242 VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



6 sense called initia ^ (rites of initiation). The name 

 also of Thebes is no less an indication of the greater 

 antiquity of the country, as it was derived, not from 

 the founder, but from the nature of the district. For 

 in the ancient tongue, and in Greece the Aeolians' 

 of Boeotia call hills tebas^ without the aspirate, and 

 in the Sabine country which Pelasgians from Greece 

 visited the term is still used in this sense. Traces 

 of this are to be found in the Sabine country not far 

 from Reate on the Via Salaria, where a slope a 

 mile* in length is called tebae, 



^ Initia. The ancient form of the worship of Ceres, the 

 Italian Goddess of Agriculture, was extremely simple. The 

 porca praecidanea was sacrificed at the beginning of harvest 

 and the praemetium — the first ears cut — was dedicated to her 

 (cf. Festus, ad verba). But after 496 B.C., when at Rome Ceres 

 was identified with the Greek Demeter, the service in her 

 honour was performed there, in the Greek language, and the 

 elaborate ritual of the Eleusinla was adopted together with 

 the ceremony of initiation. Cf. Cicero (De Leg., ii, 9), who 

 quotes from the Twelve Tables : Neve quern initianto nisi, ut 

 assolet Cereri Graeco more. 



^ Aeolis. The Greek nominative plural 'AioXftc. He uses it 

 again, ill, 12, 6, and several times in the De Lingua Latlna. 



^ Tebas. Scaliger is very angry with Varro because of this 

 derivation. He says that the word means a little boat. The 

 Egyptian Thebes was, in Egyptian, T-ape="the head," a 

 meaning which would square well with Varro's collis\ cf. 

 the use of "pen" meaning "head" or "mountain top" In 

 Celtic. 



* Miliarius clivus. The translation given is a guess, perhaps 

 a bad one. Schneider thinks that the expression means a slope 

 or hill on which is a mill-stone — which seems to me much 

 worse — in fact an impossible rendering ! Good sense would be 



