Laudator Temporis Acti

Gilbert Highet (1906-1978), Poets in a Landscape (1957; rpt. New York: New York Review Books, 2010), p. 58:

Along the Mincio lie the fields which Vergil knew and loved well. Still extant in them is one specially happy union — the marriage of land and water. For miles and miles along the roads and through the fields run long irrigation ditches carrying water, seldom slow-moving, almost never stagnant, usually in active motion to moisten the earth and feed the roots. At intersections near every farm the long channels of water branch off into the fields. There is usually a watergate at these junctions, a vertical wooden barrier two or three feet high, held in place by a slotted framework on each side of the channel. To water a field, the farmer and his men lift the barrier, and the ditch fills quickly, with a welcome rippling sound. After an hour or two, he can say, like Vergil's father [sic, read farmer] in the Bucolics:

Now, lads, close off the channels: the meadows have drunk enough.¹

¹ Vergil, Bucolics 3.111.

The Latin:

claudite iam rivos, pueri; sat prata biberunt.

The original edition of Highet's delightful book has dozens of illustrations, the reprint not even a single one.

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Thanks to Eric Thomson for this photograph of the Mincio, taken 12 years ago: