us bought a thousand goats, hoping that he might
thereby derive from his property an income of a thousand deniers a
day: but so it fell out that he lost all his goats after a brief
illness. On the other hand, among the Sallentini and near Casinum they
graze their goats in flocks of one hundred.

"Almost the same difference of opinion exists as to the relative number
of bucks to nannies, for some, and I am among them, allow a buck to
every ten nannies, but others, like Menas, make it fifteen, and some
even twenty, like Murrius."

_Of swine_

IV. "And now," concluded Cossinius, "which of you Italian swine
breeders will stand forth and tell us of his herd? Surely he should be
able to speak with the most authority whose cognomen is Scrofa."

At this pleasantry, Tremelius turned upon Cossinius and said: "You seem
to be ignorant why I am called Scrofa, but, in order that our friends
sitting beside you may understand, you should know my family did not
always bear this swinish cognomen, nor am I of the race of Eumaeus. The
first of us to be called Scrofa was my grandfather who, when he was
quaestor under the praetor Licinius Nerva, and was left in command of
the army in the province of Macedonia during the absence of the praetor,
it so happened that the enemy thought they had an opportunity to gain a
victory and began to attack the camp. My grandfather, in exhorting the
soldiers to take up their arms and go out against the enemy, exclaimed
that he would soon scatter them as a sow (scrofa) does her pigs, and he
was as good as his word. For in that battle he so overwhelmed and
discomfited the enemy, that on account of it the praetor Nerva was
hailed Imperator and my grandfather obtained his cognomen and so was
called Scrofa.[127] So, while neither my great grandfather nor any of my
ancestors of the Tremelian family was ever called Scrofa, yet as I am
not less than the sixth of our family in succession who has attained
praetorian rank, it ill becomes me to run away in the face of your
challenge, so I will tell you what I know about swine. Indeed from my
youth I have been devoted to agriculture, so that I am perhaps as well
acquainted with that animal as is any of you great stockmen: for who of
us cultivates a farm but keeps hogs, and who has not heard his father
say that that man is either lazy or a spendthrift who hangs in the meat
house a flitch of bacon obtained from the butcher rather than from his
own farm.

"He who w