Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/30

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VAL D'ARNO.

is not he? and will it not make a difference to you whether you look, when you travel in Italy, in his rough early marbles for this fountain of life, or only glance at them because your Murray's Guide tells you,—and think them "odd old things"?

19. We must look for a moment more at one odd old thing—the sarcophagus which was his tutor. Upon it is carved the hunting of Meleager; and it was made, or by tradition received as, the tomb of the mother of the Countess Matilda. I must not let you pass by it without noticing two curious coincidences in these particulars. First, in the Greek subject which is given Niccola to read.

The boar, remember, is Diana's enemy. It is sent upon the fields of Calydon in punishment of the refusal of the Calydonians to sacrifice to her. 'You have refused me,' she said; 'you will not have Artemis Laphria, Forager Diana, to range in your fields. You shall have the Forager Swine, instead.'

Meleager and Atalanta are Diana's servants,—servants of all order, purity, due sequence of season, and time. The orbed architecture of Tuscany, with its sculptures of the succession