Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 442. “Vide Athenæum, quem Lanzius laudavit, iii.

p. 114. e. hæc ex Philemone referentem: βλωμιλίους ἄρτους ὀνομάζεσθαι

λέγει τοὺς ἔχοντας ἐντομάς, οὓς Ῥωμαῖοι, καδράτους λέγουσι. ὀκτάβλωμον

Spohnius intelligit de servo celeriter edente. Minime verò. Panes

rustici incisuras suas habent, ut servis omnibus æquas partes

frangendo possis dirimere. v. Philostrat. Imagg. p. 95. 16. Jacobs.”

Gœttling in loc. p. 173.

Footnote 1704:

Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 46. Dickinson. Delphi Phœnicizantes, c. 10. p.

101, sqq.

Footnote 1705:

Scheffer. de Re Vehic. 186, seq. Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 449. The necks

of these animals, when galled by the yoke, were cured by the leaves of

black briony steeped in wine. Dioscor. iv. 185.

-----

As the Greeks well understood the practice of fallowing, their lands

were then, as now, suffered to regain their strength by lying for a time

idle;[1706] and it seems to have been as much their custom as it is

still of their descendants,[1707] for the poor, at least, to roam over

these fallow grounds, collecting nettles,[1708] mallows, the sow-thistle

or jagged lettuce,[1709] dandelions, sea-purslain, stoches, hartwort,

briony sprouts, gentle-rocket, usually found in the environs of towns,

and about the courts of houses, gardens, and ruins, with other wild

herbs for salads, or to be eaten as vegetables.

-----

Footnote 1706:

Xenoph. Œconom. xvi. 13, seq. Cf. Schulz. Antiquitat. Rustic. § 7.

Footnote 1707:

Sibthorpe, in Walp. Mem. v. i. p. 144.

Footnote 1708:

Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 420. Hesiod alludes to this diet where he

celebrates the inferiority of the half to the whole:—

Νήπιοι, οὐδὲ ἴσασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ἥμισυ παντός,

Οὐδ᾽ ὅσον ἐν μαλάχῄ τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλῳ μεγ’ ὄνειαρ.

Opp. et Dies, 40, seq.

Cf. on the proverb in the first verse, Diog. Laert. i. 4. 2. Aristot.

Ethic. Nicom. i. 7. Ovid. Fast. v. 718.

Footnote 1709:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. vi. 4. 8.

-----

The rules observed in sowing were numerous, and, in many instances, not

a little curious. As a matter of course, they were careful to adapt the

grain to the soil:[1710] thus rich plains were appropriated to wheat,

and in the intervals cropped with vegetables; middling grounds to

barley;[1711] while poor and hungry spots were given up to lentils,

vetches, lupins, and such other pulse as were cultivated on a large

scale. Beans and peas, however, were supposed to thrive best in fat and

level lands. The principal sowing-time[1712] was in autumn; for, as soon

as the equinoctial rains had moistened the earth, the sower immediately

went forth to sow, committing to the ground the hopes of the future

year. The best time for scattering wheat they placed somewhere in

November, about the setting of the constellation called the Crown. They

were careful in this operation to avoid the time when the south

wind[1713] blew, and, generally, all cold and raw weather, as it

rendered the earth ungenial, and little apt to fructify that which was

entrusted to it. Great skill was supposed to be required in scattering

the seed: in the first place, that it should be equally distributed;

and, secondly, that none should fall between the horns of the oxen,

superstition having taught them the belief that such grain, which they

denominated Kerasbolos,[1714] if it sprang up at all, would produce corn

which could neither be baked nor eaten. A favourite sowing sieve was

made of wolf’s-hide, pierced with thirty holes as large as the tips of

the fingers. In later ages much virtue was supposed to reside in the

barbarous term Phriel,[1715] which they accordingly wrote on the plough.

The choice of grains for sowing necessarily afforded much exercise[1716]

to their ingenuity: seed wheat, they thought, should be of a rich gold

colour, full, smooth, and solid; barley, white and heavy; both not

exceeding one year old, for they quickly deteriorated, and, after the

third year, would not they supposed grow. This, however, was an error,

since barley has been known to preserve its vitality upwards of two

thousand years.

-----

Footnote 1710:

Geop. ii. 12.

Footnote 1711:

A fine kind of barley was cultivated on the plain of Marathon, which

obtained the name of Achillean, on account, as Dr. Chandler

conjectures, of its tallness. ii. 184. Attica, in fact, produced the

best barley known to the ancients. Theoph. Hist. Plant. viii. 8. 2.

Footnote 1712:

Geop. ii. 14.—Ἐπειδὰν ὁ μετοπωρινὸς χρόνος ἔλθῃ, πάντες που οἱ

ἄνθρωποι πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἀποβλέπουσιν, ὁπότε βρέξας τὴν γὴν ἀφήσει

αὐτοὺς σπείρειν. Xenoph. Œconom. xvii. 2. There was a second

sowing-time in the spring, and a third in summer for millet and

sesame. Theoph. Hist. Plant. viii. 1. 2, sqq. In Phocis, and other

cold parts of Greece, they sowed early, that the corn might be strong

before the winter came on. § 7. In ancient Italy corn was chiefly

committed to the ground in September and October; though in mild

seasons the work of sowing went on throughout the winter. Schulze,

Antiquitates Rusticæ, § 4. p. 6.

Footnote 1713:

Cf. Aristot. Problem, xxvi. 3.

Footnote 1714:

Plat. de Legg. t. viii. p. 119. Tim. Lex. Plat. p. 85. Ruhnk. Plut.

Sympos. vii. 2.

Footnote 1715:

Geop. ii. 19.

Footnote 1716:

Geop. ii. 16.

-----

It was customary often to renew seed by sowing the produce of mountains

on plains; of dry places in moist, and the contrary.[1717] To try the

comparative value of different qualities of grain[1718] they took a

sample of each, and sowed the whole in separate patches of the same bed,

a little before the rising of the Dog-star. If the produce of any of

these samples withered, through the influence they supposed of Syrius,

the wheat which it represented was rejected. As corn when committed to

the earth is exposed to numerous enemies, they had recourse to a variety

of contrivances for its preservation: to protect it from birds, mice,

and ants,[1719] they steeped it in the juice of houseleeks, or mixed it

with hellebore and cypress leaves, and scattered it out of a circle, or

sprinkled it with water into which river crabs had been thrown for eight

days, or with powdered hartshorn or ivory. Not satisfied with these

precautions, they had likewise recourse to scarecrows,[1720] fixing up

long reeds here and there in the fields, with dead birds suspended to

them by the feet. This long list of contrivances they closed by a spell:

taking a live toad, they carried it round the field by night, after

which they shut it up carefully in a jar, which they buried in the

middle of the grounds.

-----

Footnote 1717:

Geop. ii. 17.

Footnote 1718:

Geop. ii. 15.

Footnote 1719:

Geop. ii. 18. “The bunting, the yellow-hammer, and a species of

Emberiza, nearly related to it, frequent the low bushes in the

neighbourhood of corn-fields.” Sibth. in Walp. Mem. i. 77.

Footnote 1720:

Among the husbandmen of Asia Minor people are employed to drive away

the birds as the corn ripens. Chandler, i. 100.

-----

When the corn began to spring up it was diligently weeded[1721] a first

and a second time. They would not trust entirely, however, to the

industry of their hands, but called in to their aid certain

characteristic enchantments, some two or three of which may be worth

describing. First, to subdue the growth of choke-weed they planted

sprigs of rose-laurel, at the corner and in the middle of their fields,

or set up a number of potsherds, upon which had been drawn with chalk

the figure of Heracles strangling the lion. But the most effectual of

all spells, was for a young woman, naked and with dishevelled hair, to

take a live cock in her hands and bear him round the fields, upon which,

not only would the choke-weed and the restharrow vanish,[1722] but all

the produce of the land would turn out of a superior quality.[1723]

-----

Footnote 1721:

Geop. ii. 24. Cf. Xen. Œconom. xv. 1. 13, seq.

Footnote 1722:

Cf. Schulz. Antiquit. Rustic. § vii.

Footnote 1723:

Geop. ii. 42. Theoph. Hist. Plant. vi. 5. 3.

-----

As the ancients well understood the value of hay, they took much pains

in the formation and management of meadows. In the first place, all

stones, stumps, bushes, and brambles,[1724] were diligently removed,

together with whatever else might interrupt the free play of the scythe

in mowing. They avoided, moreover, letting into them their droves of

hogs, which were found to turn up the soil and destroy the roots of the

young grass. In moist lands, too, even the larger cattle were excluded,

as the holes made by their hoofs[1725] in sinking broke up the fine

level of the turf. Old hay fields, in districts where much rain fell,

grew in time to be clothed with a coating of moss,[1726] which some

farmers sought to remove by manuring the ground with ashes; but the more

scientific agriculturists ploughed them up, and took precisely the same

steps as in the formation of a new meadow, that is, they sowed the

ground with beans, turnips, or rape-seed, which, in the second year,

were succeeded by wheat; on the third it was thoroughly cleared out, and

sown with hay-seed, mingled with vetches, after which the whole field

was finely levelled by the harrow.

-----

Footnote 1724:

Colum. ii. 18. Varro, i. 49.

Footnote 1725:

Cf. Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 489.

Footnote 1726:

Lord Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, 539.

-----

The rules observed by them in the regulation of their hay harvest[1727]

were, first, to mow before the grass or clover was withered, when it

became less rich and nutritive; second, to beware in making the ricks,

that it was neither too dry nor too damp, since in the former case it

was little better than straw, and in the latter was liable to

spontaneous combustion.[1728] It may be observed further, that

clover[1729] was usually sown in March or April, and though commonly

mown six, or at least five, times in the twelve months, did not require

to be renewed in less than ten years.[1730]

-----

Footnote 1727:

Much hay was laid up in Eubœa for consumption during the winter

months.—Dion Chrysost. i. 225.

Footnote 1728:

Colum. ii. 19.

Footnote 1729:

Καὶ τὴν βοτάνην δὲ, τὴν μάλιστα τρέφουσαν τοὺς ἵππους ἀπὸ τοῦ

πλεονάζειν ἐνταῦθα ἰδίως Μηνδικὴν καλοῦμεν. Strab. xi. 13. t. ii. p.

453.

Footnote 1730:

Pallad. v. 1. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 604.

-----

Harvest usually commenced in Greece about the rising of the

Pleiades,[1731] when the corn had already acquired a deep gold colour,

though not yet so ripe as to fall from the ear, which in barley happens

earlier than in wheat, the grain having no hose.[1732] Among the Romans

operations were preceded by the sacrifice[1733] of a young sow to Ceres,

with libations of wine, the burning of frankincense, and the offering of

a cake to Jove, Juno, and Janus. They, at the same time, addressed their

prayers to the last-mentioned gods, nearly in the following words:—“O

father Janus or Jupiter, in making an oblation of this cake I offer up

my prayers that thou wouldst be propitious to me and my children, my

house, and my family!”[1734]

-----

Footnote 1731:

Geop. ii. 25. Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 383. xiv. cal. June. Cf. Plin.

Hist. Nat. xviii. 69.

Footnote 1732:

Pallad. vii. 2.

Footnote 1733:

The custom with which the modern Greeks hail the approach of summer is

picturesque and beautiful: “On the first of May at Athens, there is

not a door that is not crowned with a garland, and the youths of both

sexes, with the elasticity of spirits so characteristic of a Greek,

forget or brave their Turkish masters, while with guitars in their

hands, and crowns upon their heads,

‘They lead the dance in honour of the May.’”

Douglas, p. 64.

Footnote 1734:

Cato, 134.

-----

At Athens, as soon as the season for reaping[1735] had come round, those

hardy citizens who lived by letting out their strength for hire,[1736]

ranged themselves in bands in the agora, whither the farmers of the

neighbourhood resorted in search of harvesters. They then, in

consequence of the hot weather, proceeded half-naked[1737] to the

fields, where, taking the sickle in hand, and separating into two

divisions, they stationed themselves at either end of the piece of corn

to be reaped, and began their work with vigour and emulation, each party

striving to reach the centre of the field before their rivals.[1738] On

other occasions they took advantage of the wind,[1739] moving along with

it, whereby they were supposed to benefit considerably, avoiding the

beard or chaff which it might have blown into their eyes, and having by

its action the tall straw bent to their hand.

-----

Footnote 1735:

The harvest began earlier in Salamis than in the neighbourhood of

Athens. Theoph. Hist. Plant. viii. 2. 11. Chandler, vol. ii. p. 230.

In Egypt barley was reaped on the sixth month after sowing, and wheat

on the seventh. Theoph. Hist. Plant. viii. 2. 7. In Greece, barley

required seven or eight months to ripen; wheat still more. This latter

grain came to maturity more speedily in Sicily, and returned

thirty-fold. § 8. In a district in the island of Rhodes they reaped

barley twice in the year. § 9. Harvest was thirty days earlier in

Attica than in the Hellespont. 8. 10. There was a kind of wheat in

Eubœa which ripened very early; and there was introduced from Sicily

into Achaia another kind which was fit for the sickle in two months.

Id. viii. 4. 4. Wheat returned in Babylonia, even to negligent

husbandmen, fifty-fold, and to such as properly cultivated their

lands, a hundred-fold. Id. viii. 7. 4.

Footnote 1736:

Dem. De Cor. § 16.

