"In the matter of breeding, the boar should be separated from the herd for two months before the season, which should be arranged between the rising of the west wind and the vernal equinox, for thus it will befall that the sows (which are big for four months) will have their litters in summer when forage is plenty. Sows should not be bred under a year old, but it is better to wait until the twentieth month so that they may have pigs at two years. They are said to breed regularly for seven years after the first litter. During the breeding season they should be given access to muddy ditches and sloughs, so that they may wallow in the mud, which is the same relaxation to them that a bath is to a man. When all the sows are stinted, the boars should be segregated 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."