rably, as it must happen! "O God," I cried, "give me strength to the very end!" The worshippers began to crowd out of the church, and I hurried away, disappearing beneath the trees.

From The Contemporary Review. HUSBANDRY IN THE GREEK DRAMATISTS.

In the spring, when the new wine was first drawn off, the great festival of Dionysus was held, with appropriate hymns and with songs and games, in which the young men contended for the prize of a goat. This is looked upon as the origin of the Greek drama, the word tragedy meaning, of course, a goat-song. There were matches between the villages, and one village or one company of singers or one single singer became more famous than the rest. Then dialogue was introduced, beginning probably in a sort of chaff

that filled the interludes between the choric songs, and in this way the local folk-fêtes of rural Attica prepared the way for Eschylus. When, however, the drama became a great literary and patriotic institution, it became the possession of townspeople who had no great sympathy with country life and things.

Athens, the violet-crowned, was as far as possible from having the significance of smoke and darkness of a modern metropolis; how far, any one can still realize who stands in that alley in the king's garden where, above the lovely leafage of bay and myrtle, ilex and oleander, the temples of the Acropolis suddenly appear against the clear sky, nothing else of the outer world being visible, while the faint hum of the modern city is drowned in the song of nightingales. Nevertheless, morally as well as materially, town it was, in the most intense sense of the word; and it is doubtful if the Athenians would have appreciated an attempt to "bring the scent of the hay across the foot-lights." We cannot expect to learn very much about contemporary agriculture from the Greek dra

a

matists, though such hints as are to be gathered from them on the subject are by no means without value.

Eschylus was the first writer to scout the idea of an early golden era, and to recognize that primitive man had a life so hard and miserable that the most unlucky of his descendants might own himself to be better off. His description of human beings before Prometheus came to their aid has been truly said to be a correct account of the Stone Age. In the "Persians" Eschylus describes a service for the dead such as in his day was certainly often performed by the pastoral or village Hellenes, whose ritual the poet transported among their enemies without any pangs of conscience. The beautiful lines refer to the libation:—

Milk from the flawless firstling of the herd,

Honey, the amber soul of perfumed meads, And water sparkling from its maiden

source:

Here, too, the juice of immemorial vine
And scented fruit, rich gift of tawny olive
That never knows a season of decay,
And flowers, the little children of the
earth,

Disposed in garlands.

So fair an offering might cheer the saddest ghost! Fain would one forget that the same people could represent their heroes as gratified by the Dahomey slaughter of innocent girls upon Rites of the sort mentheir tombs. tioned by Eschylus formed the rustic obsequies both in Greece and in Italy. To this day, in the island of Sardinia, where many ancient customs are preserved, flowers and simple fruits, such as nuts, are thrown into the open grave.

But during winter I my flock drove off
Unto my sheep cotes, he to Laius' stalls.

In the same play the evil ways of Egypt are reproved where men sit indoors weaving at the loom, and their wives earn their daily bread abroad in the fields; one of the many proofs that in Greece women were put to do no hard outdoor work, though the girls helped in gathering the grapes. In one or two places Sophocles speaks of horses or mules ploughing, and it seems that by the better-to-do peasants or landowners they were preferred to oxen. The colts were allowed to run wild till they were of an age to work, when the advent of their servitude was marked by their manes being cut short, a barbarous operation against which Sophocles' generous spirit revolted. "I mourn for my tresses," runs one of his fragments, "as doth a filly who, caught and carried off by the herdsman, hath her chestnut mane shorn from her neck by a rugged hand in the horse-stables, and then turned into a meadow, with limpid brooks, sees her image clearly reflected with all her mane disgracefully shorn off. Who, however ruthless, would not pity her, as she crouches affrighted, driven mad by shame, groaning for her vanished mane?" Horse-breeding must have presented serious difficulties in a country so generally arid as Greece was even then; the best horses were brought over from Asia Minor, and the race deteriorated after a few generations. That Athens could all the same be addressed

as the "breeder of horses," shows that the conviction of the national importance of the horse induced the Athenians to overcome all obstacles, and also, probably, that the country people of attention to horse-breeding by the high Attica were led to give great care and prices offered for good animals. the contempt for the cultivator which

Far from the early Greek mind was

generated a vocabulary of ugly names, boor, clout, clodhopper with many more, and turned vilain into villain. But the amenities of civilization and the overwhelming weight attached to purely intellectual development tend towards the depreciation of the peasant, whose philosophy is not of the Schools, and Euripides, perhaps, gave expression to a growing sentiment when he made his Hector say, as Homer's Hector would not have said:

Full prone the mind of rustics is to folly.

