Chapter VI: Pastoral Life (1)

But within the circle of Hellenic country life[1777] there was a kind of parenthetical existence, a remnant of the old nomadic habits, once common, perhaps, to the whole race,—I mean the pastoral life, of which we obtain so many glimpses through the leafy glades and grassy avenues of Greek poetry. No doubt, the fancy of imaginative men, thirsting for a degree of simplicity and happiness greater than they find around them in cities or villages, is apt to kindle and shed too glorious a light on approaching the tranquil solitudes, the pine forests, the mountain glens, the hidden lakes, the umbrageous streams that leap and frolic down the wild rocks of a country so rife with beauty as Greece. Nevertheless, adhering strictly to truth and reality, there is, in such regions, much about the pastoral life to delight the mind. In the first place, the occupations of an ancient shepherd left him great leisure, and he was generally, by habit no less than by inclination, led to prize that “dolce far niente” which, in all southern climates, constitutes the chief enjoyment of existence.

-----

Footnote 1777:

The charm of that repose and freedom from care supposed to be tasted
in the seclusion of the country, appears in all ages to have led to
the belief, that there is something more natural in fields and forests
than in cities, though it be quite as necessary that man should have
dwellings as that he should cultivate the ground. The paradox,
however, is thus expressed by Varro: Divina natura dedit agros, ars
humana ædificavit urbes. De Re Rust. iii. 1, which Cowper,
unconsciously perhaps, has thus translated,

God gave the country, but man made the town.

-----

And indeed all the world over, repose, both of mind and body, is sweet. But not entire repose. Accordingly the Grecian shepherd, whose flocks fed tranquilly, whose condition, assured, and pinched by no necessities, left him at liberty to consult his own tastes in his recreations, took refuge from idleness in music and song.[1778] At first, and perhaps always, their lays were rude; but nature, their only teacher, infused into them originality and passion, such as we find in the only poet of antiquity, save Homer, in whose verses the fragrance of the woods still breathes. Whether like Paris and Anchises they kept their own flocks or undertook the care for others, they were still on the mountains perfectly free. Their education was peculiar. Abroad much after dark,[1779] in a climate where the summer nights are soft and balmy beyond expression, and where the stars seem lovingly to crowd closer about the earth, they necessarily grew romantic and superstitious.[1780] Events occurring early in their own lives or handed down to them by tradition, long meditated on, were in the end invested with supernatural attributes. Under similar circumstances their national religion had probably been first formed. They in the same way, in every canton, created a local religion.[1781] Their very creed was poetry. Tree, rock, mountain, spring, every thing was instinct with divinity, not mystically, as in certain philosophical systems, but literally; and, as they believed, the immortal race, their invisible companions at all hours, could when they pleased put on visibility, or rather remove from their eyes the film which prevented their habitually beholding them.

-----

Footnote 1778:

Travellers find among the modern shepherds of the East much the same
tastes and habits. “The hills,” observed Dr. Chandler, speaking of
Lydia, “were enlivened by flocks of sheep and goats, and resounded
with the rude music of the lyre and of the pipe; the former a stringed
instrument resembling a guitar, and held much in the same manner, but
usually played on with a bow.” Chandler, i. p. 85. Cf. Theocrit.
Eidyll. i. 7. viii. 9.

Footnote 1779:

The same habits still prevail: “We could discern fires on Lesbos as
before on several islands and capes, made chiefly by fishermen and
shepherds, who live much abroad in the air, to burn the strong stalks
of the Turkey wheat and the dry herbage on the mountains.” Chandler,
i. 11. Cf. p. 320.

Footnote 1780:

Among other things we find them putting the strongest faith in
dreams—at least we may suppose the fishermen in Theocritus, who lay so
much stress on the visions of the night, to hold a creed pretty nearly
akin to that of shepherds. Eidyll. 21. v. 29. sqq.

Footnote 1781:

The gods they principally worshiped were Pan, the Muses, and the
Nymphs. To the Nymphs and Pan they sacrificed as to gods presiding
over mountains, where they themselves usually wandered. Pan, moreover,
was skilled in the pipe, the instrument of their race. The Muses they
adored as the goddesses of poetry and music. Schol. Theoc. i. 6. In
verse 12 of the same Eidyll. the Nymphs are spoken of where the office
of the Muses is in contemplation, which may easily be explained. For
the Muses are properly the Nymphs of those fountains which inspire
poets with their lays. Cf. Voss. ad Virg. Eclog. iii. 84. By the
Lydians the Muses were denominated Nymphs. Schol. Theoc. Eidyll. vii.
92. Cf. Eidyll. v. 140. Lyc. Cassand. 274. ibique Schol. et Potter.
Kiessl. ad Theocrit.

-----

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.

Footnote 1782:

Lycoph. Cassand. 91, seq. in common with Homer and the other ancient
poets, represent princes as shepherds. The guarding of flocks was
then, in fact, a regal occupation. Didymos, ad Odyss. ν. 223,
observes, that τὸ παλαιὸν καὶ οἱ τῶν βασιλέων παίδες πανάπαλοι (l.
παναίπολοι) ἐκαλοῦντο, καὶ ἐποίμαινον. Meurs. ad Lycoph. p. 1181.
Varr. De Re Rust. ii. 1.

