryman 
 of ancient times. 
 
 Paganism, the ** religion of rustics," as in the end 
 the ancient faith was called, formed, all along, an 
 agricultural religion, a name given to it by the most 
 spirituel and the least spiritual of ecclesiastics, the 
 Neapolitan neo- pagan Galiani. As the letters of 
 the witty Abb6 are little known, I am tempted to 
 quote his shrewd remarks. 
 
 "La G^orgique," he writes to Mme. D'Epinay in 1770, 
 "n'est plus un sujet de pogme a notre dge. II faut une 
 religion agricole, chez un peuple coloniste, pour parler avec 
 emphase et avec grandeur des abeilles, des poireaux et des 
 oignons. Avec votre triste consubstantialit^ et transsub- 
 stantiation, que voulez-vous qu'on fasse ? II y a deux 
 sortes de religions : celles des peuples nouveaux sont riantes, 
 et ne sont qu'agriculture, medicine, athl^tique, et population. 
 
XII TRANSFORMATION 223 
 
 Celles des vieux peuples sont tristes et ne sont que m^ta- 
 physique, rh^torique, contemplation, elevation de I'ime j 
 elles doivent causer Tabandon de la cultivation, de la 
 population, de la bonne sant6 et des plaisirs. Nous sommes 
 vieux." 
 
 An agricultural religion naturally suited peasants. 
 The gods were divine benefactors who could be 
 rendered propitious by certain stated and simple 
 means. If things, nevertheless, went wrong, the 
 peasant is a man of infinite resignation. He began 
 again. If he died — well, the gods only do not know 
 death. The Beyond ? Plato blamed Homer for 
 saying that it was better to be the servant of one 
 who had not himself enough bread to eat, than to 
 be a king of ghosts, because this picture of Hades 
 as " a dreadful place " was likely to diminish men's 
 courage in face of death. But the peasant, if he 
 thought of Hades at all, probably did not think so 
 very ill of it. Anyhow it was a place of rest. The 
 Lares formed a cheerful link between the dead and 
 the living, and the peasant really believed in the 
 Lares, which the cultivated Roman did not. For 
 the rest, he had not the obstinate yearnings, the 
 restless curiosity, of more finely strung minds. He 
 felt that he was living conformably to a stronger 
 will which made — not exactly for righteousness — 
 but for order. 
 
 Suddenly the news was conveyed to the peasants 
 
224 TRANSFORMATION xn 
 
 that there was not a word of truth in their religion ; 
 no, something worse ; that it all belonged to the 
 spirit of evil of whom they had never heard ; that 
 their gods were not merely a delusion, but hateful, 
 to be crushed, broken, maledicted. And they were 
 seized with the vertigo of the earthquake — that 
 peculiar sense that the one solid thing is giving way 
 under your feet, which alarms you or not, according 
 to the state of your nerves, but which certainly 
 impresses. The Church began to feel itself strong. 
 Heretics were first put to death in a.d. 385, and if 
 it were right to suppress heresy with the sword it 
 must certainly be right to suppress Paganism with 
 the pickaxe. The peasants, many of whom had 
 never heard of Christ, saw the approach of men 
 dressed in black and not much washed. " How can 
 dirt be pleasing to divinity ? '' Rutilius had asked ; 
 but for many centuries it was thought to be one of 
 the surest means of salvation. Did not St. Bernard 
 say in praise of the Templars : " They never dress 
 gaily and wash but seldom " .? The " Black Men " 
 broke the statues and threw down the shrines. It 
 was in vain that Libanius, Julian's tolerant minister, 
 the Pagan friend of Basil and Chrysostom, implored 
 Theodosius to stay the hand of these missionaries of 
 destruction ; in vain he pleaded that to the peasants 
 the temple was the very eye of Nature, the symbol 
 and manifestation of a present deity, the solace of all 
 
TRANSFORMATION 225 
 
 their troubles, the holiest of all their joys. In vain. 
 Through the length and breadth of the land the 
 peasants heard of Christ for the first time from the 
 mouths of the monks who were come to destroy their 
 altars. 
 
 Sometimes the very destroyers were seized with a 
 haunting sense of sacrilege, for it is recorded that 
 " to St. Martin of Tours the gods whose altars he 
 had broken, Jupiter or Mercury, Venus or Minerva, 
 came in dreams, bitterly reproaching him." How 
 much more horror-struck must have been the un- 
 converted ! 
 
 To the man of simple mind his religion is always 
 the only one. Whether it is attacked in the name of 
 a purer or higher faith, or in the name of a harsher 
 or cruder one, or in the name of pure denial, it is 
 the same thing ; for him it is true — why inquire if it 
 is good or probable ? Wireless telegraphy is im- 
 probable, but it is a fact. This is precisely the basis 
 of belief of those who believe and who do not make- 
 believe-to-believe. 
 
 Therefore the peasant had the feeling of the earth- 
 quake ; but, as happens after an earthquake, the 
 sense of security returned. The pickaxe was not 
 proof; the altars might fall but the gods were real. 
 The peasants made this reflection, and, where they 
 could, they resisted ; where they could not, they 
 submitted — especially outwardly. They took care 
 
 Q 
 
226 TRANSFORMATION xn 
 
 to retain a great part of their old religion. When 
 sick (as St. Augustine deplored) they sent for some 
 old Pagan woman who knew magic remedies. A 
 day or two before Byron died at Missolonghi he 
 asked those around him to try to find some ^' ugly 
 old woman " of magical repute, such as the Greeks 
 sent for when they were ill. The witch was actually 
 found, but as he did not again ask for her, she was 
 not brought to his bedside. The religion of one age 
 became the witchcraft of another, and witchcraft in 
 the South is still flourishing. 
 
 For many centuries much more than such-like 
 mere scraps of the old faith subsisted. Sacrifices 
 of fire and incense were tolerated after the killing of 
 animals was forbidden, but the peasants met for 
 a family feast, and in their hearts they consecrated to 
 their gods the animal killed. This continued for a 
 very long time. Originally the Emperor had not 
 encouraged recourse to actual violence ; indeed 
 Libanius* chief argument was that Theodosius could 
 not know or countenance the things done by the 
 "Black Men," who left the fields barren "to put 
 themselves, as they pretended, into communication 
 with the Creator of the Universe on the mountains.*' 
 But the Church pressed him forward, and the Church, 
 which had quieted the scruples once felt by it about 
 violence to heretics, could not be expected to have 
 any where it was a question of Pagans. 
 
XII TRANSFORMATION 227 
 
 At first the crusade was limited to the Eastern 
 Empire, but it was taken up in the West by 
 Valentinian II., who forbade even hanging up 
 garlands, or lighting lamps, or the fire on the hearth 
 in honour of the Lares, or the libation before 
 drinking. Valentinian lost his life in consequence, 
 but, as usual, assassination did not effect its object. 
 Theodosius was now absolute in East and West, and 
 in the beginning of the fifth century the country 
 districts of Italy were scoured. 
 
 The official existence (so to speak) of Paganism 
 ended in the sixth century, when Justinian closed 
 its last-recognised refuge, the Academy of Athens ; 
 but in lonely and isolated places it lasted in its fullest 
 acceptation till much later. A side-light on the 
 position of latter-day Pagans is thrown in the 
 following extract from a letter written by Gregory 
 the Great to the Empress Constantina : 
 
 Having heard that there are many Gentiles in the island 
 of Sardinia, and that, according to their depraved custom, 
 they still sacrifice to idols, and that the priests of the island 
 have become lax in preaching our Redeemer, I sent one of 
 the Italian bishops there, who, with the help of God, con- 
 verted many of these Gentiles to the faith. But he has 
 informed me of a sacrilegious matter, namely, that those 
 w^ho sacrifice to idols pay a tax to the judge that it may be 
 permitted to them ; of whom some, now being baptized, 
 have given up sacrificing to idols, yet still this tax which 
 they had been accustomed to pay for that purpose is exacted 
 from them by the same judge even after baptism. And 
 
228 TRANSFORMATION xn 
 
 when he was found fault with by the bishop for this, he- 
 answered that he had promised to pay so much for his post, 
 which he could not do unless by these means. 
 
 The Pope adds that in Corsica the islanders are 
 so ground down by taxation that they hardly pay 
 the taxes even by selling their own children. Here, 
 at least, is the Head of the Church in his best 
 character, that of pleader for the poor with the 
 great and powerful in the name of an authority 
 higher than theirs. Gregory has been accused of 
 destroying many classical works owing to the 
 attraction which they lent to Paganism, but on 
 what is considered insufficient evidence. In the 
 ninth century, the Mainots in the Peloponnesus 
 still worshipped the gods, and there were Pagans in 
 the Tyrolese valleys at the same date. No doubt 
 in some secluded spots they existed even later. 
 
 Then, on a certain day in a certain year, an old 
 man, bent and feeble, went forth softly to make the 
 last offering to the gods. Perhaps it was a garland 
 hung on a tree near the place where a shrine had 
 stood. He felt very sure that the offering was 
 accepted — he felt that the gods, forsaken now by all, 
 must be glad to see their faithful worshipper. Gods 
 have their troubles like men ; it is sad to be left 
 alone. The old man, when he had hung the flowers 
 on the bough, went back to his abode and lay down 
 on his bed, for he was tired. He closed his eyes 
 
XII TRANSFORMATION 229 
 
 and he did not open them again. The last Pagan 
 was dead. 
 
 Before glancing at the process by which the 
 Southern peasants became as devoted to the new 
 faith as they had been to the old, we may notice a 
 point of some singularity. It is this. If we look at 
 the Christianity, not of Emperors and Black Men in 
 the fifth century, but of the first hunted Christians 
 in the tombs, we observe a tendency to assimilate 
 Christian dogma to the simplest pastoral symbolism 
 of the ancient myths — a tendency to form a new 
 religion agricole^ humaner, diviner than the old, but 
 still rural, still speaking of the peace of the fields. 
 The Christians in the Catacombs, experiencing the 
 Italian need to give a pictorial rendering to their 
 faith, represented the Founder of it not as the Christ 
 enthroned on the Globe of the Ravenna mosaics, or 
 the Christ crucified of the modern Church Universal. 
 Historically Christ was still one who had failed ; the 
 spiritual conquest of all the world, which may have 
 seemed, at the time when the mosaics of S. Vitale 
 were made, an almost certain event (far more probable 
 than it can seem to us now), was to the Christians of 
 the second century at most a desire. Hence they 
 made no pictures of enthroned Christs. And as for 
 the Crucifix, an early Christian placed before the 
 crucified Christ of Velasquez would have felt a 
 thrill of horror, of outraged decency, as if he had 
 
230 TRANSFORMATION xn 
 
 been shown the agony of one of his own friends who 
 had been put to death. The tragedy was too near. 
 
 The persecuted Christians represented Christ 
 under types taken from the ancient idylls, as 
 Orpheus with his lyre, or as a shepherd youth with 
 lamb or kid on his shoulder, standing among olive 
 branches and rose-trees, the fruits of summer, the 
 wheat-sheaves of autumn. 
 
 But she sigh'd, 
 The infant Church of love, she felt the tide 
 Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave. 
 
 And then she smiled ; and in the Catacombs, 
 With eye suffused but heart inspired true, 
 On those walls subterranean, where she hid 
 Her head 'mid ignominy, death and tombs. 
 She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew. 
 
 Under entirely changed circumstances the early 
 idyllic type came into use again among the scholar 
 poets of the Renaissance, who were no longer simple 
 and ingenuous, but steeped in a learning which they 
 were eager to display. Only one, the half-Puritan 
 Spenser, joins the classical terminology to an 
 impassioned earnestness which recalls the fervour 
 of the Catacombs rather than the preciosity of 
 humanism : 
 
 And wonned not the great god Pan 
 
 Upon Mount Olivet, 
 Feeding the blessed flocks of Dan 
 
 Which dyd himselfe beget ? 
 
XII TRANSFORMATION 231 
 
 O blessed sheepe ! O shepherd great, 
 
 That bought his flock so deare, 
 And them dyd save with bloudy sweat 
 
 From wolves that would them teare ! 
 