But in justice to Euripides it should not be forgotten that he created one beautiful peasant type; a type that has grown into a literary race of highminded peasants or serfs whose derivation often passes unnoticed. Euripides never drew a more distinct character, though the touches are few, than that of Auturgus to whom Ægisthus married Electra in the hopes that the slur of so unfitting an alliance might prevent her from getting her rights as Agamemnon's daughter. Clytemnestra would have probably objected to her being killed; the next best thing, Ægisthus thought, was to marry her below her rank. But Auturgus defeated the device by becoming simply the respectful protector of the royal maiden. He is called "old," but it is clear that he was not much more than middle-aged as he is not past doing hard and incessant work. Though poor, he comes of a noble stock, a statement that does not affect his position as a true peasant any more than the kidnapping story about Eumæus made him less of a swine-herd. Very likely it was all true. How many illustrious names are owned by Italian peasants; nay, in how many cases it is known that only two or three generations ago a peasant family which now lives on polenta would have been recog

nized as equals by the highest in the land. Something fairer in the skin, something more gracious in their mein, is all that is left to distinguish them from the great mass of cultivators. For the rest, their feelings, their manners, their appearance are of these. Auturgus is a peasant through and through. He has the austere gravity impressed by a life spent close to nature, watchful of the fated return of her signs, face to face with the solemn sequence of her seasons. Gently he chides Electra for working at all; he would not have her toil, she was not trained for it. She answers that it is her pleasure to help him as far as she can; the laborer coming home tired likes to find all in order in his house. So he consents to her fetching the water if such be her will; the spring is not far off. As for him, at earliest dawn he will yoke his oxen and go to plough; idle wretches who are always invoking the gods never earn a livelihood. As soon as he is assured of the respectability of the two strangers who are really Orestes and Pylades, he asks them into his house; what there is, is at their service; a woman can easily improvise a little feast. There is enough in the cottage for one day, at least, and if the food be simple, hunger is a good sauce. He has a fine indifference to their seeing his poverty, and that genuine instinct of hospitality which is satisfied when you know that you have offered of your best. "Di quello che c'è non manca niente." as they say in Tuscany. So Auturgus passes from the scene, true peasant and true gentleman; a combination not rare some thousand years ago, not rare now. Two of the comedies of Aristophanes deal more or less directly with agricultural affairs, the "Acharnians" and the "Peace." In the former, the hero, Dicæopolis, though a citizen of Athens. is, before all things, a country farmer. His heart is with his farm, for which he longed, "which never said 'Buy fuel,' or 'vinegar,' or 'oil,' but of itself produced all things, and the 'buy' was absent." In this play there is one of the hits against Euripides because his mother sold watercresses; Aristophanes thought it degrading to work for your bread. Tired of the Peloponnesian

war, which had gone on for six years, Dicæopolis negotiates a private peace for himself and his family. He is the "peace-at-any-price" farmer, who excites great indignation among his more patriotic or Chauvinist fellow-countrymen ("Marathon men" and other old growlers), but who goes his way unheeding. He buys eels and all sorts of delicacies from the enemy, who may traffic with him alone. He is perfectly content, and indifferent to the sufferings of his neighbors; nay, he takes a positive pleasure in enjoying what they are without.

If there were peace, sigh the Acharnian chorus, "then would they plant a long row of vines, young fig trees, and olives, all round the estate. What use to plant now for the spoiler?"

While Dicæopolis is greedily watching his contraband thrushes and other dainties being cooked, another and the saddest victim of the war comes in who has something worse to rue than the lack of eels or hares: the eternal victim, the husbandman. In all Greek tragedy there are few things more tragic than this sudden entrance of misery into a farce. The Boeotians have carried off the poor man's team, his land lies fallow:

His eyes are dim with weeping for his oxen. In vain he begs for the least drop of peace, which he seems to think a kind of quack medicine, kept in bottles. With the ineffable egotism of the Sybarite, Dicæopolis bids him be off "to weep somewhere else." He goes, repeating, "Woe's me for the oxen which tilled my ground."

