that the name comes from that of
the famous bull Italus which Hercules drove out of Sicily into this
country.

"The ox is indeed the companion and fellow labourer of man and the
minister of Ceres: wherefore the ancients, holding him inviolable,
made it a capital offence to kill an ox.[136] Both Attica and
Peloponnesus bear witness of the regard in which the ox was held: for
he who first yoked oxen to the plough is celebrated at Athens under
the name Buzyges and at Argos under that of Homogyros."

"I know," replied Vaccius, "the importance of the ox and that his
very name is used to signify that quality, as in words like [Greek:
bousukon](big fig), [Greek: boupais](a big boy), [Greek: boulimos] (a
ravenous hunger),[Greek: boopis] (large eyed), and again that a certain
large grape is called _bumamma_ (cow teat). Furthermore, I know it was
the form of a bull that Jupiter assumed when he wooed Europa and bore
her across the sea from Phoenicia: that it was a bull which protected
the children of Neptune and Melanippe from being crushed in a stable
by a herd of cattle: I know too that the bees which give the sweetest
honey are generated from the carcase of an ox, whence the Greeks call
them [Greek: bougeneis] (born of an ox), an expression which Plautius
latinized on the occasion where the praetor Hirrius, was accused at
Rome of having libeled the Senate. 'But be of good cheer, I will
give you at least as great satisfaction as did he who wrote the
Bugonia.'[137]

"In the first place there are said to be four ages of cattle,
during which they are known by the successive designation of calf
(_vitulus_), yearling (_juvencus_), prime (_novellus_) and aged
(_vetulus_). These designations are further divided according to sex,
as bull-calf and heifer-calf, or bull and cow.

"A cow which is sterile is called _taura_: when pregnant, _horda_,
from which last name a certain festival is called the _hordicalia
(Fordicidia_) because cows in calf are sacrificed upon it.

"He who wishes to buy a herd of neat cattle should take care first that
they are of an age to produce, rather than past breeding; that they
are well set up, clean limbed, square bodied, large, with black horns
and broad brows, large black eyes, hairy ears, flat cheek bones,
snub-nosed, not hump-backed but rather with the back bone slightly
roached, wide nostrils, blackish lips, a neck muscular and long with
dew laps hanging from it, the barrel large and well ribbed, t