Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/315

 of its inhabitants with the Milesians. The reader will have noticed the fact that the worship of Pan was introduced into Italy from Arcadia by Evander, from which circumstance it may be reasonably inferred, that improvements in the management of sheep were also introduced at the same time. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Evander with his companions was said by the Romans to have migrated to Latium ''about sixty years before the Trojan war''. The same historian alleges that this colony taught in Italy the use of letters, of instrumental music and other arts, established laws, and brought some degree of refinement instead of the former savage mode of life. The story of the birth of Romulus and Remus supposes sheep-breeding to have been practiced at the period of that event, and in a state of society similar to that which we have found prevailing further eastward; for it is stated, that Faustulus, who discovered them, kept the king's flocks. He was "magister regii pecoris ."

According to Pausanias (l. viii. c. 3. § 2.) the first Greek colony, which went into Italy, was from Arcadia, being conducted thither by Œnotrus, an Arcadian prince. This was several centuries before the expedition under Evander, and the part of Italy thus colonized was the southern extremity, afterwards occupied by the Bruttii. If with Niebuhr we regard this tradition only in the light of a genealogical table, designed to indicate the affinities of tribes and nations, still the simple fact of the colonization of South Italy by Arcadians certainly authorizes the conjecture, that Arcadia was one of the stepping-stones, by which the art of sheep-breeding was transported from Asia into Europe.