[1066]. Aristoph. Acharn. 10, sqq.

[1067]. Sch. Æschin. Tim. p. 17. Orator. Att. t. xiii. p. 377. Vales. ad Harpoc. 99, 296. Suid. v. καθάρσιον, t. i. p. 1346. a. Poll. viii. 104.

BOOK V.
RURAL LIFE.

CHAPTER I.
THE VILLA AND THE FARMYARD.

If we now, for a moment, quit the city and its amusements, and observe the tone and character of Hellenic rural life, we shall find, perhaps, that there existed in antiquity a still greater contrast between town and country than in modern times. From the poetry of Athens, rife with sylvan imagery, we, no less than from its history, discover how deeply they loved the sunshine and calm and quiet of their fields. The rustic population confined to the city during the Peleponnesian war almost perished of nostalgia within sight of their village homes. Half the metaphors in their language are of country growth. The bee murmurs, the partridge whirrs, the lark, the nightingale, the thrush, pour their music through the channels of verse and prose. The odours of ripe fruit, of new wine “purple and gushing,” the fresh invigorating morning breeze from harvest fields, from clover meadows dotted with kine, the scent of milk-pails, of honey, and the honey-comb, still breathe sweetly over the Attic page, and prove how smitten with home delights the Athenian people were,

“With plesaunce of the breathing fields yfed.”

This their manly and healthful taste, however, constantly, in time of war, exposed them to the malice of their enemies. For the valleys and grassy uplands of Attica, being thickly covered with villas and farmhouses,[[1068]] the first act of an invading army was to lay all those beautiful homesteads in ashes. Thus the Persians, in their two invasions, destroyed the whole with fire and sword. But the gentlemen, immediately on their return, rebuilt their dwellings[[1069]] with greater taste and magnificence, so that, before the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war, it is probable that, as a scene of unambitious affluence, taste, high cultivation, and rustic contentment, nothing was ever beheld to compare with Attica. Here and there, throughout the land, perched on rocks, or shaded by trees, were small rustic chapels dedicated to the nymphs, or rural gods.[[1070]] On the mountains, and in solitary glens, and wherever springs gushed from the cliffs, caverns were scooped out by the hands of the leisurely shepherds,[[1071]] and consecrated by association with mythology. Fountains, also, and water-courses, altars, statues,[[1072]] and sacred groves,[[1073]] protected at once by religion and the laws,[[1074]] imprinted on the landscape features of poetry and elegance.

Another cause which, in the eyes of the Athenians, imparted sanctity to their lands, was the practice of burying in them their dead. The spot selected for this sacred purpose seems usually to have been the orchard, where, amid fig-trees and trailing vines,[[1075]] often near the boundaries of the estate, might be seen the ancient and venerable monuments of the dead. All Attica, therefore, in their eyes, appeared holy as a sepulchre; and, as every one guarded his own ancestral ashes, to sell a farm cost a man’s feelings more than in countries where people inter those they love in public cemeteries; and this circumstance with many would operate like a law of entail.[[1076]]

But it is easy thus to present to the imagination a general picture of the country. What we want is to thrust aside the impediments, to dissipate the obscurity of two thousand years, and lift the latch of a Greek farmhouse, such as it existed in the days of Pericles.