s and Italians separated, have had the general meaning "to
plait," and it cannot have been until a later period, and probably
in different regions independently of each other, that it assumed
that of "weaving." The cultivation of flax, old as it is, does not
reach back to this period, for the Indians, though well acquainted
with the flax-plant, up to the present day use it only for the
preparation of linseed-oil. Hemp probably became known to the
Italians at a still later period than flax; at least -cannabis-
looks quite like a borrowed word of later date.
6. Thus -aro-, -aratrum- reappear in the old German -aran-
(to plough, dialectically -eren-), -erida-, in Slavonian -orati-,
-oradlo-, in Lithuanian -arti-, -arimnas-, in Celtic -ar-, -aradar-.
Thus alongside of -ligo- stands our rake (German -rechen-), of
-hortus- our garden (German -garten-), of -mola- our mill (German
-muhle-, Slavonic -mlyn-, Lithuanian -malunas-, Celtic -malin-).
With all these facts before us, we cannot allow that there ever was
a time when the Greeks in all Hellenic cantons subsisted by purely
pastoral husbandry. If it was the possession of cattle, and not of
land, which in Greece as in Italy formed the basis and the standard
of all private property, the reason of this was not that agriculture
was of later introduction, but that it was at first conducted on
the system of joint possession. Of course a purely agricultural
economy cannot have existed anywhere before the separation of
the stocks; on the contrary, pastoral husbandry was (more or less
according to locality) combined with it to an extent relatively
greater than was the case in later times.
7. Nothing is more significant in this respect than the close connection
of agriculture with marriage and the foundation of cities during
the earliest epoch of culture. Thus the gods in Italy immediately
concerned with marriage are Ceres and (or?) Tellus (Plutarch,
Romul. 22; Servius on Aen. iv. 166; Rossbach, Rom. Ehe, 257, 301),
in Greece Demeter (Plutarch, Conjug. Praec. init.); in old Greek
formulas the procreation of children is called --arotos--(ii.
The Family and the State, note); indeed the oldest Roman formof
marriage, -confarreatio-, derives its name and its ceremony from
the cultivation of corn. The use of the plough in the founding of
cities is well known.
8. Among the oldest names of weapons on both sides scarcely any
can be shown to be certainly related; -lancea-, alth
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