Trygæus, in the "Peace," is a much superior person to Dicæopolis, who, living long in towns, had succeeded in mixing up the mania for luxury of the vulgar citizen with the stolid narrowness of the most benighted provincial. Trygæus is the country dweller in the strictest and best sense. He has learnt, from his stake in the country, to love the fatherland and understand its interests. He, too, desires peace; not,

however, for himself alone, but for all the sore-tried land. He risks a great deal to accomplish his purpose, embarking on a novel and daring exploit on behalf of all the Greeks. He risks coming to a bad end and becoming a subject for a tragedy by Euripides-dreadful fate! That he went to heaven on the back of an unpleasant beetle does not lessen his moral virtue.

When he is engaged in getting Peace out of the hole in which she was imprisoned, all sorts of people try to aid him, but only the husbandmen succeed. In reward, they are sent off to till their fields, and Trygæus follows to break up the long desolate earth of his little farm, and return to the old sweet, inexpensive pleasures, cakes of dried fruits, figs and myrtles and sweet new wine, and the violet bed near the well, and the desired olives!

Peace alone, says Aristophanes, is the end of all who lead an agricultural life. Little do the talkers in the towns, who get up wars, know of the wretchedness they bring the husbandman! Lions at home, foxes in battle, they contrive to save their skin and their chattels, while the peasant loses both. But with peace, how enviable is the country lot! How pleasant is it to far merenda (the Italian word expresses the sense exactly which picnic does not) some autumn afternoon, when the soft providential rain is falling on the sown fields and the wood sawn in summer crackles on the hearth. You will call your wife to roast some kidney beans and bring out some figs and a thrush, and a bit of hare, and call in a neighbor to share the simple feast, and remember to preserve a bit for the old father, and send the maid to call the man from the field, for to-day is wet and he cannot hoe or strip off the vine leaves. When Trygaus goes home he finds that war has lasted so long that the boys know only war-like songs, but he would have the old songs back, such as:

Thus they feasted on the flesh of oxen. The poet complains more than once that the "old songs" are being forgotten. "The Shearing of the Ram," for instance, of Simonides, which everybody once knew, was out of fashion with the jeunesse dorée. The craze for progress

had penetrated even into the country; a theme illustrated in the "Clouds," the comedy which has never been entirely cleared from the tragic suspicion of having been instrumental in causing the death of Socrates. Strepsiades, who began with driving goats, dressed in a leather jerkin, is the pattern of the enriched peasant, dense in intelligence; a sort of Attic prototype of Verga's Don Gesualdo; the fore-doomed victim of his spendthrift relations. Phidippides, the graceless but superficially sharp-witted son, who even in his sleep dreams about horses, and whose only care is to waste his father's store, gathers from the new theories taught in the Thinking-shop a mass of arguments to defend his conduct, which so enrages his father who had sent him there in the hope of reforming him, that he ends by burning the place down.

If Aristophanes has given some unlovely pictures of country-folk, when he paints Nature herself, he never fails in that lyric ecstasy which is what made him an immortal poet, and not simply a comic dramatist. The heavenly gift in him was precisely the appreciation of natural things-the song of birds, the flowery meads, the season of spring when the plane-tree whispers to the elm. Appreciation carried to the point where it becomes interpretation, counts for ninety per cent. in poetic genius.

Up to a certain point there is a great uniformity in the Greek view of nature when it is considered that, measuring by time, we might expect as much divergence as between the views of Chaucer and Wordsworth. It is always curious to reflect that, while Roman poetry is nearly crushed into a century (imagine if our poetry began with 1797!), the Greek covers, from first to last, a space as large as modern literature. Throughout the whole period may be observed a positive enjoyment of pure beauty that was much keener, as I have said once before, than any the modern world knows of. The narcissus does nou give the joy to us that it gave the ancient Greek, in spite of the narcissus farms in the Scilly Isles. That spontaneous and unanalyzed joy is the permanent keynote of the Greek naturesong. But the keynote may be the same