Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/302

 the comparison of kings to shepherds, and to their leading rams in Homer and in the Scriptures.

The Greek word [Greek: Ktilos], originally an adjective, corresponds exactly to the Italian manso. It appears to have been applicable to all trained tame animals. Hence it was used specially to denote the large and powerful ram, which was instructed to assist the shepherd in disposing the sheep in proper order and in leading them to and from their daily pasture as well as during their long migrations. In the third book of the Iliad (l. 196-198), where Priam is described surveying the Greek troops from the Scæan gate, after the account of Agamemnon, who was considered as their shepherd, we find Ulysses, who was inferior to him both in rank and in stature, represented as his manso, that is, as the ram, which immediately follows the shepherd and aids him in conducting the flock. The same image is repeated in the thirteenth book (l. 492, 493), where Pope's translation, though very paraphrastic, is an admirable representation of the real circumstances.

In order follow all th' embodied train, Like Ida's flocks proceeding o'er the plain: Before his fleecy care, erect and bold, Stalks the proud ram, the father of the fold; With joy the swain surveys them, as he leads To the cool fountains, through the well-known meads.

Propertius presents us with a similar picture in the following lines;

Corniger Idæi vacuam pastoris in aulam Dux aries saturas ipse reduxit oves.

Lib. iii. El. 13.

The fold receives the sheep on Ida fed, By the great ram, their horned chieftain, led.

Aristotle calls these rams "the leaders of the sheep," and he states, that the shepherds provided for each flock such a leader, ''which, when called by name by the shepherd, placed himself at the head of the flock'', and was trained to execute this office from an early age. The employment of the manso was probably the ground, on which many of the Orientals adopted the