CHAPTER V.

TESTIMONY OF PROFANE HISTORY ΤΟ THE ANTIQUITY AND UTILITY OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS.

Cattle in Egypt.-In Greece.-In Scythia.-In Ancient Rome.In Ethiopia and Lusitania.-Idolatrous veneration of cattle.Indian, Egyptian and Roman cattle.-Consequences of the Roman conquests.-Pursuits of society during the " Dark Ages."-Cattle in France, Britain, &c.-Different opinions of naturalists.—Original race of cattle.—Varieties of the European cow.-Diversity of qualities in the cow family.-Indian and Tartar cattle.

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EGYPT was distinguished as a mighty empire, and for its improvement in the arts, within four or five centuries after the flood; and though unsuited for pasturage, which the inhabitants affected to despise, when Abraham sojourned in that country, one hundred and eighty years before there any mention of the horse, Pharaoh presented him with sheep and cattle. And we learn that at a subsequent period the monarch of that country had considerable herds; for being informed by Joseph that his brethren were shepherds, the king said, "If thou knowest any men of activity among them, make them rulers over my cattle."* later than this, Moses stipulated that not a hoof belonging to the Israelites should be left in Egypt; the very institution of the passover lamb, implied the general possession of flocks. Pharaoh's dreams of the kine also prove that the Egyptians were acquainted with the management of cattle; for it is said that the seven "well-favored and fat-fleshed" kine which he saw were fed on the achu, * Gen. 47: 6.

Still

TESTIMONY OF PROFANE AUTHORS.

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that is, the succulent water-plants of the Nile, and not "in a meadow," as it is rendered in our version.*

The general views that have been presented, are fully confirmed by profane writers. Hesiod, one of the oldest poets of Greece, who flourished in the ninth century before the Christian era, praises the pastoral occupation, and referring to ages antecedent to his own times, speaks of the high honor in which it was anciently held. According to some accounts he was himself a shepherd, and tended his flock at the foot of Mount Helicon, in Boeotia. Homer, who is supposed to have been cotemporary with Hesiod, frequently mentions milk and cheese as common articles of food; they are also often alluded to by Theocritus, Euripides and other poets. Butter was probably unknown in Greece before the time of Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century B. C., as he is the earliest profane historian whose works have come down to us that mentions it.

Among the families that were dispersed abroad by the confusion of tongues, those who migrated northward, and afterwards known as the Scythians, were the most remarkable. Carrying with them the habits of pastoral life to which they had been accustomed in the more genial regions of the south, and coming in possession of a limitless extent of territory, stretching from the northern shores of the Euxine and Caspian seas, to the frozen regions of the north, they appear to have led wandering lives, living in tents, and devoting their attention to the rearing and management of cattle. Hippocrates, who was nearly cotemporary with Herodotus, in his account of the Scythians, describes with great minuteness their process of butter-making, and highly commends milk, as a most healthy and nourishing food.

*See Bible Illustrated, p. 44.

+ Herodotus.

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CATTLE IN ANCIENT ROME.

Aristotle, distinguished as the father of natural history, lived about one hundred years afterwards. In his book on animals, he describes the characteristics of some of the ruminant tribes with great judgment and accuracy; and from the many curious particulars relating to milk and cheese collected by him, it may be fairly inferred, that the importance of these, as articles of human sustenance, was in his age duly appreciated.

