d by the dry fissures of tortuous furrows ... the
stones in the stream, and the mud on the banks are dried up ...
here neither nude statues, comic actors, nor Hippodrome are to be
found ... the noise of the waters is so great that it drowns
conversation. From the dining-room, if you have time to spare at
meals, you can occupy it with the delight of looking at the
scenery, and watch the fishing ... here you can find a hidden
recess, cool even in summer heat, a place to sleep in. Here what
joy it is to listen to the cicadas chirping at noonday, and to
the frogs croaking when the twilight is coming on, and to the
swans and geese giving note at the early hours of the night, and
at midnight to the cocks crowing together, and to the boding
crows with three-fold note greeting the ruddy torch of the rising
dawn; and in the half light of the morning to hear the
nightingale warbling in the bushes, and the swallow twittering
among the beams.... Between whiles, the shepherds play in their
rustic fashion. Not far off is a wood where the branches of two
huge limes interlace, though their trunks are apart (in their
shade we play ball), and a lake that rises to such fury in a
storm that the trees that border it are wetted by the spray.

In another letter to Domidius he described a visit to the
country-seat of two of his friends:

We were torn from one pleasure to another--games, feastings,
chatting, rowing, bathing, fishing.

As a true adherent even as a bishop of classic culture and humanity,
Sidonius is thus an interesting figure in these wild times, with his
Pliny-like enthusiasm for country rather than city, and his
susceptibility to woodland and pastoral life.

The limit of extravagance in the bombastic rhetoric of the period was
reached in the travels of Ennodius,[32] who was scarcely more than a
fantastic prattler. The purest, noblest, and most important figure of
the sixth century was undoubtedly Boetius; but it is Cassiodorus, a
statesman of the first rank under Theodoric, who in his _Variorium
libris_ gives the most interesting view of the attitude of his day
towards Nature. He revelled in her and in describing her. After
praising Baja for its beauty[33] and Lactarius for its healthiness,
he said of Scyllacium:

The city of Scyllacium hangs upon the hills like a cluster of
grapes, not that it may pride itself upon their difficult