different. To the Hellene the agricultural life only is a morally perfect condition; his poet has given expression to this feeling in the beautiful words:—
Τῆς πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποισιν εἰρήνης φίλης
πιστὴ τροφὸς ταμία συνεργὸς ἐπίτροπος
θυγατὴρ ἀδελφὴ πάντα ταῦτ' ἐχρῆτό μοι
σοι δ' ὄνομα δὴ τί ἔστιν; ὅτι γεωργία. . .[1]
And to the Roman poet of a period troubled by wars peaceful agriculture is not only the most ideal condition of human life, but also the happy state of innocence of primeval mankind:—
Ut prisca gens mortalium
Paterna rura bobus exercet suis,
says Horace in his celebrated epode 'Beatus ille;' and of any more ancient period he had never heard.[2] George Rawlinson very oddly says, 'It was a fashion among the Greeks to praise the simplicity and honesty of the nomade races, who were less civilised than themselves;[3] for the passages of literature quoted by him in confirmation of this assertion lay no stress on the nomadic element. But
- ↑ Given by Josephus Langius, Florilegii magni seu Polyantheae . . . libri XXIII., Lugduni 1681, I. 120, as by Aristophanes; but the author and the translator have searched the works and fragments of Aristophanes in vain.
- ↑ Ovid also begins with the life of the fields; his golden age is distinguished from the others only in this, that:
Ipsa quoque immunis, rastroque intacta, nec ullis
Saucia vomeribus, per se dabat omnia tellus;
and
Mox etiam fruges tellus inarata ferebat:
Nec renovatus ager gravidis canebat aristis.
- (Metamorph. I. 101–2, 109–10.)
- ↑ History of Herodotus, tr. G. Rawlinson, IV. c. 46, note 5.
lichen Entwickelung, p. 134. A glance at the sedentary Phenicians and the settled Semites of Mesopotamia shows at once the important exceptions. It must also not be overlooked that agriculture was in practice to no small extent among the Phenicians; even the Romans call a kind of threshing machine, the 'Punic:' Varro, De re rustica, I. 52 ; cf. Lowth, De sacra poesi Hebracorum, Oxford 1821, Prael. VII. p. 62. The commerce with Egypt, which von Hellwald brings into prominence, is no sufficient reason why the favourite characterisation of the Semites does not apply to these nations. The Hebrews continued their nomadic life for a long time after they had made intimate acquaintance with Egypt; and the nomadic Arabs were not materially influenced by communication with sedentary nations.
