sweet that they seem to flow with milk and honey. Again, Theocritus
may encounter his rustics fluting in rivalry, like Daphnis and
Menalcas in the eighth idyl, 'on the long ranges of the hills.'
Their kine and sheep have fed upwards from the lower valleys to the
place where


'The track winds down to the clear stream,
To cross the sparkling shallows; there
The cattle love to gather, on their way
To the high mountain pastures and to stay,
Till the rough cow-herds drive them past,
Knee-deep in the cool ford; for 'tis the last
Of all the woody, high, well-water'd dells
On Etna, . . .
. . . glade,
And stream, and sward, and chestnut-trees,
End here; Etna beyond, in the broad glare
Of the hot noon, without a shade,
Slope behind slope, up to the peak, lies bare;
The peak, round which the white clouds play.' {0b}


Theocritus never drives his flock so high, and rarely muses on such
thoughts as come to wanderers beyond the shade of trees and the sound
of water among the scorched rocks and the barren lava. The day is
always cooled and soothed, in his idyls, with the 'music of water
that falleth from the high face of the rock,' or with the murmurs of
the sea. From the cliffs and their seat among the bright red berries
on the arbutus shrubs, his shepherds flute to each other, as they