Per loca pastorum deserta atque otia dia(240),
and transmitted, from generation to generation, in the mouth of the people, no fragment has been preserved. Yet traces of the existence of this kind of pastoral song, and of the music accompanying it, at a time antecedent to the composition of the Homeric poems, may be seen in the representation, on the Shield of Achilles, of the boy in the vineyard 'singing the beautiful song Linus,'--a representation which is purely idyllic,--and of the shepherds, in the Ambuscade, who appear { ~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH TONOS~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~} { ~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH TONOS~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER XI~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}, as they accompany their flocks. The author of the Iliad absorbed the spirit of this primitive poetry in the greater compass of his epic creation, as Shakspeare has absorbed the Elizabethan pastoral within the all-embracing compass of his representation. Much of the imagery of the Iliad, several incidents casually introduced in connexion with the names of obscure persons perishing in battle, some of the supernatural events glanced at, as of the meeting of Aphrodite with Anchises while tending his herds on the spurs of Ida,--a subject of allusion also in the Sicilian idyl,--are of a pastoral character and origin. In the lines which spring up with a tender grace in the midst of the stern grandeur of the final conflict between Hector and Achilles--