With this sense of noxa compare id. vi. 129 sq., where it is said that buckthorn or hawthorn “tristes pellere posset a foribus noxas.”
[1063]. Ovid, Fasti, iv. 763-774. The prayer that the wolves may be kept far from the fold is mentioned also by Tibullus (ii. 5. 88).
[1064]. Ovid, Fasti, iv. 779-782; Tibullus, ii. 5. 89 sq.; Propertius, v. 1. 19, v. 4. 77 sq.; Persius, i. 72; Probus on Virgil, Georg. iii. 1.
[1065]. I owe this observation to F. A. Paley, on Ovid, Fasti, iv. 754. He refers to Virgil, Georg. ii. 435, Ecl. x. 30; Theocritus, xi. 73 sq.; to which may be added Virgil, Georg. iii. 300 sq., 320 sq.; Horace, Epist. i. 14. 28; Cato, De re rustica, 30; Columella, De re rustica, vii. 3. 21, xi. 2. 83 and 99-101. From these passages of Cato and Columella we learn that the Italian farmer fed his cattle on the leaves of the elm, the ash, the poplar, the oak, the evergreen oak, the fig, and the laurel.
[1066]. Ovid, Fasti, iv. 749-754.
[1067]. Ovid, Fasti, iv. 757-760.
[1068]. Columella, De re rustica, vii. 3. 11. In this respect the practice of ancient Italian farmers would seem to have differed from that of modern English breeders. In a letter (dated 8th February 1908) my friend Professor W. Somerville of Oxford writes: “It is against all modern custom to arrange matters so that lambs are born five months after April 21, say the end of September.” And, again, in another letter (dated 16th February 1908) he writes to me: “The matter of coupling ewes and rams in the end of April is very perplexing. In this country it is only the Dorset breed of sheep that will ‘take’ the ram at this time of the year. In the case of other breeds the ewe will only take the ram in autumn, say from July to November, so that the lambs are born from January to May. We consider that lambs born late in the season, say May or June, never thrive well.”
[1069]. The suggestion was made by C. G. Heyne in his commentary on Tibullus, i. 5. 88.
[1070]. O. Keller, Thiere des classischen Alterthums (Innsbruck, 1887), pp. 158 sqq.
[1071]. Calpurnius, Bucol. v. 16-28.