, Anon.:⁠— “Thou hast come, O stranger, to the seats of this land, renowned for the steed; to seats the fairest on earth, the chalky Colonus; where the vocal nightingale, chief abounding, trills her plaintive note in the green vales, tenanting the dark-hued ivy and the leafy grove of the god, untrodden [by mortal foot], teeming with fruits, impervious to the sun, and unshaken by the winds of every storm; where Bacchus ever roams in revelry companioning his divine nurses. And ever day by day the narcissus, with its beauteous clusters, burst into bloom by heaven’s dew, the ancient coronet of the mighty goddesses, and the saffron with golden ray; nor do the sleepless founts that feed the channels of Cephissus fail, but ever, each day, it rushes o’er the plains with its stainless wave, fertilizing the bosom of the earth; nor have the choirs of the Muses spurned this clime; nor Venus, too, of the golden rein. And there is a tree, such as I hear not to have ever sprung in the land of Asia, nor in the mighty Doric island of Pelops, a tree unplanted by hand, of spontaneous growth, terror of the hostile spear, which flourishes chiefly in this region, the leaf of the azure olive that nourishes our young.

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