Footnote 1737:

Or perhaps wholly so when they happened to be inhabitants of the warm

lowlands on the sea-shore and valleys. At least this is the opinion of

Hesiod who counsels the husbandman, γυμνὸν σπείρειν, γυμνὸν δὲ

βοωτεῖν, γυμνὸν δ᾽ ἀμάαν, εἴ χ’ ὥρια πάντ᾽ ἐθέλησθα ἔργα κομίζεσθαι

Δημήτερος. Opp. et Dies, 391, sqq.

Aristophanes alludes to the same custom. Lysist. 1175.

Ἥδη γεωργεῖν γυμνὸς, ἀποδὺς βούλομαι. And Virgil. “Nudus ara, sere

nudus,” Georg, i. 299, upon which Servius remarks: “Non dicit nudum

esse debere, quasi aliter non oporteat aut possit; sed sub tanta

serenitate dicit hæc agenda, ut et amictus possit contemni.” Be this,

however, as it may, the precept of Hesiod and Virgil is literally

observed in Egypt, where the rustics often perform their labour stark

naked.

Footnote 1738:

Il. λ. 67, seq.

Footnote 1739:

Πότερα οὖν τέμνεις, ἔφη, στὰς ἔνθα πνεῖ ἄνεμος, ἢ ἀντίος· οὐκ ἀντίος,

ἔφην, ἔγωγε· χαλεπὸν γὰρ, οἶμαι, καὶ τοῖς ὄμμασι καὶ ταῖς χερσὶ

γίγνεται, ἀντιον ἀχύρων καὶ ἀθέρων θερίζειν. Xenoph. Œconom. xviii. 1.

-----

In many parts of Greece, though the practice was not general, the women

joined in these labours. The reapers, as they advanced, laid the corn

behind them in long lines upon the stubble, and were followed by two

other classes of harvesters, one of whom bound it into sheaves which the

others bore back and piled up into mows. Of the whole of these

operations, together with the plenteous feast which interrupted or

terminated their toils, Homer has left us a graphic picture in the

Iliad:[1740]

There in a field ’mid lofty corn, the lusty reapers stand,

Plying their task right joyously, with sickle each in hand.

Some strew in lines, as on they press, the handfuls thick behind,

While at their heels the heavy sheaves their merry comrades bind.

These to the mows a troop of boys next bear in haste away,

Piling upon the golden glebe the triumphs of the day.

Among them wrapped in silent joy, their sceptered king appears,

Beholding, in the swelling heaps, the stores of future years.

A mighty ox beneath an oak the busy heralds slay,

With grateful sacrifice to close the labours of the day.

While near, the husbandman’s repast the rustic maids prepare,

Sprinkling with flour the broiling cates whose savour fills the air.

-----

Footnote 1740:

σ. 550, seq.

-----

In these remote and unsettled times it behoved the rustic to keep a

sharp look-out on the sheaves left behind him on the field, as there

were usually prowlers,[1741] lurking amid the neighbouring woods and

thickets, ready to pounce upon and carry off whatever they saw

unguarded.

-----

Footnote 1741:

Ἡμερόκοιτοὶ ἀνδρες, an elegant euphonism for “thieves”. Hesiod. Opp.

et Dies, 605. Cf. the note of Gœttling on verse 375.

-----

The implement used in cutting wheat seems always to have been the

sickle, while in the case of barley and other inferior grains, the

scythe was commonly employed. In some parts of ancient Gaul, where no

value was set upon the straw, corn was reaped by a sort of cart,[1742]

armed in front with scythes, having the edges inclined upwards, which,

as it was driven along by an ox, harnessed behind, cut off the ears of

corn, which were received into the tumbril. In this manner the produce

of a whole field might be got in easily in a day. Reaping among the

ancient inhabitants of Italy[1743] was performed in three ways: first

they reaped close, as in Umbria, and laid the handfuls carefully on the

ground, after which the ears were separated from the straw, and borne in

baskets to the threshing-floor. Elsewhere, as in Picenum, they made use

of a ripple or serrated hook, having a long handle with which the ears

only were cut off, leaving the straw standing to be afterwards collected

and raked up into mows.

-----

Footnote 1742:

Pallad. vii. 2.

Footnote 1743:

Varro. i. 50.

-----

In the neighbourhood of Rome they reaped with the common sickle, holding

the upper part of the straw in their left hand, and cutting it off in

the middle. This tall stubble was afterwards mown and carried off to be

used as fodder or bedding for cattle. In Upper Egypt and Nubia, the

dhoura stalks are left about two feet in height to support the crop of

kidney-beans which succeeds next in order. Among the Athenians[1744]

when the corn grew tall the stubble was suffered to remain to be burned

for manure; but, when short, the value of the straw led them to reap

close.

Footnote 1744:

Καὶ ἀκροτομοίης δ᾽ἂν, ἔφη, ἢ παρὰ γῆν τέμνοις; ἢν μὲν βραχὺς ἦ ὁ

κάλαμος τοῦ σίτου, ἔγωγ’, ἔφην, κάτωθεν ἂν τέμνοιμι, ἵνα ἱκανὰ τὰ

ἄχυρα μᾶλλον γίγνηται. Ἐὰν δὲ ὑψηλὸς ᾖ, νομίζω ὀρθῶς ἂν ποιεῖν

μεσοτομῶν, ἵνα μήτε οἱ ἁλοῶντες μοχθῶσι περιττὸν πόνον, μήτε οἱ

λικμῶντες, ὧν οὐδὲν προσδέονται. Τὸ δὲ ἐv τῇ γῇ λειφθὲν ἡγοῦμαι καὶ

κατακαυθὲν συνωφελεῖν ἂν τὴν γῆν καὶ εις κοπρον ἐμβληθὲν τὴν κόπρον

συμπληθύνειν. Xenoph. Œconom. xviii. 2.

-----

In separating the grain from the straw the ancients made use of horses,

oxen, and mules, which, passing round and round over the

threshing-floor, trod out the corn. All the labourer had to do was to

guide the movements of the cattle, and take care that no part of the

sheaf remained untrodden.[1745] From a very humane law in the Old

Testament we learn, that among some nations it was customary to tie up

the mouths of such animals as they employed in this labour, which was

forbidden the Israelites: “Thou shalt not,” says the Scripture, “muzzle

the ox that treadeth out the corn.” Nor was it practised among the

Greeks in the age of Homer,[1746] whom we find describing the oxen

bellowing as they made their unwearied round. The threshing-floor, which

was of a circular form,[1747] stood on a breezy eminence, in the open

field, where, as at present, in modern Greece, and in the Crimea,[1748]

a high pole was set up in the centre, to which the cattle were tied by a

cord determining the extent of the circle they had to describe.[1749]

The end being nailed, every turn made by the cattle coiled the rope

about the pole and diminished their range, until, at length, they were

brought quite close to the centre, after which, their heads were turned

about, and by moving in an opposite direction the cord was unwound.

Great pains were taken in the construction of this threshing-floor,

which was somewhat elevated about the centre, in order, as Varro

observes, that what rain fell might speedily run off. It was sometimes

paved with stone, or pitched with flints, but more commonly coated with

stucco, made level by a roller, and well soaked with the lees of oil

which at once prevented the growth of weeds and grass, preserved it from

cracking, and repelled the approach of mice, ants, and moles, to which

oil-lees are destructive.[1750] Though some authorities advise that it

should be situated under the master’s, or at least the steward’s, eye,

it was generally thought advisable to keep it at a distance from the

house and gardens, since the finer particles of chaff, borne thickly

through the air, caused ophthalmia, and often blindness,[1751] and

proved exceedingly injurious to all plants and pulpy fruits, more

particularly grapes. In some parts of the ancient world, exposed to the

chances of summer rains, the threshing-floor was covered; and, even in

Italy, an umbracula,[1752] or shed, was always constructed close at

hand, into which the corn could be removed in case of bad weather. But

this in the sunnier climate of Greece was judged unnecessary. In

obedience to a notion prevalent among Hellenic farmers, the sheaves were

piled up with the straw towards the south, by which means they believed

the grain was enlarged and loosened from the hose. When the farmer

happened to be scant of cattle he made use of a threshing-machine,[1753]

which consisted of a kind of heavy sledge, toothed below with sharp

stones or iron. Occasionally, too, the flail[1754] was used, especially

in the case of such corn as was laid up in the barn and threshed during

winter.

-----

Footnote 1745:

Xenoph. Œconom. xviii. 4. The same custom still prevails in Southern

Europe and in the East. “Corn is trodden out in Granada in

circular-formed threshing-floors, in the open fields; the animals

employed are mules or oxen.” Napier, Excursions, &c., i. 156. Again,

in the Troad, “The oxen or horses being harnessed to a sort of sledge,

the bottom part of which is armed with sharp flints, are driven over

the corn, the person who guides the cattle balancing him or herself

with great dexterity whilst rapidly drawn round in revolving circles.”

Id. ii. 171. Cf. Fowler, Three Years in Persia, i. 173, and Chandler,

i. 320. ii. 234.

Footnote 1746:

Iliad, υ. 495, seq. Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 599.

Footnote 1747:

Suid. v. ἁλωὰ t. i. p. 186. c. Philoch. Frag. Siebel. p. 86. Etym.

Mag. 73. 56, seq. Colum. ii. 20. Geop. ii. 26. Senec. Quæst. Nat. i.

2.

Footnote 1748:

Earl of Aberdeen in Walp. Mem. i. 150. Pallas, Trav. in South. Russia,

vol. iv. p. 148, seq.

Footnote 1749:

Schneid. ad Xenoph, Œcon. xviii. 8.

Footnote 1750:

Varro. de Re Rust. i. 51.

Footnote 1751:

Geop. ii. 26.

Footnote 1752:

Varro. i. 51. Pallad. i. 36.

Footnote 1753:

Mathem. Vett. p. 85. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 8.

Footnote 1754:

Colum. ii. 21.

-----

In winnowing,[1755] when the breeze served, they simply threw the grain

up into the air with a scoop, until the wind had completely cleared away

the chaff. In serene days they had recourse to a winnowing machine,

which, though turned by the hand, was of great power, as we may judge

from its being employed in cleansing vetches, and even beans.[1756] To

receive the chaff, which was too valuable to be lost, pits appear to

have been sunk all round the threshing-floor, which, for the passage of

the men and cattle, would appear to have been covered, save in the

direction of the wind.[1757] When the corn was designed for immediate

use, one winnowing was deemed sufficient; but that which was intended to

be laid up in the granary[1758] underwent the operation a second time.

-----

Footnote 1755:

Plat. Tim. t. vii. p. 65. Xenoph. Œconom. xviii. 8.

Footnote 1756:

Il. ν. 588.

Footnote 1757:

Il. ε. 562.

Footnote 1758:

See on the vessels in which the produce of the harvest was received,

Pollux. x. 129.

-----

On the building and preparation of granaries[1759] the ancients bestowed

great pains. Every means which could communicate to grain firmness and

durability appears to have been tried by them; and their success was

answerable to their diligence, for, in their granaries, wheat was

preserved in perfection fifty, and millet a hundred years.[1760] Their

methods, however, were various; some laid up their grain in hollow rocks

and caves, as in Thrace and Cappadocia; others sank deep pits in the

earth[1761] where they found it to be perfectly free from humidity, as

in Farther Spain, while others, as in Hither Spain, Apulia, and

Greece,[1762] erected their granaries on lofty basements fronting the

East, and with openings towards the north and west winds.[1763] There

was usually a range of numerous diminutive windows near the roof, to

supply free vent for the heated air, while the floor, in many cases,

contained small apertures for the admission of the cool breezes beneath.

The walls were built with suitable solidity, and having, together with

the floor, been plastered with rough mortar,[1764] made commonly with

hair, for which chaff was sometimes substituted, received a coat of fine

stucco, on the preparation of which much care was bestowed. It was

generally composed of lime, sand, and powdered marble, moistened with

the lees of oil, the peculiar flavour and odour of which were supposed

effectually to repel the approaches of mice,[1765] weevils, and ants.

Instead of this a common stucco, formed of clay, was often used.

Occasionally the grain was packed up in baskets or large jars,[1766]

such, it may be presumed, as those still employed for the purpose in

Africa, where they are commonly kept in a corner outside the door. Beans

and other pulse were preserved in oil-jars rubbed with ashes.[1767]

-----

Footnote 1759:

Cf. Pallad. l. 19. Colum. i. 6. A granary, commonly σιτοφυλακεῖον,

was, by Menander, in his Eunuch, denominated σιτοβόλιον; among the

Siciliotes and Greek colonists of Italy ῥογος; as in the Busiris of

Epicharmos. Poll. ix. 45.

Footnote 1760:

Varro. i. 57.

Footnote 1761:

The same practice is still found in several of the Grecian islands.

“Ils font dans les champs un trou proportionné à la quantité de bled

qu’ils y veulent serrer; il est ordinairement de cinq pieds de

diamètre, sur deux ou trois de profondeur. On en tapisse l’intérieur

d’environ un demi-pied de paille brisée sous les pieds des bœufs;

on y serre ensuite le grain, de manière qu’il s’élève par dessus la

terre, à une hauteur à-peu-près égale à la profondeur du trou; on le

couvre avec un demi-pied de paille, sur laquelle on met trois ou

quatre pouces de terre.” Della Rocca, Traité Complet sur les Abeilles,

t. i. p. 198, seq.

