“Some add a particular stipulation that they are not affected with cholera.

“In the matter of pasture, a marshy place is well fitted for hogs, because they delight not only in water, but in mud, the reason for which appears in the tradition that when a wolf has fallen upon a hog he always drags the carcass into the water because his teeth cannot endure the natural heat of hog flesh.

“Swine are fed mostly on mast, though also on beans, barley and other kinds of corn, which not only make them fat but give the meat an agreeable relish.  In summer they go out to pasture early in the morning and before the heat of the day:  at midday they are brought into some shady place, preferably where there is water:  in the afternoon, when the heat has abated, they are fed again.  In the winter time they do not go out to pasture until the hoar frost has evaporated and the ice has melted.

“In the matter of breeding, the boar should be separated from the herd for two months before the season, which should be arranged between the rising of the west wind and the vernal equinox, for thus it will befall that the sows (which are big for four months) will have their litters in summer when forage is plenty.  Sows should not be bred under a year old, but it is better to wait until the twentieth month so that they may have pigs at two years.  They are said to breed regularly for seven years after the first litter.  During the breeding season they should be given access to muddy ditches and sloughs, so that they may wallow in the mud, which is the same relaxation to them that a bath is to a man.  When all the sows are stinted, the boars should be segregated again.  A boar is fit for service at eight months and so continues until his prime, after which his vigor decreases until he is fit only for the butcher to make of his flesh a dainty offering for the people.  Our name for the hog, sus, is called [Greek:  hus] in Greek, but formerly it was [Greek:  thus], derived from [Greek:  thuein], meaning to offer as a sacrifice, for it seems that victims were chosen from the race of swine for the earliest sacrifices; evidence of which remains in the tradition that pigs are sacrificed at the initiation to the mysteries of Ceres, that when a treaty is ratified peace begins with the slaughter of a pig, and that in solemnizing a marriage the ancient kings and mighty men of Etruria caused the bride and the bridegroom to sacrifice a pig at the beginning of the ceremony, a practice which the earliest Latins and the Greek colonists in Italy seem also to have followed:  nam et nostrae mulieres, maxime nutrices, naturam qua feminae sunt in virginibus appellant porcum, et graecae [Greek:  choiron], significantes esse dignum insigni nuptiarum.[128]

“The hog is said to be created by nature for the food of man[129] and so life and salt perform the same functions for him, as they both preserve his flesh.