sheep were held in some estimation by the Egyptians is, however, manifest from the fact, that in the splendid procession exhibited at Alexandria by Ptolemy Philadelphus, there were 130 sheep from Ethiopia, 300 from Arabia, and 20 from Eubœa[1]. Also, that the pastoral habits of the Ethiopians were known to the Romans may be inferred from the allusion, which Virgil makes to them in his Tenth Eclogue (l. 64-68.):
No toils of ours can change the cruel god,
Though we should flee him through each new abode;
Whether we drink, where chilling Hebrus flows,
And winter reigns amid Sithonian snows;
Or, where the elms beneath hot Cancer bend,
Our Ethiopian sheep we fainting tend.
We find, that the people of Libya had attained to some distinction in the management of flocks. What Diodorus says of the Egyptian sheep is asserted by Aristotle of those of Libya, viz. that they produced young twice in the year[2]. That sheep-*breeding had extended hither in very early times appears from a passage in the Odyssey, which, however, in consequence of the remoteness of the situation and the imperfect knowledge of geography in the time of the writer, is mixed with fable, inasmuch as it represents, that the ewes brought forth not only twice, but even three times in the year, and that the lambs were immediately provided with horns[3].
That happy clime! where each revolving year
The teeming ewes a triple offspring bear,
And two fair crescents of translucent horn
The brows of all their young increase adorn;
The shepherd swains, with sure abundance blest,
On the fat flock and rural dainties feast;
Nor want of herbage makes the dairy fail,
But every season fills the foaming pail.
Pope's Translation.
Pindar (Pyth. ix. 11.) distinguishes Libya by the epithet [Greek: poumêlos], "abounding in flocks." To the same district of Africa,
- [Footnote: with "fleeces as coarse and hairy as those of the goat."—Travels in Barbary,
part iii. chap. 2. § 1.]