Footnote 1762:

Geop. ii. 27.

Footnote 1763:

Cf. Lord Bacon. Hist. Life and Death, p. 5.

Footnote 1764:

But, according to Theophrastus, corn kept best in granaries

unplastered with lime. Hist. Plant. viii. 10. 1. In a certain part of

Cappadocia called Petra, corn would keep fit for sowing forty years,

and for food sixty or seventy, although in that district cloths and

other articles decay rapidly. Id. viii. 10. 5.

Footnote 1765:

Among tame animals designed to protect the farmstead from vermin, the

weasel was sometimes used. Hom. Batrachom. 52. Ovid. Met. ix. 323.

Luc. Timon. § 21. Perizon. ad Ælian. Var. Hist. xiv. 4. Muncker, ad

Anton. Liber. 29. Plin. Hist. Nat. xix. 16. Welcker. ad Simon. Amorg.

p. 43.

Footnote 1766:

From which they carefully cleansed the spider’s webs: ἐκ δ᾽ ἀγγέων

ἐλάσειας ἀράχνια. Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 475. Cf. 600. A similar method

still prevails in the islands of the Archipelago when the grain is

intended for the market: “Ceux qui veulent porter leurs grains à la

ville, les mettent dans des vases de terre cuite, qu’ils remplissent à

deux ou trois pouces près; ensuite ils étendent par dessus quelques

feuilles de figuier sauvage, appelé _orni_, et en Latin _caprificus_;

enfin ils achèvent de remplir les vases avec de la cendre, et les

couvrent d’une espèce d’ardoise, mais plus forte et plus épaisse que

celle dont on se sert en France pour couvrir les maisons.” Della

Rocca, Traité Complet sur les Abeilles, t. i. p. 200.

Footnote 1767:

Varro. i. 57.

-----

Before the produce of the new year was carried in, the granaries, having

been carefully swept, were smeared all over with oil-lees. Various other

precautions were, likewise, taken to protect the sacred gifts of Demeter

from depredation, such as drawing on the floor broad lines of

chalk,[1768] or strewing handfuls of wild origany round the heaps, or

sprinkling them with the ashes of oaken twigs or dry cow’s dung, or

sprigs of wormwood and southernwood, or, in greater quantity, the leaves

of the everlasting. Instead of these, in some cases, they made use of

powdered clay[1769] or dry pomegranate leaves, rubbed small, and passed

through a sieve, a chœnix of which was sprinkled over a bushel of corn.

The favourite plan, however, seems to have been, to spread a layer of

half-withered fleabane over the floor, on which were poured about ten

bushels of wheat, then a layer of fleabane, and so on, until the granary

was full.[1770] Wheat thus layed up was supposed not only to last many

years, but also to preserve its weight in breadmaking. To render barley

durable, they strewed over it laurel leaves, or the ashes of laurel

wood, as, likewise, everlasting, calaminth, and gypsum, or placed a

tightly-corked bottle of vinegar,[1771] in the middle of the heap. To

communicate greater plumpness to all kinds of grain, they sprinkled over

the piles a mixture composed of nitre,[1772] spume of nitre, and fine

earth, which, likewise, acted as a preservative. To render flour more

durable, they thrust into it small maple branches, stripped of their

leaves, or little cakes of salt and cumin.[1773]

-----

Footnote 1768:

Geop. ii. 29.

Footnote 1769:

This substance was brought from Olynthos and Cerinthos, in Eubœa. It

is said to have improved the appearance of the wheat, though it

deteriorated its quality as an article of food. Theoph. viii. 10. 7.

Footnote 1770:

The granaries of the island of Syra, with the contrivance by which

corn is there preserved at the present day, are thus described by

Della Rocca:—“Les granges, appelées en Grec θεμονέα, ont communément

une vingtaine de pieds de long, sur huit à dix de hauteur et de

largeur. On les remplit jusqu’à la moitié de leur hauteur, de paille

bien foulée: on pratique un espace de trois ou quatre pieds, que l’on

remplit de grain. A côté on en forme un autre, que l’on remplit de

même, et ainsi de suite, selon l’étendue de la grange, et la quantité

de grain que l’on a; cela fait, par des ouvertures pratiquées dans la

couverture, on recouvre de paille tout le bled, jusqu’à ce que la

grange soit exactement remplie. Quand on veut en faire usage, on

commence par le tas le plus voisin de la porte; on enlève d’abord la

paille avec beaucoup de précaution: plus on approche, plus cette

précaution augmente; enfin, pour ôter les derniers brins de paille, on

se sert d’un balai de millepertuis ou d’autres plantes que l’on fait

sécher; et si malgré tous ces soins, la surface du monceau de grain

n’est pas bien nette, on achève d’en enlever toutes les menues pailles

en la vannant avec un chapeau car les paysans de nos îles portent

comme ici, dans les champs, des chapeaux ronds de feutre; ils en

portent aussi de paille, que l’on travaille avec beaucoup de

délicatesse à Sifanto.” Traité Complet sur les Abeilles. t. i. p. 199,

seq. Among the tribes of Northern Africa a more complete system of

preserving grain prevails. “The Arabs, in lieu of granaries, preserve

all their grain in pits: forty or fifty of these are made, each to

contain about a thousand bushels: the spot selected is a dry, sandy

soil, the hole being formed in the shape of a large earthen jug, the

sides are plastered with mortar about a foot in thickness, and the

wheat or grain filled up to the mouth, which is left just large enough

for a man to get in at, and is about three feet below the surface of

the ground; this is now plastered over also, and filled with the soil

around to the same level as the surrounding country. The earth taken

out in forming the pits is removed to a distance, and being scattered

abroad, in a month or two the grass grows over the surface, and no

one, unless those who have buried this treasure, would imagine that

there was anything beneath their feet. The grain thus buried preserves

for many years. I have eaten bread at the Esmailla made from wheat as

old as the Sultan, having been buried the year of his birth, and it

was as good as that made of flour from this year’s crop.” Colonel

Scott, Journal of a Residence in the Esmailla of Abd-el-Kader. p. 155,

seq. Mandelslo (lib. ii. c. iii.) found corn-vaults of similar

construction in the Azores; and most travellers who have visited the

island of Malta will have observed in the fortifications of Valetta

that series of curious and beautiful granaries excavated in the form

of a bottle in the solid rock.

Footnote 1771:

Geop. ii. 30, seq.

Footnote 1772:

Geop. ii. 28.

Footnote 1773:

Geop. ii. 30.

-----

The fruits of the earth having been thus safely lodged within doors, the

grateful husbandmen celebrated in honour of their rural gods, Demeter

and Dionysos, a festival which may, perhaps, be denominated that of the

Harvest Home. In Attica it took place in the great temple at Eleusis,

and continued during several days. No bloody sacrifices were on this

occasion offered up; but, in lieu of them, oblations of cakes and fruit

with other rustic offerings, designed at once to express their gratitude

for past blessings, and to render the gods propitious to them in future.

The first loaf made from the new corn was probably eaten or offered up

on this day, since it received the name of Thargelos, or Thalusios, from

Thalusia, the denomination of the festival.[1774]

-----

Footnote 1774:

Vid. Theoc. Eidyll. vii. 3. Etym. Mag. 444. 13. Athen. xiii. 65. iii.

80. Meurs. Græc. Fer. p. 15. p. 142. Dem. adv. Neær. § 27, with the

authorities collected by Taylor.

-----

Before we quit the farm, it may be observed, that the ancients kept a

number of slaves, constituting a kind of rural police, whose occupation

wholly consisted in guarding the boundaries of estates.[1775] These,

among the Romans, were denominated rangers, or foresters. There were

others to whom the care of the fruit was entrusted; and both these

classes of persons were probably elderly men, remarkable for their

diligence and fidelity, who were rewarded, by appointment to this more

easy duty, for their honest discharge in youth of such as were more

painful and laborious. Boys were sometimes set to keep watch over

vineyards,[1776] as we may see in the first Eidyll of Theocritus, where

he gives us a lively sketch of such a guardian plotted against by two

foxes.

-----

Footnote 1775:

Such of these as had charge of the timber may be denominated

wood-reeves, a term which answers very well the Latin Saltuarius. The

slave-guards of forests, in Crete, were called Ergatones. Hesych. ap.

Meurs. Cret. p. 190.

Footnote 1776:

Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 223, seq. Theocrit. Eidyll. xxv. 27. Cf.

Feith. Antiq. Hom. iv. i. 276, sqq. Vineyards in Athens still require

guards. Speaking of his approach to Athens from the Peiræeus, Chandler

observes:—“In a tree was a kind of couch, sheltered with boughs,

belonging to a man employed to watch there during the vintage.” ii.

27.

-----

CHAPTER VI.

PASTORAL LIFE.

But within the circle of Hellenic country life[1777] there was a kind of

parenthetical existence, a remnant of the old nomadic habits, once

common, perhaps, to the whole race,—I mean the pastoral life, of which

we obtain so many glimpses through the leafy glades and grassy avenues

of Greek poetry. No doubt, the fancy of imaginative men, thirsting for a

degree of simplicity and happiness greater than they find around them in

cities or villages, is apt to kindle and shed too glorious a light on

approaching the tranquil solitudes, the pine forests, the mountain

glens, the hidden lakes, the umbrageous streams that leap and frolic

down the wild rocks of a country so rife with beauty as Greece.

Nevertheless, adhering strictly to truth and reality, there is, in such

regions, much about the pastoral life to delight the mind. In the first

place, the occupations of an ancient shepherd left him great leisure,

and he was generally, by habit no less than by inclination, led to prize

that “dolce far niente” which, in all southern climates, constitutes the

chief enjoyment of existence.

-----

Footnote 1777:

The charm of that repose and freedom from care supposed to be tasted

in the seclusion of the country, appears in all ages to have led to

the belief, that there is something more natural in fields and forests

than in cities, though it be quite as necessary that man should have

dwellings as that he should cultivate the ground. The paradox,

however, is thus expressed by Varro: Divina natura dedit agros, ars

humana ædificavit urbes. De Re Rust. iii. 1, which Cowper,

unconsciously perhaps, has thus translated,

God gave the country, but man made the town.

-----

And indeed all the world over, repose, both of mind and body, is sweet.

But not entire repose. Accordingly the Grecian shepherd, whose flocks

fed tranquilly, whose condition, assured, and pinched by no necessities,

left him at liberty to consult his own tastes in his recreations, took

refuge from idleness in music and song.[1778] At first, and perhaps

always, their lays were rude; but nature, their only teacher, infused

into them originality and passion, such as we find in the only poet of

antiquity, save Homer, in whose verses the fragrance of the woods still

breathes. Whether like Paris and Anchises they kept their own flocks or

undertook the care for others, they were still on the mountains

perfectly free. Their education was peculiar. Abroad much after

dark,[1779] in a climate where the summer nights are soft and balmy

beyond expression, and where the stars seem lovingly to crowd closer

about the earth, they necessarily grew romantic and superstitious.[1780]

Events occurring early in their own lives or handed down to them by

tradition, long meditated on, were in the end invested with supernatural

attributes. Under similar circumstances their national religion had

probably been first formed. They in the same way, in every canton,

created a local religion.[1781] Their very creed was poetry. Tree, rock,

mountain, spring, every thing was instinct with divinity, not

mystically, as in certain philosophical systems, but literally; and, as

they believed, the immortal race, their invisible companions at all

hours, could when they pleased put on visibility, or rather remove from

their eyes the film which prevented their habitually beholding them.

-----

Footnote 1778:

Travellers find among the modern shepherds of the East much the same

tastes and habits. “The hills,” observed Dr. Chandler, speaking of

Lydia, “were enlivened by flocks of sheep and goats, and resounded

with the rude music of the lyre and of the pipe; the former a stringed

instrument resembling a guitar, and held much in the same manner, but

usually played on with a bow.” Chandler, i. p. 85. Cf. Theocrit.

Eidyll. i. 7. viii. 9.

Footnote 1779:

The same habits still prevail: “We could discern fires on Lesbos as

before on several islands and capes, made chiefly by fishermen and

shepherds, who live much abroad in the air, to burn the strong stalks

of the Turkey wheat and the dry herbage on the mountains.” Chandler,

i. 11. Cf. p. 320.

Footnote 1780:

Among other things we find them putting the strongest faith in

dreams—at least we may suppose the fishermen in Theocritus, who lay so

much stress on the visions of the night, to hold a creed pretty nearly

akin to that of shepherds. Eidyll. 21. v. 29. sqq.

Footnote 1781:

The gods they principally worshiped were Pan, the Muses, and the

Nymphs. To the Nymphs and Pan they sacrificed as to gods presiding

over mountains, where they themselves usually wandered. Pan, moreover,

was skilled in the pipe, the instrument of their race. The Muses they

adored as the goddesses of poetry and music. Schol. Theoc. i. 6. In

verse 12 of the same Eidyll. the Nymphs are spoken of where the office

of the Muses is in contemplation, which may easily be explained. For

the Muses are properly the Nymphs of those fountains which inspire

poets with their lays. Cf. Voss. ad Virg. Eclog. iii. 84. By the

Lydians the Muses were denominated Nymphs. Schol. Theoc. Eidyll. vii.

92. Cf. Eidyll. v. 140. Lyc. Cassand. 274. ibique Schol. et Potter.

Kiessl. ad Theocrit.

