For, to the best of my
knowledge, there are no indications of any large Hellenic settlement up
there. But it struck me that there may well have been a villa or
two--indeed, there must have been, to judge by the miscellaneous ancient
material found on my little place. This is what makes me think that
these two relics were deliberately carried there."
"Carried?"
"Carried. For although the summer season at Locri was undoubtedly more
endurable then than it now is, yet the town must have been sufficiently
hot in the dog-days; whereas my vineyard is situated among the cool
uplands--"
"A kind of climatic station, you mean?"
"Precisely. Don't you think that richer people had domiciles in both
places? The ancients, you know, were so sensitive in the matter of
temperatures that in summer time they traveled only by night and some
of their toughest generals had underground chambers built for them
during their campaigns. I can imagine, for instance, some young and
ardent lover of art, in the days when Pythagoras taught under those
glittering colonnades of Croton, when the fleets of Metapontum swept
the blue Ionian and Sybaris taught the world how to live a life of
ease--I can almost see this youth," he pursued enthusiastically,
"flitting from a hot palace on the plain towards those breezy heights
and, inflamed with an all-absorbing passion for the beautiful, carrying
up with him one or two, just one or two, of those beloved bronzes from
which he could not, and would not, be parted--no, not even for a short
summer month--to be a joy to his eyes and an inspiration to h is soul
among the mountain solitudes.
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