Hunters came to chase the bears upon the hills that covered the forgotten city; shepherds led their flocks upon them; labourers turned up the soil with their ploughs; gardeners cultivated their lettuces and grafted their pear trees.

They were not rich, and they had no arts.

The walls of their cabins were covered with old vines and roses, A goat-skin clothed their tanned limbs, while their wives dressed themselves with the wool that they themselves had spun.

The goat-herds moulded little figures of men and animals out of clay, or sang songs about the young girl who follows her lover through woods or among the browsing goats while the pine trees whisper together and the water utters its murmuring sound.

The master of the house grew angry with the beetles who devoured his figs; he planned snares to protect his fowls from the velvet-tailed fox, and he poured out wine for his neighbours saying: "Drink! The flies have not spoilt my vintage; the vines were dry before they came." Then in the course of ages the wealth of the villages and the corn that filled the fields were pillaged by barbarian invaders.