And Theocritus (a very ancient poet, but he
was one of our own tribe, for he wrote nothing but pastorals) gave
the same epithet to a husbandman [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced]. The divine husbandman replied to Hercules, who was but
[Greek text] himself. These were civil Greeks, and who understood
the dignity of our calling. Among the Romans, we have in the first
place our truly divine Virgil, who, though by the favour of Maecenas
and Augustus he might have been one of the chief men of Rome, yet
chose rather to employ much of his time in the exercise, and much of
his immortal wit in the praise and instructions of a rustic life;
who, though he had written before whole books of Pastorals and
Georgics, could not abstain in his great and imperial poem from
describing Evander, one of his best princes, as living just after
the homely manner of an ordinary countryman. He seats him in a
throne of maple, and lays him but upon a bear's skin, the kine and
oxen are lowing in his courtyard, the birds' under the eaves of his
window call him up in the morning; and when he goes abroad only two
dogs go along, with him for his guard.
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