the world, the origin of fire,
of the tenuous air, of water and of earth. I told them how primeval men
had lived wretched and naked in the woods, before the ingenious spirits
had taught them the arts; of God, too, I sang to them, and why they gave
Dionysus Semele to mother, because his desire to befriend mankind was
born amid the thunder.

"It was not without effort that this people, more pleasing than all the
others in the eyes of the gods, these happy Greeks, achieved good
government and a knowledge of the arts. Their first temple was a hut
composed of laurel branches; their first image of the gods, a tree;
their first altar, a rough stone stained with the blood of Iphigenia.
But in a short time they brought wisdom and beauty to a point that no
nation had attained before them, that no nation has since approached.
Whence comes it, Arcade, this solitary marvel on the earth? Wherefore
did the sacred soil of Ionia and of Attica bring forth this incomparable
flower? Because nor priesthood, nor dogma, nor revelation ever found a
place there, because the Greeks never knew the jealous God.

"It was his own grace, his own genius that the Greek enthroned and
deified as his God, and when he raised his eyes to the heavens it was
his own image that he saw reflected there. He conceived everything in
due measure; and to his temples he gave perfect proportion. All therein
was grace, harmony, symmetry, and wisdom; all were worthy of the
immortals who dwelt within them and who under names of happy choice, in
realised shapes, figured forth the genius of man. The columns which bore
the marble architrave, the frieze and the cornice were touched with
something human, which made them venerable; and sometimes one might see,
as at Athens and at Delphi, beautiful young girls strong-limbed and
radiant upstaying the entablature of treasure house and sanctuary. O
days of splendour, harmony, and wisdom!

"Dionysus resolved to repair to Italy, whither he was summoned under the
name of Bacchus by a people eager to celebrate his mysteries. I took
passage in his ship decked with tendrils of the vine, and landed under
the eyes of the two brothers of Helen at the mouth of the yellow Tiber.
Already under the teaching of the god, the inhabitants of Latium had
learned to wed the vine to the young stripling elm. It was my pleasure
to dwell at the foot of the Sabine hills in a valley crowned with trees
and watered with pure springs. I gathered the verbena