Footnote 1783:

Il. ζ. 25. Odyss. ο. 385, seq.

Footnote 1784:

Il. δ. 106.

Footnote 1785:

Iliad. δ. 452, seq. ε. 137. θ, 555.

Footnote 1786:

The following picture by Milton almost seems to be designed to form a
contrast to the above:

As when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds
Ascending, while the north wind sleeps, o’erspread
Heaven’s cheerful face, the lowring element
Scowls o’er the darken’d landscape snow or shower;
If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet,
Extend his evening beam, the fields revive,
The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds
Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.
Parad. Lost, ii. 488, sqq.

Iliad θ. 559, sqq. Here _shepherd_, observes the Scholiast, is used
for _herdsman_. Ποιμήν εἶπεν ἀντὶ τοῦ βουκόλος διὰ νυκτὸς γὰρ αἱ βόες
νέμονται, in loc. i. 238.

Footnote 1787:

On this passage Ἀρίσταρχος τὴν κατὰ φύσιν λαμπρὰν λέγει κἂν μὴ
πλήθουσα ᾖ εἰ γὰρ πληροσέληνος ἦν, ἐκέκρυπτο ἄν μᾶλλον τὰ ἄστρα.
Schol. Bekker. t. i. 238. Cf. Eustath. in Iliad. θ. t. i. p. 621.

Footnote 1788:

Iliad, μ. 451, seq.

-----

Again, the Trojan forces following their leader, Æneas, suggest to his mind the idea of innumerable flocks bounding after a ram to drink.[1789]

The people followed, as the flock the shaggy ram succeeds, Who to the cooling streamlet’s bank the woolly nation leads (While swells the shepherd’s heart with joy) from pasture on the meads.

Elsewhere, he describes a troop of hungry wolves attacking the flocks on the mountains:—[1790]

As when the hungry wolves, on folds forsaken by the watch,
Descend, the kids and tender lambs by thievish force to snatch;
Or when the timid browsing crew are scattered far and wide,
And seized, by witless shepherds left upon the mountain side.

But, in another place, they are represented contending with a lion by night for the body of one of their flock.[1791]

Thus the night-watching shepherds strive, but vainly, to repel
The angry lion, whom the stings of want and rage impel,
Upon the carcase fastens he: his heart no fear can quell.

Where the number of the flock required the care of several men a chief shepherd ἐπιποιμὴν was appointed to overlook the rest.[1792] Among the ancients twenty sheep were thought to require the attention of a man and a boy;[1793] but, in modern times, three men and a boy, with four or five dogs, are sometimes entrusted with a flock of five hundred, of which two-thirds are ewes.[1794] The proportion of rams to ewes is at present as four to a hundred.

-----

Footnote 1789:

Iliad, ν. 491, sqq.

Footnote 1790:

Iliad. π. 354, sqq.

Footnote 1791:

Iliad. σ. 161, seq.

Footnote 1792:

Odyss. μ. 131. The duties of this servant are described by Varro, who
likewise states the physical qualities required to be found in
shepherds. Contra, pernoctare ad suum quemque gregem esse omnes sub
uno magistro pecoris cum esse majorem natu potius quàm alios et
peritiorem quàm reliquos, quod iis qui ætate, et scientia præstant
animo æquiore reliquis parent. Ita tamen oportet ætate præstare ut ne
propter senectutem minus sustinere possit labores. Neque enim senes,
neque pueri callium difficultatem, ac montium arduitatem, atque
asperitatem facile ferunt: quod patiendum illis qui greges sequuntur
præsertim armenticios, ac caprinos quibus rupes ac silvæ ad pabulandi
cordi. De Re Rust, ii. 10. Cf. Colum. ii. 1.

Footnote 1793:

Geop. xviii. 1. Yet we find mention in Demosthenes of a shepherd with
a flock of fifty sheep under his care. In Everg. et Mnes. § 15.

Footnote 1794:

Leake, Travels in the Morea, vol. i. p. 17.

-----

From very remote ages shepherds had learned to avail themselves of the aid of dogs,[1795] which in farms were usually furnished with wooden collars.[1796] The breed generally employed in this service, in later ages at least, was the Molossian,[1797] which, though exceedingly powerful and fierce towards strangers, was by its masters found sufficiently gentle and tractable. The shepherd’s pipe,[1798] frequently made of the donax, or common river-reed,[1799] likewise used in thatching cottages, formed a no less necessary accompaniment. Another of their instruments of music was the flute crooked at the top, finely polished and rubbed with bees’ wax.[1800]

-----

Footnote 1795:

Plat. de Rep. iv. t. vi. p. 204. Columella describes with poetical
enthusiasm the character and qualities of the shepherd’s dog, which he
refuses to class among dumb animals, its bark being, according to him,
full of meaning: “Canis falso dicitur mutus custos nam quis hominum
clarius, aut tanta vociferatione bestiam vel furem prædicat quam iste
latratu? quis famulus amantior domini? quis fidelior comes? quis
custos incorruptior? quis excubitor inveniri potest vigilantior? quis
denique ultor aut vindex constantior? Quare vel in primis hoc animal
mercari tuerique debet agricola, quod et villam et fructus
familiamque, at pecora custodit.” De Re Rusticâ, 7. 12.

Footnote 1796:

Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 897.

Footnote 1797:

Aristot. Hist. Animal. ix. 1.

