Before us through the trees came tantalizing glimpses of the open country running away towards shaggy gray Hymettus.  Left to itself the land would be mostly arid and seared brown by the summer sun; but everywhere the friendly work of man is visible.  One can count the little green oblong patches, stretching even up the mountain side, marked with gleaming white farm buildings or sometimes with little temples and chapels sacred to the rural gods.  Once or twice also we notice a plot of land which seems one tangled waste of trees and shrubbery.  This is a sacred “temenos,” an inviolate grove, set apart to some god; and within the fences of the compound no mortal dare set foot under pain of direful sacrilege and pollution.

Following a kind of bridle path, however, we are soon amid the groves of olive and other trees, while the horses plod their slow way beside the brook.  Not a few citizens going or coming from Athens meet us, for this is really one of the parks and breathing spaces of the closely built city.  The Athenians and Greeks in general live in a land of such natural beauty that they take this loveliness as a matter of course.  Very seldom do their poets indulge in deliberate descriptions of “beautiful landscapes”; but none the less the fair things of nature have penetrated deeply into their souls.  The constant allusions in Homer and the other masters of song to the great storm waves, the deep shades of the forest, the crystal books, the pleasant rest for wanderers under the shade trees, the plains bright with spring flowers, the ivy twining above a grave, the lamenting nightingale, the chirping cicada, tell their own story; men seldom describe at length what is become warp and woof of their inmost lives.  The mere fact that the Greeks dwell constantly in such a beautiful land, and have learned to love it so intensely, makes frequent and set descriptions thereto seem trivial.

171.  Plato’s Description of the Walk by the Ilissus.—­Nevertheless occasionally this inborn love of the glorious outer world must find its expression, and it is of these very groves along he Ilissus that we have one of the few “nature pieces” in Athenian literature.  As the plodding steeds take their way let us recall our Plato—­his “Phoedrus,” written probably not many years before this our visit.

Socrates is walking with Phedrus outside the walls, and urges the latter:  “Let us go to the Ilissus and sit down in some quiet spot.”  “I am fortunate,” answers Phedrus, “in not having my sandals on, and, as you never have any, we may go along the brook and cool our feet.  This is the easiest way, and at midday is anything but unpleasant.”  He adds that they will go on to the tallest plane tree in the distance, “where are shade and gentle breezes, and grass whereon we may either sit or lie....  The little stream is delightfully clear and bright.  I can fancy there might well be maidens playing near [according to the