DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE ROMANS. 33 



occupying' only a very small space. There is no individual 

 portraiture of particular localities,* but a deep and intimate 

 comprehension of nature is depicted in soft colors. Where, 

 for instance, has the gentle play of the waves, or the stillness 

 of night been, more happily described ? And how well do 

 these pleasing pictures contrast with the powerful description 

 of the bursting tempest in the first book of the Georgics, and 

 the picture in the ^neid of the voyage and landing at the 

 Strophades, the crashing fall of the rock, or the flames emitted 

 from Mount -tEtna.t 



From Ovid we might have expected, as the fruit of his long' 

 sojourn in the plains of Tomi, in Lower Moesia, a poetic de- 

 scription of the marshes, of which, however, no account has 

 been transmitted to us from antiquity. The exile did not 

 indeed see that kind of steppe-like plain, which in summer is 

 densely covered with juicy plants, varying from four to six feet 

 in height, and which in every breath of wind present the as- 

 pect of a waving sea of flowering verdure. The place of 

 his banishment was a desolate, swampy marsh-land, and the 

 broken spirit of the poet, which gives itself vent in unmanly 

 lamentation, was preoccupied with the recollection of the en- 

 joyments of social life and the political occurrences at Rome, 

 and thus remained dead to the impressions produced by the 

 contemplation of the Scythian desert, with which he was sur- 

 rounded. As a compensation, however, this highly-gifted poet, 

 whose descriptions of nature are so vivid, has given us, besides 

 his too frequently-repeated representations of grottoes, springs, 

 and "calm moon-light nights," a remarkably characteristic, 

 and even geognostically important delineation of a volcanic 

 eruption at Methone, between Epidaurus and Troezene. The 

 passage to which we allude has already been cited in another 

 part of this work. J Ovid shows us, as our readers will re- 



* The passages from Virgil, which are adduced by Malte-Brun (Ayi- 

 nales des Voyages, t. iii., 1808, p. 235-266) as local descriptions, merely 

 show that the poet had a knowledge of the produce of different coun- 

 tries, as, for instance, the safl'ron of Mount Traolus ; that he was ac- 

 quainted with the incense of the Sabeans, and viith the true names of 

 several small rivers; and that even the mephitic vapors which rise from 

 a cavern in the Apennines, near Amsanctus, were not unknown to him. 



t Virg., Georg., l, 356-392; iii., 349-380; ^n., iii., 191-211; iv., 

 246-251; xii., 684-689. 



t Compare Ovid, Mef.,i., 568-576; iii., 155-164; iii., 407-412; vii., 

 180-188; XV., 296-306; Trist., lib. i., EL 3, 60; hb. iii., EL 4, 49; 

 EL 12, 15 ; Ex Ponto, lib. iii., Ep. 7-9, as instances of separate pictures 

 of natural scenery. There is a pleasant description of a spring at Hy 

 mettus, beginning with the verse, 



B2 



