"Yes," replied Cossinius, "they are the considerations of what was the origin, what the importance, and what the economy of the husbandry of live stock. Varro here had begun to discourse upon them while we were calling on Petus during his illness, when the arrival of the physician interrupted us."
"Of the three divisions of the [Greek: historikon] or interpretation of this subject, which you have mentioned, I will venture," said I, "to speak only of the first two, of the origin and of the importance of this industry. The third division, of how it should be practised, Scrofa shall undertake for us, as one, if I may speak Greek to a company of half Greek shepherds [Greek: hos per mou pollon ameinon] (who is better qualified than I am),[110] for Scrofa was the teacher of C. Lucilius Hirrus, your son-in-law, whose flocks and herds in Bruttii have such reputation."
"But," interrupted Scrofa, "you shall hear what we have to say only on condition that you, who come from Epirus and are masters of the art of feeding cattle, shall recompense us and shall give public testimony of what you know on the subject: for none of us knows it all."
Having thus assumed that my share of the discussion should be the first or theoretical part of the subject (which I did, although I have a stock farm in Italy, because, as the proverb is, not every one who owns a lyre is a musician), I began:
"Doubtless in the very order of nature both man and cattle have existed since the beginning of time, for whether we believe that there was a First Cause of the generation of animals, as Thales of Miletus and Zeno of Citium maintained, or that there was none as was the opinion of Pythagoras of Samos and Aristotle of Stagira, it is, as Dicaearchus points out, a necessity of human life to have descended gradually from the earliest time to the present day: thus in the beginning was the primitive age when man lived on whatever the virgin soil produced spontaneously; thence he descended to the second or pastoral age, when, as he had formerly gathered for his use acorns,[111] strawberries, mulberries and apples by picking them from trees and bushes, so now, to satisfy a like need, he captured in the woods such as he could of the wild beasts of the field, and, having enclosed, began to domesticate them. Among these it is considered not without reason that sheep were foremost, both because of their utility and because of their docile nature, for this animal is the gentlest of all and most readily accommodated to the life of man, and supplies him with milk and cheese for food, and skins and wool to clothe his body.
"Finally, by the third step, man descended from the pastoral age to that of agriculture. In this there have persisted many relics of the two preceding ages, which, long remaining in their original state, are found even in our day: for in many places may yet be seen some kinds of our domestic cattle still in their wild state, such as the large flocks of wild sheep in Phrygia, and in Samothrace a species of wild goats like those which are called "big horns" (platycerotes) and abound in Italy on the mountains of Fiscellum and Tetrica. Every body knows that there are wild swine, unless you maintain that the wild boar is not a true member of the swine family.
"There are still many cattle running at large in Dardania, Medica and Thrace, while there are wild asses in Phrygia and Lycaonia, and wild horses in certain regions of hither Spain.
"I have now told you of the origin of the industry of feeding cattle.
As to its importance, I have this to say:
"The most important persons of antiquity were all keepers of live stock, as both the Greek and Latin languages reveal, as well as the earliest poets, who describe their heroes some as [Greek: polyarnos] (rich in lambs), some as [Greek: polymaelos] (rich in sheep), and others as [Greek: polyboutaes] (rich in herds), and tell of flocks which on account of their value were said to have golden fleeces, like that of Atreus in Argos which he complained that Thyestes stole away from him: or that ram which Aeetes sacrificed at Colchis, whose fleece was the quest of those princes known as the Argonauts: or again like those so called golden apples (mala) of the Hesperides that Hercules brought back from Africa into Greece, which were, according to the ancient tradition, in fact goats and sheep which the Greeks, from the sound of their voice, called [Greek: maela]: indeed, much in the same way our country people, using a different letter (since the bleat of a sheep seems to make more of the sound of bee than of me) say that sheep "be-alare," whence by the elision of a letter as often happens, is derived the word belare (or balare), to bleat.
"If cattle had not been held in the highest esteem among the ancients the astrologers would not have called the signs of the zodiac by their names in describing the heavens: and they not only did not hesitate to place them there but many even begin their enumeration of the twelve signs with these animal names, thus giving Aries and Taurus precedence over Apollo and Hercules, whose signs, very gods as they are, are subordinated under the name of Gemini: nor did they deem that a sixth of these twelve signs was a sufficient proportion for the names of cattle, but they must even add Capricornus and make it a quarter. Furthermore, in naming the constellations they selected other names of cattle, as the goat, the kid, and the dog. And in like manner have not certain parts both of the sea and of the land taken their names from cattle, as witness the Aegean Sea, which is called after the Greek name for goat [Greek: aigeos], and Mount Taurus in Syria after the bull, and Mount Cantherius in the Sabine country after the horse, and the Thracian, as well as the Cimmerian, Bosphorus, after the ox: and again many place names on land like the town in Greece known as [Greek: hippion Argos], or horse breeding Argos. Yea, Italy itself derives its name, according to Piso, from vitula, our word for heifer.