DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE GREEKS. 27 



ation. The preponderance of the descriptive element shows 

 itself in the forty-eight cantos of the Dionysiaca of the Egyp- 

 tian Nonnus, which are remarkable ibr their skillfully artist- 

 ical versification. The poet dwells with pleasure on the de- 

 lineation of great convulsions of nature ; he makes a fire kin- 

 dled by lightning on the woody banks of the Hydaspes bum 

 up even the fishes in the bed of the river ; and he shows how 

 ascending vapors occasion the meteorological processes of the 

 storm and electric rain. Although capable of writing roman- 

 tic poetry, Nonnus of Panopolis is remarkably unequal in his 

 style, being at one time animated and exciting, and at another 

 tedious and verbose. 



A deeper feeling for nature and a greater delicacy of sensi- 

 bility is manifested in some portions of the Greek Anthology, 

 which "has been transmitted to us in such various ways and 

 from such different epochs. In the graceful translation of 

 Jacobs, every thing that relates to animal and vegetable forms 

 has been collected in one section — these passages being small 

 pictures, consisting, in most cases, of mere allusions to indi- 

 vidual forms. The plane-tree, which " nourishes amid its 

 branches the grape swelling with juice," and which, in the 

 time of Dionysius the Elder, first penetrated from Asia Minor 

 through the Island of Diomedes to the shores of the Sicilian 

 Anapus, is perhaps too often introduced ; still, on the whole, 

 the ancient mind shows itself more inclined, in these songs 

 and epigrams, to dwell on the animal than on the vegetable 

 world. The vernal idyl of Meleager of Gadara, in Ccfilo-Syr- 

 ia, is a noble, and, at the same time, a more considerable com- 

 position.* 



* Meleagri Reliquice, ed. Mauso, p. 5. Compare Jacobs, Leben una 

 Kunst der Alten, bd. i., abth. i., s. xv. ; abth. ii., s. 150-190. Zenobetti 

 believed himself to have been the first to discover Meleager's poem on 

 Spring, in the middle of the eighteenth century {Mel. Gadareni in Ver 

 Idyllicni, 1759, p. 5). See Briincku Anal., t. iii., p. 105. There are 

 two fine sylvan poems of Marianos in the Anthol. Grceca, ii., 511 and 

 512. Meleager's poem contrasts well with the praise of Spring in the 

 eclogues of Himerius, a Sophist, who was teacher of rhetoric at Athens 

 under Julian. The style, on the whole, is cold and profusely ornate ; 

 but in some parts, especially in the descriptive portions, this writer 

 sometimes approximates closely to the modern way of considering na- 

 ture. Himerii Sophistce Eclogce et Declamationes, ed. Wernsdorf, 1790. 

 (Oratio iii., 3-6, and xxi., 5.) It seems extraordinary that the lovely 

 situation of Constantinople should not have inspired the Sophists. 

 (Orat. vii., 5—7 ; xvi., 3-8.) The passages of Nonnus, referred to in the 

 text, occur in Dionys., ed. Petri Cunaei, 1610, lib. ii., p. 70 ; vi., p. 199, 

 xxiii., p. 16 and 619 ; xxvi., p. 694. Compare, also, Ouwarotf, Nonnu* 

 von Panopolis, der Dichter, 1817, s. 3, 16. 21. 



