Here, then,
are the crags and waterfalls and grottoes that Vergil describes in the
_Eclogues_.
[Footnote 2: The picturesque road from Naples to Puteoli clung to the
edge of the rocky promontory of Posilipo, finally piercing the outermost
rock by means of a tunnel now misnamed the "grotto di Sejano." Most of
the road is now under twenty feet of water: See Guenther, _Pausilypon_. To
see the splendid ridge as Vergil saw it from the road one must now row
the length of it from Naples to Nesida, sketching in an abundance of
ilexes and goats in place of the villas that now cover it.]
And here, too, were doubtless as many melodious shepherds as ever
Theocritus found in Sicily, for they were of the same race of people as
the Sicilians. Why should the slopes of Lactarius be less musical than
those of Aetna? Indeed the reasonable reader will find that, except for
an occasional transference of actual persons into Arcadian setting--by an
allegorical turn invented before Vergil--there is no serious confusion
in the scenery or inconsistent treatment in the plots of Vergil's
_Eclogues_. But by failing to make this simple assumption--naturally due
any and every poet--readers of Vergil have needlessly marred the effect
of some of his finest passages.
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