Following a kind of bridle path, however, we are soon amid the groves of olive and other trees, while the horses plod their slow way beside the brook. Not a few citizens going or coming from Athens meet us, for this is really one of the parks and breathing spaces of the closely built city. The Athenians and Greeks in general live in a land of such natural beauty that they take this loveliness as a matter of course. Very seldom do their poets indulge in deliberate descriptions of “beautiful landscapes”; but none the less the fair things of nature have penetrated deeply into their souls. The constant allusions in Homer and the other masters of song to the great storm waves, the deep shades of the forest, the crystal brooks, the pleasant rest for wanderers under the shade trees, the plains bright with spring flowers, the ivy twining above a grave, the lamenting nightingale, the chirping cicada, tell their own story; men seldom describe at length what is become warp and woof of their inmost lives. The mere fact that the Greeks dwell _constantly_ in such a beautiful land, and have learned to love it so intensely, makes frequent and set descriptions thereto seem trivial. 171. Plato’s Description of the Walk by the Ilissus.—Nevertheless occasionally this inborn love of the glorious outer world must find its expression, and it is of these very groves along he Ilissus that we have one of the few “nature pieces” in Athenian literature. As the plodding steeds take their way let us recall our Plato—his _Phædrus_, written probably not many years before this our visit. Socrates is walking with Phædrus outside the walls, and urges the latter: “Let us go to the Ilissus and sit down in some quiet spot.” “I am fortunate,” answers Phædrus, “in not having my sandals on, and, as you never have any, we may go along the brook and cool our feet. This is the easiest way, and at midday is anything but unpleasant.” He adds that they will go on to the tallest plane tree in the distance, “where are shade and gentle breezes, and grass whereon we may either sit or lie…. The little stream is delightfully clear and bright. I can fancy there might well be maidens playing near [according to the local myth of Boreas’s rape of Orithyia].” And so at last they come to the place, when Socrates says: “Yes indeed, a fair and shady resting place it is, full of summer sounds and scents. There is the lofty and spreading plane tree, and the agnus castus, high and clustering in the fullest blossom and the greatest fragrance, and the stream which flows beneath the plane tree is deliciously cool to the feet. Judging by the ornaments and images [set] about, this must be a spot sacred to Achelous and the Nymphs; moreover there is a sweet breeze and the grasshoppers are chirruping; and the greatest charm of all is the grass like a pillow, gently sloping to the head.”[*] [*] Jewett, translator; slightly altered.