It is an interesting question, and one allied to the present inquiry, to ascertain the origin of the _bucolic_ poetry of the ancients. No one can doubt that its mingled character of simplicity, nature, and buffoonery, was copied from real life. Now the manners which it represented could neither have been those of slaves, for the condition of slavery does not admit of any regular society; nor yet of free citizens, for the rustic scenes of this poetry wholly disagree with a city life. It remains therefore that it imitated the life of subjects, of bondmen, such as existed as a separate class in the Doric states, and accordingly bucolic poems are commonly in the Doric dialect. It is related, that when Xerxes had overrun Greece, and the Spartan women could not perform the customary rites of Artemis Caryatis, the shepherds came from the mountains, and sang pastoral hymns to the goddess.(1619) From this confused account we may collect that in the north of Laconia there had been some rude essays of pastoral poetry. In this respect, however, the shepherds of Italy and Sicily have become far more celebrated; Epicharmus mentions their bucolics (βουκολιασμοὶ), as a kind of dance and song;(1620) and even before his time Stesichorus had formed them into a species of lyric poetry.(1621) Nevertheless their origin appears not to have been independent of one another, for both in Laconia and Sicily the name of Tityrus was used for the leading goat or ram of the flock.(1622) That the same name should equally distinguish the human and animal leader of the flock, is a trait of the simplicity of those men, who passed their days among valleys and pastures, harmlessly tending their flocks, and taking no more notice of other modes of life than sending from time to time the produce of their industry to the city. Now in Sicily these shepherds were not of Greek extraction, but were undoubtedly of the aboriginal Siculian population, the ancient worshippers of the goddess Pales;(1623) and it is not improbable that the bucolic poetry owed its origin to native talent. Even the ancient legend of Daphnis, who lost his eyes through his love for a nymph,(1624) appears to me rather of a Siculian than Grecian cast; although how far the character of the Greeks and of the native inhabitants were opposed, is a very obscure subject of inquiry.(1625)