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.
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]]
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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,