-----

It is well known that, in the present day, among the nomadic nations of

Asia, the sons of the chiefs still follow their flocks in the

wilderness. And this in the heroic ages was likewise the case in

Greece,[1782] where youths of the noblest families watched over their

fathers’ sheep and cattle. Thus Bucolion, son of Laomedon, led to

pasture the flocks of his sire, and, in the solitudes of the Phrygian

mountains, was met and loved by a nymph.[1783] Two sons also of Priam

pursued the same occupation;[1784] and thus among the Hebrews, David,

the son of Jesse, passes his youth in the sheepfold, and his manhood on

a throne. In this secluded and solitary life the sights and sounds of

nature became familiar to them, the voice of sudden torrents rushing

from the mountains,[1785] the roar of lions springing on their folds, or

the sweet moonlight silvering both mountain and valley. It is with the

shepherd’s life that Homer connects that noble description of the night

which Chapman has thus translated:

As when about the silver moon, when air is free from wind,[1786]

And stars shine clear,[1787] to whose sweet beams high prospects and the

brows

Of all steep hills and pinnacles thrust up themselves for shows,

And even the lonely valleys joy to glitter in their sight,

When the unmeasured firmament bursts to disclose her light,

And all the signs in heaven are seen, that glad the shepherd’s heart.

The glimpses of pastoral life, albeit too few, are still frequent in

Homer, who loves, whenever possible, to illustrate his subject by

bringing before our minds the image of a shepherd. Thus Hector, lifting

a large rock, is compared to a shepherd bearing a ram’s fleece.[1788]

As when the fleece, though large yet light, the careful shepherd rears,

With both hands plunged within its folds, so he the rock uptears.

Footnote 1782:

Lycoph. Cassand. 91, seq. in common with Homer and the other ancient

poets, represent princes as shepherds. The guarding of flocks was

then, in fact, a regal occupation. Didymos, ad Odyss. ν. 223,

observes, that τὸ παλαιὸν καὶ οἱ τῶν βασιλέων παίδες πανάπαλοι (l.

παναίπολοι) ἐκαλοῦντο, καὶ ἐποίμαινον. Meurs. ad Lycoph. p. 1181.

Varr. De Re Rust. ii. 1.

Footnote 1783:

Il. ζ. 25. Odyss. ο. 385, seq.

Footnote 1784:

Il. δ. 106.

Footnote 1785:

Iliad. δ. 452, seq. ε. 137. θ, 555.

Footnote 1786:

The following picture by Milton almost seems to be designed to form a

contrast to the above:

As when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds

Ascending, while the north wind sleeps, o’erspread

Heaven’s cheerful face, the lowring element

Scowls o’er the darken’d landscape snow or shower;

If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet,

Extend his evening beam, the fields revive,

The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds

Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.

Parad. Lost, ii. 488, sqq.

Iliad θ. 559, sqq. Here _shepherd_, observes the Scholiast, is used

for _herdsman_. Ποιμήν εἶπεν ἀντὶ τοῦ βουκόλος διὰ νυκτὸς γὰρ αἱ βόες

νέμονται, in loc. i. 238.

Footnote 1787:

On this passage Ἀρίσταρχος τὴν κατὰ φύσιν λαμπρὰν λέγει κἂν μὴ

πλήθουσα ᾖ εἰ γὰρ πληροσέληνος ἦν, ἐκέκρυπτο ἄν μᾶλλον τὰ ἄστρα.

Schol. Bekker. t. i. 238. Cf. Eustath. in Iliad. θ. t. i. p. 621.

Footnote 1788:

Iliad, μ. 451, seq.

-----

Again, the Trojan forces following their leader, Æneas, suggest to his

mind the idea of innumerable flocks bounding after a ram to drink.[1789]

The people followed, as the flock the shaggy ram succeeds,

Who to the cooling streamlet’s bank the woolly nation leads

(While swells the shepherd’s heart with joy) from pasture on the meads.

Elsewhere, he describes a troop of hungry wolves attacking the flocks on

the mountains:—[1790]

As when the hungry wolves, on folds forsaken by the watch,

Descend, the kids and tender lambs by thievish force to snatch;

Or when the timid browsing crew are scattered far and wide,

And seized, by witless shepherds left upon the mountain side.

But, in another place, they are represented contending with a lion by

night for the body of one of their flock.[1791]

Thus the night-watching shepherds strive, but vainly, to repel

The angry lion, whom the stings of want and rage impel,

Upon the carcase fastens he: his heart no fear can quell.

Where the number of the flock required the care of several men a chief

shepherd ἐπιποιμὴν was appointed to overlook the rest.[1792] Among the

ancients twenty sheep were thought to require the attention of a man and

a boy;[1793] but, in modern times, three men and a boy, with four or

five dogs, are sometimes entrusted with a flock of five hundred, of

which two-thirds are ewes.[1794] The proportion of rams to ewes is at

present as four to a hundred.

-----

Footnote 1789:

Iliad, ν. 491, sqq.

Footnote 1790:

Iliad. π. 354, sqq.

Footnote 1791:

Iliad. σ. 161, seq.

Footnote 1792:

Odyss. μ. 131. The duties of this servant are described by Varro, who

likewise states the physical qualities required to be found in

shepherds. Contra, pernoctare ad suum quemque gregem esse omnes sub

uno magistro pecoris cum esse majorem natu potius quàm alios et

peritiorem quàm reliquos, quod iis qui ætate, et scientia præstant

animo æquiore reliquis parent. Ita tamen oportet ætate præstare ut ne

propter senectutem minus sustinere possit labores. Neque enim senes,

neque pueri callium difficultatem, ac montium arduitatem, atque

asperitatem facile ferunt: quod patiendum illis qui greges sequuntur

præsertim armenticios, ac caprinos quibus rupes ac silvæ ad pabulandi

cordi. De Re Rust, ii. 10. Cf. Colum. ii. 1.

Footnote 1793:

Geop. xviii. 1. Yet we find mention in Demosthenes of a shepherd with

a flock of fifty sheep under his care. In Everg. et Mnes. § 15.

Footnote 1794:

Leake, Travels in the Morea, vol. i. p. 17.

-----

From very remote ages shepherds had learned to avail themselves of the

aid of dogs,[1795] which in farms were usually furnished with wooden

collars.[1796] The breed generally employed in this service, in later

ages at least, was the Molossian,[1797] which, though exceedingly

powerful and fierce towards strangers, was by its masters found

sufficiently gentle and tractable. The shepherd’s pipe,[1798] frequently

made of the donax, or common river-reed,[1799] likewise used in

thatching cottages, formed a no less necessary accompaniment. Another of

their instruments of music was the flute crooked at the top, finely

polished and rubbed with bees’ wax.[1800]

-----

Footnote 1795:

Plat. de Rep. iv. t. vi. p. 204. Columella describes with poetical

enthusiasm the character and qualities of the shepherd’s dog, which he

refuses to class among dumb animals, its bark being, according to him,

full of meaning: “Canis falso dicitur mutus custos nam quis hominum

clarius, aut tanta vociferatione bestiam vel furem prædicat quam iste

latratu? quis famulus amantior domini? quis fidelior comes? quis

custos incorruptior? quis excubitor inveniri potest vigilantior? quis

denique ultor aut vindex constantior? Quare vel in primis hoc animal

mercari tuerique debet agricola, quod et villam et fructus

familiamque, at pecora custodit.” De Re Rusticâ, 7. 12.

Footnote 1796:

Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 897.

Footnote 1797:

Aristot. Hist. Animal. ix. 1.

Footnote 1798:

Luc. Bis Accus. § 11.

Footnote 1799:

Plat. Rep. iii. § 10. Stalb.

Footnote 1800:

Theocrit. i. 129. Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 132. Mosch. Eidyll. iii. 54.

-----

As the Arcadians, descendants of the Pelasgians, derived one of their

principal delights from music,[1801] it is reasonable to infer that the

ancestral nation, preëminently pastoral, was likewise addicted to this

science. The feeding of herds and flocks constituted the principal

occupation of the Proselenoi,[1802] who were little devoted to

agriculture, as may be inferred from their acorn-eating habits; for no

nation ever continued to feed on mast after they could obtain bread. A

report prevailed in the ancient world that the Arcadians were of a

poetical temperament, to which Virgil alludes in the well-known verses—

Arcades ambo,

Et cantare pares et respondere parati.

And as improvisatori they may possibly have excelled, though Greece knew

nothing of an Arcadian literature. However, chiefly after the example of

Virgil, the poets of modern times have always delighted to convert

Arcadia into a kind of pastoral Utopia, which is done by Sannazaro,

Tasso, Guarini, Sir Philip Sydney, Daniel, and many others. Palmerius à

Grentmesnil[1803] discovers something like the descendants of the

Arcadians among the Irish, whose pastoral taste for music he conceives

to be commemorated by the triangular harp in the national insignia.

-----

Footnote 1801:

Athen. xiv. 22.

Footnote 1802:

Etym. Mag. 690. 11.

Footnote 1803:

“Sic et hodie audio Hibernos, qui pecuariam exercent, musicæ deditos,

et triangulari cithara (quam vocamus _harpe_) plerumque se oblectare

solere, unde aiunt insignia regni Hiberniæ fuisse olim et esse adhuc

tale musicum instrumentum.” Desc. Græc. Ant. p. 61.

-----

Their usual clothing consisted of diptheræ, or dressed sheepskins,[1804]

just as at the present day among the Nubian shepherds, whom one may see

thus clad, roaming through the sandy hollows of the Lybian desert. On

the inside of these skins the traitor Hermion wrote the letters which

betrayed the designs of his countrymen to the enemy in Laconia.[1805]

Others wore goatskin cloaks, which they likewise used as a coverlet at

night.[1806] Euripides introduces his chorus of satyrs complaining of

this miserable costume.[1807]

“Much loved Bacchos where dost thou

Lonely dwell afar,

Shaking thy gold locks at eve

Like a blazing star?

While I thy minister am fain

To serve this one-eyed Cyclop swain,

A slave borne down by fortune’s stroke

In a wretched goatskin cloak.”

-----

Footnote 1804:

Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 73. Cf. Vesp. 442. Küst.—Eq. 398. Bekk. Luc.

Tim. § 8. We find mention also made of a cloak of wolfskin.

Philostrat. Vit. Sophist. ii. 6.

Footnote 1805:

Suidas. v. διφθέρα. t. i. p. 757. e.

Footnote 1806:

Harless. ad Theocrit. v. 2.

Footnote 1807:

Cyclop. 79, seq.

-----

And thus simple was ever their appearance in the East. But, as I have

hinted above, their very great leisure,[1808] the accidents of their

occupation, and the grand and regular march of natural phenomena in

those countries, often ripened their intellects beyond what the

condition of a modern heath-trotter renders credible. Thus, in the

mountains of Chaldæa, astronomy and all its parasitical sciences took

birth among the shepherd race. From temperament and circumstances, the

inhabitants of thinly-peopled tracts, if unvexed by wars, are profoundly

meditative. What they behold in serene indistraction gradually rouses

their thoughts, and presenting itself again and again, attended always,

as the phenomena of the heavens are, by the same accidents, compels them

to study.[1809]

-----

Footnote 1808:

Lord Bacon considers the pastoral state preferable in some respects to

the agricultural:—“The two simplest and most primitive trades of life;

that of the shepherd (who by reason of his leisure, rests in a place,

and living in view of heaven, is a lively image of a contemplative

life) and that of the husbandman; where we see the favour of God went

to the shepherd and not to the tiller of the ground.”—Advancement of

Learning, p. 64. Shepherds made libations of milk to the Muses.

Theocrit. i. 143, seq.

Footnote 1809:

Even yet we find the shepherds of Greece retain some smack of

classical learning: “After dinner I walked out with a shepherd’s boy

to herbarise; my pastoral botanist surprised me not a little with his

nomenclature; I traced the names of Dioscorides, and Theophrastus,

corrupted, indeed, in some degree by pronunciation, and by the long

_series annorum_, which had elapsed since the time of these

philosophers, but many of them were unmutilated, and their virtues

faithfully handed down in the oral traditions of the country. My

shepherd boy returned to his fold not less satisfied with some paras

that I had given him, than I was in finding in such a rustic a

repository of ancient science.”—Sibth. in Walp. i. 66, seq. There is

in Sir John Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, translated by Robert

Mulcaster, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a passage describing the

pastoral habits of our ancestors, and the intellectual superiority

they engendered, which appears to me so excellent, that I cannot

resist the temptation to introduce it here:—“England is so fertile and

fruitefull, that comparing quantity to quantity it surmounteth all

other landes in fruitefulnesse. Yea, it bringeth forth fruite of

itselfe, scant provoked by mann’s industrie and labour. For there the

landes, the fieldes, the groves, and the woodes, doe so aboundantlye

springe, that the same untilled doe commonly yield to their owners

more profite then tilled, though else they bee most fruitefull of

corne and graine. There also are fieldes of pasture inclosed with

hedges and ditches, with trees planted and growing uppon the same,

which are a defence to their heardes of sheepe and cattell, against

stormes and heate of the sunne; and the pastures are commonly watered,

so that cattell shutte and closed therein have no neede of keeping

neither by day, nor by night. For there bee no wolves, nor beares, nor

lyons, wherefore their sheepe lye by night in the fields, unkept

within their foldes wherewith their land is manured. By the meanes

whereof, the men of that countrie are scant troubled with any

painefull labour, wherefore they live more spiritually, as did the

ancient fathers, which did rather choose to keepe and feede cattell,

than to disturbe the quietnesse of the minde with care of husbandrie.