Ancient Rome was built by rude hunters and herdsmen. Romulus, its founder, 754 years B. C. traced a furrow round the Palatine hill with a plough drawn by two milk-white cattle, and caused the area within the furrow to be inclosed with a wall of earth; he then poured out libations of milk to propitiate the gods. Eight hundred years afterwards Pliny relates, that the devotional offering of milk, in commemoration of the custom of their fathers, was still continued. Anciently in Rome these animals were so highly valued, that they were only slaughtered on extraordinary occasions; and it is recorded of a citizen who slaughtered one of his own cattle for the entertainment of a guest, that he was, by the popular vote, banished the state. The cattle most esteemed in Italy,* according to Pliny, and which commanded the highest price, were imported from Epirus, a breed said to have been greatly improved by the celebrated king Pyrrhus, who was extremely curious in his knowledge of domestic animals. Several eastern nations are referred to, by the same writer, whose inhabitants subsisted upon milk and the spontaneous productions of the earth; and

* Timens, a Greek author, and Varro, both cited by Aulus Gellius, (Noct. Attic. lib. ii. cap. 1.) have said that Italy was so called from the abundance of oxen in it, which in the ancient Greek language were called rado: whence Gellius affirms that Italia signifies armentosissima.

IDOLATROUS VENERATION OF CATTLE.

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Virgil, as is well known, subject of breeding cattle,

who so managed their stocks, as to secure an abundant supply of milk throughout the year. Strabo gives substantially the same account of the Ethiopians, Lusitanians, and other oriental people, among whom milk was one of the chief means of subsistence. devoted his third Georgic to the and his Eclogues abound throughout with allusions to pastoral life. Apicius and some other writers of that day appear to have made the qualities of milk a subject of special inquiry. Both Columella and Varro, in their treatises De Re Rustica, give due prominence to this important department of rural economy, as then understood and practised by the most civilized nations. So far, indeed, as we can learn, the semi-barbarous countries of these periods, as in preceding ages, chiefly pursued pasturage, and subsisted upon the produce of their flocks. Such, according to the Roman writers, was the condition of the ancient German, and other European nations; such were the habits of the early Britons, as given by Cæsar in his Commentaries, who, he says, neglected the plough, undervalued husbandry, and lived upon the milk and flesh of cattle, a description which at that time was doubtless capable of very general application.

The superstitious, and even idolatrous regard for animals of this species, in many nations, is well known. Taurus, the bull, was deified, and his constellation placed in the zodiac. The same animal was worshipped as the god Apis, in Egypt, and dedicated to Osiris, to whom was ascribed the origin of agriculture; and from this, it is supposed by some, the Greeks derived the minotaur, and also the Israelites the idea of the golden calf they modelled and worshipped in the wilderness. At Heliopolis, divine honors were paid to Mnesis, under the form of the ox, while

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CONSEQUENCES OF THE ROMAN CONQUEST.

the cow was consecrated to Isis. The Zor Aster, or sacred bull, appears to have been worshipped in some way, throughout Egypt. The Brahminy, or sacred bull of the Hindoos, rambles about the country without interruption; he is caressed and pampered by the people, to feed him being deemed a meritorious act of religion.* So great is the veneration of the Gentoos for the cow, that they would rather sacrifice their parents or children, than slay one of them. The traditions also of different nations, founded doubtless upon the universally acknowledged utility of the animal, invest it with peculiar honors. The Indians say that it was the first animal created by the three kinds of gods, who were directed by the Supreme Lord to furnish the earth with animated beings. And the traditions of every Celtic nation, it is said, enrol the cow amongst the earliest productions, and represent it as a kind of divinity.†

The causes which operated to the extension of the Roman arms over the greater part of the inhabited earth, also powerfully tended to ameliorate the condition of human life by the improvements in agriculture, the domestication of animals, and by the invention of numerous useful arts. In Italy, in Greece, in the middle and southern countries of Asia, in Egypt, in the northwest parts of Africa, even in Gaul and Spain, agriculture was diligently practised, and the husbandry of tillage and pasturage was cultivated so as to afford abundance of the prime necessaries of life. Nor were these benefits limited by the bounds of the Roman empire; they were gradually, but in some degree, very extensively diffused among the savage nations beyond these limits, so that a larger proportion of the human race participated in the advantages incident to civilization, than in any previous age.

Hamilton's Descript. of Hindostan. + Youatt's History of Cattle.