 The statue of Christ, young and beautiful, by 
 Michelangelo, in the Church of Santa Maria sopra 
 Minerva, which nearly all who go to see it call 
 ** Pagan," is, perhaps, the only famous work of art 
 representing the Redeemer that would have satisfied 
 the early Christians. 
 
 Had the crusading monks trusted more to the 
 story of Christ the Good Shepherd and less to the 
 pickaxe, it is possible that the work of conversion 
 would have advanced more rapidly. As it was, the 
 slowness with which it advanced caused poignant 
 distress to true servants of Christ, who thirsted to 
 save souls and bring light to those who sit in dark- 
 ness and in the shadow of death. How was the task 
 to be accelerated ? There are problems which are 
 solved by acts, not by words. No Christian saint or 
 doctor would have said even to himself : '' The way 
 to gain over the peasants is to assimilate the new 
 faith to the old." But, in practice, that was what was 
 done. 
 
 The doctors, however, had not much to do with 
 it. St. Augustine set his face resolutely against the 
 veneration of images, and insisted that Christ should 
 be sought in the Bible. But men of undoubted 
 
232 TRANSFORMATION xn 
 
 holiness, scattered about the country, could not resist 
 the temptation of trying *' by all means to save some,'* 
 and the way which proved by far the most efficacious 
 was to let the peasants keep or re-establish a cult 
 which, in outward particulars, was as like as possible 
 to the one they were called upon to renounce : 
 
 So these nations feared the Lord and served their graven 
 images, both their children and their children's children ; as 
 did their fathers, so do they unto this day. 
 
 Certainly the names were changed ; for Diana, 
 Guardian of the Harbours, there was Mary, Star of 
 the Sea ; for Diana, dwelling in the mountains, there 
 was Mary, Our Lady of the' Snows. Fortuna 
 Primigenia became the Madonna della Fortuna. 
 The names were changed, but is there so very much 
 in a name ? 
 
 A pretty story told by St. Paulinus illustrates 
 exactly by what steps the peasant began to feel at 
 home in the new faith. A countryman recommended 
 his beloved oxen to Felix, the legendary Saint of 
 Nolo. " He loves them better than his own 
 children ! " writes Paulinus, and his care of them 
 was extreme, but lo and behold ! one night they 
 were stolen out of the stable ! Thereupon the 
 countryman violently upbraided St. Felix for his un- 
 pardonable negligence (just as he would have done 
 if the negligent protector had been a sylvan god). 
 Nothing would satisfy him unless he recovered those 
 
XII TRANSFORMATION 233 
 
 very same oxen — no others would do. Well, and 
 what happened ? Paulinus may tell it : " St. Felix 
 forgave the want of politeness for the sake of the 
 abundance of faith, and he laughed with Our Lord 
 over the injurious expressions addressed to him." 
 That night the oxen walked back into the stable. 
 
 Paulinus seems to have been the first person who 
 had pictures painted inside a church, though his 
 object was only to interest and edify ; he did 
 not intend them for veneration. Those pictures 
 were the lineal ancestors of the altar-pieces of 
 Raphael. Without them, let it be remembered, we 
 should have had no Christian Art. 
 
 Pictures in churches probably began everywhere 
 as a device to amuse the peasants, and the veneration 
 of images may have sprung from the peasants, in out- 
 of-the-way places, saving favourite statues of their 
 gods by giving them new names. In my own 
 garden there is a statue, called by the peasants ** la 
 Madonna, Mora," the head of which, certainly an 
 antique, much resembles the head of a Diana found 
 at Pompeii. 
 
 Thus did the country-folk, from being the last 
 Pagans, become the pillar of the Church, and when 
 the supremacy of Rome was threatened to its 
 foundations it was chiefly the peasants allied to the 
 " Black Men " who saved it. 
 
 Contact with a monotheistic race made the 
 
234 TRANSFORMATION xn 
 
 educated classes in Byzantium ashamed of forms of 
 worship which intelligent Mohammedans told them 
 were Paganism over again. If success had crowned 
 the Iconoclastic movement, the cult of the Saints 
 would have been reduced within narrow limits, and 
 the power of the priesthood would have received an 
 irrevocable blow. It failed, from a coalition of 
 women, peasants, and monks (a great part of the 
 higher clergy was in favour of it). The Popes had 
 the fortunate accident of siding with Italian nationality 
 against strangers for the second time — the first was 
 in the struggle with the Arian Goths. 
 
XIII 
 
 THE DIVINE PASTORAL 
 
 The unique place which the Altissimo Poeta occupied 
 in the first twelve Christian centuries was due, 
 without doubt, to his fame as a prophet. This is 
 the most reasonable explanation of the ascription to 
 him of magical powers ; he could not have been a 
 prophet quite like the others, argued the unlearned 
 man, with his rough logic — therefore, he was a 
 beneficent kind of wizard. On the other hand, 
 scholars and theologians accepted the theory that 
 Virgil arrived at foreknowledge by divine favour ; 
 they did not think it necessary to bring magic on 
 the scene. There was one sceptic, a man whose 
 erudition was not less than his candour, which might 
 have led him to the stake had he lived at the right 
 time — St. Jerome. He turned the whole matter 
 into ridicule, but no one agreed with him. From 
 St. Augustine to Abelard, the flower of mediaeval 
 learning believed that the Fourth Eclogue was a 
 prophecy of the birth of Christ. Constantine the 
 
 235 
 
236 THE DIVINE PASTORAL xm 
 
 Great, in his oration to the Assembly of the Saints, 
 brings the Eclogue forward to convince those who 
 were not convinced by a certain acrostic on the name 
 of Jesus Christ, which passed for a Sibylline prophecy, 
 and which, he says sadly, many persons supposed 
 to have been composed " by some one professing our 
 faith and not unacquainted with the poetic art " — to 
 have been, in short, a forgery, as it actually was. 
 Now, the Eclogue was not a forgery, and the Sibylline 
 prediction on which it was based was held to be 
 genuine. Constantine's enthusiasm for Virgil knew 
 no bounds : he called him the Prince of Latin poets, 
 and " this admirably wise and accomplished man.'* 
 His discourse on the Eclogue has been said to be 
 too scholarly for him to have written it, but it is 
 hard to set aside the positive statement of Eusebius 
 that the Emperor did write this and many other 
 orations in Latin, which were turned into Greek by a 
 special staff of translators maintained for the purpose. 
 Indeed, Eusebius gives one the idea that Constantine 
 was as fond of composing speeches as a Caesar of 
 a much later date. 
 
 An ancient legend tells of the visit of St. Paul 
 to VirgiFs tomb at Naples, and Dante makes Statius 
 thank the Mantuan Vates for converting him. 
 Successive popes quoted the Eclogue as a prophecy. 
 Theologians pointed to various texts in Scripture in 
 which the existence of prophets among the Gentiles 
 
XIII THE DIVINE PASTORAL 237 
 
 seemed to be suggested. Though Dante's story of 
 the conversion of Statius does not seem to have 
 been true, there is no reason entirely to reject such 
 stories. The ancient world looked on prophecy some- 
 what as we look on astronomical predictions ; and 
 with minds so disposed, Virgil's oracle might work 
 a remarkable effect. To say, as has been said, that 
 the interpretation of the Eclogue in a Christian sense 
 was the result of " a curious misconception," fails 
 to do justice to the high intellect of the men who 
 so interpreted it. These men were influenced by 
 the religious atmosphere of their time, but they 
 would not have been so obtuse as to suppose a 
 Pagan poem to be a Messianic prophecy had it not 
 looked remarkably like one. It would have been 
 more curious if no one had been struck by the 
 resemblance. Without altering the meaning, as 
 Pope did, but by a very simple process of selection 
 and omission, it is easy to show the spirit in which 
 the poem was read. I have done this in the follow- 
 ing version, from which the mythological names 
 are left out ; but even these, which sound incongruous 
 to us, did not sound so in times when it was 
 common for poets to mix up Christian and Pagan 
 personages : 
 
 Sicilian muses, let me sing again ! 
 
 But not to all gives still uncloyed delights 
 The leafy grove where I too long have lain ; 
 
 Lift then my rural song to higher flights. 
 
238 THE DIVINE PASTORAL xm 
 
 Now comes the Age of which the Sibyl told, 
 When ancient Justice shall return to earth. 
 
 And Time's great book its final page unfold, 
 
 Since Time is ripe and hails the Heavenly Birth. 
 
 The Iron Race shall cease, and soon elate 
 A Golden Race its happy course begin ; 
 
 The nations dwell together without hate, 
 Man being born anew and cleansed of sin. 
 
 One, whom Immortal Presences surround. 
 Where light of life immortal grows not dim, 
 
 A happy world shall rule in peace profound. 
 His Father's virtue manifest in Him. 
 
 O Child ! Earth brings thee all her first green things, 
 
 Ivy and holly, winter's little store, 
 Undriven the she-goat her sweet burden brings. 
 
 And mighty lions affright the herds no more. 
 
 Dead lies the poisonous snake among the grass. 
 And dead the nightshade and the hemlock dead ; 
 
 Only sweet herbs spring up where thou shalt pass, 
 And flowering branches o'er thy cradle spread. 
 
 Dear Child ! begotten of the Eternal Sire, 
 
 The heavens to tell thee near with gladness rang ; 
 
 O could I see the world's fulfilled desire. 
 Then would I sing as poet never sang. 
 
 Still on thine eyes no mortal eyes have shone. 
 Thy mother waits thee still, weary the while ; 
 
 The full months bid her smile upon her Son, 
 Begin, O Child, to know her by her smile. 
 
 The prophetical view was, of course, unaffected 
 by the question of exactly what Virgil had in his 
 mind. On this point conjecture was divided. Con- 
 
XIII THE DIVINE PASTORAL 239 
 
 stantine held that the poet " was acquainted with that 
 blessed mystery which gave our Lord the name of 
 Saviour/' but that, to avoid persecution, he obscured 
 the truth and drew the thoughts of his hearers to 
 objects with which they were familiar. Others 
 believed, more rationally, that Virgil spoke he knew 
 not what — which did not interfere with the validity 
 of the prophecy, since the essence of prophetical 
 writings lies in their foreshadowing events of which 
 their authors had no intellectual perception. There- 
 fore, in the Ages of Faith, VirgiFs conscious intention 
 was a secondary matter. To us, on the contrary, it 
 is a point of great interest, but we are as far as ever 
 from throwing light on it. Prejudice, which once 
 existed on one side, changed over to the other ; the 
 wish to interpret the Eclogue supernaturally gave 
 place to a wish to interpret it naturally : thus ** lovis 
 incrementum," from being " progeny of Jove," 
 became '* protege of Jove *' — though the former 
 meaning seems, to say the least, a more probable one 
 than the latter. It was discovered that Pollio's son, 
 an intolerable person, really went about boasting 
 that he was the fated infant. This discovery is 
 important because it shows that VirgiFs own con- 
 temporaries did not know of whom he was speaking. 
 But the theory it involves is the most extravagant of 
 all. Virgil says that the great event is to happen 
 while Pollio is Consul, which would be a strange way 
 
240 THE DIVINE PASTORAL xm 
 
 of saying that the great event was the birth of his 
 own son. Apart from this, Virgil could not have 
 made such predictions about the son of a simple 
 administrator without committing rank treason 
 against Augustus. The theory of an Imperial off- 
 spring has much more to recommend it, only we can- 
 not find the Imperial offspring. One of the greatest 
 authorities on Virgil, Professor Sellar, decided against 
 the claims of the unfortunate Julia, previously regarded 
 as the best candidate. Some critics have seen in the 
 Fourth Eclogue the aspiration towards a new and 
 renovated Rome, but this is a case of" thinking into " 
 an ancient poet ideas which an ancient poet would not 
 have thought. On the whole, the most reasonable 
 opinion is that of Gaston Boissier, who brought to 
 the subject not only scholarship but a profound and 
 sympathetic study of the epoch. The accomplished 
 French writer declined to attach any definite meaning 
 to the poem, which he preferred to consider a reflec- 
 tion of the vague unsettlement and expectancy pre- 
 vailing in the Roman world during the last half- 
 century before Christ. 
 
