DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE GREEKS. 379 



the river; and he shows how ascending vapours occasion 

 the meteorological processes of the storm and electric rain. 

 Although capable of writing romantic 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, everything 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 Coelo-Syria, is 

 a noble and at the same time a more considerable compoition.* 



On account of the renown attached from ancient times to 

 the spot, I would not omit to mention the description of the 



* Meleagri Reliquice, ed. Manso, p. 5. Compare Jacobs, Leben und 

 Kunst der Alien, bd. i. abth. i. s. xv. abth. ii. s. 1 50-190. 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 Idyllion, 1759, p. 5); see Brunckii 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 

 nature. Himerii Sophistce Eclogce, et Declamationes, ed. Wernsdorf. 

 1790. (Oratio iii. 8-6, 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 Ouwaroff, Nonnus 

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



