as Acarnania were entrusted
to Plotius and Varro." It is difficult to understand Varro's own
reference to Delos, but Appian makes clear how it happened that Varro
was stationed on the coast of Epirus and so fell in with the company
of "half Greek shepherds" who are the _dramatis personae_ of the
second book. As the scene of the first book was laid in a temple of
Tellus, so this relating to live stock is cast in a temple of Pales,
the goddess of shepherds, on the occasion of the festival of the
Parilia, and the names of the characters have a punning reference to
live stock.]

[Footnote 109: The codices here contain an interpolation of the words
"HIC INTERMISIMUS," to indicate that a part of the text is missing,
with which judgment of some early student of the archetype Victorius,
Scaliger and Ursinus, as well as their successors among the
commentators on Varro, have all agreed. It is a pleasure to record the
agreement on this point, because it is believed to be unique: but
many precedents for plunging the reader _in medias res_, as does the
surviving text, might be found in the modern short story of the
artist in style. As M. Boissier points out Varro might have cited the
beginning of the Odyssey as a precedent for this.]

[Footnote 110: This is a paraphase of a favorite locution of Homer's
heroes, whose characteristic modesty does not, however, permit them
to apply it to themselves, as Varro does. Thus in _Iliad_, VII, 114,
Agamemnon advises Menelaos not to venture against Hector, whom "even
Achilles dreadeth to meet in battle, wherein is the warrior's glory,
and Achilles is better far than thou."]

[Footnote 111: Virgil (Aen. VII, 314) made a fine line out of this
tradition, endowing the sturdy race of Fauns and Nymphs who inhabited
the land of Saturn before the Golden Age, with the qualities of the
trees on whose fruit they subsisted, "gensque virum truncis et duro
robore nata."]

[Footnote 112: In the registers of the censors every thing from which
the public revenues were derived was set down under the head of
_pascua_, or "pasture lands," because for a long time the pasture
lands were the only source of such revenue. Cf. Pliny, _H.N._ XVIII,
3.]

[Footnote 113: Olisippo is the modern Lisbon. This tradition about the
mares of the region is repeated by Virgil (Geo. III, 272) by Columella
(VI, 27) and by Pliny (VIII, 67). Professor Ridgeway in _The Origin
and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse_ describes it a