 The dream of a retarn to a golden age was not 
 unknown in classical literature, but it was at the end 
 of the kite — a dream which knows itself to be a dream. 
 When the theory of the ages was treated by a realist 
 like Hesiod, he made the worst age come last, antici- 
 pating the modern oracles of degeneration. Aristotle 
 
XIII THE DIVINE PASTORAL 241 
 
 evolved a system of self-repeating cycles which 
 depended on the position of the heavenly bodies, but 
 it presents few analogies with Virgil's millennium. 
 The idea of a universal peace has been connected 
 from the earliest times with the birth or sojourn 
 upon earth of certain exceptional beings. 
 
 Virgil must have remembered what is called the 
 Twenty-fourth Idyll of Theocritus (though by some 
 it is supposed not to be by him). Professor Sellar 
 saw no trace of Theocritean influence in the " Pollio," 
 but the " PoUio " and the " Little Hercules " both 
 deal with prophecies about a wonderful child. The 
 seer Tiresias tells how the mothers of a later day, 
 when they sit spinning in the evening twilight, will 
 sing the praise of Alcmena, and call her the glory 
 of womanhood. Her child shall be the greatest of 
 heroes ; he shall overcome men and monsters, and 
 there shall be peace on earth : " the wolf that finds 
 the kid in its lair shall not harm it." When all is 
 said, however, we cannot deny that the allusions, and 
 especially the general tone of the Fourth Eclogue, 
 remind us less of any classical myth than of parts of 
 the Hebrew Scriptures. 
 
 Why did no Roman Sir William Jones or Edward 
 FitzGerald draw the attention of his receptive, 
 inquisitive fellow-countrymen to the wealth of poetry 
 lying perdu in the Jewish sacred books ? How was 
 it that the Septuagint attracted so little notice ? It 
 
 R 
 
242 THE DIVINE PASTORAL xm 
 
 is assumed that the Romans set their minds against 
 everything foreign that was not Greek, but this 
 seems to be disproved by the almost frantic way in 
 which, latterly, they ran after Oriental fashions in 
 religious rites. I have heard the suggestion that the 
 cause of the neglect of the Septuagint was the little 
 skill of its authors, which rendered many of the 
 finest passages of the original commonplace or 
 incomprehensible. 
 
 Virgil was a learned man and was particularly 
 versed in Alexandrine learning, but no one thinks 
 that he possessed direct knowledge of the Old 
 Testament ; had he read it, even in its imperfect 
 Greek form, it would have left more traces in his 
 works. On the other hand, it is possible that frag- 
 ments of Hebrew prophecies crept into the Sibylline 
 books which replaced the older ones that were 
 destroyed when the Capitol was burnt during the 
 first civil war. This would account for Virgil's 
 associating Messianic ideas with the sibyl. 
 
 It is also possible that the great revival of these 
 ideas among the Jews themselves led to their becom- 
 ing known and even giving rise to discussion among 
 the Gentiles. The opportunism of Herod the Great 
 — his ready exchange of the last shreds of Jewish 
 independence for the civilities of Caesar — drove the 
 more ardent spirits of patriots and dreamers to a 
 passionate rebound from despair to hope. The 
 
THE DIVINE PASTORAL 243 
 
 Simeons who waited for the consolation of Israel, the 
 Annas who looked for redemption in Jerusalem, sent, 
 perchance, a magnetic thrill of longing through a 
 world which had nothing in common with their race 
 or their faith. 
 
 Besides Virgil, another famous Gentile was be- 
 lieved to have foreshadowed the birth of Christ. 
 This was Zoroaster, on whose prophecies an ancient 
 tradition affirmed that the Magi based their researches. 
 Zoroaster did predict that a Saviour would be born 
 of a Virgin, so that the tradition was not without 
 justification. No incident of the infancy of Christ 
 took so strong a hold of the popular imagination 
 during the early centuries as the Magi's visit. In the 
 homage of the Wise Men the Church saw prefigured 
 the subjection of the Gentile world. To emphasise 
 their symbolical significance, the "Wise Men" became 
 " kings." These changes happen automatically ; 
 people cannot relate a story without giving it a 
 colour of preconceived ideas. It was to guard 
 against similar unconscious modifications that the 
 Jews devised the extraordinarily ingenious method 
 for preserving the purity of the sacred text which was 
 carried out in the Massorah. If it is difficult to 
 keep a written canon pure, it is far more difficult to 
 prevent the phantasy of the pious from embroidering 
 " improvements " on that part of it which slips into 
 oral legend. 
 
244 THE DIVINE PASTORAL xm 
 
 In the Roman catacombs there are two or three 
 
 drawings of the Virgin lifting up the Child to the 
 
 adoration of the Magi, and the subject reappears in 
 
 a mosaic in the sixth-century Church of S. Apollinare 
 
 Nuovo at Ravenna. Almost always when the subject 
 
 of the Nativity was treated in early Christian art 
 
 (which was not often) it was in connexion with the 
 
 Wise Men's visit. The same is true of early 
 
 hymnology. Synesius of Cyrene, the poet-bishop of 
 
 Ptolemais, who lived at the beginning of the fifth 
 
 century, wrote the impressive rhapsody which 
 
 E. B. Browning translated in her " Greek Christian 
 
 Poets " : 
 
 What time thou wast pourM mild 
 
 From an earthly vase defiled, 
 
 Magi with fair arts besprent 
 
 At thy new star's orient. 
 
 Trembled inly, wondered wild, 
 
 Questioned with their thoughts abroad — 
 
 " What then is the new-born Child ? 
 
 Who the hidden God ? 
 
 God, or corpse, or king ? " 
 
 Bring your gifts, oh, hither bring 
 
 Myrrh for rite — for tribute gold — 
 
 Frankincense for sacrifice. 
 
 God ! thine incense take and hold ! 
 
 King ! I bring thee gold of price ! 
 
 Myrrh with tomb will harmonize. 
 
 The Magi became great personages in the Middle 
 Ages by reason of their alleged relics, which were 
 first preserved in St. Sophia, then given to the city of 
 
XIII THE DIVINE PASTORAL 245 
 
 Milan, and lastly transferred to Cologne when Milan 
 fell into the hands of Frederick Barbarossa in 11 62 — 
 a robbery which much distressed the Milanese, who 
 resolved to represent a mystery of the Three Kings 
 every year to keep alive the memory of their former 
 custody of these venerable bones. They always 
 hoped to get the relics back, and a few years ago they 
 did get back a portion of them, which were put in 
 the tomb at Sant' Eustorgio, from which they had 
 been stolen more than seven hundred years before. 
 Everything comes to those who know how to wait 
 — long enough. 
 
 Virgil himself frequently figured in the mysteries 
 of the Middle Ages, accompanied by the Sibyl. In 
 the earliest specimen extant, the office of the Nativity, 
 which was performed at Limoges in the tenth century, 
 ** Virgilius Maro, goddess " (sic) " of the Gentiles,'* 
 is asked if it is true that he was a witness to Christ. 
 The poet replies with a line from his Eclogue. 
 
XIV 
 
 PUER PARVULUS 
 
 A STUDY of the religion of the modern peasant may 
 seem to have little to do with the outdoor life of 
 antiquity, but, in truth, the religion of the peasant 
 has reminded me as often as his agricultural methods 
 of the continuity of life in Southern lands. After 
 the stamping out of Paganism the country became 
 reconsecrated ; the Divine Presences returned ; the 
 sanctuary was back on the hilltop ; once more the 
 rude image looked kindly on the field. Much was 
 as it had been before. Nevertheless, in the peasant 
 himself a wonderful thing had happened : he had 
 made a discovery greater than that of the Pole, the 
 discovery of the next world. Harvest and seedtime 
 and the sleep of winter carried a new significance. 
 
 Over the golden grain light lies the well-turned furrow, 
 Deeper the furrow that waits, toiler, the end of thy toil : 
 Merrily plough and sow : e'en now in the dark earth's bosom 
 Quickens the living food and Hope forsakes not the grave.^ 
 
 If there was less of unconscious joy, there was a 
 
 1 " Dem Ackerman " of Goethe. 
 246 
 
XIV PUER PARVULUS 247 
 
 conscious joy that surpassed it. In place of the 
 human twin of the Faun of Praxiteles stood the 
 Vecchietto of the Sacro Monte — an old labouring-man 
 gazing upward with god -illuminated face. The 
 belief in a Beyond permeates the peasant's faith 
 in its entirety, and this must not be forgotten when 
 pointing out the externalism of some of his observ- 
 ances and the stage of development to which his 
 religious intelligence belongs. 
 
 There was no actual cult of the Infant Saviour 
 till the thirteenth century. Bonaventura, the 
 " seraphic doctor," related how the wish came to 
 St. Francis of Assisi so to commemorate the birth 
 of Christ as to move the people to devotion. This 
 wish he prepared to carry out at the castle of 
 Grescio with the greatest solemnity. That there 
 might be no murmurs, he first sought the permission 
 of the Pope, after obtaining which he put hay in 
 a manger and caused the ox and the ass to be 
 brought to the place, and around there was a great 
 multitude. It was a most beautiful night and many 
 lamps were lit and all the wood resounded with the 
 solemn sound of the songs chanted by the religious 
 brothers. The Man of God stood before the 
 manger full of ineffable sweetness, weeping for holy 
 joy. On a da'is raised above the manger. Mass 
 was said, and the Blessed Francis chanted the 
 holy Gospel and preached to the people on the 
 
248 PUER PARVULUS xiv 
 
 Nativity of Our Lord, whom he called on this 
 occasion lo Bambin de Be km out of the tenderness 
 of great love. 
 
 Some of us have looked with mortal eyes on the 
 fields of Bethlehem which are still so fair and green. 
 With that unchanged setting before us, if we were 
 not dull indeed, we saw as in a vision the shepherds 
 who watched their flocks by night ; we heard as 
 in a dream the song of glory to God and peace to 
 man which, floating from the Syrian skies, has been 
 borne to the farthest ends of the earth. The divine 
 idyll related by St. Luke alone among the evangelists 
 seemed to take life and form. To me it is not 
 doubtful that memories carried away by the Saint 
 from the real Bethlehem suggested the idea of 
 making the scene of the Nativity live again among 
 his Umbrian hills.^ He knew that the humble 
 folk to whom he cared most to address himself 
 believe what they see. For the time being what 
 they see is real to them. They receive from it the 
 same emotions ; it receives from them the same 
 homage. It is not a matter of stocks and stones 
 but of the reverse of stocks and stones. It is an 
 intense power of imagination brought into activity 
 by the touch of a material spring. 
 
 It was the mission if not the conscious object 
 
 1 M. Paul Sabatier has been so kind as to send me the following dates which 
 coincide well with this theory : Journey of St. Francis in the East 1219-1220 j 
 institution of the Presepio at the castle of Grescio, December 24, 1224. 
 
PUER PARVULUS 249 
 
 of Francis of Assisi to develop the latent democratic 
 forces of Catholicism, and he foresaw, with the in- 
 sight of men of faith, the place which the manger 
 of the Babe of Bethlehem would conquer in the 
 affections of the Southern rural masses. Easter is 
 the great popular feast in the Eastern Church, 
 Christmas in the Latin, — especially in Italy. One 
 is the feast of the next world, the other of this. 
 Italians are fond of this world. Then, too, what 
 could appeal more strongly to the followers of the 
 plough, the keepers of the sheepfold, than the image 
 of the Child born " fra il bue e F asinello " ? The 
 poverty of the Holy Family, on which no emphasis 
 is laid in the Gospels, is dwelt upon constantly in 
 the later literature of the Nativity ; the simple 
 explanation of the birth in the stable — that there 
 was no room at the inn — is left out of sight. The 
 Italian peasant thinks, and draws patience from the 
 thought, that Joseph and Mary could not afford to 
 pay for a better lodging. 
 
