128 VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



totle of Stagyra^ believed, human life must have 

 come down from the highest antiquity to our time, 

 stage by stage, as Dicaearchus writes, and the re- 

 motest stage must have been the state of Nature 

 when man lived on those things which the virgin 



4 earth produced spontaneously. Then from this 

 mode of life they must have descended to the 

 second mode, the pastoral, in which, by plucking 

 from wild and woodland trees and shrubs acorns, 

 arbutus berries, and mulberries, they made a store 

 of fruit for subsequent use, and in the same way 

 and for the same end captured such wild animals as 

 they could and shut them up and tamed them. 

 There is reason to believe that amongst these 

 animals sheep were the first adopted, on account of 

 their usefulness and gentle nature, for they are by 

 nature extremely gentle and especially fitted for 

 association with man's life, for through them milk 

 and cheese were added to his food, and for his body 

 they furnished clothing in the shape of skins. 



5 Finally, with the third stage, they reached, from 

 the pastoral mode of life, the agricultural, retaining 

 in it much of the two former stages, and went on 

 long in the stage which they had reached before 

 they could attain^ our present civilization. Even 



1 Aristotle. Cf. Phys., ii, i, 192: twv ovnav to. fikv tan (pvaei, 

 Tci de di* dWag ahias, (pvaei fikv to. re ^(pa kuI to. fikpr) avrCJv Koi 

 TO. ^VTO..'^ They exist, therefore, by (^vaig — the eternal apxn 



KlVrjOtdiQ. 



^ Dum ad nos perveniret. This impersonal use of the active 

 verb — normal with the passive verb — is common with Varro. 

 Cf. i, 44, I ; i, 23, 3, etc. 