And heereof it cometh, that menne of this countrie are more apte and

fitte to discerne in doubtfull causes of great examination and triall,

than are menne whollye given to moyling in the ground; in whom that

rurall exercise engendereth rudeness of witte and minde.” chap. 29.

-----

But solitude is less surely the nurse of science than of superstition.

The leaven, which in populous cities scarcely swells visibly in the

breast, ferments unrestrainedly in the depths of woods, in the

high-piled recesses of mountains, in the gloom of caverns, where nature

invests itself with attributes which address themselves powerfully to

the heart, and appears almost to hold communion with its offspring.

Hence the wild mythologies of Nomadic races, which are not loose-hanging

creeds, to be put off and on like a cloak, but a belief inwrought into

their souls, a part of themselves, and perhaps the best part, since it

is from this that springs the whole dignity and poetry of their lives.

In all countries fables rise in the fields, to flow into and be lost in

the cities. Observe the wild picture which Plato, in his Academic Dream,

presents to us of a group of Lydian shepherds. It has all the poetical

elements of an Arabian tale.

Tradition, he says, represented Gyges the ancestor of Crœsus as a hired

shepherd, who with many others guarded the imperial flocks in the

remoter districts of the country. At this time happened a great

earthquake, attended by floods of rain, which, in the parts where they

were, opened up a vast chasm in the earth. Gyges arriving alone at the

mouth of the gap stood amazed at its depth and magnitude, but observing

a practicable descent went down, and roamed through its subterraneous

passages. Many marvellous things, according to the mythos, did he there

see, and among the rest a hollow brazen horse, with doors in its side,

through which looking in, he beheld a colossal naked corpse, with a

jewelled ring on its hand. Transferring this to his own finger Gyges

departed.

Shortly afterwards, still wearing the signet, he went to the assembly of

shepherds, which met monthly, for the purpose of selecting a person to

bear the usual report of the flocks to the king. Sitting down among the

rest he happened to turn the beavil of his ring towards himself, upon

which he became invisible to his companions,[1810] as he clearly

discovered from their discourse, which proceeded as if about an absent

man. Smitten with much wonder he returned the gem to its former position

and again became visible. He made the experiment over and over and

always with success; upon which, like another Macbeth, a vast scheme of

ambition darkly shadowed itself upon his mind, and a crown tinged

slightly with blood swam before him. It does not, however, appear that

like the Thane of Cawdor he was perplexed with scruples. He does not

say,—

“Why do I yield to that suggestion,

Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,

Against the use of nature? Present facts

Are less than horrible imaginings.

My thought whose murder’s yet but phantasy,

Shakes so my single state of man, that function

Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is,

But what is not.”

-----

Footnote 1810:

The reader will in this place perhaps remember the dream of Rousseau,

on the enjoyment which the possession of such a ring would have

afforded him; when after pushing his speculations as far as they could

go he determines that he was much better without it.—Rêveries du

Promeneur Solitaire, iii. 137.

-----

Gyges, with the ruthless resolution of an Oriental, forms his plan at

once, and coolly works it out. He procures himself to be elected one of

the mission to the king, and on arriving at the capital, dishonours the

queen, murders his master, and ascends the throne.[1811]

-----

Footnote 1811:

Plat. Rep. ii. § 3. Cf. x. § 12. Stallb. Among the gods similar powers

were attributed to the helmet of Hades. Thus, in Homer, Athena is

concealed from Mars by the effect of this enchanted piece of

armour.—Iliad, ε. 845. Apollod. ii. 4. 2.

-----

This may be regarded as a specimen of the shepherds’ tales.[1812] But

they moved for the most part in an atmosphere of superstition, had

ceremonies of their own, a mythology of their own, and of the whole the

pervading spirit was love. In communities highly civilised, this passion

commonly degenerates into a plaything, despised when weak, and

mischievous when strong. It is otherwise in the early stages of society.

There, in proportion to their freedom from the aspirations and anxieties

of ambition, men seek happiness in the cultivation of the affections.

The society of women is to them all in all. And the evils that infest

them, disturb their quiet, and engender crime, spring, too, from the

same bitter-sweet fountain, which flows with honey or gall according to

the temper of those who drink of it. Consequently, in contemplating the

pastoral life of Greece, we must beware not to overlook the

shepherdesses,[1813] those heroines of Bucolic poetry, whose freshness

and nature still survive in Theocritus, and other fragments of

antiquity, and may operate as an antidote to that insipid spawn whose

loves and lamentations affect us like ipecacuanha in modern pastorals.

-----

Footnote 1812:

To the same class belongs that tradition of a brazen tablet thrown up

by a fountain in Lycia foretelling the overthrow of the Persian

monarchy by the Greeks.—Plut. Alexand. § 17.

Footnote 1813:

Cf. Varr. De Re Rust. ii. 10.

-----

In these latitudes of society, at least, women enjoyed their freedom,

and the glimpses presented to us of them as they there existed may be

regarded among the chief charms of Greek poetry. Only, for example,

observe the picture which Chæremon the Flower Poet, has delineated of a

bevy of beautiful virgins sporting by moonlight:

“There one reclined apart I saw, within the moon’s pale light,

With bosom through her parted robe appearing snowy white;

Another danced, and floating free her garments in the breeze

She seemed as buoyant as the wave that leaps o’er summer seas.

While dusky shadows all around shrunk backward from the place,

Chased by the beaming splendour shed like sunshine from her face:

Beside this living picture stood a maiden passing fair

With soft round arms exposed; a fourth with free and graceful air,

Like Dian when the bounding hart she tracks through morning dew,

Bared through the opening of her robes her lovely limbs to view.

And oh! the image of her charms, as clouds in heaven above,

Mirrored by streams, left on my soul the stamp of hopeless love.

And slumbering near them others lay, on beds of sweetest flowers,

The dusky petaled violet, the rose of Paphian bowers.

The inula and saffron flower, which on their garments cast,

And veils, such hues as deck the sky when day is ebbing fast;

While far and near tall marjoram bedecked the fairy ground,

Loading with sweets the vagrant winds that frolicked all around.”[1814]

-----

Footnote 1814:

Athen. xiii. 87.

-----

In the ordinary bucolic poets women to be sure are sketched with a rude

pencil, though coquettish as queens, of which we have an exemplification

in the picture on the shepherd’s cup:[1815]

And there, by ivy shaded, sits a maid divinely wrought,

With veil and circlet on her brows, by two fond lovers sought.

Both beautiful with flowing hair, both sueing to be heard,

On this side one, the other there, but neither is preferred.

For now on this, on that anon, she pours her witching smile,

Like sunshine on the buds of hope, in falsehood all and guile,

Though ceaselessly, with swelling eyes, they seek her heart to move,

By every soft and touching art that wins a maiden’s love.[1816]

-----

Footnote 1815:

This was the κισσύβιον, a goblet or cup turned of ivy wood. It was

usually rubbed with wax and polished, for the purpose of bringing out

the beautiful carving which adorned it. Cf. Etym. Mag. 515. 33.

Footnote 1816:

Theocrit. i. 32, sqq.

-----

There is here no straining after the ideal. Like Titian’s beauties,

these shepherdesses are all creatures of this earth, filled with robust

health, dark-eyed, warm, impassioned, and somewhat deficient in reserve.

They understand well how to act their part in a dialogue. For every bolt

shot at them they can return another as keen. Each bower and bosky

bourne seems redolent of their smiles; their laughter awakens the

echoes; their ruddy lips and pearly teeth hang like a vision over every

bubbling spring and love-hiding thicket which they were wont to

frequent. Hence the charm of Theocritus. And a still stronger charm

perhaps would have belonged to the pages of him who should have painted

the shepherd’s life of a remoter age,[1817] when none were above such an

occupation, which therefore united at once all the dignity of lofty

independence with the careless freedom of manners and unapprehensive

enjoyment in which consists the secret source of all the pleasure which

rustic pictures afford. Most of his creations, though not all, are in

this respect wanting. Ideas of penury[1818] slip in, and, in the midst

of rich poetry, check the developement of pleasurable feelings. For the

musical swains, though apparently ambitious of nought but the reputation

of song, permit us to discover, that they are but hirelings tending

flocks not their own. The contrast between persons of this class and

those who are owners of the sheep they tend, is forcibly pointed out in

the sacred language of Christ: “I am the good shepherd: the good

shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling and

not the shepherd and whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming,

and leaveth the sheep and fleeth, and the wolf catcheth them and

scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth because he is a hireling, and

careth not for the sheep. I am the good shepherd and know my sheep and

am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me even so know I the Father;

and I lay down my life for the sheep.”[1819] The same affectionate

tenderness is attributed to shepherds in the prophetic writings: “he

shall feed his flocks like a shepherd, he shall gather the lambs with

his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that

are with young.”[1820]

-----

Footnote 1817:

Though even here we detect the presence of hirelings; for Homer

observes, that, among the Læstrigons, such shepherds as could do with

little sleep received double wages. Odyss. κ. 84, seq.

Footnote 1818:

In fact black slaves, from Africa, were sometimes employed as

shepherds, at least in Sicily. Theoc. i. 24.

Footnote 1819:

John, x. 11, sqq.

Footnote 1820:

Isaiah, xl. 11.

-----

In the matter of virtues and vices, the shepherds of antiquity were very

much, no doubt, like other men. Their habits were such as grew naturally

out of their position. Towards whatever their feelings led them they

proceeded vehemently, and with that singleness of purpose which belongs

to men of simple and decided character.[1821] They were too commonly

creatures of mere impulse. From the peculiar form of their communion

with nature, which, like the masses of Egyptian architecture, was

continued and monotonous, they acquired a peculiarity of mental

temperament, warm, as it were, in parts, and cold in parts. Every

circumstance around them tended to rouse, pique, and inflame the passion

of desire and its concomitants; the pairing of their flocks, of the

birds, of the very wild beasts whose courage or ferocity they dreaded;

their own leisure combined with the excess of health, the influence of

climate, the solicitations of opportunity, impelled them into excess;

and, accordingly, their morals in this respect sank to a low standard,

and rendered them any thing but models of the golden age. The intellect

of course was comparatively little cultivated; and there being no other

check upon the feelings, suicides, murders of jealousy, and other

evidences of ill-regulated passion would often occur.[1822]

-----

Footnote 1821:

It has been observed by Gibbon, who had diligently studied the

pastoral nations of Asia in their general habits and characteristics,

that ambition and the spirit of conquest are powerfully excited by the

shepherd’s manner of life. “The thrones of Asia have been repeatedly

overturned by the shepherds of the north, and their arms have spread

terror and devastation over the most fertile and warlike countries of

Europe. On this occasion, as well as on many others, the sober

historian is forcibly awakened from a pleasing vision and is compelled

with some reluctance to confess, that the pastoral manners which have

been adorned with the fairest attributes of peace and innocence are

much better adapted to the fierce and cruel habits of a military

life.” Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, iv. 348. Hippocrates in

his brief but vigorous manner has presented us with a picture of the

Scythian shepherd’s life in ancient times, (De Aër. et Loc. § 92,

sqq.) and from modern travellers we find that it differed very little

from that which they lead at the present day. See the travels of

Rubriquis in Hakluyt, i. 101, sqq. See also the notes of Coray on

Hippocrates, t. ii. 280, seq.

Footnote 1822:

Theocritus describes Daphnis dying for love. Eidyll. i. 135.

-----

But, in proportion as we pierce further back into antiquity, these

tragical incidents become fewer: not merely because our knowledge of

those ages is more scanty, but that in ruder times morality is

comparatively lax, and men’s taste less fastidious. The rigid laws of

marriage were then little observed. Women passed from husband to husband

without losing character or caste; and when they produced illegitimate

offspring attributed the paternity to some god, and scarcely considered

the circumstance a misfortune. Half the princes of the Homeric age were

illegitimate; for this is what is always meant by saying they were

descended from the gods. Æneas was the son of some young woman whom

Anchises met on the mountains, where he pastured his father’s flocks and

pretended to have been loved by Aphrodite.[1823] Persons so

circumstanced were, doubtless, capable of much romance. Nymphs and

goddesses peopled their imagination, and their imagination let loose its

brood upon the woods. Poets afterwards, able to infuse a soul into these

rustic traditions, gave a local habitation and a name to every beautiful

legend they could collect. Hence that sunny picture, the interview of

Aphrodite and Anchises amid the lofty recesses, the grassy slopes, the

sparkling leaping brooks, and old umbrageous forests of Mount Ida.

Already, however, the force of dress was known, which Montaigne

afterwards celebrated; for the Homeric bard, about to record an

interview between the goddess and her shepherd-lover, instead of

supposing her to have been

“When unadorned, adorned the most,”

describes all the arts of a luxurious toilette.

-----

Footnote 1823:

Hom. Hymn. ad Ven. 54, sqq.

-----

The picture, however, of pastoral life which he suggests rather than

describes, is worked out with strokes of great simplicity. All the other

herdsmen disperse in the execution of their several duties, leaving

Anchises alone in the cattle-sheds,[1824] spacious in dimensions, and

tastefully erected, where he amuses his solitary leisure with the music

of the cithara. While thus engaged he beholds the approach of the

goddess,[1825] and is at once struck with her beauty and the splendour

of her raiment. At the unearthly vision his love is kindled; but the

poet, skilled in the mysteries of the heart, chastens his passion by

overmastering feelings of reverence, such as necessarily belong to

unsophisticated youth. Anchises constitutes, indeed, the _beau idéal_ of

an heroic shepherd, simple, high-minded, ingenuous, venturous and

fearless in contests with man or beast, but in his intercourse with

woman gentle, reverent,

“And of his port as meek as is a maid.”