Footnote 1798:

Luc. Bis Accus. § 11.

Footnote 1799:

Plat. Rep. iii. § 10. Stalb.

Footnote 1800:

Theocrit. i. 129. Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 132. Mosch. Eidyll. iii. 54.

-----

As the Arcadians, descendants of the Pelasgians, derived one of their principal delights from music,[1801] it is reasonable to infer that the ancestral nation, preëminently pastoral, was likewise addicted to this science. The feeding of herds and flocks constituted the principal occupation of the Proselenoi,[1802] who were little devoted to agriculture, as may be inferred from their acorn-eating habits; for no nation ever continued to feed on mast after they could obtain bread. A report prevailed in the ancient world that the Arcadians were of a poetical temperament, to which Virgil alludes in the well-known verses—

Arcades ambo,
Et cantare pares et respondere parati.

And as improvisatori they may possibly have excelled, though Greece knew nothing of an Arcadian literature. However, chiefly after the example of Virgil, the poets of modern times have always delighted to convert Arcadia into a kind of pastoral Utopia, which is done by Sannazaro, Tasso, Guarini, Sir Philip Sydney, Daniel, and many others. Palmerius à Grentmesnil[1803] discovers something like the descendants of the Arcadians among the Irish, whose pastoral taste for music he conceives to be commemorated by the triangular harp in the national insignia.

-----

Footnote 1801:

Athen. xiv. 22.

Footnote 1802:

Etym. Mag. 690. 11.

Footnote 1803:

“Sic et hodie audio Hibernos, qui pecuariam exercent, musicæ deditos,
et triangulari cithara (quam vocamus _harpe_) plerumque se oblectare
solere, unde aiunt insignia regni Hiberniæ fuisse olim et esse adhuc
tale musicum instrumentum.” Desc. Græc. Ant. p. 61.

-----

Their usual clothing consisted of diptheræ, or dressed sheepskins,[1804] just as at the present day among the Nubian shepherds, whom one may see thus clad, roaming through the sandy hollows of the Lybian desert. On the inside of these skins the traitor Hermion wrote the letters which betrayed the designs of his countrymen to the enemy in Laconia.[1805] Others wore goatskin cloaks, which they likewise used as a coverlet at night.[1806] Euripides introduces his chorus of satyrs complaining of this miserable costume.[1807]

“Much loved Bacchos where dost thou
Lonely dwell afar,
Shaking thy gold locks at eve
Like a blazing star?
While I thy minister am fain
To serve this one-eyed Cyclop swain,
A slave borne down by fortune’s stroke
In a wretched goatskin cloak.”

-----

Footnote 1804:

Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 73. Cf. Vesp. 442. Küst.—Eq. 398. Bekk. Luc.
Tim. § 8. We find mention also made of a cloak of wolfskin.
Philostrat. Vit. Sophist. ii. 6.

Footnote 1805:

Suidas. v. διφθέρα. t. i. p. 757. e.

Footnote 1806:

Harless. ad Theocrit. v. 2.

Footnote 1807:

Cyclop. 79, seq.

-----

And thus simple was ever their appearance in the East. But, as I have hinted above, their very great leisure,[1808] the accidents of their occupation, and the grand and regular march of natural phenomena in those countries, often ripened their intellects beyond what the condition of a modern heath-trotter renders credible. Thus, in the mountains of Chaldæa, astronomy and all its parasitical sciences took birth among the shepherd race. From temperament and circumstances, the inhabitants of thinly-peopled tracts, if unvexed by wars, are profoundly meditative. What they behold in serene indistraction gradually rouses their thoughts, and presenting itself again and again, attended always, as the phenomena of the heavens are, by the same accidents, compels them to study.[1809]

-----

Footnote 1808:

Lord Bacon considers the pastoral state preferable in some respects to
the agricultural:—“The two simplest and most primitive trades of life;
that of the shepherd (who by reason of his leisure, rests in a place,
and living in view of heaven, is a lively image of a contemplative
life) and that of the husbandman; where we see the favour of God went
to the shepherd and not to the tiller of the ground.”—Advancement of
Learning, p. 64. Shepherds made libations of milk to the Muses.
Theocrit. i. 143, seq.

Footnote 1809:

