Part 25 (1/2)
[Footnote 127: Macrobius (_Saturn_. I, 6) tells another story of the origin of this cognomen, which, if not so heroic as that in the text, is entertaining. It is related that a neighbour's sow strayed on Tremelius' land and was caught and killed as a vagrant. When the owner came to claim it and a.s.serted the right to search the premises Tremelius hid the carca.s.s in the bed in which his wife was lying and then took a solemn oath that there was no sow in his house except that in the bed.]
[Footnote 128: It would seem, as Gibbon says of the Empress Theodora, that this pa.s.sage could be left ”veiled in the obscurity of a learned language”; but it may be noted that the _locus cla.s.sicus_ for the play on the word is the incident of the Megarian ”mystery pigs” in Aristophanes' _Acharnians_, 728 ff. Cf. also Athenaeus, IX, 17, 18.]
[Footnote 129: Cf. Pliny (_H.N._ VIII, 77): ”There is no animal that affords a greater variety to the palate of the epicure: all the others have their own peculiar flavour, but the flesh of the hog has nearly fifty different flavours.”]
[Footnote 130: In his stimulating book, _Comment la route cree le type Social_, Edmond Desmolins submits an ingenious hypothesis to explain the pre-eminence of the Gauls in the growing and making of pork, and how that pre-eminence was itself the explanation of their early success in cultivating the cereals. He describes their migrating ancestors, the Celts, pus.h.i.+ng their way up the Danube as hordes of nomad shepherds with their vast flocks and herds of horses and cattle, on the milk of which they had hitherto subsisted. So long as they journeyed through prairie steppes, the last of which was Hungary, they maintained their shepherd character, but when they once pa.s.sed the site of the present city of Vienna and entered the plateau of Bavaria, they found new physical conditions which caused them to reduce and to separate their herds of large cattle--an unbroken forest affording little pasture of gra.s.s. Here they found the wild boar subsisting upon the mast of the forest, and him they domesticated out of an economic necessity, to take the place of their larger cattle as a basis of food supply. Until then they had not been meat eaters, and so had known no necessity for cereals, for milk is a balanced ration in itself. But this change of diet required them also to take to agriculture and so to abandon their nomad life.
'By reason of the habits of the animal, swine husbandry has a tendency in itself to confine those engaged in it to a more or less sedentary life, but we are about to see how the Celts were compelled to accomplish this important evolution by an even more powerful force.
Meat cannot be eaten habitually except in conjunction with a cereal ... and of all the meats pork is the one which demands this a.s.sociation most insistently, because it is the least easily digested and the most heating of all the meats.... So that is how the adoption of swine husbandry and a diet of pork compelled our nomad Celts to take the next step and settle down to agriculture.']
[Footnote 131: This Gallic _tomacina_ was doubtless the ancestor of the _mortadella_ now produced in the Emilia and known to English speaking consumers as ”Bologna” sausage.]
[Footnote 132: The Gaul of which Cato was here writing is the modern Lombardy, one of the most densely populated and richest agricultural districts in the world. Here are found today those truly marvellous ”marchite” or irrigated meadows which owe the initiative for their existence to the Cistercian monks of the Chiaravalle Abbey, who began their fruitful agricultural labours in the country near Milan in the twelfth century. There is a recorded instance of one of these meadows which yielded in a single season 140 tons of gra.s.s per hectare, equal to 75 tons of hay, or 30 tons per acre! The meadows are mowed six times a year, and the gra.s.s is fed green to Swiss cows, which are kept in great numbers for the manufacture of ”frommaggio di grana,” or Parmesan cheese. This system of green soiling maintains the fertility of the meadows, while the by-product of the dairies is the feeding of hogs, which are kept in such quant.i.ty that they are today exported as they were in the times of Cato and Varro. There is no region of the earth, unless it be Flanders, of which the aspect so rejoices the heart of a farmer as the Milanese. Well may the Lombard proverb say, ”Chi ha prato, ha tutto.”]
[Footnote 133: Virgil (_Aen_. VII, 26) subsequently made good use of this tradition of the founding of Lavinium, the sacred city of the Romans where the Penates dwelt and whither solemn processions were wont to proceed from Rome until Christianity became the State religion. The site has been identified as that of the modern village of Practica, where a few miserable shepherds collect during the winter months, fleeing to the hills at the approach of summer and the dread _malaria_.]