 The erection of the first manger or presepio in 
 the castle of Grescio was painted by Giotto in one 
 of his frescoes in the upper church at Assisi. He 
 represents the Saint in the act of constructing the 
 manger, when the image of the child Jesus which 
 he holds in his arms miraculously wakes to life. 
 But the influence of the presepio in art had been felt 
 before that ; it may be perceived in the Nativity 
 
250 PUER PARVULUS xiv 
 
 which Nicolo Pisano carved on the pulpit of the 
 Baptistery at Pisa. Though it is not necessary to 
 connect every artistic presentation of the Nativity 
 with the custom which soon prevailed in every house- 
 hold of erecting a manger at Christmas, it is yet 
 plain that there was an intimate relationship between 
 the two. Both the presepi and the treatment of the 
 subject in art tended to become more elaborate. 
 In the fifteenth century Benozzo Gozzoli introduced 
 trees, birds, and other natural things, and instead of 
 wintry snows, the earth was shown breaking into 
 blossom. By and by, the train of pilgrims increased 
 and the whole world was displayed on the march. 
 The great Nativity of Bernadino Luini at Saronno 
 illustrates this development of the once simple theme. 
 Convents and rich families began to spend lavishly 
 on their Christmas shows ; increased care was be- 
 stowed on the scenery ; Jerusalem, the holy city, 
 appeared in the distance, and the perspective was 
 managed with such skill that a surprising effect of 
 length was given to the motley procession which 
 wound down the mountain road. Trees, flowers, and 
 animals enlivened the foreground. A magnificent 
 specimen is preserved in the Certosa di San Martino 
 above Naples. The lasting popularity of these 
 exhibitions is proved by the fact that, a few winters 
 ago, a moving mechanical presepio was shown at 
 Milan, in which the figures were marionettes. It 
 
XIV PUER PARVULUS 251 
 
 was a pretty sight, and so discreetly arranged that 
 it secured the patronage of the high ecclesiastical 
 authorities. At the day performance the little 
 theatre was always full of children and their nurses. 
 Unfortunately, after the Nativity came a scene of 
 the Massacre of the Innocents, with real screams, 
 almost as blood-curdling as the screams in Tosca, 
 But it was all much appreciated by the audience, for 
 children bear out the remark of St. Augustine that 
 people like that best on the stage which most harrows 
 their feelings. Some slight movement of the figures 
 is attempted now even in the churches; the three 
 kings, for instance, are made to canter round on 
 their mules, re -appearing — at suitable intervals. 
 There is no doubt that among the poor this kind of 
 spectacle excites deeply religious feelings. I shall not 
 forget the passionate, earnest face of one young girl 
 kneeling before a presepio — of what was she telling 
 the Virgin Mother } The rich, if they go from 
 habit, yet are touched — at least by those memories 
 of childhood which are so close to religion. 
 
 It cannot be denied, however, that besides its 
 devotional aspect, the presepio has always attracted 
 the multitude as a beautiful show. Machiavelli 
 mentions a gorgeous Nativity exhibited in 1466 
 ** to give the people something else than public affairs 
 to think about." Travellers came from far away 
 to see such exhibitions. In 1587 Tasso visited the 
 
252 PUER PARVULUS 
 
 presepio erected by Pope Sixtus V. in Santa Maria 
 Maggiore, — once called S. Maria ad praesepe from 
 its containing five boards which are said to have 
 composed the original manger at Bethlehem. But of 
 all the pictured mangers that which has obtained the 
 widest fame is the one displayed at Santa Maria in 
 Araceli. Lady Morgan and an infinite number of 
 writers have described it. The figures are life-size, 
 and the image of the Babe is that Santissimo Bambino 
 which legend reports to have been carved from the 
 branch of a tree on the Mount of Olives by a 
 Franciscan friar and painted miraculously, though 
 not artistically, by St. Luke. When I went to see 
 the Bambino I asked the lay brother in attendance 
 whether it still was taken out to visit the sick 
 for whom mortal hope was past. " Oh, yes," he 
 replied ; "it went out yesterday." '* Are there 
 many cures ? " I asked. " Certainly there are," was 
 the answer, and no doubt a true one, for life may 
 often be saved by raising the patient's moral. 
 The image is covered with jewels, the gifts of 
 the grateful. 
 
 No place except " Betelem, che '1 gran parto 
 accolse in grembo," has so good a traditional right 
 to be associated with Christmas as Santa Maria in 
 Araceli. This right rests on a story which it is said 
 can be traced to the eighth century, but I do not 
 know where to look for mention of it before the 
 
XIV PUER PARVULUS 253 
 
 fourteenth. The story runs thus : When the question 
 was proposed by the Roman Senate of deifying 
 Augustus, the Emperor consulted a sibyl (or sooth- 
 sayer) as to whether any one alive were greater than 
 he. After the sibyl had performed some invocations, 
 a vision appeared of a circle in which was a woman 
 holding a little child. " This child/' said the sibyl, 
 " is greater than thou." At the same time a voice 
 was heard saying, " Here is the altar of Heaven." 
 These things happened on the first Christmas Day. 
 Augustus built an altar on the spot, which was 
 afterwards converted into the present Church. 
 
 In the octave of Christmas little Roman children 
 still " preach," as it is called, before the Holy Child ; 
 a sight which, even more than the presepio itself, 
 draws crowds to the Araceli ; for, like all children of 
 the South, they say their " pieces " with an infinite 
 charm that raises half a smile and half a tear. 
 Almost as soon as the institution of the Manger, 
 there grew up the custom of speaking or singing 
 before it. The privilege of expounding the event 
 which it represented passed from friars or priests to 
 peasants and children, and this added to the essentially 
 popular character of the rite ; it became, as it were, 
 a little Mass of the poor and pious laity. Lullabies 
 were written to be sung to the Infant Jesus, many of 
 them being composed in the person of the Virgin, 
 and even believed by the people to have been sung 
 
254 PUER PARVULUS xiv 
 
 by her — a tradition perhaps known to Coleridge 
 when he wrote : 
 
 A mother's song the Virgin Mother sung. 
 
 One beautiful Latin lullaby was reverenced, in 
 particular, as the Virgin's own song, but there is 
 no proof that any sacred ninne nanne existed before 
 the lovely specimens written by the Franciscan Fra 
 Jacopone da Todi, who lived in the same century as 
 his master, and who is famous as author of the Stab at 
 Mater, The poor friar showed an almost inspired 
 knowledge of a mother's heart ; he almost fathomed 
 the unfathomable — a mother's love. Umbria with its 
 sun-painted hills, so like the hills of Palestine, gave 
 birth to the chosen saint, poet, and painter of the 
 Holy Child — Francis, Jacopone, and Raphael. 
 
 In the steps of Fra Jacopone followed a great 
 company, ranging from immortal poets to the 
 humblest folk-minstrel. Milton played his organ, 
 Herrick his pipe, Crashaw his viol with pathetic tones. 
 If Crashaw lacked the great Puritan's majestic sweep, 
 he approached more nearly to that impassioned 
 fervour, joined to a kind of confidential familiarity, 
 which is the note of early Italian Christmas songs. 
 His " Hymn sung by the shepherds in the Holy 
 Nativity of our Lord God " alternates between the 
 homely and the sublime ; between the vision to the 
 mortal eye : 
 
x.v PUER PARVULUS 255 
 
 Poor world (said I), what will thou do 
 
 To entertain this starry stranger ? 
 Is this the best thou can'st bestow — 
 
 A cold and not too cleanly manger ? 
 
 and the spiritual vision : 
 
 We saw thee in Thy balmy nest, 
 
 Young Dawn of our eternal Day, 
 We saw thine eyes break from their East 
 
 And chase the trembling shades away. 
 We saw thee and we blessed the sight, 
 We saw thee by thine own sweet light. 
 
 A lesser poet, Patrick Carey, whose poems, written 
 in the seventeenth century, were first published by 
 Sir Walter Scott, composed one charming verse : 
 
 Look, how he shakes for cold. 
 
 How pale his lips are grown. 
 Wherein his limbs to fold. 
 Yet mantle has he none. 
 His pretty feet and hands 
 (Of late more pure and white 
 Than is the snow 
 That pains him so) 
 Have lost their candour quite. 
 
 This is very like the Italian folk-lullabies, though 
 it is improbable that Carey was acquainted with them. 
 They were known, no doubt, to Mrs. Browning, but 
 her poem called " The Virgin Mary to the Child 
 Jesus " has other thoughts than those of the Italian 
 folk-singer, who would prefer Raphael's healthy Babe 
 with the goldfinch to the English poet's ** child 
 without the heart for play." 
 
256 PUER PARVULUS xiv 
 
 The songs and carols of the Holy Nativity cannot 
 be even counted here. Saboly, the Provencal poet, 
 called the " Troubaire de Betelem," alone wrote one 
 hundred and ten. From the point of view of litera- 
 ture, the finest Christmas poem, since Milton*s hymn, 
 is the Nat ale of Alessandro Manzoni, the following 
 lines from which are considered by Italian critics an 
 incomparable specimen of the '* grand style " : 
 
 L* angiol del ciel agli uomini 
 Nunzio di tanta sorte, 
 Non dei potenti volgesi 
 Alle vegliate porte ; 
 Ma fra i pastor devoti 
 Al duro mondo ignoti, 
 Subito in luce appar ! 
 
 Here every word tells and every word is noble and 
 simple. The sentiment is purely Franciscan — the 
 great welling-up sentiment of democracy. I cannot 
 read these lines without thinking of one of the 
 grand democratic perorations of Fra Agostino da 
 Montefeltro, the humble brother whose eloquent 
 voice so often crowded the city churches of Italy, 
 not only with the faithful but with all the " sheep 
 out of the stable," — as a Milanese friend of mine 
 designates '* Jews, Turks, and Infidels " in what he 
 believes to be most idiomatic English. 
 
 Nativity interludes and plays existed before the 
 time of St. Francis ; the first extant regular drama 
 performed at Christmas belongs to the precious 
 
XIV PUER PARVULUS 257 
 
 manuscript of the Abbey of Saint-Ben6it-sur-Loire, 
 and it is one of the earliest specimens of a modern 
 drama (as distinguished from mere dialogues) which 
 we possess. Hrotswitha's imitations of Terence 
 alone preceded it. The Saint-Benoit play is called 
 Hirode. The shepherds (rather neglected in earlier 
 art and literature) now make their formal appearance 
 and describe how they have found the Babe lying 
 between two dumb animals. The three kings follow 
 with their offerings, which they present almost in 
 the words of the Greek Christian poet Synesius : 
 '' Oh, King, take this gold. Gold is the symbol of 
 kings. Take the myrrh. Myrrh is the symbol of 
 tombs. Take the incense, for thou art truly God." 
 The Infant Jesus is brought out to them, not by 
 the Virgin but by two nurses ; the non-appearance 
 of the Madonna is, perhaps, to be attributed to a 
 scruple, soon to disappear, as to showing her in the 
 first moments of her motherhood. 
 
 If, however, Nativity mysteries existed before the 
 presepioy they increased a hundredfold after the 
 veneration of the Infant Saviour became a common 
 practice. The Cumaean Sibyl usually appeared in 
 them accompanied by Virgil, and Moses and Aaron, 
 all the prophets, King David, Nebuchadnezzar, as 
 well as Balaam's ass (with a little boy inside it), 
 combined to make up what was dear to the mediaeval 
 playgoer, an enormously long list of personages. 
 
