on of Chalcedon, ascended
the mountain on which stood the Urios temple to Zeus, and there
'sitting in the temple, he took a view of the Euxine Sea, which is
worthy of admiration.' (Herodotus.)

Philip V. of Macedon ascended the Haemus B.C. 181, and Apollonios
Rhodios describes the panorama spread out before the Argonauts as
they ascended the Dindymon, and elsewhere recalls the view from Mt.
Olympus. These are the oldest descriptions of distant views conceived
as landscape in the classic literature preserved to us. Petrarch's
ascent comes next in order.

This sentimental and subjective feeling for Nature, half-idyllic,
half-romantic, which seemed to arise suddenly and spontaneously in
Petrarch, is not to be wholly explained by a marked individuality,
nourished by the tendencies of the period; the influence of Roman
literature, the re-birth of the classic, must also be taken into
account. For the Renaissance attitude towards Nature was closely
allied to the Roman, and therefore to the Hellenic; and the fact that
the first modern man arose on Italian soil was due to the revival of
antiquity plus its union with the genius of the Italian people. Many
direct analogies can be traced between Petrarch and the Roman poets;
it was in their school that his eyes opened to the wonders of Nature,
and he learnt to blend the inner with the outer life.

Boccaccio does not lead us much further. There is idyllic quality in
his description of a wood in the _Ameto_,[9] and especially in
_Fiammetta_, in which he praises country life and describes the
spring games of the Florentine youth.

This is the description of a valley in the _Decameron_: 'After a walk
of nearly a mile, they came to the Ladies' Valley, which they entered
by a straight path, whence there issued forth a fine crystal current,
and they found it so extremely beautiful and pleasant, especially at
that sultry season, that nothing could exceed it, and, as some of
them told me afterwards, the plain in the valley was so exact a
circle, as if it had been described by a pair of compasses, though it
seemed rather the work of Nature than of art, and was about half a
mile in circumference, surrounded by six hills of moderate height, on
each of which was a palace built in the form of a little castle....
The part that looks toward the south was planted as thick as they
could stand together with vines, olives, almonds, cherries, figs, and
most other kinds of fruit trees, and on the n