If we now, for a moment, quit the city and its amusements, and observe the tone and character of Hellenic rural life, we shall find, perhaps, that there existed in antiquity a still greater contrast between town and country than in modern times. From the poetry of Athens, rife with sylvan imagery, we, no less than from its history, discover how deeply they loved the sunshine and calm and quiet of their fields. The rustic population confined to the city during the Peleponnesian war almost perished of nostalgia within sight of their village homes. Half the metaphors in their language are of country growth. The bee murmurs, the partridge whirrs, the lark, the nightingale, the thrush, pour their music through the channels of verse and prose. The odours of ripe fruit, of new wine “purple and gushing,” the fresh invigorating morning breeze from harvest fields, from clover meadows dotted with kine, the scent of milk-pails, of honey, and the honey-comb, still breathe sweetly over the Attic page, and prove how smitten with home delights the Athenian people were, “With plesaunce of the breathing fields yfed.” This their manly and healthful taste, however, constantly, in time of war, exposed them to the malice of their enemies. For the valleys and grassy uplands of Attica, being thickly covered with villas and farmhouses,[1068] the first act of an invading army was to lay all those beautiful homesteads in ashes. Thus the Persians, in their two invasions, destroyed the whole with fire and sword. But the gentlemen, immediately on their return, rebuilt their dwellings[1069] with greater taste and magnificence, so that, before the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war, it is probable that, as a scene of unambitious affluence, taste, high cultivation, and rustic contentment, nothing was ever beheld to compare with Attica. Here and there, throughout the land, perched on rocks, or shaded by trees, were small rustic chapels dedicated to the nymphs, or rural gods.[1070] On the mountains, and in solitary glens, and wherever springs gushed from the cliffs, caverns were scooped out by the hands of the leisurely shepherds,[1071] and consecrated by association with mythology. Fountains, also, and water-courses, altars, statues,[1072] and sacred groves,[1073] protected at once by religion and the laws,[1074] imprinted on the landscape features of poetry and elegance. ----- Footnote 1068: Demosth. in Ev. et Mnes. § 15. Footnote 1069: Thucyd. ii. 65. Footnote 1070: In the neighbourhood of the Isthmus the shepherds of the present day often pass the winter months in mountain caverns.—Chandler, ii. p. 261. Footnote 1071: Theocrit. i. 143, seq. Footnote 1072: Cf. Iliad. β. 305, seq. Footnote 1073: On the wild olive and other trees, of which these groves were composed, the eye of the passenger usually beheld suspended a number of votive offerings.—Sch. Aristoph. Ran. 943. Footnote 1074: Cf. Plat. Phæd. t. i. p. 9. -----