You reproach me for loitering in the country; I might complain with more reason that you stay in the town when the earth shines in the light of spring, the ice is melting from the Alps, and the soil is marked by the dry fissures of tortuous furrows ... the stones in the stream, and the mud on the banks are dried up ... here neither nude statues, comic actors, nor Hippodrome are to be found ... the noise of the waters is so great that it drowns conversation. From the dining-room, if you have time to spare at meals, you can occupy it with the delight of looking at the scenery, and watch the fishing ... here you can find a hidden recess, cool even in summer heat, a place to sleep in. Here what joy it is to listen to the cicadas chirping at noonday, and to the frogs croaking when the twilight is coming on, and to the swans and geese giving note at the early hours of the night, and at midnight to the cocks crowing together, and to the boding crows with three-fold note greeting the ruddy torch of the rising dawn; and in the half light of the morning to hear the nightingale warbling in the bushes, and the swallow twittering among the beams.... Between whiles, the shepherds play in their rustic fashion. Not far off is a wood where the branches of two huge limes interlace, though their trunks are apart (in their shade we play ball), and a lake that rises to such fury in a storm that the trees that border it are wetted by the spray.
In another letter to Domidius he described a visit to the country-seat of two of his friends:
We were torn from one pleasure to another--games, feastings, chatting, rowing, bathing, fishing.
As a true adherent even as a bishop of classic culture and humanity, Sidonius is thus an interesting figure in these wild times, with his Pliny-like enthusiasm for country rather than city, and his susceptibility to woodland and pastoral life.
The limit of extravagance in the bombastic rhetoric of the period was reached in the travels of Ennodius,[[32]] who was scarcely more than a fantastic prattler. The purest, noblest, and most important figure of the sixth century was undoubtedly Boetius; but it is Cassiodorus, a statesman of the first rank under Theodoric, who in his Variorium libris gives the most interesting view of the attitude of his day towards Nature. He revelled in her and in describing her. After praising Baja for its beauty[[33]] and Lactarius for its healthiness, he said of Scyllacium:
The city of Scyllacium hangs upon the hills like a cluster of grapes, not that it may pride itself upon their difficult ascent, but that it may voluptuously gaze on verdant plains and the blue back of the sea. The city beholds the rising sun from its very cradle, when the day that is about to be born sends forward no heralding Aurora; but as soon as it begins to rise, the quivering brightness displays its torch. It beholds Phoebus in his joy; it is bathed in the brightness of that luminary so that it might be thought to be itself the native land of the sun, the claims of Rhodes to that honour being outdone.... It enjoys a translucent air, but withal so temperate, that its winters are sunny and its summers cool, and life passes there without sorrow, since hostile seasons are feared by none. Hence, too, man himself is here freer of soul than elsewhere, for this temperateness of the climate prevails in all things.... Assuredly for the body to imbibe muddy waters is a different thing from sucking in the transparency of a sweet fountain. Even so the vigour of the mind is repressed when it is clogged by a heavy atmosphere. Nature itself hath made us subject to these influences.... clouds make us feel sad, and again a bright day fills us with joy.... At the foot of the Moscian Mount we hollowed out the bowels of the rock, and tastefully introduced therein the eddying waves of Nereus. Here a troop of fishes sporting in free captivity refreshes all minds with delight, and charms all eyes with admiration. They run greedily to the hand of man, and, before they become his food, seek dainties from him.
He described the town as rich in vineyards and olive woods, cornfields and villas.
He awarded the palm of beauty to Como and its lake, and although he wrote in the clumsy language of a decaying literature, this sixth-century sketch still strikes us as surprisingly complete and artistic in feeling:
Como, with its precipitous mountains and its vast expanse of lake, seems placed there for the defence of the Province of Liguria; and yet again, it is so beautiful, that one would think it was created for pleasure only.
To the south lies a fertile plain with easy roads for the transport of provisions; on the north, a lake sixty miles long abounding in fish, soothing the mind with delicious recreation.... Rightly is it called Como, because it is adorned with such gifts. The lake lies in a shell-like valley with white margins. Above rises a diadem of lofty mountains, their slopes studded with bright villas; a girdle of olives below, vineyards above, while a crest of thick chestnut woods adorns the very summit of the hills. Streams of snowy clearness dash from the hill-sides into the lake. On the eastern side these unite to form the river Addua, so called because it contains the added volume of two streams.... So delightful a region makes men delicate and averse to labour.... Therefore the inhabitants deserve special consideration, and for this reason we wish them to enjoy perpetually the royal bounty.
This shews, beyond dispute, that the taste for the beauty of Nature, even at that wild time, was not dead, and that the writer's attitude was not mainly utilitarian. He noted the fertility of the land in wine and grain, and of the sea in fish, but he laid far greater stress upon its charms and their influence upon the inhabitants.