Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/312

 Scutana, which is the modern Scultenna, a tributary of the Po, rising in the Apennines; Secondly, the coarse kind, grown in Liguria and the country of the Insubres, which was very much used for the common wearing apparel of the Italians; and Thirdly, the middle kind, grown about Patavium (now Padua) and employed for making valuable carpets and various descriptions of blankets. By comparing the statements of this author with those of Columella and Martial it will appear, that the whole region watered by the parallel rivers Parma, Gabellus, and Scultenna, and known by the name of ''Macri Campi'', or the Barren Plains, was esteemed for the production of the fine white wool.

That the tending of both sheep and goats was a principal occupation of the people of Mantua we learn from Virgil, a native of that city, who places the scene of most of his pastorals in its vicinity. His First and Ninth Eclogues more particularly relate to the calamities, which the Mantuans were compelled to sustain, when Augustus seized on their lands to reward his veteran soldiers after the battle of Philippi. These eclogues mention flocks both of sheep and goats, and show that those who had the care of them cultivated music and poetry after the manner of the Sicilians. The commencement of the Seventh Eclogue is especially instructive, because it gives us reason to believe, that while many of the Arcadians left their country in consequence of that excess of population, to which mountainous regions are subject, in order to become foreign mercenaries, others, on the contrary, entered into foreign service as shepherds and goatherds, and in this condition not only made themselves useful by their experience, skill, and fidelity, but also introduced at the same time their native music together with that refinement of manners and feelings which it promoted. The poet thus describes two such individuals, who had been employed in tending flocks upon the banks of the Mincius (l. 12, 13), and who were either born in Arcadia, or were at least of Arcadian origin.

Two blooming swains had join'd their flocks in one, Thyrsis his sheep, and tuneful Corydon