170. The Country by the Ilissus: the Greeks and Natural Beauty.—Our companions are on horseback (a token of tolerable wealth in Athens), but the beasts amble along not too rapidly for nimble grooms to run behind, each ready to aid his respective master. Once outside the gate the regular road swings down to the south towards Phalerum; we, however, are in no great haste and desire to see as much as possible. The farms we are seeking lie well north of the city, but we can make a delightful circuit by skirting the city walls with the eastern shadow of the Acropolis behind us, and going at first northeast, along the groves and leafy avenues which line the thin stream of the Ilissus,[*] the second “river” of Athens.
[*] The Ilissus, unlike its sturdier rival, the Cephisus, ran dry during the summer heats; but there was enough water along its bed to create a dense vegetation.
Before us through the trees came tantalizing glimpses of the open country running away towards shaggy gray Hymettus. Left to itself the land would be mostly arid and seared brown by the summer sun; but everywhere the friendly work of man is visible. One can count the little green oblong patches, stretching even up the mountain side, marked with gleaming white farm buildings or sometimes with little temples and chapels sacred to the rural gods. Once or twice also we notice a plot of land which seems one tangled waste of trees and shrubbery. This is a sacred “temenos,” an inviolate grove, set apart to some god; and within the fences of the compound no mortal dare set foot under pain of direful sacrilege and pollution.
Following a kind of bridle path, however, we are soon amid the groves of olive and other trees, while the horses plod their slow way beside the brook. Not a few citizens going or coming from Athens meet us, for this is really one of the parks and breathing spaces of the closely built city. The Athenians and Greeks in general live in a land of such natural beauty that they take this loveliness as a matter of course. Very seldom do their poets indulge in deliberate descriptions of “beautiful landscapes”; but none the less the fair things of nature have penetrated deeply into their souls. The constant allusions in Homer and the other masters of song to the great storm waves, the deep shades of the forest, the crystal brooks, the pleasant rest for wanderers under the shade trees, the plains bright with spring flowers, the ivy twining above a grave, the lamenting nightingale, the chirping cicada, tell their own story; men seldom describe at length what is become warp and woof of their inmost lives. The mere fact that the Greeks dwell constantly in such a beautiful land, and have learned to love it so intensely, makes frequent and set descriptions thereto seem trivial.
171. Plato’s Description of the Walk by the Ilissus.—Nevertheless occasionally this inborn love of the glorious outer world must find its expression, and it is of these very groves along he Ilissus that we have one of the few “nature pieces” in Athenian literature. As the plodding steeds take their way let us recall our Plato—his Phædrus, written probably not many years before this our visit.
Socrates is walking with Phædrus outside the walls, and urges the latter: “Let us go to the Ilissus and sit down in some quiet spot.” “I am fortunate,” answers Phædrus, “in not having my sandals on, and, as you never have any, we may go along the brook and cool our feet. This is the easiest way, and at midday is anything but unpleasant.” He adds that they will go on to the tallest plane tree in the distance, “where are shade and gentle breezes, and grass whereon we may either sit or lie…. The little stream is delightfully clear and bright. I can fancy there might well be maidens playing near [according to the local myth of Boreas’s rape of Orithyia].” And so at last they come to the place, when Socrates says: “Yes indeed, a fair and shady resting place it is, full of summer sounds and scents. There is the lofty and spreading plane tree, and the agnus castus, high and clustering in the fullest blossom and the greatest fragrance, and the stream which flows beneath the plane tree is deliciously cool to the feet. Judging by the ornaments and images [set] about, this must be a spot sacred to Achelous and the Nymphs; moreover there is a sweet breeze and the grasshoppers are chirruping; and the greatest charm of all is the grass like a pillow, gently sloping to the head.”[*]
[*] Jewett, translator; slightly altered.
172. The Athenian Love of Country Life.—So the two friends had sat them down to delve in delightful profundities; but following the bridle path, the little brook and its groves end for us all too soon. We are in the open country around Athens, and the fierce rays of Helios beat strongly on our heads. We are outside the city, but by no means far from human life. Farm succeeds farm, for the land around Athens has a goodly population to maintain, and there is a round price for vegetables in the Agora. Truth to tell, the average Athenian, though he pretends to love the market, the Pnyx, the Dicasteries, and the Gymnasia, has a shrewd hankering for the soil, and does not care to spend more time in Athens then necessary. Aristophanes is full of the contrasts between “country life” and “city life” and almost always with the advantage given the former. Says his Strepsiades (in The Clouds), “A country life for me—dirty, untrimmed, lolling around at ease, and just abounding in bees and sheep and oil cake.” His Diceæpolis (Acharnians) voices clearly the independence of the farmer: “How I long for peace.[*] I’m disgusted with the city; and yearn for my own farm which never bawled out [as in the markets] ‘buy my coals’ or ‘buy my vinegar’ or ‘oil,’ or knew the word ‘buy,’ but just of itself produced everything.” And his Trygæus (in The Peace) states the case better yet: “Ah! how eager I am to get back into the fields, and break up my little farm with the mattock again…[for I remember] what kind of a life we had there; and those cakes of dried fruits, and the figs, and the myrtles, and the sweet new wine, and the violet bed next to the well, and the olives we so long for!”
[*] I.e. the end of the Peloponnesian War, which compelled the farming population to remove inside the walls.
There is another reason why the Athenians rejoice in the country. The dusty streets are at best a poor playground for the children, the inner court of the house is only a respectable prison for the wife. In the country the lads can enjoy themselves; the wife and the daughters can roam about freely with delightful absence of convention. There will be no happier day in the year than when the master says, “Let us set out for the farm.”