The diffusion of Greece under Alexander and his successors, as at a later period the diffusion of Rome under the Empire, brought with the decay of civic spirit a great increase of humanity. The dedication written by Theocritus for his friend Nicias of Miletus[24] gives a vivid picture of the gracious atmosphere of a rich and cultured Greek home, of the happy union of science and art with harmonious family life and kindly helpfulness and hospitality. Care for others was a more controlling motive in life than before. The feeling grew that we are all one family, and owe each other the service and thoughtfulness due to kinsfolk, till Menander could say that true life was living for others.[25] In this spirit the sailor, come safe ashore, offers prayer to Poseidon that others who cross the sea may be as fortunate; so too, from the other side of the matter, Pan of the sea-cliff promises a favourable wind to all strangers who sail by him, in remembrance of the pious fisherman who set his statue there, as guardian of their trawling-nets and eel-baskets.[26] In revulsion from the immense accumulation of material wealth in this period, a certain refined simplicity was then the ideal of the best minds, as it was afterwards in the early Roman Empire, as it is in our own day. The charm of the country was, perhaps for the first time, fully realised; the life of gardens became a passion, and hardly less so the life of the opener air, of the hill and meadow, of the shepherd and hunter, the farmer and fisherman. The rules of art, like the demands of heaven, were best satisfied with small and simple offerings. "The least of a little"[27] was sufficient to lay before gods who had no need of riches; and as the art of the epigrammatist grew more refined, the poet took pride in working with the slightest materials. The husbandman lays a handful of corn-ears before Demeter, the gardener a basket of ripe fruit at the feet of Priapus; the implements of their craft are dedicated by the carpenter and the goldsmith; the young girl and the aged woman offer their even slighter gift, the spindle and distaff, the reel of wool, and the rush-woven basket.[28] A staff of wild-olive cut in the coppice is accepted by the lord of the myriad-boughed forest; the Muses are pleased with their bunch of roses wet with morning dew.[29] The boy Daphnis offers his fawnskin and scrip of apples to the great divinity of Pan;[30] the young herdsman and his newly-married wife, still with the rose-garland on her hair, make prayer and thanksgiving with a cream cheese and a piece of honeycomb to the mistress of a hundred cities, Aphrodite with her house of gold.[31] The hard and laborious life of the small farmer was touched with something of the natural magic that saturates the Georgics; "rich with fair fleeces, and fair wine, and fair fruit of corn," and blessed by the gracious Seasons whose feet pass over the furrows.[32] On the green slope Pan himself makes solitary music to