Even yet we find the shepherds of Greece retain some smack of
classical learning: “After dinner I walked out with a shepherd’s boy
to herbarise; my pastoral botanist surprised me not a little with his
nomenclature; I traced the names of Dioscorides, and Theophrastus,
corrupted, indeed, in some degree by pronunciation, and by the long
_series annorum_, which had elapsed since the time of these
philosophers, but many of them were unmutilated, and their virtues
faithfully handed down in the oral traditions of the country. My
shepherd boy returned to his fold not less satisfied with some paras
that I had given him, than I was in finding in such a rustic a
repository of ancient science.”—Sibth. in Walp. i. 66, seq. There is
in Sir John Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, translated by Robert
Mulcaster, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a passage describing the
pastoral habits of our ancestors, and the intellectual superiority
they engendered, which appears to me so excellent, that I cannot
resist the temptation to introduce it here:—“England is so fertile and
fruitefull, that comparing quantity to quantity it surmounteth all
other landes in fruitefulnesse. Yea, it bringeth forth fruite of
itselfe, scant provoked by mann’s industrie and labour. For there the
landes, the fieldes, the groves, and the woodes, doe so aboundantlye
springe, that the same untilled doe commonly yield to their owners
more profite then tilled, though else they bee most fruitefull of
corne and graine. There also are fieldes of pasture inclosed with
hedges and ditches, with trees planted and growing uppon the same,
which are a defence to their heardes of sheepe and cattell, against
stormes and heate of the sunne; and the pastures are commonly watered,
so that cattell shutte and closed therein have no neede of keeping
neither by day, nor by night. For there bee no wolves, nor beares, nor
lyons, wherefore their sheepe lye by night in the fields, unkept
within their foldes wherewith their land is manured. By the meanes
whereof, the men of that countrie are scant troubled with any
painefull labour, wherefore they live more spiritually, as did the
ancient fathers, which did rather choose to keepe and feede cattell,
than to disturbe the quietnesse of the minde with care of husbandrie.
And heereof it cometh, that menne of this countrie are more apte and
fitte to discerne in doubtfull causes of great examination and triall,
than are menne whollye given to moyling in the ground; in whom that
rurall exercise engendereth rudeness of witte and minde.” chap. 29.

-----

But solitude is less surely the nurse of science than of superstition. The leaven, which in populous cities scarcely swells visibly in the breast, ferments unrestrainedly in the depths of woods, in the high-piled recesses of mountains, in the gloom of caverns, where nature invests itself with attributes which address themselves powerfully to the heart, and appears almost to hold communion with its offspring. Hence the wild mythologies of Nomadic races, which are not loose-hanging creeds, to be put off and on like a cloak, but a belief inwrought into their souls, a part of themselves, and perhaps the best part, since it is from this that springs the whole dignity and poetry of their lives. In all countries fables rise in the fields, to flow into and be lost in the cities. Observe the wild picture which Plato, in his Academic Dream, presents to us of a group of Lydian shepherds. It has all the poetical elements of an Arabian tale.

Tradition, he says, represented Gyges the ancestor of Crœsus as a hired shepherd, who with many others guarded the imperial flocks in the remoter districts of the country. At this time happened a great earthquake, attended by floods of rain, which, in the parts where they were, opened up a vast chasm in the earth. Gyges arriving alone at the mouth of the gap stood amazed at its depth and magnitude, but observing a practicable descent went down, and roamed through its subterraneous passages. Many marvellous things, according to the mythos, did he there see, and among the rest a hollow brazen horse, with doors in its side, through which looking in, he beheld a colossal naked corpse, with a jewelled ring on its hand. Transferring this to his own finger Gyges departed.

Shortly afterwards, still wearing the signet, he went to the assembly of shepherds, which met monthly, for the purpose of selecting a person to bear the usual report of the flocks to the king. Sitting down among the rest he happened to turn the beavil of his ring towards himself, upon which he became invisible to his companions,[1810] as he clearly discovered from their discourse, which proceeded as if about an absent man. Smitten with much wonder he returned the gem to its former position and again became visible. He made the experiment over and over and always with success; upon which, like another Macbeth, a vast scheme of ambition darkly shadowed itself upon his mind, and a crown tinged slightly with blood swam before him. It does not, however, appear that like the Thane of Cawdor he was perplexed with scruples. He does not say,—

“Why do I yield to that suggestion,
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present facts
Are less than horrible imaginings.
My thought whose murder’s yet but phantasy,
Shakes so my single state of man, that function
Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is,
But what is not.”

-----

Footnote 1810:

The reader will in this place perhaps remember the dream of Rousseau,
on the enjoyment which the possession of such a ring would have
afforded him; when after pushing his speculations as far as they could
go he determines that he was much better without it.—Rêveries du
Promeneur Solitaire, iii. 137.

-----

Gyges, with the ruthless resolution of an Oriental, forms his plan at once, and coolly works it out. He procures himself to be elected one of the mission to the king, and on arriving at the capital, dishonours the queen, murders his master, and ascends the throne.[1811]

-----

Footnote 1811:

Plat. Rep. ii. § 3. Cf. x. § 12. Stallb. Among the gods similar powers
were attributed to the helmet of Hades. Thus, in Homer, Athena is
concealed from Mars by the effect of this enchanted piece of
armour.—Iliad, ε. 845. Apollod. ii. 4. 2.

-----

This may be regarded as a specimen of the shepherds’ tales.[1812] But they moved for the most part in an atmosphere of superstition, had ceremonies of their own, a mythology of their own, and of the whole the pervading spirit was love. In communities highly civilised, this passion commonly degenerates into a plaything, despised when weak, and mischievous when strong. It is otherwise in the early stages of society. There, in proportion to their freedom from the aspirations and anxieties of ambition, men seek happiness in the cultivation of the affections. The society of women is to them all in all. And the evils that infest them, disturb their quiet, and engender crime, spring, too, from the same bitter-sweet fountain, which flows with honey or gall according to the temper of those who drink of it. Consequently, in contemplating the pastoral life of Greece, we must beware not to overlook the shepherdesses,[1813] those heroines of Bucolic poetry, whose freshness and nature still survive in Theocritus, and other fragments of antiquity, and may operate as an antidote to that insipid spawn whose loves and lamentations affect us like ipecacuanha in modern pastorals.

