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.