In fact, the gallant knights of romance seem rather to have been

modelled after the heroic warriors of Greece, than from any realities

supplied by the chivalrous ages. The author of the Hymn is careful in

describing the shepherd’s couch, to insinuate with how great strength

and courage he was endowed. He reclines, we are told, on skins of bears

and lions slain by his own hand, though over these there were cast, for

show, garments of the softest texture.[1826]

-----

Footnote 1824:

Compare Trollope, Notes on St. John, x. i.

Footnote 1825:

Aleuas, the Thessalian, is said to have been favoured with the visits

of a very different mistress as he pastured his herds on Mount Ossa,

near the Hæmonian spring; for a dragon of enormous size, becoming

enamoured of his beauty and golden hair, frequently approached the

shepherd with presents of game of her own catching. Having laid her

gifts at his feet, she would kiss his locks and lick his face with her

tongue, which, as the fountain was so near it, may be hoped was a work

of supererogation. Ælian. De Nat. Animal. viii. 11.

Footnote 1826:

Hymn. ad Vener. 158, sqq.

-----

Throughout this work it has been seen how the influence of climate and

position concurred in the formation of the Greek character. We may

ourselves put the doctrine to the proof by observing the effect upon our

minds of those reflections of landscapes which appear in language; rude

Boreal scenes exciting the spirit of contention and energy; while the

soft valleys, groves, and odoriferous gardens of the South produce a

calm upon our thoughts favourable to the more benevolent emotions.

Hellenic shepherds, therefore, no other causes preventing, may upon the

whole be supposed to have been humane.

Indeed, the very curious adventures of a sophist,[1827] in the mountains

of Eubœa, preserved among the literary wrecks of antiquity, open up to

our view a picture of pastoral life which, in spite of much rudeness and

indigence, exhibits the Greek character in its original roughness and

simplicity, full of kindness, full of gentleness, full of hospitable

propensities, which would do honour to the noblest Arab Sheikh. And the

material scene itself, in every feature Grecian, harmonises exactly with

the moral landscape.

-----

Footnote 1827:

Dion Chrysostom. Orat. vii. t. i. p. 219, sqq. Phot. 166. a. 24.

-----

The eastern shores of the island of Negropont, beetled over by Mount

Caphareus,[1828] and indented by no creeks or harbours, were in

antiquity infamous for shipwrecks, notwithstanding that they formed the

principal station of the purple fishers.[1829] Cast away on this coast,

the sophist Dion, for his eloquence surnamed of the golden-mouth, fell

in with a pastoral hunter who, entertaining him generously, furnished at

the same time a complete idea of the rude herdsman, who preserved in the

vicinity of the highest civilisation known to the old world the

simplicity of the Homeric Abantes.[1830] Nay, this wild sportsman,

pursuing with his huge dogs a stag along the cliffs, powerful in limb,

hale in colour, and with long hair streaming over his shoulders,

appeared to be the natural descendant of those Heroic warriors.[1831]

Armed with his hunting-knife, he flays and cuts up the stag upon the

spot, and taking along with him the skin and choicest pieces of venison

abandons the remainder on the beach. As they go along he displays the

knowledge wherewith experience stores the rustic mind. He understands

the signs of the weather, and from the clouds which cap the summits of

Caphareus foretells how long the sea will continue unnavigable.[1832]

-----

Footnote 1828:

On this mountain and the mythological legends attached to it, see

Virg. Æn. xi. 260, with the note of Servius. Ovid. Metamorph. xiv.

472. Cf. Propert. v. 115, sqq. Jacobs. Plin. iv. 21. An ancient

scholiast, quoted by Morell, thus relates the revenge of Nauplios:

Ναύπλιος τοῦ υἱέος δὴ τοῦ Παλαμήδους τοῦ φόνου ἀμυνόμενος τοὺς Ἕλλήνας

τοῦ ἀνέμου αὐτοῖς ἐνστάντος· ἐπεὶ τοῦτον διὰ θαλάττης ἐγέλων. αὐτὸς

οὗτος τὸν Καφηρέα καταλαβὼν εἶτα νυκτὸς πυρσεύων ἀπὸ τῶν ἐκεῖσε

πετρωδῶν πάγων, ἠπάτα προσχεῖν, ὡς δή τινι εὐπροσόδῳ ἀκτῆ τοῖς

ἀποτόμοις κρημνοῖς εἰς βάθος ἐῤῥιζωμένοις καὶ χοιράσι διειλημμένοις.

καὶ οὕτως ἀπρόοπτως ἀπωλόντο. Schediasm. &c., in Dion. t. ii. p. 580,

seq. Cf. Strab. viii. 6. t ii. p. 195. Apollodor. ii. i. 5. Orph.

Argonaut. 204, sqq.

Footnote 1829:

On the purple fisheries of Eubœa, cf. Feder. Morell. Schediasm. &c.,

in Dion. ii. 576. Reiske. and Aristot. Hist. Animal. v. 15.

Footnote 1830:

A life equally simple is led by the Albanian shepherds of the present

day. “They live on the mountains, in the vale or the plain, as the

varying seasons require, under arbours, or sheds, covered with boughs,

tending their flocks abroad, or milking the ewes and she-goats at the

fold, and making cheese and butter to supply the city.” Chandler, ii.

p. 135.

Footnote 1831:

Iliad. β. 541. δ. 464. The long hair of these ancient warriors is thus

mentioned by the Homeric Scholiast: τὰ ὀπίσω μέρη τῆς κεφαλῆς κομῶντες

ἀνδρείας χάριν. ἴδιον δὲ τοῦτο τῆς τῶν Εὐβοέων κουρᾶς, τὸ ὄπισθεν τὰς

τρίχας βαθείας ἔχειν. t. i. p. 83. Bekker.

Footnote 1832:

Cf. Theoph. De Sign. Pluv. i. 22.

-----

Rude as an American backwoodsman, he was precipitated, by the rare luck

of meeting with a stranger, into equal inquisitiveness and garrulity. He

put questions without waiting for an answer. He gossipped of his own

concerns; explained without being asked the whole economy of his life;

and exhibited all that enthusiasm of beneficence which belongs to human

nature when uncorrupted by the thirst of gold. There is a rare truth in

the description; far too much ever to have graced a sophist’s tale,

unless nature had supplied the model.

“There are two of us,” says he, “who inhabit together the same rude

nook, having married sisters, by whom we have both sons and daughters.

We derive our subsistence principally from the chase, paying but little

attention to agriculture, since we have no land of our own. Nor were our

fathers better off in this respect than ourselves; for, though freeborn

citizens, they were poor, and by their condition constrained to tend the

herds of another, a man of great property, owning vast droves of cattle,

numerous horses and sheep, several beautiful estates, with many other

possessions, and all these mountains as far as you can see. This

opulence, however, became his ruin. For the emperor, casting a covetous

eye upon his domains, put him to death, that he might have a pretext for

seizing on them. Our few beasts went along with our master’s, and the

wages due to us there was no one to pay.

“Here, therefore, of necessity we remained[1833] where two or three huts

were left us, with a slight wooden shed in which the calves had been

housed in the summer nights.[1834] For, during winter, we had been used

to descend for pasture to the plains where, in the proper season, stores

of hay were also laid up; but with the re-appearance of summer we

returned again to the mountains. The spot which had formed our principal

station now became our fixed dwelling. Branching off on either hand is a

deep and shady valley, having in the middle a rivulet so shallow as to

be easily traversed, both by cattle and their young. This stream,

flowing from a spring hard by, is pure and perennial and cooled by the

summer wind blowing perpetually up the ravine. The encircling forests of

oak stretch forth their boughs far above, over a carpet of soft verdure,

which descends with a gentle slope into the stream, giving birth to a

few gad-flies,[1835] or any other insect hurtful to herds. Extending

around are numerous lovely meadows, dotted with lofty trees, where the

grass is green and luxuriant throughout the year.”

-----

Footnote 1833:

Had Bernardin de St. Pierre read this when he wrote his Indian

Cottage?

Footnote 1834:

An equal degree of contentment to that which in this recital we find

exhibited by the Eubœan herdsmen, is still in our own times displayed

by the rough peasants of the Lipari islands, in the midst of far

greater privations:—“It is incredible at the same time how contented

these islanders are amid all their poverty. Ulysses perhaps cherished

not a greater love for his Ithaca than they bear to their Eolian rocks

which, wretched as they may appear, they would not exchange for the

Fortunate islands. Frequently have I entered their huts which seem

like the nests of birds hung to the cliffs. They are framed of pieces

of lava ill-joined together, equally destitute of ornament within and

without, and scarcely admitting a feeble uncertain light, like some

gloomy cavern.” Spallanzani, Travels in the Two Sicilies, iv. 147.

Footnote 1835:

The absence of these tormentors of cattle was considered a matter of

great importance by the ancients. Virgil, where he is giving

directions respecting the best pastures suited to the youthful mothers

of the herds, celebrates the exploits of the gadfly:

Saltibus in vacuis pascant, et plena secundum

Flumina: muscus ubi, et viridissima gramine ripa,

Speluncæque tegant, et saxea procubet umbra.

Est lucos Silari circa, ilicibusque virentem

Plurimus Alburnum volitans, cui nomen asilo

Romanum est, œstrum Graii vertere vocantes:

Asper, acerba sonans: quo tota exterrita sylvis

Diffugiunt armenta; furit mugitibus æther

Concussus, sylvæque et sicci ripa Tanagri.

Georg. iii. 143, sqq.

See the note of Philargyrius in loc. Aristot. Hist. Animal, iv. 4. v.

19.

-----

The eloquence of this description, I mean in the original, is not

unworthy to be compared with that in the Phædrus[1836] which has given

eternal bloom to the platane-tree and agnus castus on the banks of the

Ilissos.

-----

Footnote 1836:

Plat. Opp. t. i. p. 9. To protect from pollution spots shaded by noble

trees they were accustomed to consecrate them to some god, and to

erect beneath the overhanging branches statues and altars. Id. ib. In

Crete the fountains are often shaded still by majestic plane-trees.

Pashley, ii. 31.

-----

The conversion of these herdsmen into hunters is narrated by Dion with a

patient simplicity worthy of Defoe. An air of solitude, snatched from

Robinson Crusoe’s island, seems to breathe at his bidding over Eubœa.

The same education operates strange changes both in man and dog; and

bringing them into hostile contact with wolves, wild boars, stags, and

other large animals, gives the latter a taste for blood, and renders him

fierce and destructive. Subsisting by the chase, they pursued it summer

and winter, following both hares and fallow-deer by their tracks in the

snow. In their intervals of leisure they strengthened and beautified

their dwellings, saw their children intermarry and grow up to succeed

them, without even once approaching any city or even village.

The style of hospitality prevalent among such men in antiquity differs

very little from that which one would now find in the hut of a

good-natured Albanian.[1837] Their industry rendered them independent,

and their independence rendered them generous. By degrees their rustic

cottages were surrounded by a garden and fruit-trees, their court was

walled in, and luxuriant vines hung their foliage and purple fruit over

windows and porch. On the arrival of a stranger, the wife takes her

station at table beside her husband. Their marriageable daughter, in the

bloom and beauty of youth, aids her brothers in waiting at table, where

host and guest recline on highly raised divans of leaves covered with

the skins of beasts. The young maiden, like a rustic Hebe, pours out the

wine, dark and fragrant, while the youths served up the dishes and then

laid out a table for themselves and dined together. And the sophist,

versed in the courts of satraps and kings, conceived these rude hunters

of the mountains the happiest and most enviable of mankind.

-----

Footnote 1837:

Or even in the shed of a Turkish shepherd in Asia Minor. Dr. Chandler

has a passage illustrative of the hospitality of pastoral tribes,

which is at once so picturesque and concise that I am tempted to

transcribe it: “About two in the morning our whole attention was fixed

by the barking of dogs, which, as we advanced, became exceedingly

furious. Deceived by the light of the moon we now fancied we could see

a village, and were much mortified to find only a station of poor

goatherds without even a shed, and nothing for our horses to eat. They

were lying wrapped in their thick capotes or loose-coats by some

glimmering embers, among the bushes in a dale under a spreading tree

by the fold. They received us hospitably, heaping on fresh fuel and

producing caimac or sour curds and coarse bread which they toasted for

us on the coals. We made a scanty meal, sitting on the ground lighted

by the fire and by the moon, after which sleep suddenly overpowered

me. On waking I found my companions by my side, sharing in the

comfortable cover of the Janizary’s cloak which he had carefully

spread over us. I was now much struck with the wild appearance of the

spot. The tree was hung with rustic utensils, the she-goats in a pen

sneezed and bleated and rustled to and fro; the shrubs, by which our

horses stood, were leafless, and the earth bare; a black cauldron with

milk was simmering over the fire, and a figure more than gaunt or

savage close by us was struggling on the ground with a kid whose ears

he had slit, and was endeavouring to cauterise with a piece of red-hot

iron.” Chandler, vol. i. 180, seq.

