ck, but in the evening they should meet at a common
supper under the supervision of the flock master.[150] It should be the
duty of the flock master to see that every thing is provided which may
be required by the flock or by the shepherds, chiefly the victuals
for the men and medicine for the flock: for which the master should
provide beasts of burden, either horses or some thing else which can
carry a load on its back.

"As to what relates to the breeding of shepherds, it is easy, so far as
concerns those who remain on the farm all the time because they can
have a fellow servant to wife at the farmstead, for Venus Pastoralis
demands no more. Some hold that it is expedient also to furnish
women[151] for those who pasture the flocks in the Saltus and the
forests and have no residence but find their shelter from the rain
under improvised sheds: that such women following the flocks and
preparing the food for the shepherds keep the men better satisfied and
more devoted to their duty. But they must needs be strong though not
deformed, and not less capable of work then the men themselves, as
they are in many localities and as may be seen throughout Illyricum,
where the women feed the flocks or carry in wood for the fire and cook
the food, or keep watch over the household utensils in their cottages.

"As to the method of raising their children, it suffices to say that
the shepherd women are usually both mothers and nurses at the same
time."

At this Cossinius looked at me and said: "I have heard you relate
that, when you were in Liburnia, you saw women big with child bringing
in fire wood and at the same time carrying a nursing child, or even
two of them, thus putting to shame those slender reeds, the women of
our class, who are wont to lie abed under mosquito bars for days at a
time when they are pregnant."

"That is true," I replied, "and the contrast is even more marked in
Illyricum, where it often happens that a pregnant woman whose time has
come will leave her work for a little while and return with a new born
child which you would think she had found rather than borne.[152]

"Not only this, the custom of that country permits the girls as much as
twenty years of age, whom they call virgins, to go about unprotected
and to give themselves to whomever they wish and to have children
before marriage."

"As to what pertains to the health of man and beast," resumed
Cossinius, "and the leech craft which may be practised w