BOOK I. III. 6-8 



some other motive than their inabiUty to put up with 

 bad neighbours that whole nations (I speak of the 

 Achaeans and Hiberians, the Albanians, too, and the 

 Sicilians as well ; and, to touch upon our ovm begin- 

 nings, the Pelasgians, the Aborigines, and the 

 Arcadians) abandoned their native soil and sought 

 out a different part of the world. And not to speak 7 

 merely of disasters affecting communities at large, 

 it is a matter of tradition that private indi\iduals 

 too, both in the countries of Greece and in our own 

 Hesperia, have been abominable neighbom-s ; unless 

 anyone could have endured that infamous Auto- 

 lycus " on an adjoining place, or unless Cacus,^ a 

 resident of the Aventine mount, brought joy to his 

 neighbours on the Palatine ! For I prefer to speak 

 of men of past times rather than of the present, so as 

 not to call by name a neighbour of my own who does 

 not allow a tree of any great spread to stand on our 

 common line ; who does not let a seed-bed go 

 unhurt, or stakes to support the vines ; who does 

 not even let the cattle graze undisturbed. Rightly, 

 then, as far as my opinion goes, did Marcus Porcius 

 advise the avoidance of such a nuisance and par- 

 ticularly warn the farmer-to-be not to come near it 

 of his own free will. 



To the other injunctions we add one which one of 8 

 the Seven Sages '^ deUvered to posterity for all 

 time : that measui'e and proportion be applied to 

 all things, and that this be understood as spoken 

 not only to those who are to embark on some other 

 enterprise, but also to those who are to acquire land 



cattle of Geryon. The story of Cacus is told at great length 

 bv Vergil, Aen. VIII. 193-2(37. 

 ' ' See I. 1. 9, note. 



47 