-----

Footnote 1812:

To the same class belongs that tradition of a brazen tablet thrown up
by a fountain in Lycia foretelling the overthrow of the Persian
monarchy by the Greeks.—Plut. Alexand. § 17.

Footnote 1813:

Cf. Varr. De Re Rust. ii. 10.

-----

In these latitudes of society, at least, women enjoyed their freedom, and the glimpses presented to us of them as they there existed may be regarded among the chief charms of Greek poetry. Only, for example, observe the picture which Chæremon the Flower Poet, has delineated of a bevy of beautiful virgins sporting by moonlight:

“There one reclined apart I saw, within the moon’s pale light, With bosom through her parted robe appearing snowy white; Another danced, and floating free her garments in the breeze She seemed as buoyant as the wave that leaps o’er summer seas. While dusky shadows all around shrunk backward from the place, Chased by the beaming splendour shed like sunshine from her face: Beside this living picture stood a maiden passing fair With soft round arms exposed; a fourth with free and graceful air, Like Dian when the bounding hart she tracks through morning dew, Bared through the opening of her robes her lovely limbs to view. And oh! the image of her charms, as clouds in heaven above, Mirrored by streams, left on my soul the stamp of hopeless love. And slumbering near them others lay, on beds of sweetest flowers, The dusky petaled violet, the rose of Paphian bowers. The inula and saffron flower, which on their garments cast, And veils, such hues as deck the sky when day is ebbing fast; While far and near tall marjoram bedecked the fairy ground, Loading with sweets the vagrant winds that frolicked all around.”[1814]

-----

Footnote 1814:

Athen. xiii. 87.

-----

In the ordinary bucolic poets women to be sure are sketched with a rude pencil, though coquettish as queens, of which we have an exemplification in the picture on the shepherd’s cup:[1815]

And there, by ivy shaded, sits a maid divinely wrought,
With veil and circlet on her brows, by two fond lovers sought.
Both beautiful with flowing hair, both sueing to be heard,
On this side one, the other there, but neither is preferred.
For now on this, on that anon, she pours her witching smile,
Like sunshine on the buds of hope, in falsehood all and guile,
Though ceaselessly, with swelling eyes, they seek her heart to move,
By every soft and touching art that wins a maiden’s love.[1816]

-----

Footnote 1815:

This was the κισσύβιον, a goblet or cup turned of ivy wood. It was
usually rubbed with wax and polished, for the purpose of bringing out
the beautiful carving which adorned it. Cf. Etym. Mag. 515. 33.

Footnote 1816:

Theocrit. i. 32, sqq.

-----

There is here no straining after the ideal. Like Titian’s beauties, these shepherdesses are all creatures of this earth, filled with robust health, dark-eyed, warm, impassioned, and somewhat deficient in reserve. They understand well how to act their part in a dialogue. For every bolt shot at them they can return another as keen. Each bower and bosky bourne seems redolent of their smiles; their laughter awakens the echoes; their ruddy lips and pearly teeth hang like a vision over every bubbling spring and love-hiding thicket which they were wont to frequent. Hence the charm of Theocritus. And a still stronger charm perhaps would have belonged to the pages of him who should have painted the shepherd’s life of a remoter age,[1817] when none were above such an occupation, which therefore united at once all the dignity of lofty independence with the careless freedom of manners and unapprehensive enjoyment in which consists the secret source of all the pleasure which rustic pictures afford. Most of his creations, though not all, are in this respect wanting. Ideas of penury[1818] slip in, and, in the midst of rich poetry, check the developement of pleasurable feelings. For the musical swains, though apparently ambitious of nought but the reputation of song, permit us to discover, that they are but hirelings tending flocks not their own. The contrast between persons of this class and those who are owners of the sheep they tend, is forcibly pointed out in the sacred language of Christ: “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling and not the shepherd and whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep and fleeth, and the wolf catcheth them and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth because he is a hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am the good shepherd and know my sheep and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me even so know I the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.”[1819] The same affectionate tenderness is attributed to shepherds in the prophetic writings: “he shall feed his flocks like a shepherd, he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.”[1820]

-----

Footnote 1817:

Though even here we detect the presence of hirelings; for Homer
observes, that, among the Læstrigons, such shepherds as could do with
little sleep received double wages. Odyss. κ. 84, seq.

Footnote 1818:

In fact black slaves, from Africa, were sometimes employed as
shepherds, at least in Sicily. Theoc. i. 24.

Footnote 1819:

John, x. 11, sqq.

Footnote 1820:

Isaiah, xl. 11.

-----

In the matter of virtues and vices, the shepherds of antiquity were very much, no doubt, like other men. Their habits were such as grew naturally out of their position. Towards whatever their feelings led them they proceeded vehemently, and with that singleness of purpose which belongs to men of simple and decided character.[1821] They were too commonly creatures of mere impulse. From the peculiar form of their communion with nature, which, like the masses of Egyptian architecture, was continued and monotonous, they acquired a peculiarity of mental temperament, warm, as it were, in parts, and cold in parts. Every circumstance around them tended to rouse, pique, and inflame the passion of desire and its concomitants; the pairing of their flocks, of the birds, of the very wild beasts whose courage or ferocity they dreaded; their own leisure combined with the excess of health, the influence of climate, the solicitations of opportunity, impelled them into excess; and, accordingly, their morals in this respect sank to a low standard, and rendered them any thing but models of the golden age. The intellect of course was comparatively little cultivated; and there being no other check upon the feelings, suicides, murders of jealousy, and other evidences of ill-regulated passion would often occur.[1822]

