But for thy favor, Melibœus, sent
Where Bætis' waves the western plains indent,
Plains at the earth's extremest verge, expos'd
To the fierce Moors, which Geryon once inclos'd.
There had I now been doom'd to tend for hire
Iberian flocks, or else of want expire:
In vain I might have tun'd my seven-fold reed:
Mid thickets vast no soul my strains would heed:
Not even Pan on that far-distant shore
Would lend his vacant ear, or be my solace more.
Juvenal in his Twelfth Satire (l. 37-42.) describes a merchant overtaken by a dreadful storm, and to save the ship throwing his most valuable goods into the sea. It will be observed, that the poet attributes the excellence and fine natural color of the woollen cloth of Bætica to three causes, the rich herbage, the occult properties of the water, and those of the air.
"Over with mine," he cries; "be nothing spar'd;" To part with all his richest goods prepar'd; His vests of Tyrian purple, fit to please The softest of the silken sons of ease, And other robes, which took a native stain From air and water on the Bætic plain. Owen's Translation.
Strabo (iii. 144. p. 385. ed. Sieb.) gives the following account of the wool of Turdetania. [Greek: Pollê de kai esthês proteron êrcheto' nyn de kai eria mallon tôn Kyraxôn, kai hyperbolê tis esti tou kallous' talantiaious goun ônountai tous krious eis tas ocheias, hyperbolê de kai tôn leptôn hyphasmatôn, haper hoi Saltiêtai kataskeuazousin.] "Much cloth used formerly to come from this country. Now also fleeces come from it more than from the Coraxi; and they are exceedingly beautiful, so that rams for breeding are sold for a talent each. Also the fine webs are very famous, which are made by the Saltiatæ."—Yates's Translation.
The reader will please to remark, that this is the passage of
Strabo, formerly referred to as containing evidence respecting
the Coraxi.
Martial, a Spaniard by birth, frequently alludes to the sheep of Bætica and especially to the various natural colors of their wool, which were so much admired, that it was manufactured without dyeing. Two of his epigrams (iv. 28. and viii. 28.)