[Footnote 134: Cf. Polybius, XII, 4: 'For in Italy the swineherds manage the feeding of their pigs in the same way. They do not follow close behind the beasts, as in Greece, but keep some distance in front of them, sounding their horn every now and then: and the animals follow behind and run together at the sound. Indeed, the complete familiarity which the animals show with the particular horn to which they belong seems at first astonis.h.i.+ng and almost incredible. For, owing to the populousness and wealth of the country, the droves of swine in Italy are exceedingly large, especially along the sea coast of the Tuscans and Gauls: for one sow will bring up a thousand pigs, or some times even more. They, therefore, drive them out from their night styes to feed according to their litters and ages. When if several droves are taken to the same place they cannot preserve these distinctions of litters: but they, of course, get mixed up with each other both as they are being driven out and as they feed, and as they are being brought home. Accordingly, the device of the horn blowing has been invented to separate them when they have got mixed up together, without labour or trouble. For as they feed one swineherd goes in one direction sounding his horn, and another in another and thus the animals sort themselves of their own accord and follow their own horn with such eagerness that it is impossible by any means to stop or hinder them. But in Greece when the swine get mixed up in the oak forests in their search for the mast, the swineherd who has most a.s.sistants and the best help at his disposal, when collecting his own animals drives off his neighbours' also. Some times, too, a thief lies in wait and drives them off without the swineherd knowing how he has lost them, because the beasts straggle a long way from their drivers in their eagerness to find acorns, when they are just beginning to fall.'
Bishop Latimer in one of his sermons quotes the phrase used in his youth, at the time of the discovery of America, in calling hogs: 'Come to thy minglemangle, come pur, come pur.' It would be impossible to transcribe the traditional call used in Virginia. One some times thinks that it was the original of the celebrated 'rebel yell' of General Lee's army.]
[Footnote 135: The use of the Greek salutation was esteemed by the more austere Romans of the age of Scipio an evidence of preciosity, to be laughed at: and so Lucienus' jesting apology for the use of it here doubtless was in reference to Lucilius' epigram which Cicero has preserved, _de Finibus_, I, 3.
”Graece ergo praetor Athenis Id quod maluisti te, quum ad me accedi, saluto [Greek: Chaire] inquam, t.i.te: lictores turma omni cohorsque [Greek: Chaire] t.i.te! Hinc hostis mi Albucius, hinc inimicus.”
It was the word which the Romans taught their parrots. Cf. Persius, _Prolog_. 8.]
[Footnote 136: The working ox was respected by the ancient Romans as a fellow labourer. Valerius Maximus (VIII, 8 _ad fin_.) cites a case of a Roman citizen who was put to death, because, to satisfy the craving of one of his children for beef to eat, he slew an ox from the plough.
Ovid puts this sentiment in the mouth of Pythagoras, when he agrees that pigs and goats are fit subjects for sacrifice, but protests against such use of sheep and oxen. (_Metamor_. XV, 139.)
”Quid meruere boves, animal sine fraude dolisque Innocuum, simplex, natum tolerare labores?
Immemor est demum, nee frugum manere dignus Qui potuit curvi demto modo pondere arati Ruricolam mactare suum: qui trita labore Ilia quibus toties durum renovaverat arvum Tot dederse messes, percussit colla securi.”]
[Footnote 137: The learned commentators have been able to discover nothing about either this Plautius or this Hirrius, but it appears that Archelaus wrote a book under the t.i.tle Bugonia, of which nothing survives. It may be conjectured, however, on the a.n.a.logy of Samson's riddle to the Philistines, ”Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness,” (_Judges_, XIV, 14), that Plautius meant to imply that some good might be the consequence of the evil Hirrius had done: and that Vaccius cited the allusion to suggest to Varro that, while he might know nothing much about cattle, his attempt to deal with the subject might provoke some useful discussion.]
