Although Theocritus and others who wrote idyls found their chief inspiration in the life of the peasants, they sometimes also wrote about the life of cities.  Human nature may be studied in the city as well as in the country, provided that a man knows how to look for it.  It is not in the courts of princes nor the houses of nobles nor the residences of the wealthy that such study can be made.  These superior classes have found it necessary to show themselves to the world very cautiously; they live by rule, they conceal their emotions, they move theatrically.  But the ordinary, everyday people of cities are very different; they speak their thoughts, they keep their hearts open, and they let us see, just as children do, the good or the evil side of their characters.  So a good poet and a good observer can find in the life of cities subjects of study almost as easily as in the country.  Theocritus has done this in his fifteenth idyl.  This idyl is very famous, and it has been translated hundreds of times into various languages.  Perhaps you may have seen one version of it which was made by Matthew Arnold.  But I think that the version made by Lang is even better.

The scene is laid in Alexandria, probably some two thousand years ago, and the occasion is a religious holiday—­a matsuri, as we call it in Japan.  Two women have made an appointment to go together to the temple, to see the festival and to see the people.  The poet begins his study by introducing us to the chamber of one of the women.

GORGO.  “Is Praxinoe at home?”

PRAXINOE.  “Dear Gorgo, how long is it since you have been here!  She is at home.  The wonder is that you have got here at last!  Eunoe, come and see that she has a chair and put a cushion on it!”

G.  “It does most charmingly as it is.”

P.  “Do sit down.”

How natural this is.  There is nothing Greek about it any more than there is Japanese; it is simply human.  It is something that happens in Tokyo every day, certainly in houses where there are chairs and where it is a custom to put a cushion on the chair for the visitor.  But remember, this was two thousand years ago.  Now listen to what the visitor has to say.

“I have scarcely got to you at all, Praxinoe!  What a huge crowd, what hosts of carriages!  Everywhere cavalry boots, everywhere men in uniform!  And the road is endless; yes, you really live too far away!”

Praxinoe answers: 

“It is all for that mad man of mine.  Here he came to the ends of the earth and took a hall, not a house, and all that we might not be neighbours.  The jealous wretch, always the same, ever for spite.”

She is speaking half in jest, half in earnest; but she forgets that her little boy is present, and the visitor reminds her of the fact: 

“Don’t talk of your husband like that, my dear girl, before the little boy,—­look how he is staring at you!—­Never mind, Zaphyrion, sweet child, she is not speaking about papa.”