In the North-Western portion of Cisalpine Gaul the wool was generally coarse, and according to Strabo (_l. c._) the garments made of it were used by the Italians for the ordinary clothing of their domestic establishments. Nevertheless, black wool of superior value was grown at Polentia, now Polenza, on the Stura, which is a tributary of the Po[339]. The following two Epigrams of Martial (_l._ xiv. 157 and 158.) allude to the use of the dark wool of Polentia for mourning and for the dress of inferior domestic servants. Polentine Wools. 1. Not wools alone, that wear the face of woe; Her goblets once did proud Polentia show. 2. Our sable hue to croplings may belong, That tend the table, not of primal throng. _Elphinston’s Translation._ [339] Pliny, L. viii. Columella, vii. 2. To these testimonies may be added Silius Italicus de Bello Punico, l. viii. 597. The country people about Modena and in other parts of the Northern Apennines still wear _undyed_ woollen cloth of a gray color. Muratori quotes from the statutes of the city of Modena, A. D. 1327, a law to _prevent the makers of such cloth from mixing with their gray wool the hair of oxen, asses, or other animals_[340]. [340] Dissertazioni sopra le Antichità Italiane, Diss. 30. tomo ii. 48, 49, 4to edition. This author in his 21st Dissertation endeavors to assign reasons for the decline of the modern Italians in the growth and manufacture of wool. Before quitting Italy we may properly inquire, whence and how came the practice of sheep-breeding into Great Britain. It has already been observed that the very improved state of the art at Tarentum may be in part ascribed to the intercourse of its inhabitants with the Milesians. The reader will have noticed the fact that the worship of Pan was introduced into Italy from Arcadia by Evander, from which circumstance it may be reasonably inferred, that improvements in the management of sheep were also introduced at the same time. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Evander with his companions was said by the Romans to have migrated to Latium _about sixty years before the Trojan war_[341]. The same historian alleges that this colony taught in Italy the use of letters, of instrumental music and other arts, established laws, and brought some degree of refinement instead of the former savage mode of life. The story of the birth of Romulus and Remus supposes sheep-breeding to have been practiced at the period of that event, and in a state of society similar to that which we have found prevailing further eastward; for it is stated, that Faustulus, who discovered them, kept the king’s flocks. He was “magister regii pecoris[342].” [341] Hist. Rom. l. i. p. 20, 21. ed. R. Stephani, Par. 1546. folio.