258 PUER PARVULUS xiv 
 
 All of these figured in a mystery which was still 
 performed a few years ago in Rouen Cathedral. In 
 one Christmas play a hymn was sung to Venus — 
 even in the Tempio Malatestiano at Rimini the riot of 
 emancipated fancy scarcely could go farther. Miracle 
 plays are supposed to have been invented by monks 
 to draw the people away from the attractions of the 
 ancient comedy, but the cure was at times worse 
 than the disease. For what we should call downright 
 profanity nothing can equal these fruits of the ages 
 of faith. And yet in the rampant licence of the 
 mediaeval mystery lay the germ of the splendid 
 freedom of the Elizabethan theatre. It must be 
 admitted, too, that in spite of extravagance, the 
 miracle plays show, here and there, a true dramatic 
 instinct which we might realise to a fuller extent if 
 we could see them acted. Many travellers go to 
 the wonderful plastic presentment of the Gospel 
 story on the Sacro Monte of Varallo with minds 
 set against it, but few come away without having 
 received an ineffaceable impression. The same thing 
 happens at Ober-Ammergau, and even at the ruder 
 performances given by Tyrolese peasants, whose 
 religious plays have not been improved to meet 
 the demands of modern taste. 
 
 Still more popular than the Nativity play was the 
 idyll, eclogue, or pastoral (as it was variously called) 
 which treated only the episode of the shepherds. 
 
XIV PUER PARVULUS 259 
 
 Some good examples were written by the Spanish 
 poet Juan de la Enzina towards the end of the 
 fifteenth century. His shepherds, instead of being 
 theologians in sheepskin, are taken straight from the 
 brown Spanish hill-side ; they sit round the fire of 
 dry twigs and fragrant plants ; they play dice for 
 chestnuts, swear by the evangelists, and discuss such 
 local matters as the death of the Sacristan — when 
 suddenly an angel announces the birth of Christ and 
 they all set off for Bethlehem as if it were the next 
 parish. A Portuguese named Gil Vicente, who often 
 wrote in Spanish, also produced some realistic idylls 
 in which people talk of friars, hermits, breviaries, 
 calendars, and papal bulls. After signing themselves 
 with the cross the shepherds go to sleep ; while they 
 are asleep angels begin to sing, which wakes one old 
 shepherd of the name of Gil, who rouses his comrade 
 Bras and tells him that he has heard angelic strains. 
 " Are you sure," says Bras, "that it was not crickets ? " 
 Gil scorns the suggestion and orders the others to go 
 immediately to the village to buy a pipe, guitar, and 
 flageolet and a baby's whistle as presents for the 
 Infant Christ. 
 
 Innumerable Christmas pastorals sprang up in 
 Italy in the seventeenth century. Every person with a 
 pen made a point of writing one, from the poet of 
 reputation to the obscure village priest. Some of 
 these pieces were set to music by famous composers 
 
26o PUER PARVULUS 
 
 (alas, where is their fame now ?), in which form they 
 came to be called oratorios, from the oratories of St. 
 Philip Neri, where they were performed. Thus an 
 epoch-making word came into currency ; along the 
 aisles of the future sounded the grand choruses of 
 Handel and the thrilling flute-notes of Don Lorenzo 
 Perosi, in whose Natale del Redentore there is 
 something of the ''ineffable sweetness'' that filled 
 the Poverello as he stood before the first presepio. 
 
 When the taste for bucolics declined, the pious 
 pastorals suffered the same fate as the rest ; but the 
 peasants clung to them, and in some mountain villages 
 of Piedmont they are still represented on the 
 Christmas night. The best of the still-surviving 
 specimens is the one performed in the valleys of 
 Cuorgne. Count Nigra, the able Italian diplomatist, 
 remembered having begun his career as an ambassador 
 by figuring in it, as a child, in the character of a 
 herald angel with wings of peacocks' feathers. To 
 his enthusiasm for folk-lore we owe the publication of 
 the text. 
 
 The necessary personages in this dramatic scene 
 are eleven shepherds and one angel, but three angels 
 are preferred when they can be had. Mary and 
 Joseph do not appear. A side altar is converted into 
 a manger, in which the image of the Babe lies. Mid- 
 night mass has advanced as far as the Credo when 
 the performance opens with what is called an 
 
XIV PUER PARVULUS 261 
 
 *' angelic prologue." In this homily, the congrega- 
 tion are requested to be very attentive — then, on 
 this dark night, they will behold great portents. 
 They will see the shepherds draw near to worship a 
 new-born Babe, in whom, with melting hearts, they 
 recognise their Redeemer. The prologue ends with 
 the words : " Whoso desires happiness and justice, 
 let him seek them in God, for they are not to be 
 found among men, and now, may all things proceed 
 with order and may we meet one day in heaven." 
 
 A knocking is heard at the chief entrance ; the 
 priest opens the door and the eleven shepherds walk 
 into the church. They wear long white woollen 
 cloaks and broad-brimmed hats which they keep on 
 their heads. Each carries a staff in one hand and 
 his offering in the other. Montano brings a lamb ; 
 Alceste, two pigeons ; Volpino, honey ; Silvio, fresh 
 butter ; Evandro, milk ; Menalca, grapes (they are 
 hung up in a dry place so as to keep till December). 
 Tigrane carries a pair of turtle-doves ; Titiro, apples ; 
 Polibeo, eggs ; Mirteo, two chickens ; Melibeo, 
 cloth for swaddling clothes. The gifts remain with 
 the priest, but, like the ancient sacrifice, they are in 
 very truth offered to Deity. This custom has 
 endeared the ceremonial to the poor, who are so fond 
 of giving. They feel that their offerings actually 
 supply the wants of their Infant Lord, and feeling is 
 much more real than thinking or knowing. 
 
262 PUER PARVULUS xiv 
 
 The crowd, which densely fills the little church, 
 leaves a clear space for the shepherds in the middle 
 of the building. Montano remarks that here they 
 are with their gifts, but he has no idea why Melibeo, 
 the oldest shepherd, has called them hither while the 
 sun is still asleep. Questions and answers gradually 
 disclose the fact that Melibeo supposed, from the 
 appearance of the heavens, the time to be come for 
 the birth of Him who should fulfil the promise 
 of Abraham. While they are speaking, Melibeo 
 suddenly declares that even now a light illumines 
 the sky, the grass grows green, streams freed from 
 ice run with a sweet murmur, flowers burst forth, 
 hill and valley smile as in April. The younger 
 shepherds, overpowered by fear, inquire if any one 
 ever saw so light a night, or rather, so light a day. 
 The congregation take this transformation on faith, 
 but there soon appears a tangible angel who invites 
 the shepherds to follow him to the manger. " Here," 
 he says, " is the august palace of the Word made 
 man." 
 
 In the next scene, the shepherds, by their homely 
 remarks, elicit from the angel an exposition of 
 Christian doctrine : 
 
 Alceste. Look in how poor and rude a shed 
 The King of kings has found a bed. 
 
 Angel. Here 'twas he uttered his first cry, 
 That you might learn humility. 
 
 Montana. Naked he meets the wintry night. 
 
PUER PARVULUS 263 
 
 Angel. The road is hard to heaven's height. 
 
 Titiro, He shakes with cold in every part. 
 
 Angel. Yet doth a flame ignite his heart. 
 
 Melibeo. He never murmurs nor complains. 
 
 Angel. That you may learn to bear your pains. 
 
 Volpino. Poor rags his body scarcely hide. 
 
 Angel Thus to reprove the sins of pride. 
 
 Evandro. It seems as if the ox and cow 
 Were drawing nigh to warm him now. 
 
 Angel. The succour thoughtless beasts supply, 
 Less feeling man shall oft deny. 
 
 Silvio. In what deep poverty he lies ! 
 
 Angel. To teach you greatness to despise. 
 
 Mirteo. He seems beyond all mortal aid. 
 
 Angel, Who trusts in God is ne'er afraid. 
 
 Menalca. His woeful state to pity moves. 
 
 Angel. So heaven tries the soul it loves. 
 
 Polibeo. His childish tears are falling fast. 
 
 Angel. Blood will be there for tears at last. 
 
 Tigrane. How soft his limbs ! How delicate ! 
 
 Angel. One day the scourge will lacerate. 
 In this rude cradle you may see 
 Even Him whose mighty hand, 
 And whose eterne command, 
 Formed heaven, created earth, and ordered hell to be. 
 
 At this point each shepherd deposits his gift. 
 Apologies are offered for the poorness of the present, 
 except in the case of the lamb — an exception which 
 shows a rare sense of the fitness of things possessed 
 by the forgotten author whose work has lasted longer 
 than his name. The dedication of the lamb is 
 solemn : '* Pure as thou art pure ; guiltless as thou 
 art guiltless ; fated victim as thou art fated victim : 
 Lord, may this my gift be acceptable in Thy sight." 
 
264 PUER PARVULUS xiv 
 
 Of the other offerings, it is confessed that they are 
 
 but common things, though they are the very best of 
 
 their kind. (This is exactly what a real peasant. says 
 
 when he makes you a present.) The apples are of the 
 
 sweetest ; the cloth took years to weave ; there never 
 
 was such honey ; the milk is milked from the pet 
 
 ewe. But what are such things for a king ? Each 
 
 giver, after his little speech, adds himself to his gift: 
 
 Ei t' offre tutto assieme 
 II dono e il donator. 
 
 Sometimes a kid, a wolf-skin, a hare, or a few flowers 
 
 are added to the gifts. The following rhyme 
 
 accompanies the flower oflFering : 
 
 These I gathered as I went, 
 Pretty flowers with sweetest scent, 
 Which among the ice and snow 
 In the ice-bound meadow grow. 
 Let them, too, Thy coming hail, 
 Let them, too, their homage yield ; 
 Thou, the lily of the vale. 
 Thou, the flower of all the field. 
 
 When the gifts have been presented, Montano says 
 that since their duty is done, they will go forth and 
 spread the good news abroad. "Let everything be 
 glad and rejoice. Let the Holy Name be graven on 
 the bark of all the trees ; let the air whisper it and 
 the crystal fountain reply. The birds, the wild 
 beasts, and the flocks shall learn to pronounce it, and 
 from every rock and mount and abyss Echo will 
 repeat the name of the Child born this night." 
 
XIV PUER PARVULUS 265 
 
 The priest finishes the Mass, and the congregation 
 join in a carol : 
 
 I hear the people singing 
 
 Their songs of gladdest praise ; 
 
 The very skies arc ringing 
 
 With sweet angelic lays. 
 Rejoice, my heart, and sing with them. 
 For Christ is born in Bethlehem. 
 
 Out of the church the mountain-folk depart into 
 the silence of the Alpine winter night. Each lights 
 his torch, and takes his way slowly across the snow 
 to his own dwelling. Above shine the innumerable 
 stars. 
 
 In the Italian plains no plays or mysteries are now 
 performed, but in a corner of the cottage the manger 
 is still arranged with moss and a waxen Babe and, if 
 possible, a few wooden or paper animals. Before 
 this the children kneel. I have in my hand the 
 Christmas letters of four little Italian peasant girls. 
 Bettina, the eldest, promises ** di pregare fervorosa- 
 mente il Divino Infante di conservare fra noi la 
 nostra degna Signora." Camilla, the second, writes : 
 " Non mancher6 in questi solenni giorni di inalzare 
 preci al Bambino celeste di ricompensare i suoi 
 benefici." Barbara, the third, inscribes '*V.G.B." 
 (Viva Gesu Bambino) at the top of her letter. She 
 writes : '* Ecco le feste del Santo Natale che io 
 desiderava tanto. Ora voglio scriverle una letterina 
 per dimostrare il mio amore. Pregher6 Gesu 
 
266 PUER PARVULUS 
 
 Bambino che la faccia vivere lunghi anni felice e 
 contenta." Evelina, the youngest (aged seven), 
 writes in a large round hand : " Ecco le feste del 
 Santo Natale ; preghero Gesu Bambino per Lei." 
 
 I would as soon attempt to translate Dante as to 
 try to put these innocent outpourings into English, 
 but I give them here because they are not without 
 interest as documents in the history of the peasants' 
 religion, south of the Alps. 
 
