“As to what relates to the breeding of shepherds, it is easy, so far as concerns those who remain on the farm all the time because they can have a fellow servant to wife at the farmstead, for Venus Pastoralis demands no more.  Some hold that it is expedient also to furnish women[151] for those who pasture the flocks in the Saltus and the forests and have no residence but find their shelter from the rain under improvised sheds:  that such women following the flocks and preparing the food for the shepherds keep the men better satisfied and more devoted to their duty.  But they must needs be strong though not deformed, and not less capable of work then the men themselves, as they are in many localities and as may be seen throughout Illyricum, where the women feed the flocks or carry in wood for the fire and cook the food, or keep watch over the household utensils in their cottages.

“As to the method of raising their children, it suffices to say that the shepherd women are usually both mothers and nurses at the same time.”

At this Cossinius looked at me and said:  “I have heard you relate that, when you were in Liburnia, you saw women big with child bringing in fire wood and at the same time carrying a nursing child, or even two of them, thus putting to shame those slender reeds, the women of our class, who are wont to lie abed under mosquito bars for days at a time when they are pregnant.”

“That is true,” I replied, “and the contrast is even more marked in Illyricum, where it often happens that a pregnant woman whose time has come will leave her work for a little while and return with a new born child which you would think she had found rather than borne.[152]

“Not only this, the custom of that country permits the girls as much as twenty years of age, whom they call virgins, to go about unprotected and to give themselves to whomever they wish and to have children before marriage.”

“As to what pertains to the health of man and beast,” resumed Cossinius, “and the leech craft which may be practised without the aid of a physician, the flock master should have the rules written down:  indeed, the flock master must have some education, otherwise he can never keep his flock accounts properly.[153]

“As to the number of shepherds, some make a narrow, some a broad, allowance.  I have one shepherd for every eighty long wool sheep:  Atticus here has one for every hundred.  One can reduce the number of men required in respect of large flocks (like those containing a thousand head or more) much more readily than in respect of comparatively small flocks, like Atticus’ and mine, for I have only seven hundred head of sheep, and you, Atticus, have, I believe, eight hundred, though we are alike in providing a ram for every ten ewes.  Two men are required to care for a herd of fifty mares:  and each of them should have a mare broken for riding to serve as a mount in those localities where it is the custom to drive the mares to pasture, as often happens in Apulia and Lucania.”