I 



III] INTRODUCTION 241 



than two thousand ^ one hundred years. And if you 

 consider those years with reference to that far-off 

 time when fields began to be cultivated, and man 

 lived in huts and hovels nor knew what a wall or a 

 gate was, you will see that farmers are more ancient 

 than the dwellers in towns by an astounding number 



4 of years; and small wonder, for divine nature made 

 the country, but man's skill the towns, and all the 

 arts were discovered in Greece, 'tis said, within the 

 space of a thousand years, but there was never a 

 time when there were in the world no fields which 

 could be cultivated. 



And not only is farming more ancient, it is also 

 better; wherefore our ancestors with good reason 

 sent their citizens from the town back to the land, 

 for in peace they were fed by the rustic Romans 



5 and in war were defended ^ by them. With good 

 reason, too, did they call the same land by the 

 names of *' Mother "and ** Ceres, "and believed that 

 they who cultivated her lived a holy and useful life, 

 and were all that remained of the race of good King 

 Saturn. And with this agrees the fact that the 

 sacred rites in honour of Ceres are in a special 



' Duo milia et centum. Ogygus must therefore have been at 

 least 350 years old when the deluge, called after him, hap- 

 pened ! 



^ Ducehantur. In the Archetype was alebanfur— no doubt an 

 echo from the first part of the sentence. In Victorius's time 

 the recepta lectio was tuebantur-, and this I have translated in 

 preference to Keil's conjecture, ducebantur. Victorius produces 

 an inscription found in Spain, in which tueor is tised in the 

 Passive. 



K 



