16- The 'Book of the Goat. 



Pausanias (vii. 26) tells us of a curious use to which 

 a number of goats were, on one occasion, put. The 

 Sicyonians collected an army to invade the country of 

 their' neighbours, the v^Egeiratse (the Hyperesians of 

 Homer) ; but these latter people, not considering them- 

 selves a match for the Sicyonians, adopted the following 

 stratagem : They collected together all the goats in 

 their land, fastened torches on their horns, and at night- 

 time set fire to them. The Sicyonians, imagining that 

 these lights proceeded from the auxiliaries of the ^Egei- 

 ratae, led their army home. It was from this circumstance 

 that the ancient name of Hyperetia was changed to 

 /Egeira, so called from aiges, the Greek for goats. In 

 the place where the most beautiful goat, the leader of 

 the rest, lay down, the people built a temple to Artemis 

 Agrotera, " the huntress, ' ; for they considered that the 

 stratagem which saved them was effectual by the aid of 

 Artemis. During the prevalence of an epidemic or 

 pestilence a goat was sometimes sacrificed to the rising 

 sun. The people of Cleonse, an ancient town of Argolis, 

 did this, and when they were freed from the plague, they 

 sent a brazen figure of a goat to Apollo (x. n). ./Elian 

 quotes Orthogoras a geographer, whose date is unknown, 

 and who wrote a work on India as stating that the 

 people of Coytha used to give their goats dried fish to eat 

 (" Nat. An." xvi. 35). 



With this may be compared what is said of the sheep 

 of Tartary, that they " eat bones like a dog " ; also what 

 Strabo has recorded of the Icthyophagi of India, who, 

 on account of the scarcity of food and water, feed them- 

 selves and their cattle with fish, so that the flesh on these 

 animals has a fishy flavour. Pliny has a chapter on goats, 

 from which I must quote only a few words. He mentions 

 the two small pendent folds or flaps (lacinia) under the 

 neck already alluded to above, and which Varro called 



