182 pliny's natural history. [Book III. at a loss. The city of Eome alone, which forms a portion of it, a face well worthy of shoulders so beauteous, how large a work would it require for an appropriate description ! And then too the coast of Campania, taken singly by itself! so blest with natural beauties and opulence, that it is evident that when nature formed it she took a delight in accumulating all her blessings in a single spot — how am I to do justice to it ? And then the climate, with its eternal freshness and so replete with health and vitality, the sereneness of the weather so enchanting, the fields so fertile, the hill sides so sunny, the thickets so free from every danger, the groves so cool and shady, the forests with a vegetation so varying and so luxu- riant, the breezes descending from so many a mountain, the fruitfulness of its grain, its vines, and its olives so transcend- ent ; its flocks with fleeces so noble, its bulls with necks so sinewy, its lakes recurring in never-ending succession, its numerous rivers and springs which refresh it with their waters on every side, its seas so many in number, its havens and the bosom of its lands opening everywhere to the commerce of all the world, and as it were eagerly stretching fortli into the very midst of the waves, for the purpose of aiding as it were the endeavours of mortals ! Por the present I forbear to speak of its genius, its man- ners, its men, and the nations whom it has conquered by eloquence and force of arms. The very Greeks themselves, a race fond in the extreme of expatiating on their own praises, have amply given judgment in its favour, when they named but a small part of it ' Magna GrseciaV' But we must be content to do on this occasion as we have done in our de- scription of the heavens ; we must only touch upon some of these points, and take notice of but a few of its stars. I only beg my readers to bear in mind that I am thus hasten- ^ Or "Great Greece." Tlais is a poor and frivolous argument used by Pliny in support of his laudations of Italy, seeing that in all probabi- lity it was not the people of Greece who gave this name to certain cities founded by Greek colonists on the Tarentine Gulf, in the south of Italy ; but either the ItaUan tribes, who in their simphcity admired their splen- dour and magnificence, or else tlie colonists themselves, who, in using the name, showed that they clung with fondness to the remembrance of their mother-country ; wliile at the same time the epithet betrayed some vanity and ostentation in wisliing thus to show their superiority to the people of their mother-country.