 The Italian peasants fought hard for their old gods, 
 and they did more — they suffered for them. Then, 
 in time, they adapted themselves to the new faith or 
 the new faith adapted itself to them. Taine said that 
 the true religion of Italy was the worship of the 
 Madonna, and another writer, E. Gebhart, said that 
 the true God of Italy was the Bambino. Since they 
 wrote thus socialism has invaded the cottage and 
 indifFerentism has taken possession of the palace, and 
 yet the heart of the people is unchanged. One thinks 
 of Byron's lines, which seem to have acquired a new 
 and deeper meaning : 
 
 But in a higher niche, alone but crowned, 
 The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child, 
 
 With her Son in her blessed arms, looked round ; 
 Spared by some chance when all beside was spoiled ; 
 
 She made the earth below seem holy ground. 
 This may seem superstition, weak or wild, 
 
 But even the faintest relics of a shrine 
 
 Of any worship wake some thoughts divine. 
 
XV 
 
 THE MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 
 
 It is always useful to remember how completely the 
 Renaissance in Italy was what its name implies — a 
 rebirth, not a new birth. The foreign deluges were 
 powerless to alter the Italian temperament. Virgil's 
 prophetic words came true : though the original 
 stock might be modified and reinvigorated from 
 abroad, it would still retain its name, its customs, 
 and its language. Nay, more, only those incomers 
 would remain who lost their own nationality and 
 grew to be one with the Italian people. 
 
 In a narrower sense the continuity of Letters had 
 never been broken, though in the eclipse of the Dark 
 Ages the threads are lost sight of. Such men as 
 Cassiodorus and Bogthius were pure Italians nurtured 
 in the lap of Roman learning. We must always 
 bear in mind that for one such man whose eminent 
 position and public charges caused his name to be 
 handed down, there were hundreds, without doubt, 
 approaching him in scholarship and tastes, who, in 
 their quiet way, kept the lamp of learning alight. 
 
 267 
 
268 MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 
 
 The attribution of this mission entirely to monks is 
 one of those ofF-hand popular judgments which call 
 for revision. When we go from Boethius, the high- 
 born Roman, to Pier delle Vigne, the low-born 
 Neapolitan, we see the same thing. Literature at the 
 court of the splendid Suabian as at that of the wise 
 Ostrogoth was represented by Italians, and in Sicily 
 the poets who lent lustre to the reign of the Norman 
 William were again of Italian blood. 
 
 A real continuity of spirit means, more than 
 anything else, the power of producing new forms. 
 Imitation is not heredity. If the seed of Italic 
 culture were alive, it would one day yield a new 
 efflorescence. This is what happened in Dante. As 
 every one knows, Dante first thought of writing his 
 Commedia in Latin. The fact, certainly, is not sur- 
 prising. Up till then Italian had been used by poets 
 as the musician uses a mandoline ; who ever thought 
 of singing of heaven and hell to such an instrument .f^ 
 
 But Dante made the discovery that Italian, instead 
 of being a mandoline, was a magnificent organ. His 
 profound patriotism enlightened him on another 
 point: to be a great nation Italy must have a speech 
 of her own which should be at once illustrious and 
 vulgar ; capable of the highest perfection and under- 
 stood by all. He undertook to give Italy such a 
 speech. Not that it is true to say, as has often been 
 said, that Dante created Italian ; some one else had 
 
XV MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 269 
 
 created it — the people of Italy. This is one of the 
 wonders of history ; how, unaided by literature, 
 during ages in which every even moderately educated 
 man wrote and largely spoke in Latin, the people of 
 Italy made for themselves a language which by the 
 time of Dante was simply the Italian wc now have. 
 To appreciate the marvel it is only necessary to 
 compare a sonnet of Pier delle Vigne with a passage 
 from Robert Langland, or a canto of the Purgatorio 
 with one of the Canterbury Tales. 
 
 Dante's supreme merit was that he simply selected ; 
 he did not alter or refine or manipulate. Saturated 
 as he was with classical lore, he left Italian what he 
 found it, a pure vernacular. It is wonderful how 
 few Latinisms there are in his writings. A Tuscan 
 himself, he had no great affection for Tuscan modes ; 
 he admitted words which the later Tuscan purists 
 called dialect and barbarous. Dante was not a 
 " polite poet " any more than, with all his learning, 
 he was a pedant. He was a supreme artist who 
 never allowed his art to appear. As has been well 
 said by Carducci, there is in his poetry '' la ingenuita 
 del canto popolare, come allodola che dagli umidi 
 seminati d' autunno, si leva trillando fin che s' incontra 
 e perde, ebra di gioia, nel sole." 
 
 The same high authority points out that Dante 
 was faithful to the genius of the people even in the 
 choice of his metre, which is that of the narrative 
 
270 MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY xv 
 
 poems that used to be recited by the wandering 
 balladist or story-teller at the street-corners. 
 
 The references to peasant- life in the Divina 
 Commedia are not numerous, but they are of great 
 interest. They are all in the form of similes, which, 
 in Dante, serve as actual guides to the mind's eye — 
 introduced not for the sake of embellishment, though 
 they do embellish, but to enable the reader to follow 
 the action of a series of familiar pictures, or, to put 
 it differently, to think in images. 
 
 No one could have written this opening to the 
 twenty-fourth canto of the Inferno who was not a 
 close observer of rustic character : 
 
 What time the hoar-frost on the ground simulates its 
 white sister but quickly wears away, the little peasant who 
 all things lacks, leaves his bed and looks out at the whitened 
 country : whereupon he slaps his thigh and goes back into 
 the house and grumbles up and down like the mole that 
 knows not what it does. Then he recovers his spirits ; 
 hope revives as he beholds how in a few hours the world has 
 changed its face. And he takes his crook and forth he 
 drives the sheep, poor fools, to pasture. 
 
 English words cannot catch the grave smile that 
 illuminates the lines — quintessentially realistic and 
 yet so tender. How give in English the shading of 
 " villanello," " pecorelle " .? Though for this last I 
 have ventured on a Shakespearean substitute as repre- 
 senting the sentiment behind the word, to convey 
 which is the real office of the translator. 
 
XV MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 271 
 
 The peasant who sees the fire-flies darting in the 
 valley " when the swarms of daytime insects yield to 
 the evening gnat " ; the goatherd who rests upon 
 his staff as his flock that lately scoured the heights 
 reposes, meekly chewing the cud, beneath the trees ; 
 the guardian of the kine, who lodges abroad beside 
 his sleeping wealth, watchful the while that no wild 
 thing comes anigh to scatter and affright — these and 
 other similes are examples of condensed description, 
 the truth of which can only be appreciated when a 
 scene like that described comes before our eyes. 
 The Tuscan poet, Giusti, said that he had never 
 rightly understood canto xxvii. of the Purgatorio 
 till he visited the Casentino district, where he saw the 
 nomadic shepherds and herdsmen who came up at 
 the beginning of the summer to pass the hot months 
 in the hills, bringing with them the utensils for 
 making cheese and a small shelter under which they 
 slept close to the herd or flock. 
 
 In each of these allusions the peasant is associated 
 with a natural scene of which he is at once the 
 complement and the thinking mirror. There is 
 kindness in them, not scorn ; Dante's scorn was for 
 evil-doers. Even the words in the Purgatorio about 
 the rough, untamed mountaineer who is speechless 
 with amazement when he first arrives in town, have 
 not the bad sense which some translators have given 
 them, because stupito means, of course, " surprised " 
 
272 MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY xv 
 
 and not '^ stupid."^ At the same time it is more 
 than doubtful if Dante shared his master's conviction 
 of the felicity of the husbandman, or Virgil's respect, 
 which was unquestionably sincere, for the qualities 
 required to make a good agriculturist. The great 
 truth that what is dismissed as manual labour (as 
 though the hands worked of themselves any more 
 than the hand writes of itself) needs as much intelli- 
 gence in its way as the writing of books was, when 
 Dante lived, deposited at the bottom of the deepest 
 of wells. The peasant, who was almost a god to 
 Homer and almost a priest to Virgil, had fallen from 
 his high estate. How low he had fallen, and the 
 outcome in literature of the debased opinion of him, 
 cannot be discussed now. We are concerned at 
 present with his literary rescue. 
 
 It must be owned that in its origin the new 
 pastoral poetry was simply an academical hobby. 
 Eclogues were written because Virgil had written 
 eclogues. Virgil was the poet, the Master, the Genius 
 of the Modern Pastoral in Italy, the link between 
 two civiHsations, the one name that had never been 
 forgotten, the one personality that lived with the 
 very life of the Italian race. Who doubted that 
 
 ^ Are not all poets wrong in representing the countryman a? so easily 
 impressed ? During an exhibition at Venice hundreds of peasants, led by their 
 priests, profited by the excursion trains to see the city. One old woman from 
 the mountains said, after visiting St. Mark's, that " it would be a beautiful church 
 if the inside was white-washed." The true peasant mind is critical — after a 
 fashion. 
 
XV MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 273 
 
 Paul wept over his grave ? His fame was beyond 
 the need of scholars or culture ; the people had taken 
 him to their hearts and enshrined him there. The 
 story that at Mantua they placed offerings of flowers 
 on a sort of altar below his statue is too likely not to 
 have been true. A Malatesta (of those who were 
 madly pious instead of being madly pagan) caused 
 the statue to be destroyed in 1397. But Virgil 
 remained, the one literary artist who had been made 
 the object of a cult.^ 
 
 Virgil wrote bucolics and it was therefore proper 
 to write them. What was not immediately realised 
 was that the real charm of the Virgilian eclogues 
 depended not on his reading Theocritus as he him- 
 self was read by the poets of the Renaissance, but on 
 his having been born and bred in country scenes, on 
 his mind being so penetrated by the Lombard land- 
 scape which he knew, that he cannot help setting it 
 
 ^ The statue was of Parian marble and probably the work of a Greek 
 sculptor. It is possible that it was erected during the poet's lifetime, in which 
 case it was, no doubt, a portrait. We may suppose that it was copied, in its 
 general lines, in the seated figure erected in the town hall of Mantua in 1227 
 by the noble Brescian who then held the office of Podesta, Loderengo Martinengo. 
 This statue still exists, and those who visited the Rome Exhibition of 191 1 saw 
 it reproduced in the Lombard pavilion. It represents Virgil as a kind of 
 glorified peasant, with long hair, which was not the fashion in Rome in the 
 age of Augustus. The face has been described justly as " grave and beautiful," 
 but it is not a great work of art — great art had ended and not begun again. 
 Yet how interesting it is to find the chief magistrate of Mantua engaged in 
 putting up a statue to the Altissimo Poeta nearly forty years before Dante and 
 Giotto were born ! A little time before, Loderengo Martinengo had proclaimed 
 Virgil '■'■ Signore di Manto-va" with the approval of the united communes, and 
 money was coined with his effigy. 
 
 T 
 
274 MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 
 
 down in the middle of a Sicily which he had read 
 about. They failed to understand that truthfulness 
 was the rod by which their own work would also be 
 ultimately measured. 
 
 Truth, however, is not always literal. In art there 
 is the truth which shows the things seen as we all see 
 them, and the truth which reveals the archetypes of 
 the things seen ; which, by generalising, arrives at the 
 type not of one but of all. The writers of the new 
 pastorals did not begin by aiming at either ; they 
 merely sought to write pretty verses sprinkled with 
 classical names. The pastoral was used as the mouth- 
 piece of private loves and hates, friendships and 
 jealousies ; it was now a courtly panegyric, now a 
 political or ecclesiastical satire. But in its progressive 
 development something more genuine arose under 
 forms which are still artificial. Pastoral poetry 
 became an embodied sigh of relief at having got 
 out of the fasting and fighting Middle Ages into 
 purer air. 
 
