Commerce

"...I now understand why the Greeks were such great Poets, & above all I can account, it seems to me, for the harmony the unity the perfection the uniform excellence of all their works of art. They lived in a perpetual commerce with external nature and nourished themselves upon the spirit of its forms. Their theaters were all open to the mountains & the sky. Their columns, that ideal type of a sacred forest, with its roof of interwoven tracery admitted the light and wind, the odour and the freshness of the country penetrated the cities."

{Percy Shelley, 1818 letter, quoted in Shelley: The Pursuit}