-----

Footnote 1821:

It has been observed by Gibbon, who had diligently studied the
pastoral nations of Asia in their general habits and characteristics,
that ambition and the spirit of conquest are powerfully excited by the
shepherd’s manner of life. “The thrones of Asia have been repeatedly
overturned by the shepherds of the north, and their arms have spread
terror and devastation over the most fertile and warlike countries of
Europe. On this occasion, as well as on many others, the sober
historian is forcibly awakened from a pleasing vision and is compelled
with some reluctance to confess, that the pastoral manners which have
been adorned with the fairest attributes of peace and innocence are
much better adapted to the fierce and cruel habits of a military
life.” Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, iv. 348. Hippocrates in
his brief but vigorous manner has presented us with a picture of the
Scythian shepherd’s life in ancient times, (De Aër. et Loc. § 92,
sqq.) and from modern travellers we find that it differed very little
from that which they lead at the present day. See the travels of
Rubriquis in Hakluyt, i. 101, sqq. See also the notes of Coray on
Hippocrates, t. ii. 280, seq.

Footnote 1822:

Theocritus describes Daphnis dying for love. Eidyll. i. 135.

-----

But, in proportion as we pierce further back into antiquity, these tragical incidents become fewer: not merely because our knowledge of those ages is more scanty, but that in ruder times morality is comparatively lax, and men’s taste less fastidious. The rigid laws of marriage were then little observed. Women passed from husband to husband without losing character or caste; and when they produced illegitimate offspring attributed the paternity to some god, and scarcely considered the circumstance a misfortune. Half the princes of the Homeric age were illegitimate; for this is what is always meant by saying they were descended from the gods. Æneas was the son of some young woman whom Anchises met on the mountains, where he pastured his father’s flocks and pretended to have been loved by Aphrodite.[1823] Persons so circumstanced were, doubtless, capable of much romance. Nymphs and goddesses peopled their imagination, and their imagination let loose its brood upon the woods. Poets afterwards, able to infuse a soul into these rustic traditions, gave a local habitation and a name to every beautiful legend they could collect. Hence that sunny picture, the interview of Aphrodite and Anchises amid the lofty recesses, the grassy slopes, the sparkling leaping brooks, and old umbrageous forests of Mount Ida. Already, however, the force of dress was known, which Montaigne afterwards celebrated; for the Homeric bard, about to record an interview between the goddess and her shepherd-lover, instead of supposing her to have been

“When unadorned, adorned the most,”

describes all the arts of a luxurious toilette.

-----

Footnote 1823:

Hom. Hymn. ad Ven. 54, sqq.

-----

The picture, however, of pastoral life which he suggests rather than describes, is worked out with strokes of great simplicity. All the other herdsmen disperse in the execution of their several duties, leaving Anchises alone in the cattle-sheds,[1824] spacious in dimensions, and tastefully erected, where he amuses his solitary leisure with the music of the cithara. While thus engaged he beholds the approach of the goddess,[1825] and is at once struck with her beauty and the splendour of her raiment. At the unearthly vision his love is kindled; but the poet, skilled in the mysteries of the heart, chastens his passion by overmastering feelings of reverence, such as necessarily belong to unsophisticated youth. Anchises constitutes, indeed, the _beau idéal_ of an heroic shepherd, simple, high-minded, ingenuous, venturous and fearless in contests with man or beast, but in his intercourse with woman gentle, reverent,

“And of his port as meek as is a maid.”

In fact, the gallant knights of romance seem rather to have been modelled after the heroic warriors of Greece, than from any realities supplied by the chivalrous ages. The author of the Hymn is careful in describing the shepherd’s couch, to insinuate with how great strength and courage he was endowed. He reclines, we are told, on skins of bears and lions slain by his own hand, though over these there were cast, for show, garments of the softest texture.[1826]

-----

Footnote 1824:

Compare Trollope, Notes on St. John, x. i.

Footnote 1825:

Aleuas, the Thessalian, is said to have been favoured with the visits
of a very different mistress as he pastured his herds on Mount Ossa,
near the Hæmonian spring; for a dragon of enormous size, becoming
enamoured of his beauty and golden hair, frequently approached the
shepherd with presents of game of her own catching. Having laid her
gifts at his feet, she would kiss his locks and lick his face with her
tongue, which, as the fountain was so near it, may be hoped was a work
of supererogation. Ælian. De Nat. Animal. viii. 11.

Footnote 1826:

Hymn. ad Vener. 158, sqq.

-----

Throughout this work it has been seen how the influence of climate and position concurred in the formation of the Greek character. We may ourselves put the doctrine to the proof by observing the effect upon our minds of those reflections of landscapes which appear in language; rude Boreal scenes exciting the spirit of contention and energy; while the soft valleys, groves, and odoriferous gardens of the South produce a calm upon our thoughts favourable to the more benevolent emotions. Hellenic shepherds, therefore, no other causes preventing, may upon the whole be supposed to have been humane.

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.

-----

Footnote 1827:

Dion Chrysostom. Orat. vii. t. i. p. 219, sqq. Phot. 166. a. 24.

