egated again. A boar is fit for service at eight months and so
continues until his prime, after which his vigor decreases until he is
fit only for the butcher to make of his flesh a dainty offering for
the people. Our name for the hog, _sus_, is called [Greek: hus]
in Greek, but formerly it was [Greek: thus], derived from [Greek:
thuein], meaning to offer as a sacrifice, for it seems that victims
were chosen from the race of swine for the earliest sacrifices;
evidence of which remains in the tradition that pigs are sacrificed
at the initiation to the mysteries of Ceres, that when a treaty
is ratified peace begins with the slaughter of a pig, and that in
solemnizing a marriage the ancient kings and mighty men of Etruria
caused the bride and the bridegroom to sacrifice a pig at the
beginning of the ceremony, a practice which the earliest Latins and
the Greek colonists in Italy seem also to have followed: nam et
nostrae mulieres, maxime nutrices, naturam qua feminae sunt
in virginibus appellant porcum, et graecae [Greek: choiron],
significantes esse dignum insigni nuptiarum.[128]

"The hog is said to be created by nature for the food of man[129] and
so life and salt perform the same functions for him, as they both
preserve his flesh.

"The Gauls[130] are reputed to put up not only the largest quantity but
the best quality of pork: evidence of its quality being that even now
hams, sausage,[131] bacon and shoulders are imported every year from
Gaul to Rome: while Cato writes concerning the amount of pork cured by
the Gauls: 'In (northern) Italy the Insubres are wont to put up three
or four thousand cuts of pork [the bulk of which can be appreciated
from the fact that among that people][132] the hog some times grows so
fat that it is not able to stand on its feet or to walk, so that it
is necessary to put it on a cart to move it any where.' Atilius the
Spaniard, who is a truthful man and learned in many things, tells of
a hog which was killed in further Spain or Lusitania from which two
chops, sent to the Senator L. Volumnius, were found to weigh three and
twenty pounds, the fat on them being so thick that it measured a foot
and three fingers from the skin to the bone."

"I can testify to some thing not less extraordinary than what you have
related," said I, "for in Arcadia I saw with my own eyes a hog which
was so fat that not only was it unable to get up but a shrew mouse
having eaten a hole in its back had there made it