I] AIM AND SCOPE OF AGRICULTURE 19 



friend's feet often ache, and pucker his forehead 

 27 with frowns. Please do, said Fundanius, for I had 

 rather hear about my feet than about the proper 

 way of sowing beetroot/ 



I will quote, said Stolo with a smile, the very 

 words he wrote: ^'Thus have I heard Tarquenna 

 say,"" that when a man's feet began to ache, by 

 remembering you he could be cured. I remember 

 you, cure my feet. * O Earth, keep thou the pain, 

 and health with me remain in my feet.'" He bids 

 one sing this thrice nine times, touch the earth, 

 spit downwards, and sing it fasting. Said I, You 

 will find many other marvels in the book of the 

 Sasernae, all of which have nothing to do with 



* Pedibus meis . . . pedes hetaceos. A pun quite in Varro's 

 manner. Cf. ill, 17, 4: Hos pisces nemo in ius vocare audet, 

 ius having the double meaning of (i) sauce, (2) trial. 



' Vel Tarquennam audivi, etc. Victorius supposes Tar- 

 quenna to have been the name of an anagnostes, a slave 

 whose office it was to read aloud. In this case the translation 

 would run, "or as I have heard T. read . . ." 



But *' Tarquenna" ("Tarchna" in Etruscan)— the name of 

 the mythical founder of Tarquinii, the ecclesiastical metropolis 

 of Etruria — is a name not likely to have been borne by a slave. 

 The whole passage from vel (or better velut, the contraction 

 for both words being the same in Minuscule MSS.) to maneto 

 seems to be In rough Saturnian verse. It may be that the 

 incantation begins with velut Tarquenna^ and that it may 

 have been addressed to the mythical hero Tarquenna. We 

 should then have to read "Tarquenna," not "Tarquennam " 

 (which In MSS. would be Tarquenna). The translation would 

 then be: "As I heard, O Tarquenna, that when a mortal's 

 feet began to ache by thinking of you he could be cured, 1 

 think now of you, cure my feet," etc. 



I 