-----

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]

-----

Footnote 1828:

On this mountain and the mythological legends attached to it, see
Virg. Æn. xi. 260, with the note of Servius. Ovid. Metamorph. xiv.
472. Cf. Propert. v. 115, sqq. Jacobs. Plin. iv. 21. An ancient
scholiast, quoted by Morell, thus relates the revenge of Nauplios:
Ναύπλιος τοῦ υἱέος δὴ τοῦ Παλαμήδους τοῦ φόνου ἀμυνόμενος τοὺς Ἕλλήνας
τοῦ ἀνέμου αὐτοῖς ἐνστάντος· ἐπεὶ τοῦτον διὰ θαλάττης ἐγέλων. αὐτὸς
οὗτος τὸν Καφηρέα καταλαβὼν εἶτα νυκτὸς πυρσεύων ἀπὸ τῶν ἐκεῖσε
πετρωδῶν πάγων, ἠπάτα προσχεῖν, ὡς δή τινι εὐπροσόδῳ ἀκτῆ τοῖς
ἀποτόμοις κρημνοῖς εἰς βάθος ἐῤῥιζωμένοις καὶ χοιράσι διειλημμένοις.
καὶ οὕτως ἀπρόοπτως ἀπωλόντο. Schediasm. &c., in Dion. t. ii. p. 580,
seq. Cf. Strab. viii. 6. t ii. p. 195. Apollodor. ii. i. 5. Orph.
Argonaut. 204, sqq.

Footnote 1829:

On the purple fisheries of Eubœa, cf. Feder. Morell. Schediasm. &c.,
in Dion. ii. 576. Reiske. and Aristot. Hist. Animal. v. 15.

Footnote 1830:

A life equally simple is led by the Albanian shepherds of the present
day. “They live on the mountains, in the vale or the plain, as the
varying seasons require, under arbours, or sheds, covered with boughs,
tending their flocks abroad, or milking the ewes and she-goats at the
fold, and making cheese and butter to supply the city.” Chandler, ii.
p. 135.

Footnote 1831:

Iliad. β. 541. δ. 464. The long hair of these ancient warriors is thus
mentioned by the Homeric Scholiast: τὰ ὀπίσω μέρη τῆς κεφαλῆς κομῶντες
ἀνδρείας χάριν. ἴδιον δὲ τοῦτο τῆς τῶν Εὐβοέων κουρᾶς, τὸ ὄπισθεν τὰς
τρίχας βαθείας ἔχειν. t. i. p. 83. Bekker.

Footnote 1832:

Cf. Theoph. De Sign. Pluv. i. 22.

-----

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.”

-----

Footnote 1833:

Had Bernardin de St. Pierre read this when he wrote his Indian
Cottage?

Footnote 1834:

An equal degree of contentment to that which in this recital we find
exhibited by the Eubœan herdsmen, is still in our own times displayed
by the rough peasants of the Lipari islands, in the midst of far
greater privations:—“It is incredible at the same time how contented
these islanders are amid all their poverty. Ulysses perhaps cherished
not a greater love for his Ithaca than they bear to their Eolian rocks
which, wretched as they may appear, they would not exchange for the
Fortunate islands. Frequently have I entered their huts which seem
like the nests of birds hung to the cliffs. They are framed of pieces
of lava ill-joined together, equally destitute of ornament within and
without, and scarcely admitting a feeble uncertain light, like some
gloomy cavern.” Spallanzani, Travels in the Two Sicilies, iv. 147.

Footnote 1835:

The absence of these tormentors of cattle was considered a matter of
great importance by the ancients. Virgil, where he is giving
directions respecting the best pastures suited to the youthful mothers
of the herds, celebrates the exploits of the gadfly:

Saltibus in vacuis pascant, et plena secundum
Flumina: muscus ubi, et viridissima gramine ripa,
Speluncæque tegant, et saxea procubet umbra.
Est lucos Silari circa, ilicibusque virentem
Plurimus Alburnum volitans, cui nomen asilo
Romanum est, œstrum Graii vertere vocantes:
Asper, acerba sonans: quo tota exterrita sylvis
Diffugiunt armenta; furit mugitibus æther
Concussus, sylvæque et sicci ripa Tanagri.
Georg. iii. 143, sqq.

See the note of Philargyrius in loc. Aristot. Hist. Animal, iv. 4. v.
19.

-----

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.

-----

Footnote 1836:

Plat. Opp. t. i. p. 9. To protect from pollution spots shaded by noble
trees they were accustomed to consecrate them to some god, and to
erect beneath the overhanging branches statues and altars. Id. ib. In
Crete the fountains are often shaded still by majestic plane-trees.
Pashley, ii. 31.

-----

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.

