DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE GREEKS. 29 



pus,* or of any other author. In the place of the passages 

 relating to natural scenery, which we can not venture to as- 

 cribe to Aristotle, we possess, however, a genuine fragment 

 which Cicero has preserved to us from a lost work of Aris- 

 totle, f It runs thus : " If there were bemgs who lived in 

 the depths of the earth, in dwellings adorned with statues and 

 paintings, and every thing which is possessed in rich abund- 

 ance by those whom we esteem fortunate ; and if these being? 

 could receive tidings of the power and might of the gods, and 

 could then emerge from their hidden dwellings through the 

 open fissures of the earth to the places which we innabit ; if 

 they could suddenly behold the earth, and the sea, and the 

 vault of heaven ; could recognize the expanse of the cloudy 

 firmament, and the might of the winds of heaven, and admire 

 the sun in its majesty, beauty, and radiant effulgence ; and, 

 lastly, when night vailed the earth in darkness, they could be- 

 hold the starry heavens, the changing moon, and the stars 

 rising and setting in the unvarying course ordained from eter- 

 nity, they would surely exclaim, ' there are gods, and such 

 great things must be the work of their hands.' " It has been 

 justly observed that this passage is alone sufficient to corrob- 

 orate Cicero's opinion of " the golden flow of Aristotle's elo- 

 quence,"! and that his words are pervaded by something of 

 the inspired force of Plato's genius. Such a testimony to the 

 existence of the heavenly powers, drawn from the beauty and 

 stupendous greatness of the works of creation, is rarely to be 

 met with in the works of antiquity. 



That which we miss in the works of the Greeks, I will not 

 say from their want of susceptibility to the beauties of nature, 

 but from the direction assumed by their literature, is still more 

 rarely to be met with among the Romans. A nation which, 

 in accordance with the ancient Sicilian habits, evinced a de- 

 cided predilection for agriculture and other rural pursuits, 

 might have justified other expectations ; but, with all their 



an altered translation of the Latin text of Apuleius. The latter saya 

 distinctly (^c Mundo, p. 250, Bip.) " that he has followed Aristotle and 

 Theophrastus in the composition of his work." 



* Osann, op. cit., s. 194-266. 



t Cicero, de Natura Deorum, ii., 37. A passage in which Sextus Em 

 piricus (advcrsns Physicos, lib. ix., 22, p. 554, Fabr.) instances a similar 

 expression of Aristotle, deserves the more attention from the fact thai 

 the same writer shortly before (ix., 20) alludes to another work of Ar- 

 istotle (on divination and dreams) which is also lost to us. 



t " Aristoteles Humen orationis aureum fundens." Cic, Acad. Quasi. 

 ii., cap. 38. (Compare Stahr, Aristotelia, th. ii., s. 161. and Aristotelet 

 bei den Rdmern, s. 53.) 