 Two eclogues written in Latin are attributed on 
 what seems good evidence to Dante. It appears that 
 towards the end of his life he received an invitation 
 to go to Bologna from a brother poet who, from his 
 skill in bucolics, was called Giovanni del Virgilio. 
 The invitation and the reply were in the form of 
 eclogues, and these were followed at some distance of 
 time by another on each side. The Bolognese poet, 
 
XV MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 275 
 
 while professing the utmost reverence for his friend's 
 genius, chides him a little for using what Dante in his 
 reply calls the ** trivial words that fall from women's 
 lips." Biographically this poetic correspondence is of 
 considerable value, but Dante's part in it — designed 
 on purpose to show that he could be rigidly classical 
 if he pleased — lacks the flashes of insight into country 
 realities that are to be found in the Commedia, 
 
 Petrarch, Boccaccio, and a host of lesser luminaries 
 of the fourteenth century wrote Latin eclogues, for it 
 was thought for a long time that Latin was still the 
 correct tongue when you were going to talk with 
 shepherds. A hundred years later, Boiardo and 
 Mantuan continued to hand down that opinion. The 
 last name is important in the history of pastoral and 
 almost dear to English ears. "Ah, good old Mantuan. 
 I may speak of thee as a traveller doth of Venice : 
 
 Vinegia, Vinegia, 
 Chi non te vede, ei non te pregia. 
 
 Old Mantuan, old Mantuan. Who understandeth 
 thee not, loves thee not." One must conclude that 
 Giovan Battista Mantovano was loved by Shakespeare 
 as he had been admired and copied by Spenser, and 
 as if that were not enough for one man of letters, he 
 has been recently beatified. The Carmelite monk 
 whose worldly pastorals are biting satires, while his 
 religious eclogues ofl?er the most wonderful harle- 
 quinade of pagan and scriptural personages ever 
 
 T 2 
 
276 MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 
 
 presented even in the fifteenth century, is, in spite of 
 his ultra-classicism, the originator of the new rustic 
 poetry. He knew the Italian rustic, and notwith- 
 standing the temptations of elegant Latinity in which 
 he was so great a master, he makes him speak as he 
 speaks. This, it may strongly be guessed, is why 
 Shakespeare liked him. He leaves the peasant un- 
 couth, almost repellent, but real. Although he was 
 certainly not conscious of assuming such a part, he 
 comes down to us also as the defender of the peasant 
 at a time when he stood sorely in need of one. While 
 others were accusing the villani of every impiety and 
 impurity, Mantuan praises their good morals and 
 sincere faith. It is always a gain to be reminded 
 that every medal has two sides and not one, and that 
 one belonging to the province of Zola. Mantuan's 
 sincerity in preferring the charms and occupations of 
 the country to the corrupt splendour of Society in the 
 days of Leo X., is proved by his own retirement to 
 his mountain monastery. He had no poetic sensi- 
 bility, but Italians do not need this for them to enjoy 
 a fine spot and pure air any more than it was needed 
 by their Roman predecessors. 
 
 It is interesting to compare with the descriptions 
 by Pliny or Symmachus of their country-houses, the 
 sonnet-sequence of the months by the Tuscan poet, 
 Folgore da San Gemignano, who lived about 1260. 
 Nothing was ever more delicately epicurean than his 
 
XV MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 277 
 
 programme for all the year, more full of health, of 
 life, of sane enjoyment. What month without its 
 pleasures ? In January you can go out several times 
 a day and pelt the country girls with snowballs ; in 
 February you chase the stag and the wild boar and 
 come home with mirthful songs to generous fare and 
 to sound sleep ; for March you have the seaside with 
 fishing-parties and good company and " not a priest 
 or a monastery anywhere in sight " ; flowery April is 
 the time to sing and dance h la Provengale '* to the new 
 German instruments " ; May the month of garlanded 
 balconies and stolen kisses ; in June, when there is the 
 first heat, you dwell up on a little eminence and pass 
 the idle days under the trellises of citron and orange ; 
 August takes you to a castle in the Alps with a well- 
 trained horse to ride at morn and eve ; in September 
 the falcons' hoods are slipped ; in October there is 
 bird-snaring (the inglorious Roman sport with which 
 Dante, alone of Italian poets, seems to have been out 
 of patience) ; finally, December sees the Wanderer 
 safe in a city in the plains with fires half up the 
 chimney and carpets spread on the floors — it sounds 
 quite English. And to keep up his spirits, indoor 
 amusements not unconnected, sad to say, with a 
 little gambling. 
 
 Another early poet should be mentioned here. 
 Franco Sacchetti, whose ballads and catches have the 
 true fragrance of the fields. His peasant girls are 
 
278 MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 
 
 life itself, no stiff Arcadians fearing to spoil their 
 dresses, but lively, romping girls ; one hears their 
 very laughter as he may hear it to-day. They 
 persuade the miller to weigh them, and tease each 
 other as to who weighs most ; they rush, they jump, 
 they fly from the shower, they fall in the mud, they 
 pick and drop their flowers, they chatter all at once, 
 start when they see a grasshopper, scream when they 
 see a snake ; . they are happy at home in the little 
 cottage with father and mother, but nowise averse 
 from love, yet thinking little of it, full of innocent 
 joy that asks no bettering. There is a note in Franco 
 Sacchetti, a lyrist scarcely remernbered, that Italian 
 poetry never quite caught again. Who else has given 
 sisters to Nausicaa and her handmaids — the fearless, 
 hardy girls who drive the oxen, wash the clothes, 
 sing, and run, and play at ball ? 
 
 The Latin eclogues of the fourteenth century had 
 two poetic children of more consequence that they 
 were to modern literature : the mingled prose and 
 verse pastoral of which the earliest was the Ameto of 
 Boccaccio (written 1342), and by far the most famous, 
 the Arcadia of Jacopo Sannazzaro (written 1489- 
 1504) ; and secondly, the pastoral play, which again 
 became the progenitor of the opera. 
 
 The Arcadia was a work, if not in every sense 
 original, at least intensely individual, a far more 
 important point. Individuality is the quality which 
 
XV MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 279 
 
 vitalises works of imagination. A great landscape 
 painter copies his scenes from nature, but unlike the 
 photographer, he throws his own temperament into 
 the copy. It has been shown conclusively that 
 Sannazzaro borrowed not only from Virgil but from 
 nearly every writer of antiquity who treated rural 
 themes. Here it is no question of plagiarism ; the 
 anthology of beautiful ideas in the Arcadia could not 
 have been meant to deceive any one in an age when 
 the Classics were passionately studied. Still the 
 borrowing exists, and it says much for the genius of 
 the Neapolitan poet that the net result is — Jacopo 
 Sannazzaro. The individual character of the work 
 sprang in a great measure from its source in a private 
 sorrow. Sannazzaro as a child of eight had loved, 
 in a childish way, but irrevocably, a little girl of his 
 own age, his frequent playmate. When they grew 
 to be youth and maiden his love grew with him, but 
 being of a timid nature and fearing, it would seem, 
 dismissal, he never disclosed an affection which, in 
 spite of her maidenly shyness, little Carmosina may 
 have very likely shared. 
 
 At last Jacopo was in so wretched a plight that 
 he thought of suicide, from which he was only kept, 
 as he naively admits, by want of courage ; as an 
 alternative he left Naples on a journey in France, 
 where he hoped to forget his love. This, however, 
 proved impossible, and he started suddenly home- 
 
28o MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY xv 
 
 wards, resolute to put his fortune to the test, but only 
 to find on reaching home that Carmosina was dead. 
 
 The Arcadia was for Sannazzaro the Katharsis of 
 this sorrow. It was not written at once, but a life 
 of singular purity and of entire fidelity in love and 
 in friendship had kept clear and sweet the memory 
 of his young romance, while the lapse of time allowed 
 it to pass from the particular phase into the general 
 and hence become a possible subject of analysis. 
 Sannazzaro was one of the first writers of fiction to 
 attempt a psychological analysis of the growth of 
 sentiment. The Arcadia is, for the rest, before all 
 a poet's fairy-tale, and its popularity came precisely 
 from its detachment from any actual conditions of 
 life. The scenery was real ; it was the beautiful 
 scenery of Naples and Salerno, in which Sannazzaro 
 took an inexhaustible pleasure, and to many north of 
 the Alps the Arcadia came as a first revelation of 
 Southern Nature. Even now its graces of style and 
 what may be called its personal charm (since some 
 books have a personal charm as well as some people) 
 keep it from the oblivion into which the various 
 imitations of it have fallen, always excepting the 
 Arcadia of Sidney — a work of less literary complete- 
 ness than its model, but one which it is delightful to 
 think of as the summer pastime of a hero. 
 
 The Court of Charles d'Anjou at Naples in the 
 thirteenth century witnessed the first indication of a 
 
MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 281 
 
 secular rustic comedy in the shape of a little piece 
 composed by Adam de la Halle on the basis of the 
 old French popular cycle of Robin et Marion. This, 
 however, had no connection with Italian pastoral 
 plays, which, if derived from anything, were rather 
 indebted to the early Umbrian mysteries. But the 
 passage from the idyll, which, from the time of 
 Theocritus, generally consisted in dialogue, to the 
 acted scene was so natural that we need not inquire 
 what suggested it. The Italian pastoral drama is 
 often described as beginning with // Sacrificio of 
 Beccari, a writer of the sixteenth century, but it is 
 difficult to see what the Orfeo of Poliziano was, 
 unless it was a pastoral play. It was, in fact, called 
 from the beginning a ** tragedy," though it is not 
 certain whether Poliziano gave it more than the 
 modest title of "favola." Written in two days, 
 amid the noise and hurry of the fetes in honour of 
 Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga's visit to Mantua in 
 1472, the Orfeo was thought lightly of by its author, 
 who was almost as great an artist in lyrical verse as 
 the Milton of the shorter pieces. He was inclined to 
 consign his ** not too creditable child " to obscurity, 
 but it was immediately too popular for that to be 
 possible. Granting the reversal of the relative 
 importance of words and music, it is still easy for 
 any one who has heard Gluck's beautiful opera to 
 have an idea of the spell that bound the first 
 
282 MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 
 
 spectators of Poliziano's play, which was also inter- 
 spersed with music of some simple sort. That spell 
 is the renewal in us of the emotions of the Young 
 World ; the chords of joy and sorrow in their 
 elementary essential forms responding to the touch 
 of Love and Death. The Orfeo was succeeded by 
 many *' favole " in the sixteenth and early part of 
 the seventeenth century ; Beccari in the Sacrificioy 
 already mentioned, while keeping the name of 
 *' favola " produced an elaborate play ; Ottavio 
 Rinuccini called his pastoral, Dafne, a " dramma 
 musicale " — which indicates a new departure. After 
 these and others like them, came two really important 
 works, the Pastor Fido of Guarini and the Aminta of 
 Tasso. Within its limits, Aminta is a poem of 
 perfect beauty ; for as a poem it must be judged, 
 not as a play. But there is no part of it so 
 engraved on the mind of the lover of outdoor things 
 as the lovely description of Armida's garden in the 
 Gerusalemme^ to which we must also turn for Tasso's 
 pathetic picture of an old peasant happy in his 
 poverty : 
 
 La nostra poverta vile e negletta : 
 Altrui vile e negletta, a me si cara . . . 
 
 The nymphs in Aminta are far indeed away from 
 such homely realities. 
 
 The Pastor Fido was the work of a courtier and 
 man of the world *' who wrote poetry too." And 
 
XV MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 283 
 
 what was singular, was that this poetry, laboriously 
 executed with the avowed purpose of rivalling Tasso, 
 came out, not excruciating like the mathematician's 
 fugue, but so incontestably exquisite in structure 
 that critics have never decided whether to rank the 
 Pastor Fido below Aminta or equal with it. Talent 
 was rarely so near succeeding in a race with genius. 
 Guarini thought well to introduce the satiric and the 
 erotic into his pastoral, and Cardinal Bellarmine is 
 said to have told him that the Pastor Fido had done 
 more mischief to morals and religion than Luther 
 and Calvin. The subject is one of the most purely 
 romantic stories of antiquity, that of Coresus and 
 Callirrhoe, and in spite of its mythological and 
 neo-classical form, Guarini's play has some noticeable 
 points of affinity with modern romanticism. He 
 altered and on the whole improved the story. A 
 young priest of Diana is faithless to his vows from 
 love of an Arcadian nymph. In consequence, a 
 pestilence descends on the land, which the goddess 
 consents to arrest only if the nymph or some one in 
 her place is offered as a living sacrifice. As a 
 voluntary victim is not forthcoming, the nymph is 
 conducted to Diana's temple for immolation. The 
 priest, her lover, must do the deed ; but when he 
 raises the sacrificial knife which is to slay her, he 
 plunges it into his own breast. The vicarious 
 offering satisfies the goddess, but the nymph kills 
 
2 84 MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 
 
 herself on her lover's body. In the original legend 
 the priest, who serves not Diana but Bacchus, is the 
 instigator of the god in causing the epidemic which 
 is inflicted because a nymph of Calydon has rejected 
 his suit. This version would not agree with modern 
 sentiment, but it leads up to a final situation which 
 is perhaps stronger : the priest, stung by remorse at 
 his too successful vengeance, commits suicide to save 
 his victim. 
 