-----

Footnote 1837:

Or even in the shed of a Turkish shepherd in Asia Minor. Dr. Chandler
has a passage illustrative of the hospitality of pastoral tribes,
which is at once so picturesque and concise that I am tempted to
transcribe it: “About two in the morning our whole attention was fixed
by the barking of dogs, which, as we advanced, became exceedingly
furious. Deceived by the light of the moon we now fancied we could see
a village, and were much mortified to find only a station of poor
goatherds without even a shed, and nothing for our horses to eat. They
were lying wrapped in their thick capotes or loose-coats by some
glimmering embers, among the bushes in a dale under a spreading tree
by the fold. They received us hospitably, heaping on fresh fuel and
producing caimac or sour curds and coarse bread which they toasted for
us on the coals. We made a scanty meal, sitting on the ground lighted
by the fire and by the moon, after which sleep suddenly overpowered
me. On waking I found my companions by my side, sharing in the
comfortable cover of the Janizary’s cloak which he had carefully
spread over us. I was now much struck with the wild appearance of the
spot. The tree was hung with rustic utensils, the she-goats in a pen
sneezed and bleated and rustled to and fro; the shrubs, by which our
horses stood, were leafless, and the earth bare; a black cauldron with
milk was simmering over the fire, and a figure more than gaunt or
savage close by us was struggling on the ground with a kid whose ears
he had slit, and was endeavouring to cauterise with a piece of red-hot
iron.” Chandler, vol. i. 180, seq.

-----

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.

-----

Footnote 1838:

History of the Caliph Vathek. p. 102.

-----

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,

“Nay, but she will take a husband, humble in rank, and like ourselves a hunter,” glancing at the same time at the lover.

“How is it then that you wait?” inquired the stranger. “Do you expect him from the village?”

“No,” answered the father, “he is not far off; and so soon as we can fix upon a fortunate day the nuptials will be celebrated.”

“And by what do you judge of a fortunate day?”

“The moon must be approaching the full, the weather fair, and the atmosphere transparent.”

“And is the youth in reality an able hunter?”

“I am,” said the young man, answering for himself, “in the chase of the stag or boar, as you yourself, if you please, shall judge to-morrow.”

“And did you take this hare, my friend?”

“I did,” replied he with a smile, “having set a gin for him by night;[1839] the weather being surpassing beautiful, and the moon larger than it ever was before.”

-----

Footnote 1839:

Cf. Philost. Icon. ii. 26, p. 851.

-----

Upon this both the old men laughed, and the lover abashed held his peace.

“But,” observed the father of the maiden, “it is no fault of mine that the solemnity is deferred; we only wait at your father’s desire, till a victim can be purchased; for a sacrifice must be offered to the gods.”

“With respect to the victim,” interposed the maiden’s younger brother, “he has long provided one, and a noble one too, which is now feeding behind the cottage.”

“And is it truly so?” demanded the old man.

“It is,” replied the lad.

“And where,” addressing the youth, “did you procure it?” inquired they.

“When we took the wild sow,[1840] which was followed by her litter,” answered he, “and the greater number, swifter than hares, made their escape; I hit one with a stone, and my companions coming up threw a skin over him. This I secured, and exchanged in the village for a young domestic pig which has been fatted in a sty behind the house.”

-----

Footnote 1840:

The wild hog is still one of the most common animals in the forests of
Greece and Asia Minor. Chandler, i. 77. Even wild bulls occasionally
make their appearance in the latter country. 176.

-----

“I now understand,” exclaimed the father, “the cause of your mother’s mirth when I would wonder what that grunting could be, and how the barley was disappearing so fast.”

“Nevertheless,” observed the young man, “to be properly fatted our Eubœan swine require acorns.[1841] However, if you will just step this way I will show her to you.”

-----

Footnote 1841:

To this best and most economical food for hogs, Homer makes allusion
where he introduces the goddess Circe attending to her sty, which she
had filled with the transformed companions of Odysseus:

τοῖσι δε Κίρκη
Πὰρ ῥ’ ἄκυλον, βάλανον τ᾽ ἔβαλεν, καρπόν τε κρανείης
Ἔδμεναι, οἷα σύες χαμαιευνάδες αἰὲν ἔδουσιν.
Od. κ. 241, sqq. Cf. ν. 409.

Ælian de Nat. Animal. v. 45, celebrates these Homeric dainties as the
food of the hog to which he elsewhere adds the fruit of the ash. viii.
9.

-----

Upon which off they went, the boys quite at a run, and in vast glee.

In the meantime, the maiden going into the other cottage, brought forth a quantity of split service-berries,[1842] medlars,[1843] and winter apples, and bunches of superb grapes, bursting ripe,[1844] and, brushing down the table, she spread them out there upon a layer of clean fern. Next moment the lads returned bringing in the pig, with much joking and shouts of laughter. Then came, too, the young man’s mother, with two of his little brothers, and they brought along with them nice white loaves, with boiled eggs in wooden salvers, with a quantity of parched peas. Having embraced her brother, with his wife and daughter, she sat down beside her husband, and said,

“Behold the victim, which my son has long fed for his marriage, and the other things also are ready; both the barley-meal and the flour. A little wine, perhaps, may be wanting, but even this we can easily procure from the village.”

And her son standing near her, fixed his eyes wistfully upon his father-in-law.

The latter smilingly observed,—

“All delay now is on the lover’s part, who, perhaps, is anxious to fatten his pig.”

“As to her,” said the youth, “she is bursting with fat.”

Upon this the sophist, willing to aid the lover, interposed, and remarked,—

“But you must take care lest while the pig is fattening he himself grow thin.”

“The stranger’s remark is just,” said his mother; “for already he is more meagre than he used to be; and I have of late observed him to be wakeful at night, and to go forth from the cottage.”

“Oh! that,” said he, “was when the dogs barked, and I stepped out to see what was the matter.”