Laudator Temporis Acti

Gerald Brenan (1894-1987), South from Granada (1957; rpt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 50:

One after another the days, the weeks, the months passed. What with reading, walking, and mixing in village life I was never at a loose end. I attribute this in great part to the gaiety and vitality of the peasant community among whom I had made my home. This small self-sufficing world had something of the zest for life and also of the sense of measure and balance of the ancient Greeks. When I read in Plato how they had regarded their cities and political constitutions as works of art and had attributed to them not so much moral qualities as aesthetic ones, I thought I understood why this village, which was no smaller than many of the self-governing republics of the Aegean, proved so satisfying. It was just the right size, had just the right amount of irrigated land distributed in the most suitable way, just the proper degree of isolation and strength of tradition to draw out the lively and human qualities of its inhabitants as far as they could go. A larger or a less isolated community would have left the peasant orbit, which allowed it to be self-sufficing, and become merged in the life of the modern nation. Yegen kept its idiosyncrasy.