the shepherd in the divine silence of the hills.[33] The fancy of
three brothers, a hunter, a fowler, and a fisherman, meeting to make
dedication of the spoils of their crafts to the country-god, was one
which had a special charm for epigrammatists; it is treated by no less
than nine poets, whose dates stretch over as many centuries.[34] Sick
of cities, the imagination turned to an Arcadia that thenceforth was
to fill all poetry with the music of its names and the fresh chill of
its pastoral air; the lilied banks of Ladon, the Erymanthian water,
the deep woodland of Pholoe and the grey steep of Cyllene.[35] Nature
grew full of a fresh and lovely divinity. A spirit dwells under the
sea, and looks with kind eyes on the creatures that go up and down in
its depths; Artemis flashes by in the rustle of the windswept oakwood,
and the sombre shade of the pines makes a roof for Pan; the wild hill
becomes a sanctuary, for ever unsown and unmown, where the Spirit of
Nature, remote and invisible, feeds his immortal flock and fulfils his
desire.[36]
----------

[1] Od. iii. 47.

[2] Anth. Pal. vii. 733; cf. also v. 14 in this selection.

[3] Cf. Thuc. vii. 86.

[4] Anth. Pal. iv. 3, ll. 113-116.

[5] Ibid. vi. 105; x. 14.

[6] Ibid. vi. 251; cf. v. 3 in this selection.