DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE GREEKS. 377 



monts. How can we suppose that so intellectual and highly 

 gifted a race should have remained insensible to the aspect of 

 the forest- crowned cliffs on the deeply-indented shores of the 

 Mediterranean, to the silent interchange of the influences affect- 

 ing the surface of the earth, and the lower strata of the 

 atmosphere at the recurrence of regular seasons and hours, 

 or to the distribution of vegetable forms? How, in an age 

 when the poetic feelings were the strongest, could this 

 active state of the senses have failed to manifest itself in 

 ideal contemplation? The Greek regarded the vegetable 

 world as standing in a manifold and mythical relation to 

 heroes and to the gods, who were supposed to avenge 

 every injury inflicted on the trees and plants sacred to them. 

 Imagination animated vegetable forms with life, but the 

 types of poetry, to which the peculiar direction of mental 

 activity amongst the ancient Greeks limited them, gave only 

 a partial development to the descriptions of natural scenery. 

 Occasionally, however, even in the writings of their tragic 

 poets, a deep sense of the beauty of nature breaks forth 

 in animated descriptions of scenery in the midst of the most 

 excited passions, or the deepest tones of sadness. Thus, when 

 (Edipus is approaching the grove of the Eumenides, the chorus 

 sings " the noble resting-place of the illustrious Colonos, where 

 the melodious nightingale loves to tarry and pour forth its 

 clear but plaintive notes." Again, it sings " the verdant 

 gloom of the thickly mantling ivy, the narcissus steeped in 

 heavenly dew, the golden-beaming crocus, and the hardy and 

 ever fresh-sprouting olive-tree."* Sophocles strives to extol his 

 native Colonos, by placing the lofty form of the fated and royal 

 wanderer by the brink of the sleepless waters of Cephisus, 

 surrounded by soft and bright scenery. The repose of nature 

 heightens the impression of pain called forth by the image of 

 the noble form of the blind sufferer, the victim of mysterious 



* (Ed. Colon., v. 668-719. Amongst delineations of scenery, indi- 

 cative of a deep feeling of nature, I would here further mention, the 

 description of Cithseron in the Bacchce of Euripides, v. 1045 (Leake, 

 North. Greece, vol. ii. p. 370), where the messenger ascends from the 

 valley of Asopus, the reference to the sunrise in the valley of Delphos, 

 in the Ion of Euripides, v. 82, and the gloomy picture in the Hymn 

 on Delos, v. 11, by Callimachus, in which the holy Delos is represented 

 as surrounded by sea-gulls, and scourged by tempestuous waves. 



