cattle of Epirus are not only better than all the Greek cattle but even than the Italian:  nevertheless, there are those who choose Italian cattle for victims and to serve as offerings to the gods on account of their size:  and without doubt they may be preferred for such holy offices, so great is the distinction of their majestic bulk and their candid coats:  and they are the more suitable for such use because white cattle are not so common in Italy as in Thrace at the gulf of Melas, where there are few of any other colour.

“When cattle are bought already broken for work we stipulate thus:  ’Do you guarantee these cattle to be in good health and warrant me against liability for any tort committed by them?’

“When we buy them unbroken, we say:  ’Do you guarantee these yearlings to be in good health and to come out of a healthy herd, and warrant me against liability for tort?’

“When butchers buy for the shambles they use a fuller formula recommended by Manilius:  but those who buy for the altar do not usually stipulate for health in their victims.

“Neat cattle pasture best in groves where there is brushwood and much leafage:  and so when they are wintered by the sea they are driven up to pasture in summer in the hills where shrubbery abounds.

“These are my breeding rules: 

“For a month before breeding I cut down the food and drink of the cows because it is deemed that they breed more certainly when they are thin.  On the other hand, I fatten the bulls up on grass and straw and hay for two months before the breeding season, and during that time I keep them apart from the cows.  Like Atticus, I have two for seventy cows, one a yearling, the other two years old.  When that constellation has risen which the Greeks call Lyra, and we Romans, Fides, I turn the bull into the herd again.  The bull indicates whether a male or a female calf has been conceived by the side on which he leaves the cow:  if male, on the right; if female, on the left.  “Why this is so,” said Vaccius, turning to me, “I leave to you who read Aristotle.”

“A cow should not be served under two years, so that she may have her first calf in the third year:  it would be better in the fourth.  Most cows bear for ten years, some even more.  The most suitable time for stinting cows is during the forty days following the rising of the Dolphin, or even a little later, for thus they will drop their calves at the most temperate season of the year, for a cow goes ten months pregnant.  On this subject I have come upon an extraordinary statement in a book that a bull which has just been altered can get a cow with calf.