Or in rough goats’-hair you be clothed[277].
[273] Corpus Inscrip. Græcar., vol. i. p. 740.
[274] Orchomenos, p. 471.
[275] Vitruvius, viii. 3. p. 218. ed. Schneider. See also Dodwell’s Tour, vol. i. p. 242. It was imagined that the water of the Melas rendered the wool black, and that of the Cephisos white.
Dr. Sibthorp, in crossing the plain of Bœotia near Platæa in November A. D. 1794, says, “Flocks of sheep, whose fleeces were of remarkable blackness, were feeding in the plain; the breed was considerably superior in beauty and size to that of Attica.”—Walpole’s Memoirs on Eur. and As. Turkey, p. 65.
[276] Contra Everg. et Mnesid. p. 1155. ed. Reiske.
[277] Apud Non. Marcellum.
We learn from Theocritus, that the shepherds of Acharnæ, one of the Attic demi, excelled in playing on the pipe[278].
[278] Idyll. vii. 71.
In the adjoining country of Megaris was a temple of great antiquity in honor of Δήμητηρ Μαλοφόρος. It was said, that Ceres was worshipped under that title, The bringer of flocks, by those who first kept sheep in the country[279]. Theognis (v. 55.) mentions, that the people of Megaris used before his time to wear goat-skins, which shows the late introduction of the growth and manufacture of wool. Here, as in Attica, it was usual to protect the sheep with skins; and, as the boys were sometimes seen naked after the Doric fashion, Diogenes, the cynic, said in reference to these practices, he would rather be the ram of a Megarensian than his son[280].