These superior classes have found it necessary to show themselves to the world very cautiously; they live by rule, they conceal their emotions, they move theatrically.

But the ordinary, everyday people of cities are very different; they speak their thoughts, they keep their hearts open, and they let us see, just as children do, the good or the evil side of their characters.

So a good poet and a good observer can find in the life of cities subjects of study almost as easily as in the country.

Theocritus has done this in his fifteenth idyl.

This idyl is very famous, and it has been translated hundreds of times into various languages.