[Footnote 138: Darwin, _Animals and Plants_, II, 20, cites this pa.s.sage and says that ”at the present day the natives of Java some times drive their cattle into the forests to cross with the wild Banteng.” The crossing of wild blood on domestic animals is not, however, always successful. A recent visitor to the German agricultural experiment station at Halle describes ”a curious hairy beast with great horns, a wild look in his eye, a white streak down his back and a b.u.mpy forehead, which had in it blood from cattle which had lived on the plains of Thibet, which had grazed on the lowland pastures of Holland, which had roamed the forests of northeast India and of the Malay Peninsular, and had wandered through the forests of Germany. We Americans had sympathy for this beast. He was some thing like ourselves, with the blood of many different races flowing through his veins.”]
[Footnote 139: Pliny (VIII, 66) cites the fact that the Scythians always preferred mares to stallions for war, and gives an ingenious reason for the preference. Aristotle (_H.A._ VI, 22) says that the Scythians rode their pregnant mares until the very last, saying that the exercise rendered parturition more easy. Every breeder of heavy draft horses has seen a mare taken from the plough and have her foal in the field, with no detriment to either: and the story of the mare Keheilet Ajuz, who founded the best of the Arab families, is well known, but bears repet.i.tion. I quote from Spencer Borden, _The Arab Horse_, p.
44: ”It is related that a certain Sheik was flying from an enemy, mounted on his favourite mare. Arab warriors trust themselves only to mares, they will not ride a stallion in war. The said mare was at the time far along toward parturition: indeed she became a mother when the flying horseman stopped for rest at noonday, the new comer being a filly. Being hard pressed the Sheik was compelled to remount his mare and again seek safety in flight, abandoning the newborn filly to her fate. Finally reaching safety among his own people, great was the surprise of all when, shortly after the arrival of the Sheik on his faithful mare, the little filly less than a day old came into camp also, having followed her mother across miles of desert. She was immediately given into the care of an old woman of the tribe (Ajuz = an old woman), hence her name Keheilet Ajuz, 'the mare of the old woman,' and grew to be the most famous of all the animals in the history of the breed.”]
[Footnote 140: Varro does not describe the livery of the horses of his day, as he does of cattle, but Virgil (_Georg_. III, 81) supplies the deficiency, a.s.serting that the best horses were bay (_spadices_) and roan (_glauci_) while the least esteemed were white (_albi_) and dun (_gilvi_), which is very interesting testimony in support of the most recent theory of the origin of the thoroughbred horse. Professor Ridgeway who, opposing Darwin's conclusion, contends for a multiple origin of the historic and recent races of horses, has collected a ma.s.s of information about the marking of famous horses of all ages in his _Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse_. He maintains that a bay livery, with a white star and stockings, the development of protective coloration from an originally striped coat, such as has gone on more recently in the case of the quaggas, is absolute evidence of the North African origin of a horse, and he shows that all the swiftest horses mentioned in history are of that race, while the heavier and less mettlesome horses of Northern origin have been, when pure bred, dun coloured or white.
Of the Italian breeds mentioned by Varro, Professor Ridgeway conjectures that the Etruscan (or Rosean) was probably an improved Northern horse, while the Apulian, from the South of Italy, represented an admixture of Libyan blood.]
[Footnote 141: Aristotle (_H.A._ VI, 22) preceded Varro with this good advice, saying that a mare ”produces better foals at the end of four or five years. It is quite necessary that she should wait one year and should pa.s.s through a fallow, as it were--[Greek: poiein osper neion].”]
[Footnote 142: Mules were employed in antiquity from the earliest times.
In Homer they were used for drawing wagons: thus Nausicaa drove a mule team to haul out the family wash, and Priam made his visit to Achilles in a mule litter. Homer professes to prefer mules to oxen for ploughing. There were mule races at the Greek games. Aristotle (_Rhetoric_, III, 2) tells an amusing story of Simonides, who, when the victor in the mule race offered him only a poor fee, refused to compose an ode, pretending to be shocked at the idea of writing about ”semi-a.s.ses,” but, on receipt of a proper fee, he wrote the ode beginning: ”Hail, daughters of storm-footed mares,” although they were equally daughters of the a.s.ses.]
[Footnote 143: The breed of Maremma sheep dogs, still preferred in Italy, is white. He is doubtless the descendant of the large woolly ”Spitz” or Pomeranian wolf dog which is figured on Etruscan coins.]