r centuries they have not had a thought of
their own.... I do not speak of the cat, to whom we are nothing more
than a too large and uneatable prey: the ferocious cat whose side long
contempt tolerates us only as encumbering parasites in our own homes.
She at least curses us in her mysterious heart: but all the others
live beside us as they might live beside a rock or a tree."

The effective use of this thesis in the scene of the revolt of the
domestic animals in the Blue Bird will be remembered.]

[Footnote 145: This method of securing the faithful affection of a dog
is solemnly recommended, without acknowledgment to Saserna, in the
seventeenth century editions of the _Maison Rustique_ (I, 27).]

[Footnote 146: Keil happily points out that in his book on the Latin
language (VII, 31), Varro quotes the "ancient proverb" to which he
here refers, viz.: "canis caninam non est" dog doesn't eat dog.]

[Footnote 147: Aristotle (_H.A._ VI, 20) says that puppies are blind
from twelve to seventeen days, depending upon the season of the year
at which they are born. Pliny (_H N._ VIII, 62) says from seven to
twenty days, depending upon the supply of the mother's milk.]

[Footnote 148: It was among these hardy shepherd slaves that Spartacus
recruited his army in 72-71 B.C., as did Caelius and Milo in 48 B.C.,
while their descendants were the brigands who infested Southern Italy
even in the nineteenth century.]

[Footnote 149: Gaius, I, 119, II, 24, 41, describes in detail the
processes here referred to by which a slave was acquired under the
Roman law.]

[Footnote 150: Dennis, in his _Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_, draws
a picture of modern Italy which may serve to illustrate Varro's sketch
of the mountain life of the shepherds of his day:

"Occasionally in my wanderings on this site (Veii) I have entered,
either from curiosity or for shelter, one of the _capanne_ scattered
over the downs. These are tall conical thatched huts which the
shepherds make their winter abode. For in Italy, the lowlands being
generally unhealthy in summer, the flocks are driven to the mountains
about May, and as soon as the great heats are past are brought back to
the rich pastures of the plains. It is a curious sight, the interior
of a _capanna_, and affords an agreeable diversity to the antiquity
hunter. A little boldness is requisite to pass through the pack of
dogs, white as new dropt lambs, but large and fierce as wolves, which,
were the