CLap. 72.] 
SHEEP. 
331 
priate marks, although different from those on the male ; and 
it is said that she is always killed the very same day that 
they find her. There is a spot in the Mle, near Memphis, 
which, from its figure, they call Phiala ;^ here they throw into 
the water a dish of gold, and another of silver, every year upon 
the days on which they celebrate the birth of Apis.^ These 
days are seven in number, and it is a remarkable thing, that 
during this time, no one is ever attacked by the crocodile ; on 
the eighth day, however, after the sixth hour, these beasts 
resume all their former ferocity. 
CHAP. 72. (47.) SHEEP, AND THEIE PEOPAOATION.^ 
Many thanks, too, do we owe to the sheep, both for ap- 
peasing the gods, and for giving us the use of its fieece. As 
oxen cultivate the fields which yield food for man, so to sheep 
are we indebted for the defence of our bodies. The generative 
power lasts in both sexes from the second to the ninth year, 
sometimes to the tenth.* The lambs produced at the first 
birth are but small. The season for coupling, in all of them, 
is from the setting of Arcturus, that is to say, the third day 
before the ides of May,^ to the setting of Aquila, the tenth 
day before the calends of August.^ The period of gestation is 
one hundred and fifty days. The lambs that are produced 
after this time are feeble ; the ancients called those that were 
bom after it, cordi.' Many persons prefer the lambs that 
are bom in the winter to those of the spring, because it is 
of much more consequence that they should have gained 
strength before the summer solstice than before the winter 
one ; consequently, the sheep is the only animal that is bene- 
fitted by being bom in the middle of winter. It is the nature of 
1 The " goblet." See B- v. c. 10. 
2 Seneca, Qusest. Nat. B. iv. c. 2, gives an account of this ceremony, 
but does not refer to the birth of Apis. — B. 
3 The contents of this Chapter appear to be principally from Varro, B. 
ii. cc. 1, 2, and Columella, B. vii. cc. 2, 3, 4. — B. 
* This account is probably from Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. v. c. 14 ; B. 
vi. c. 19 ; and B. ix. c. 3, where we have various particulars respecting 
the production and mode of life of the sheep. — B. 
5 13th May. ^ 6 23rd July. 
' Varro, ubi supray gives a somewhat different account : Those lambs 
are called '-'cordi,* which are born after their time, and have remained 
in the womb, called xoptov from which they take that name." — B. 
