LANDSCAPE 273 



While Latin literature was growing, that of Greece was 

 declining. The process of decadence, however, advanced 

 slowly ; and some minor beauties, which had been unde- 

 veloped in the earlier stages, now assumed prominence. We 

 find a distinct feeling for landscape, timid and subdued, but 

 delicately true, in the Idyls of Theocritus. The poets of the 

 Anthology, with Meleager at their head, show that the sense 

 of nature had begun to disengage itself from merely mytho- 

 logical associations. Meleager can see flowers without think- 

 ing of boys and girls beloved by deities. He calls the 

 narcissus * rain-lover,' and the lilies are for him 'mountain- 

 wanderers.' With the decay of sculpture, painting became 

 an art of more importance. We have many indications that 

 wall-frescoes were a common feature of Grseco-Roman archi- 

 tecture. The treatise of Philostratus called et/coves possesses 

 considerable interest, as determining the character of these 

 pictures. It is clear that though figure-subjects of the sculp- 

 turesque type still formed the staple of plastic art, scenery 

 was being treated with some degree of intelligent apprecia- 

 tion ; and the same conclusion may be arrived at after a 

 study of the Pompeian frescoes. This tendency of painting 

 reacted upon literature. The books of the Greek novelists 

 abound in exquisite landscape detail. Nature is always used 

 as a background to humanity. But this background is sympa- 

 thetically felt, and its main features are touched with an 

 evident perception of their own attractiveness. In the hands 

 of the novelists language becomes singularly euphuistic. They 

 develop rhetorical conceits, and coin quaint imagery to convey 

 the aesthetic impression made by natural objects on the human 

 sensibilities. 



The Roman poets of the Silver Age respond to this im- 

 pulse. Passing over Lucan, Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus, 

 and Statius, from all of whose works lovely pieces of land- 

 scape-description might be culled, I will invite attention to 

 Ausonius, in whom, at the very close of the classical period, 

 modern sentiment seems ready to expand. His poem on the 

 Moselle has always been admired for its mastery of descrip- 

 tive verse. His elegy on Roses may be read in another essay 



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