 Besides the Arcadian pastorals in prose and verse, 
 another kind of idyll made its appearance in Italy 
 which owed nothing to tradition. Its creator was 
 that prince among humanists, Lorenzo de' Medici, 
 who, like every one else, exercised his skill in the 
 ideal pastoral, into which he infused a freshness and 
 a distinction not often attained. Few eclogues have 
 stood the test of time as triumphantly as his Covinto, 
 But on a happy day, Lorenzo looked over Arcadia 
 into Tuscany. It is strange that the poets who were 
 composing so much about imaginary shepherds and 
 shepherdesses had not listened with more attention 
 to the beautiful real folk -poetry of the Italian 
 peasant. That they did not listen to it we have not 
 much proof before Poliziano, in whose rispetti there 
 are signs of the folk -poet's influence. Poliziano 
 really knew the country ; in his admirable stanzas 
 describing country-life in La Giostra there is much 
 more than a merely artistic welding of Greek and 
 
MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 285 
 
 Latin reminiscences. But it was left to Lorenzo 
 de' Medici to speak the very language, the common 
 everyday tongue, of the Tuscan countryside where 
 he rested in his splendid villas from the cares of 
 princes and the burden of a great intellect. In La 
 Nencia di Barberino he brings close to us a figure 
 that flits about in the books of old travellers in Italy 
 from Montaigne downwards : a charming figure 
 in a broad straw hat and a costume always becoming 
 and sometimes costly, with the brightest eyes looking 
 from under arched eyebrows, the head small and 
 well -shaped with delicately modelled ears, and the 
 mouth sweetly laughing and sweetly speaking — the 
 very mouth to prattle in accents that make professors 
 weep with envy. This quizzical and sprightly maiden 
 is the complete opposite of languid nymphs. 
 
 To her Vallera, the goatherd of Barberino, 
 addresses his love, admiration, hope, and fear in 
 stanzas which one reads at a breath, so natural, so 
 living are they in their sunny grace as of a Tuscan 
 landscape. How far had Lorenzo in his mind that 
 intention of parody which caused Gay to immortalise 
 Blouzelinda and Buxoma } Some doubts have been 
 expressed as to whether he had any such intention, 
 but the doubters, in love with Nencia, are a little 
 wilfully blind to the unromantic character of the 
 compliments paid to her. The truth seems to be 
 that while it apparently did not occur to Gay that 
 
286 MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 
 
 his rustic rhymes, in spite of the intolerable nomen- 
 clature, were proofs, not of the unfitness, but of the 
 admirable suitability of kindred subjects for poetry, 
 Lorenzo, a poet of higher order than Gay, did perceive 
 that Nencia was a delightful creature, and that in her 
 way, although of flesh and blood and a good cook, 
 she might be as poetic as the most diaphanous of 
 nymphs. The grain of irony, however, though it 
 was but a grain, had the effect of making the picture 
 not altogether true. The portrait is less fair than 
 the original. The real peasant girl and her peasant 
 lover have more poetry in them than Nencia and 
 Vallera. Where in Lorenzo's poem are those lyric 
 flights which we meet constantly in folk-songs .f^ 
 There is truth but there is not all the truth, and 
 the part suppressed is the more beautiful. 
 
 On the other hand, we may be sure that his little 
 poem called La Caccia col Falcone does not lose in 
 veracity by the suppression of all the sentimental 
 associations which we are used to attach to that form 
 of sport ; nothing could be more lifelike than the 
 prosaic but amusing talk of the peasants who have 
 the care of the dogs and the hawks, with their 
 squabbles and reconciliations. We can almost see 
 the dogs answering to their names : 
 
 Chiama Tamburo, Pezuolo, e Martello, 
 La Foglia, la Castagna, e la Guerrina, 
 Fagiano, Fagianin, Rocca e Capello, 
 E Friza, e Biondo, Bamboccio e Rossina, 
 
XV MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 287 
 
 Ghiotto, la Torta, Viola e Pestello, 
 
 E Serchio e Fuse e M mio Buontempo vecchio 
 
 Zambraco, Buratel, Scaccio, e Pennechio — 
 
 a list which, with that of Ovid, would make the basis 
 of a chapter I should like to write on the names 
 of animals. Buontempo must have been Lorenzo's 
 own dog, to whom he thus secured a little space in 
 the House of Fame where Du Bellay established for 
 ever his cat Belaud. 
 
 The Magnificent had a profoundly human 
 penetration into the humble life of the very poor, 
 but the proof of it, far more than in Nencia or the 
 Caccia^ is to be found in the fanciful allegory to 
 which he gave the name of Amhra after the Medicean 
 villa at Poggio a Caiano, above the Ombrone. 
 Ambra had been already celebrated by Poliziano in 
 exquisite Latin verses. 
 
 Lorenzo's poems treat the two rivers, Ombrone 
 and Arno, in the most approved neo-classical style, 
 when we come on a sudden, almost with shock, to 
 a brief interlude of intense descriptive directness. 
 The subject is one of those terrible and unexpected 
 floods caused by the melting of the snows or by 
 torrential rain, which turn a peaceful stream into an 
 engine of awful destruction beyond the power of 
 man to control or arrest. One must have observed 
 a swollen river rushing madly towards the Mediter- 
 ranean down what was, perhaps, the day before a dry 
 
288 MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 
 
 shingly bed with hardly enough of water for the 
 washerwomen to wash their linen in, to form an idea 
 of the dread terror of Nature's changes. Lorenzo de' 
 Medici's lines describe one aspect of the desolation : 
 " Scarcely was the scared peasant woman in time to 
 unbar the stable to the beasts ; she carries her crying 
 child in a basket ; the elder girl follows, her shoulders 
 bent under the weight of wretched linen and wool. 
 The rest of the old household things are floating 
 around ; the pigs swim and the oxen stir distraught ; 
 the little sheep will never again be shorn. Some of 
 the family have taken refuge upon the house-tops ; 
 huddled on the roof, they look down upon their poor 
 wealth, all the fruit of their long labour and all their 
 hope — and from their fear they groan not, nor do they 
 speak words : the fear for life that fills their sad hearts. 
 Nor do they make account of what they held most 
 dear ; so does the greater care drive out all others." 
 
 Then we return to the dancing brightness of 
 Omhrone Amante Superbo as if in joyous rebound, but 
 who can read that description even in the ashes of 
 translation without being touched almost to tears } 
 
 After Nencia there was the Beca of Lorenzo's 
 friend Luigi Pulci, of whom he says in La Caccia 
 that just when people were looking for him, he had 
 gone off brooding into a coppice with some fancy in 
 his head : 
 
 Vorr^ fantasticar forse un sonetto. 
 
XV MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 289 
 
 Then, the Silvana of Doni, the Tonia of Simeoni, 
 and many other imitations were produced in which 
 the naturalness of ISlencia was rarely caught, while 
 the tendency to parody became more pronounced 
 and irritating. One exception must be made : the 
 Lamento di Cecco da Varlungo by Prior Francesco 
 Baldovini is a delightful poem, and if Sandra is a less 
 living character than Nencia, Cecco is certainly more 
 attractive than Vallera ; when he tells in his caressing 
 Tuscan dialect how he has taught a jay to talk like 
 a Christian and has tamed a little hare " which lies 
 down with my Giordano " (the dog), we agree with 
 him that Sandra is an " assassina " to despise such 
 pretty offerings, to which he would gladly add his heart, 
 only she has had that since long ago. This poem was 
 greatly liked by Metastasio. The gay little comedy 
 of La Tancia^ of Michelagnolo Buonarroti (161 1), 
 should also not be passed over without praise. The 
 peasants who live at cross purposes, and the insuffer- 
 ably conceited cittadino whom Tancia despises while 
 he is lost in admiration of his own generosity in 
 wishing to marry her, seem ready-made for a comic 
 opera. Instead of irony there is fun, and we are 
 much the gainers. Had the authors of this style of 
 rustic poetry more often escaped from the strain of 
 false humour which vitiated it from its birth, it would 
 have borne far other fruits. 
 
 Meanwhile the Arcadian style rose in repute and 
 
290 MODERN PASTORAL IN ITALY 
 
 sank in quality. There was not a scribbling Abbate, 
 a fashionable grand lady, a beardless and brainless 
 rhymester who did not call him or herself an Arcadian 
 and form one of a literary society dedicated to these 
 pastimes. The movement had its good side ; it 
 espoused the cause of pure Italian diction ; it made 
 literature popular ; it contributed to the happiness 
 of a great many harmless individuals. It became, of 
 course, a sort of log-rolling and mutual admiration 
 institution, but any method of bringing together 
 cultivated people is not to be lightly condemned. 
 One work, difficult to classify, but connected in a 
 general way with outdoor poetry, the Bacco in 
 Toscana of Francesco Redi, emerges, splendid in 
 verve^ in merriment, in absolute spontaneity, from 
 the frigid mass of literature in the seventeenth 
 century. It sparkles and glows and overflows even 
 as the generous wines which it celebrates, with an 
 innocent glee that might disarm a teetotaller. 
 
 By a curious chance it was in Sicily, its birthplace, 
 that the idyll took a new impulse of genuine, if 
 not great poetry, in the charming dialect poems of 
 Giovanni Meli. From Sicily has also come the new 
 treatment of rural life initiated by Giovanni Verga, 
 which has penetrated the arts of music and painting, 
 and of which the full development belongs to the 
 future. 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 ESSAYS IN THE STUDY OF FOLK- 
 SONGS. 
 
 •'The poetry of the common people has found an advocate both 
 eloquent and erudite in the Countess Martinengo Cesaresco." — W. R. S. 
 Ralston, Academy. 
 
 ITALIAN CHARACTERS, second Edition (exhausted). 
 
 ' ' Excellent sketches . . . the Countess Martinengo Cesaresco, whose 
 books convey better than any others to British readers the high spirit of 
 the Risorgimento. " — G. Macaulay Trevelyan, Garibaldi and the 
 Thousand, pp. ix. 361. 
 
 THE LIBERATION OF ITALY. Third Edition. 
 
 ' • The Countess Martinengo has indeed supplied the general reader 
 with a clear, eloquent, and authentic summary of some of the most com- 
 plicated and fascinating chapters in modern history." — Frederic 
 Harrison, Nineteenth Century, February 1895. 
 
 CAVOUR» Second Impression. 
 
 " She has not only created literature, she has made a fine portrait of 
 the great statesman. . . . Those best acquainted with the subject will 
 best understand how many books went to the distilling of this short bio- 
 graphy. It is the best brief life in English of a dynamic statesman." — 
 W. RoscoE Thayer, Italica, pp. 155-156. 
 
 LOMBARD STUDIES. 
 
 ' ' After giving an excellent biography of Count Cavour, the author has 
 published a fine volume illustrating the Lake of Garda and other North 
 Italian subjects." — Angelo de Gubernatis, Cronache delta Civilta 
 Elleno-Latina. 
 
 THE PLACE OF ANIMALS IN HUMAN 
 THOUGHT. 
 
 ' ' A beautiful book . . . most suggestive from many points of view. 
 It affords very pleasant reading and does not weary you from beginning 
 to end. "—J. Jamshedji Modi, East and West. 
 
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