flock crowded down the broken road leading to the fold, followed by their grotesque-looking shepherd and his rough dogs, the pet-kids crowding round their master and answering to his call, we could not help thinking of the antique manners described by the poets, and represented in the pictures of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
"The goats are the most useful domestic animals. Here no other cheese or milk is tasted. Besides, the ricotta, a kind of curd, and junkets, are made of goats'-milk, and, with bread serve many of the country people for food[1]."
From Athenæus[2] we learn the superior excellence of the goats of Scyros and Naxos.
Virgil (l. c.), after mentioning the use of goats for food, goes on to show their contributions to the weaver.
Cloth'd in their shaven beards and hoary hair,
Fence of the ocean spray and nightly air,
The miserable seaman breasts the main,
And camps uninjur'd press the marshy plain.
Sotheby's Translation.
The last line of this passage of Virgil is quoted by Columella (L. vii. 6.) in speaking of the utility of the he-goat;
For he himself is shorn "for the use of camps and to make coverings for
wretched sailors."
Virgil, moreover, has here followed Varro, who writes thus;
As the sheep yields to man wool for clothing, so the goat furnishes hair for the
use of sailors, and to make ropes for military engines, and vessels for artificers.
- * * * * The goats are shorn in a great part of Phrygia, because there
they have long shaggy hair. Cilicia (i. e. hair-cloths), and other things of the same kind, are commonly imported from that country. The name Cilicia is
- ↑ Three Months passed in the Mountains east of Rome, by Maria Graham (Lady Calcott), p. 36. 55, 56. The same writer says, that "black sheep are rather encouraged here for the wool," and that "the clothing of the friars is of this undyed wool." p. 55.
- ↑ Quoted in Chapter I. p. 236. Ælian bears testimony to the same fact, observing, that the cows of Epirus were said to yield the greatest quantity of milk, and the goats of Scyros. Hist. Anim. l. iii. cap. 33. From Tournefort, Sonnini, and other modern travellers we learn, that both Scyros and Naxos are very rocky and mountainous, and that they still produce goats. See also Dapper, Déscription des Isles de l'Archipel, p. 256. 350.
