g aside his horsemanship, in which he must have been nearly
perfect, there was very much that was grand about the old Greek,--very
much that makes us strangely love the man, who, when his soldiers lay
benumbed under the snows on the heights of Armenia, threw off his
general's coat, or blanket, or what not, and set himself resolutely to
wood-chopping and to cheering them. The farmer knew how.

Such men win battles. He has his joke, too, with Cheirisophus, the
Lacedaemonian, about the thieving propensity of his townspeople, and
invites him, in virtue of it, to _steal_ a difficult march upon the
enemy. And Cheirisophus grimly retorts upon Xenophon, that Athenians are
said to be great experts in stealing the public money, especially the
high officers. This sounds home-like! When I come upon such things, I
forget the parasangs and the Taochians and the dead Cyrus, and seem to
be reading out of American newspapers.

It is quite out of the question to claim Theocritus as a farm-writer;
and yet in all old literature there is not to be found such a lively
bevy of heifers, and wanton kids, and "butting rams," and stalwart
herdsmen, who milk the cows "upon the sly," as in the "Idyls" of the
musical Sicilian.

There is no doubt but Theocritus knew the country to a charm: he knew
all its roughnesses, and the thorns that scratched the bare legs of the
goatherds; he knew the lank heifers, that fed, "like grasshoppers," only
on dew; he knew what clatter the brooks made, tumbling headlong adown
the rocks,--

[Greek: apo tus petras kataleibetai ypsothen ydor]

he knew, moreover, all the charms and coyness of the country-nymphs,
giving even a rural twist to his praises of the courtly Helen:--

"In shape, in height, in stately presence
fair,
Straight as a furrow gliding from the
share."[B]

[Footnote B: Elton's translation, I think. I do not vouch for its
correctness.]

A man must have had an eye for good ploughing and a lithe figure, as
well as a keen scent for the odor of fresh-turned earth, to make such a
comparison as that!

Theocritus was no French sentimentalist; he would have protested against
the tame elegancies of the Roman Bucolics; and the _sospiri ardenti_ and
_miserelli aman_ of Guarini would have driven him mad. He is as brisk as
the wind upon a breezy down. His cow-tenders are swart and bare-legged,
and love with a vengeance. There is no miserable tooting upon flutes,
but an uproarious song