Nor want of herbage makes the dairy fail,
But every season fills the foaming pail.
Pope’s Translation.
[245] Aristot. Problem. cap. x. sec. 46.
[246] Odyss. iv. 85-89.
Pindar (Pyth. ix. 11.) distinguishes Libya by the epithet πολύμηλος, “abounding in flocks.” To the same district of Africa, Virgil alludes in the following passage of the Georgics, which is surpassed by few as a happy example of the art of the poet in describing the various modes of pastoral life.
Why should I sing of Libya’s artless swains;
Her scatter’d cottages and trackless plains?
By day, by night, without a destined home,
For many a month their flocks all lonely roam;