II] OF COWS AND OXEN 183 



bulls italic and it was owing to the great number 

 and beauty of these, and to the breeding of bullocks 

 {vituli) in this country that the name of Italy was 

 bestowed upon it. Others have written that it was 

 because of a famous bull called Italus which Her- 

 cules pursued into Italy. 



The ox, I say, is the comrade of man in the 



4 labours of the field, and the servant^ of Ceres, and 



the ancients were so firmly determined to guard his 



life that they punished with death ^ any one who 



work was a history of Sicily from the earliest times down to 

 264 B.C. Of this only a few scraps remain. 



Cf. Gellius, xi, i : Timaeus in historiis . . . et M. Varro 

 in A ntiquitatibus R. H. terrain Italiam de Graeco vocabulo ap- 

 pellatam scripserunt quoniam hoves Graeca vetere lingua haXoi 

 vocitati sint. Curtius (Gk. Etym., i, p. 257) remarks: "This 

 etymology is splendidly confirmed by ' Viteliu ' (Italy) in the 

 inscription on Oscan coins." Probably the word is connected 

 with (/)iroc, a year, and its root meanin^^ is "yearling." 



' Cereris minister. At Eleusis, the most ancient seat of the 

 worship of Demeter, certain sacred cattle were kept (their 

 keepers were called ^ovl^vyai — oi ras itpac fiovg Iv VXiv&lvi dporpi- 

 ovaaq rpicpovrtq (Schol. ad Aristidem), and by them the Rharian 

 plain was solemnly ploughed every year in memory of the first 

 sowing of wheat by Demeter or Triptolemus. 



' Capite sanxerint. Pliny (viii, 4, 5) and Valerius Maximus 

 (viii, i) tell how a man who had killed an ox was damnatus a 

 Populo Romano die dicta . . . actusque in exilium tanquam 

 coiono suo interempto. Columella (praef. § 7 to Bk. vi) says 

 that "at Athens in Attica he is called the servant of Ceres and 

 Triptolemus, shares the sky with the brightest constellations, 

 is the most hard-working comrade of man in the tilling of the 

 soil, and was so venerated by the ancients that it was as much 

 a capital offence to have slain an ox as a citizen." In the age 



i 



