The Sicilian βουκολιασμὸς was a fashion among the Sicilian herdsmen earlier than Epicharmus, who noticed the alleged inventor of it, Diomus, the βούκολος Σικελιώτης (Athenæ. xiv, p. 619). The rustic manners and speech represented in the Sicilian comedy are contrasted with the town manners and speech of the Attic comedy, by Plautus, Persæ. Act. iii. Sc. 1, v, 31:—
“Librorum eccillum habeo plenum soracum.
Dabuntur dotis tibi inde sexcenti logi,
Atque Attici omnes, nullum Siculum acceperis.”
Compare the beginning of the prologue to the Menæchmi of Plautus.
The comic μῦθος began at Syracuse with Epicharmus and Phormis (Aristot. Poet, v, 5).
[703] Zenobius, Proverb. v, 84.—Σικελὸς στρατιώτης.
[704] Diodor. xi, 90-91; xii, 9.
[705] See Dolomieu, Dissertation on the Earthquakes of Calabria Ultra, in 1783, in Pinkerton, Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. v, p. 280.
“It is impossible (he observes) to form an adequate idea of the fertility of Calabria Ultra, particularly of that part called the Plain (south-west of the Apennines, below the gulf of St. Eufemia). The fields, productive of olive-trees of larger growth than any seen elsewhere, are yet productive of grain. Vines load with their branches the trees on which they grow, yet lessen not their crops. All things grow there, and nature seems to anticipate the wishes of the husbandman. There is never a sufficiency of hands to gather the whole of the olives, which finally fall and rot at the bottom of the trees that bore them, in the months of February and March. Crowds of foreigners, principally Sicilians, come there to help to gather them, and share the produce with the grower. Oil is their chief article of exportation: in every quarter their wines are good and precious.” Compare pp. 278-282.