-----

But a pastoral picture is incomplete without love. The youthful beauty

of Caphareus, hidden, like another Nouronihar[1838] from the world, is

accordingly beloved by her cousin, an adventurous hunter like her sire,

who joins the family circle in the evening, accompanied by his father,

bringing in his hand a hare as a present to his mistress. The old man

salutes the guest, the youth offers his present with a kiss, and

immediately undertakes the office of the girl, who thereupon resumes her

place beside her mother.

-----

Footnote 1838:

History of the Caliph Vathek. p. 102.

-----

Observing this arrangement, the stranger inquires whether she is not

soon to be married to some wealthy peasant, who might benefit the

family, upon which the youth and maiden blush, and her father replies,

“Nay, but she will take a husband, humble in rank, and like ourselves a

hunter,” glancing at the same time at the lover.

“How is it then that you wait?” inquired the stranger. “Do you expect

him from the village?”

“No,” answered the father, “he is not far off; and so soon as we can fix

upon a fortunate day the nuptials will be celebrated.”

“And by what do you judge of a fortunate day?”

“The moon must be approaching the full, the weather fair, and the

atmosphere transparent.”

“And is the youth in reality an able hunter?”

“I am,” said the young man, answering for himself, “in the chase of the

stag or boar, as you yourself, if you please, shall judge to-morrow.”

“And did you take this hare, my friend?”

“I did,” replied he with a smile, “having set a gin for him by

night;[1839] the weather being surpassing beautiful, and the moon larger

than it ever was before.”

-----

Footnote 1839:

Cf. Philost. Icon. ii. 26, p. 851.

-----

Upon this both the old men laughed, and the lover abashed held his

peace.

“But,” observed the father of the maiden, “it is no fault of mine that

the solemnity is deferred; we only wait at your father’s desire, till a

victim can be purchased; for a sacrifice must be offered to the gods.”

“With respect to the victim,” interposed the maiden’s younger brother,

“he has long provided one, and a noble one too, which is now feeding

behind the cottage.”

“And is it truly so?” demanded the old man.

“It is,” replied the lad.

“And where,” addressing the youth, “did you procure it?” inquired they.

“When we took the wild sow,[1840] which was followed by her litter,”

answered he, “and the greater number, swifter than hares, made their

escape; I hit one with a stone, and my companions coming up threw a skin

over him. This I secured, and exchanged in the village for a young

domestic pig which has been fatted in a sty behind the house.”

-----

Footnote 1840:

The wild hog is still one of the most common animals in the forests of

Greece and Asia Minor. Chandler, i. 77. Even wild bulls occasionally

make their appearance in the latter country. 176.

-----

“I now understand,” exclaimed the father, “the cause of your mother’s

mirth when I would wonder what that grunting could be, and how the

barley was disappearing so fast.”

“Nevertheless,” observed the young man, “to be properly fatted our

Eubœan swine require acorns.[1841] However, if you will just step this

way I will show her to you.”

-----

Footnote 1841:

To this best and most economical food for hogs, Homer makes allusion

where he introduces the goddess Circe attending to her sty, which she

had filled with the transformed companions of Odysseus:

τοῖσι δε Κίρκη

Πὰρ ῥ’ ἄκυλον, βάλανον τ᾽ ἔβαλεν, καρπόν τε κρανείης

Ἔδμεναι, οἷα σύες χαμαιευνάδες αἰὲν ἔδουσιν.

Od. κ. 241, sqq. Cf. ν. 409.

Ælian de Nat. Animal. v. 45, celebrates these Homeric dainties as the

food of the hog to which he elsewhere adds the fruit of the ash. viii.

9.

-----

Upon which off they went, the boys quite at a run, and in vast glee.

In the meantime, the maiden going into the other cottage, brought forth

a quantity of split service-berries,[1842] medlars,[1843] and winter

apples, and bunches of superb grapes, bursting ripe,[1844] and, brushing

down the table, she spread them out there upon a layer of clean fern.

Next moment the lads returned bringing in the pig, with much joking and

shouts of laughter. Then came, too, the young man’s mother, with two of

his little brothers, and they brought along with them nice white loaves,

with boiled eggs in wooden salvers, with a quantity of parched peas.

Having embraced her brother, with his wife and daughter, she sat down

beside her husband, and said,

“Behold the victim, which my son has long fed for his marriage, and the

other things also are ready; both the barley-meal and the flour. A

little wine, perhaps, may be wanting, but even this we can easily

procure from the village.”

And her son standing near her, fixed his eyes wistfully upon his

father-in-law.

The latter smilingly observed,—

“All delay now is on the lover’s part, who, perhaps, is anxious to

fatten his pig.”

“As to her,” said the youth, “she is bursting with fat.”

Upon this the sophist, willing to aid the lover, interposed, and

remarked,—

“But you must take care lest while the pig is fattening he himself grow

thin.”

“The stranger’s remark is just,” said his mother; “for already he is

more meagre than he used to be; and I have of late observed him to be

wakeful at night, and to go forth from the cottage.”

“Oh! that,” said he, “was when the dogs barked, and I stepped out to see

what was the matter.”

“Not you!” said his mother,—“but went moping about. Let us, therefore,”

continued she, “put him to no further trial.”

And throwing her arms about her sister, the maiden’s mother, she kissed

her; whereupon the latter, addressing her husband, said,—

“Let us grant them their desire.”

To which he agreed; and it was resolved, that the marriage should be

solemnized in three days, the stranger being invited to remain and

witness it, which he did.

-----

Footnote 1842:

Cf. Theoph. Hist. Plant. ii. 2. 10. ii. 7. 7—iii. 6. 5—vi. 3. 11.

Ὄα, ἀκροδρύων εἶδος μήλοις μικροῖς ἐμφερές

Tim. Lec. Platon. in voce with the note of Ruhnken.

Footnote 1843:

On the three kinds of medlars, Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 12. 5.

Footnote 1844:

Philost. Icon. i. 31, p. 809. ii. 26, p. 851.

-----

The above picture of an obscure herdsman’s life in its naked simplicity,

void of all embellishment, will probably be thought more trustworthy

than the elaborate descriptions of the poets, notwithstanding that, even

in these, it is easy to separate the real from the fictitious.

In the estimation of the Greeks the herdsman[1845] commonly ranked

before the shepherd, and the latter before the goatherd,—for the dream

of rank pursues mankind even amid the quiet of the fields,—and their

manners are supposed to have corresponded. Pollux,[1846] however,

reckons the goatherd next after the herdsman, and again inverts the

order. Varro, on the other hand, gives precedence to the shepherd as the

most ancient, the sheep, in his opinion, having been the animal earliest

tamed.

-----

Footnote 1845:

Robust persons, with loud voices, were ordinarily chosen for herdsmen,

while goatherds were selected for their lightness and agility. Geop.

ii. 1. Shepherds obtained among the Greeks the name of ποιμένες; while

the keepers of other flocks and herds were termed αἰπόλοι. Schol.

Theoc. i. 6.

Footnote 1846:

Onomast. i. 249.

-----

In point of utility the goat, in some parts of the ancient world,

rivalled the sheep, producing fine hair which was shorn like wool.[1847]

I may remark, too, in passing, that the large-tailed sheep still common

in Asia Minor, as well as at the Cape, were anciently plentiful in

Syria, where, according to the great naturalist,[1848] their tails

attained a cubit in breadth. In some parts of Arabia another more

curious breed was found, with tails three cubits in length, to carry

which they were supplied by the ingenuity of the shepherds with wooden

carriages.[1849]

-----

Footnote 1847:

Arist. Hist. Anim. viii. 27. 3. Things manufactured from the hair of

this animal were called κιλίκια. Etym. Mag. 513. 41.

Footnote 1848:

Arist. Hist. Anim. viii. 27. 3. Speaking of the neighbourhood of

Smyrna,—The “sheep,” observed Dr. Chandler, “have broad tails, hanging

down like an apron, some weighing eight, ten, or more pounds. These

are eaten as a dainty, and the fat, before they are full-grown,

accounted as delicious as marrow.” Travels, i. 77. Of the broad-tailed

sheep mentioned by the ancients the most remarkable were those of

India, where, according to Ctesios, of veracious memory, both they and

the goats were larger than asses:—τὰ πρόβατα τῶν Ἰνδῶν καὶ αἱ αἶγες

μείζους ὄνων εἰσί, καὶ τίκτουσιν ἀνὰ τεσσάρων καὶ ἓξ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ,

ἔχουσι δὲ οὐρὰς μεγάλας · διὸ τῶν τοκάδων ἀποτέμνουσιν ἵνα δύνωνται

ὀχεύεσθαι. Phot. Biblioth. Cod. 72. p. 46. b. Bekker. Ælian. de Nat.

Animal, iv. 32, relates, without any symptoms of incredulity,

precisely the same fact; and then adds a circumstance which may keep

in countenance the Abyssinian story of Bruce respecting the carving of

a rump-steak from a live cow,—for the Indians, observes Ælian, were in

the habit of cutting open the tails of the rams, extracting all the

fat, and then sowing them up again so dexterously that in a short time

no trace of the incision remained visible.

Footnote 1849:

Herod. iii. 113. Ælian. Hist. Anim. x. 4.

-----

In most parts of Greece, as well as in the East, it was customary to

bring home the sheep from pasture towards evening, and shut them up for

the night in warm and roomy cotes, which were surrounded by wattled

fences,[1850] strong and high, both to prevent them from leaping over,

and to exclude the wild beasts which, in remoter ages, abounded in the

mountains. They were carefully roofed over, and every other precaution

was taken to render them perfectly dry, the floor being usually pitched

with stones, and slightly inclined. Their bedding[1851] consisted of

calaminth and asphodel and pennyroyal and polion (a sort of herb whose

leaves appear white in the morning, of a purple colour at noon, and blue

when the sun sets[1852]) and fleabane and southernwood and

origany,[1853] all which repel vermin. The more completely to effect the

same purpose, they were, likewise, in the habit of fumigating the cotes

from time to time, by burning in them several locks of some

shepherdess’s hair,[1854] together with gum ammoniac, hartshorn, the

hoofs or hair of goats, bitumen, cassia, fleabane, or calaminth, for the

smell of which serpents were thought to have a peculiar aversion.[1855]

Their ordinary food, while in the folds, consisted of green clover and

cytisus, fenugreek, oaten and barley straw, and vegetable stalks,[1856]

which were supposed to be improved if sprinkled on the threshing-floor

with brine, figs blown down by the wind, and dry leaves.

-----

Footnote 1850:

Bound together, probably, by wild succory or cneoron, as in modern

times by the withe-wind. Theoph. Hist. Plant. vii. 11. 3. vi. 2. 2.

Footnote 1851:

Geop. xviii. 2.

Footnote 1852:

Plin. xxi. 7.

Footnote 1853:

Dioscor. iii. 32.

Footnote 1854:

Geop. xviii. 2.

Footnote 1855:

Aristoph. Eccles. 644. Geop. xviii. 2.4.

Footnote 1856:

Geop. xviii. 2. Apropos of Cytisus, it is observed by Æschylides, in

Ælian. de Nat. Animal. xvi. 32, that the rustics of Cios, on account

of the aridity of the island, possessed few flocks. Those they had,

however, were fed entirely on the leaves of the cytisus, the fig-tree,

and the olive, mingled occasionally with the straw and halm of

vegetables. The lambs reared on this island were of singular beauty,

and sold at a higher price than those of most other parts. In Lydia

and Macedonia sheep were sometimes fattened upon fish, which must have

given the mutton of those countries a somewhat unsavoury odour. Ælian.

De Nat. Animal. xv. 5. Another favourite food of sheep was the leaves

of the white nymphæa, the tender shoots of which were eaten by swine,

while men themselves fed upon the fruit. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 10.

7. Children, too, it is said, regarded as a delicacy the stalks of the

phleos, the typha, and the butomos. The roots of this fruit were given

as food to cattle. Id. ibid.

-----

In the short and sharp days of winter,[1857] they were not led forth to

pasture till both the dew and the hoar frost had disappeared; but in

summer the shepherds were careful to be a-field with the dawn while the

dew was still heavy on the grass. In Attica[1858] and the environs of

Miletus, where was produced the finest and costliest wool in the ancient

world, the sheep[1859] were protected from rain and dust and brambles

and whatever else could damage their fleeces[1860] by housings of purple

leather.[1861] The same practice prevailed also in the Megaris, where

Diogenes beholding a flock of sheep[1862] thus clad, while the children,

like those of the Egyptian peasants were suffered to run about naked,

said, “It is better to be a Megarean’s ram than his son.” Ælian[1863]

alludes to this saying for the purpose of noticing the ignorance and

want of education prevalent among the Megareans. We find likewise in

Plutarch[1864] another version of the anecdote taxing these Dorians with

avarice and meanness. Augustus imitated the saying of Diogenes and

applied it to Herod, hearing of whose cruelty to his family, he said,

“It were better to be Herod’s hog than his son.”[1865] But if the

Megareans lived poorly they built grandly: so that of them it was said,

that they ate as if they were to die to-morrow, and built as if they

were to live for ever.[1866]

-----

Footnote 1857:

Geop. xviii. 2.

Footnote 1858:

Cf. Athen, v. 60. Hom. Il. β. 305, sqq.

