By the 5 th century B. C., the division between town and country was openly acknowledged, the town seen as the centre of civilized life, the country as socially inferior. The agroikos , the countryman, found occasional sympathy, as in the plays of Aristophanes but, more often, he became the butt of jokes or ridicule. The setting of the idyll is an imagined tranquil retreat where, as in the Golden Age, nature provides freely, without need of husbandry, and graceful and literate herdsmen are free to pursue what pleasures they may. Hesiod would have said that the Muses were singing false songs again. Hesiod Works and Days .
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