] 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