Footnote 1859:

Those of the neighbouring country of Bœotia are now, however, more

highly valued. “Flocks of sheep whose fleeces were of a remarkable

blackness were feeding on the plain; the breed was considerably

superior in beauty and size to that of Attica.” Sibth. in Walp. i. 65.

To dream of sheep of this colour was regarded by the ancients as

unlucky. Artemid. Oneirocrit. ii. 12. p. 96. The finest black sheep in

the ancient world were found in a district of Phrygia in the

neighbourhood of the cities of Colossè and Laodicea, the wool of which

not only exceeded that of Miletos in softness, but was of a glossy jet

colour like that of the raven’s wing. Φέρει δ᾽ ὁ περὶ τὴν Λαοδίκειαν

τόπος προβάτων ἀρετὰς, οὐκ εἰς μαλακότητας μόνον τῶν ἐρίων, ᾗ καὶ τῶν

Μιλησίων διαφέρει, ἀλλὰ καὶ εὶς τὴν κοραξὴν χρόαν ὥστε καὶ

προσοδεύονται χρόαν ὥστε καὶ προσοδεύονται λαμπρῶς ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν· ὥσπερ

καὶ οἱ Κολοσσηνοὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ὁμωνύμου χρώματος πλησίον οἰκοῦντες. Strab.

xii. 8. t. iii. p. 74. Plin. Nat. Hist. viii. 73. Cf. Chandler,

Travels in Greece and Asia Minor, i. 262. The country round Abydos

also was celebrated for its black flocks among which not a single

white sheep was to be discovered. Ælian de Nat. Animal. 3. 32.

Footnote 1860:

Varro. de Re Rust. ii. 2.

Footnote 1861:

Horace speaks of the “pellites oves Galesi.” Od. ii. 6. 10.

Footnote 1862:

Diog. Laert. vi. 41. The practice is noticed also by Pliny who

says,—“Ovium summa genera duo, tectum et colonicum; illiud mollius,

hoc in pascuo delicatius, quippe quum tectum rubis vescatur.

Operimenta ei ex Arabicis præcipua.” Nat. Hist. viii. 72. Columella

also mentions these coverings:—“Molle vero pecus, etiam velamen quo

protegitur, amittit atque id non parvo sumptu reparatur.” vii. 3, seq.

Footnote 1863:

Var. Hist. xii. 56.

Footnote 1864:

De Cupiditate. § 7.

Footnote 1865:

Macrob. Sat. ii. 4.

Footnote 1866:

Tertull. in Apolog. ap. Menag. ad Laert. vi. 41. t. ii. p. 141. b. c.

-----

Sheep, as most persons familiar with the country will probably have

observed, are wont in hot summer days to retire during the prevalence of

the sun’s greatest heat beneath the shade of spreading trees,[1867] at

which time a green sweep of uplands dotted with antique oaks or

beeches,[1868] each with its stem encircled by some portion of the flock

reposing upon their own fleeces, presents a picture of singular beauty

and tranquillity. The picturesque features of the scene were in old

times enhanced by the addition of several accompaniments now nowhere to

be found, consisting of statues, altars, or chapels, erected in honour

of the rural gods or nymphs.[1869] Fountains, moreover, of limpid

water[1870] in many places gushed forth from beneath the trees, where

there were usually a number of seats for the accommodation of the

shepherds and shepherdesses. In these retreats they generally passed the

sultry hours of the day, playing on the pastoral flute or the syrinx,

chanting their wild lays, or amusing each other by the relation of those

strange legends which inhabited the woods and lonely mountains of

Greece.[1871] There prevailed among them a superstition against

disturbing by their music or otherwise that hushed stillness which most

persons must have observed to characterise the summer noon. At this hour

of the day the God Pan,[1872] in the opinion of Greek shepherds, took

his rest after the toils of the chase, reclining under a tree in the

solitary forest;[1873] and, as he was held to be of a hasty choleric

disposition, they abstained at that time from piping through fear of

provoking his anger. The other Gods likewise were believed to enjoy a

short sleep at this time, as we find in the case of the nymph Aura, in

the Dionysiacs.[1874]

-----

Footnote 1867:

Geop. xviii. 2.

Footnote 1868:

Nor in Asia Minor is the shade of trees always deemed sufficient. “We

came,” says Dr. Chandler, “to a shed formed with boughs round a tree,

to shelter the flocks and herds from the sun at noon.” Travels, i. 25.

Footnote 1869:

Schol. Theoc. i. 21. Cf. Plat. Phædr. t. i. p. 9.

Footnote 1870:

I cannot resist the temptation to introduce in this place the picture

in miniature of a Greek landscape from the picturesque and beautiful

journal of Dr. Sibthorpe: “We dined under a rock, from whose side

descended a purling spring among violets, primroses, and the starry

hyacinth, mixed with black Silyrium and different coloured orches. The

flowering ash hung from the sides of the mountain, under the shade of

which bloomed saxifrages, and the snowy Isopyrum, with the Campanula

Pyramidalis; this latter plant is now called χαρισονη; it yields

abundance of a sweet milky fluid, and was said to promote a secretion

of milk, a quality first attributed to it under the doctrine of

signatures. Our guide made nose-gays of the fragrant leaves of the

Fraxinella; the common nettle was not forgotten as a pot-herb, but the

Imperatoria seemed to be the favourite salad. Among the shrubs I

noticed our gooseberry-tree, and the Cellis Australis grew wild among

the rocks.” Walp. Mem. i. 63.

Footnote 1871:

See Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 582, sqq.

Footnote 1872:

To dream of this god was considered auspicious by shepherds. Artemid.

Oneirocrit. ii. 42. p. 133.

Footnote 1873:

Schol. Theoc. i. 15. Cal. Hymn. in. Lav. Poll. 72. ibique interp. Nem.

Eclog. iii. 3. Cf. Hom. Il. τ. 13. Od. ι. 9. The shepherd in the

Anthology (Jacob. t. ii. no. 227. p. 694) is not so religious as

Theocritus’ goatherd, for he boldly pipes in the morn and at noon χὡ

ποιμὴν ἐν ὄρεσσι μεσαμβρινὸν ἀγχόθι παγᾶς συρίσδων. Kiessling. ad

Theoc. i. 15.

Footnote 1874:

Nonn. xlviii. 258, sqq. Cf. Philost. Icon. ii. 11. et J. B. Carpzov.

Disp. Phil. De Quiete Dei, p. 16, sqq.

-----

From a passage in St. John’s gospel it would appear, that the practice

prevailed among the Oriental shepherds of distinguishing the several

members of their flocks by separate names: “The sheep hear his voice,

and he calleth his own sheep by name and leadeth them out. And when he

putteth forth his own sheep he goeth before them, and the sheep follow

him, for they know his voice.” We likewise find traces of the same

custom in Sicily, Crete, and various other parts of Greece, where goats,

and heifers, and sheep, enjoyed the privilege of a name, as Cynœtha,

Amalthea, and others. In later times it was judged preferable, that the

flock should follow their shepherds by the eye, for which reason they

were accustomed to stuff their ears with wool.[1875] To prevent rams

from butting, they used to bore a hole[1876] through their horns near

the roots. Sheep were generally shorn[1877] during the month of May, and

after the wool had been clipped, they were commonly anointed with wine,

oil, and the juice of bitter lupins.[1878] In remoter ages the practice

prevailed of plucking off the wool instead of shearing it; and this

barbarous method, at once so painful to the sheep and so laborious to

the shepherd, had not been entirely abandoned in the age of Pliny.[1879]

It was a rule among the pastoral tribes, that the number of their flocks

should be uneven.[1880] The shepherds of Greece bestowed the name of

Sekitai,[1881] (from σηκος an enclosure) upon lambs taken early from the

ewes, and fed by hand. They were usually kept in a cote apart from the

other sheep.

-----

Footnote 1875:

Geop. xviii. 4.

Footnote 1876:

Ferocia ejus cohibetur cornu juxta aurem terebrato. Plin. Nat. Hist.

vii. 72. Cf. Geopon. viii. 5. To the same purpose writes also

Columella:—Epicharmus Syracusanus qui pecudum medicinas diligentissime

conscripsit affirmat pugnacem arietem mitigari terebra secundum

auriculas foratis cornibus qua curvantur in flexu. Columell. vii. 3.

Footnote 1877:

It is observed by the ancients that long lank wool indicated strength

in the sheep, curly wool the contrary. Geop. xviii. 1, seq.

Footnote 1878:

Geop. xviii. 8.

Footnote 1879:

Duerat quibusdam in locis vellendi mos. Plin. Nat. Hist, vii. 73.

Veliæ unde essent plures accepi caussas inquies quod ibi pastores

palatim ex ovibus ante tonsuram inventam vellere lanam sint soliti, ex

quo vellera dicuntur. Varr. de Ling. Lat. iv. Cf. De Re Rust. ii. 11.

Isidor. xix. 27.

Footnote 1880:

Geop. xviii. 2.

Footnote 1881:

Schol. Theoc. i. 9.

-----

As flocks, in most parts of Greece, were exposed to the rapacity of the

wolf,[1882] the shepherds had recourse to an extraordinary contrivance,

to destroy this fierce animal; kindling large charcoal fires in open

spaces in the woods, they cast thereon the powder of certain diminutive

fish, caught in great numbers along the grassy shores of Greece,

together with small slices of lamb and kid. Attracted by the savour

which they could snuff from a distance, the wolves flocked in great

numbers towards the fires, round which they prowled with loud howlings,

in expectation of sharing the prey, the odour of which had drawn them

thither. Stupified at length by the fumes of the charcoal, they would

drop upon the earth in a lethargic sleep, when the shepherds coming up

knocked them on the head.[1883]

-----

Footnote 1882:

From the relations of travellers it would appear that the method

observed by the ancient Greeks in ridding themselves of the wolf is no

longer known to their descendants, though the apprehension of their

destructiveness and ferocity be as great as ever. Solon, it is well

known set a price in his laws on the head of a wolf, which appears to

have varied in different ages; (cf. Plut. Solon. § 23. Schol.

Aristoph. Av. 369;) but could never have amounted to the sum of two

talents. Whatever the ancient price may have been, however, it was

paid by the magistrates; but “the peasant now produces the skins in

the bazaar or market, and is recompensed by voluntary contributions.”

Chandler, ii. p. 145. Close by a khan on mount Parnes, which is

covered with pine trees, Sir George Wheler saw a very curious

fountain, to which the wolves, bears, and wild boars commonly descend

to drink. Id. p. 197.

Footnote 1883:

Geop. xviii. 14. Nevertheless, when a wolf bit a sheep without killing

it, the flesh was supposed to be rendered more tender and delicate, an

effect which Plutarch attributes to the hot and fiery breath of the

beast. Sympos. ii. 9.

-----

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

LONDON:

Printed by S. & J. BENTLEY, WILSON, and FLEY,

Bangor House, Shoe Lane.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Transcriber’s Note

The printer employed the cursive forms of beta (ϐ) and theta (ϑ),

sometimes in the same passage with the standard β and θ. These have been

replaced with the standard forms.

Hyphenated words sometimes also appear without hyphenation, e.g. ‘olive

grounds’ and ‘olive-grounds’. Where there is a clear preponderance, the

hyphen has either been retained or removed to following the preference.

When there was none, they are left as printed.

Comments

91.10 The original quotation marks (“Wretch, would you make

me a “Phaselitan for a farthing?”) have been properly

nested.

355.n3.64 The asterisk seems to serve no purpose. It might have

referred to an internal footnote that was never

printed. It was retained, nonetheless.

Minor punctation errors and inconsistencies in the footnote apparatus

have been corrected with no further mention here.

Those errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected,

and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the

original. Corrections within notes are denoted with ‘n’ and the original

note number.

36.n1 καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν ο[ἴκι]/ἰκίαν Replaced.

61.15 to have been a comb[.] Added.

63.31 The _Ægle[,]_ the _Pede_ and Added.

65.11 in Lycia[,/.] Replaced.

71.29 ran into the opposite extreme[,/.] Replaced.

86.7 signi[ni]fies eggs) Removed.

119.20 were most brilliantly reflected[,/.] Replaced.

133.8 recal[l]s to mind Inserted.

134.n3 Ἅλα[ ]λείχειν Space added.

135.n3.10 Profluit.[”] Added.

139.30 How much [my,/, my] friend, Transposed.

163.31 The walnuts a[u/n]d chestnuts Inverted.

164.20 [“]but we call it Added.

185.37 roll about the room like a hoop[,/.] Replaced.

201.31 to the frying[-]pan Inserted.

209.n5.1 Sc[ol/h\. Aristoph. Nub. 1337, seq. Replaced.

209.n6.1 Ilgen, De Sc[h]ol. Poes. p. 156. Removed.

242.1 the friendship of Demosthenes[.] Added.

242.34 the “Exile Hunter.[”] Added.

249.n7.2 [‘/“]chez les anciens Atheniens Replaced.

257.n5 Μ[ε/έ]σσοισιν Replaced.

274.18 whose Penelope, the[ the] _beau idéal_ Removed.

286.n8 and out [out ]of these they sometimes Repetition.

drank.

290.n4 following in the foo[t]steps of Heyne Inserted.

328.16 found this answer of[ of] irrigation. Removed.

355.n3.38 le _samia_[,] gros raisin Added.

385.15 hey would not, if po[s]ssible, Removed.

423.38 shall judge to-morrow[.]” Added.

429.n6.14 non parvo sumptu reparatur.[”] Added.