In this hut lived twenty-five men, their nether limbs clad in goat skins, with the hair outwards, realizing the satyrs of ancient fable: but they had no nymphs to tease, nor shepherdesses to woo, and never 'sat all day Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love To amorous Phillida.' They were a band of celibates without the vows. In such huts they dwell all the year round, flaying lambs or shearing sheep, living on bread, _ricotta_ and water, very rarely tasting meat or wine and sleeping on shelves ranged round the hut, like berths in a ship's cabin. Thus are the dreams of Arcadia dispelled by realities."] [Footnote 151: In modern Italy the shepherds do not take their women with them to the _saltus_, but, as Dennis says, lead there the life of "celibates, without the vows."] [Footnote 152: In the Venitian provinces of Italy today the women are still seen at work in the harvest and rice fields with their babes in their bosoms: but the most amazing modern spectacle of this kind is that of women coaling ships in the East, carrying their unhappy youngsters up and down the coal ladders throughout the work.] [Footnote 153: The author of _Maison Rustique_ did not agree with Varro in this opinion. I quote from Surflet's translation of 1606 (I, 7): "And for writing and reading it skilleth not whether he be able to doe it or no, or that he should have any other charge to looke unto besides that of yours, or else that he should use another to set downe in writing such expences as he hath laid out: for paper will admit any thing."] [Footnote 154: This temple and fig tree stood in Rome at the foot of the Palatine hill, in the neighbourhood of the Lupercal. It was under this fig tree that Romulus and Remus were supposed to have been suckled by the wolf.] [Footnote 155: 'That is the beste grease that is to a shepe, to grease hym in the mouthe with good meate,' says Sir Anthony Fitzherbert.] [Footnote 156: Pliny (VII, 59) says that most nations learn the use of barbers next after that of letters, but that the Romans were late in this respect. Varro himself wore a beard, as appears on the coin he struck during the war with the Pirates. It is reproduced in Smiths _Dict. Gr. and Rom. Biog_., III, p. 1227.] [Footnote 157: Cowper's verse in _The Task_ seems to be all that is happy in the way of translation of Varro's text, "divina natura dedit agros, ars humana aedificavit urbes": but Cowley's "God the first garden made, and the first city Cain" was probably Cowper's source. Cowley was a reader of Varro, as his pleasant and sane essay _Of Agriculture_ shows.]