第16章 GEORGIC III(5)

Of sickness, too, the causes and the signs I'll teach thee. Loathly scab assails the sheep, When chilly showers have probed them to the quick, And winter stark with hoar-frost, or when sweat Unpurged cleaves to them after shearing done, And rough thorns rend their bodies. Hence it is Shepherds their whole flock steep in running streams, While, plunged beneath the flood, with drenched fell, The ram, launched free, goes drifting down the tide.

Else, having shorn, they smear their bodies o'er With acrid oil-lees, and mix silver-scum And native sulphur and Idaean pitch, Wax mollified with ointment, and therewith Sea-leek, strong hellebores, bitumen black.

Yet ne'er doth kindlier fortune crown his toil, Than if with blade of iron a man dare lance The ulcer's mouth ope: for the taint is fed And quickened by confinement; while the swain His hand of healing from the wound withholds, Or sits for happier signs imploring heaven.

Aye, and when inward to the bleater's bones The pain hath sunk and rages, and their limbs By thirsty fever are consumed, 'tis good To draw the enkindled heat therefrom, and pierce Within the hoof-clefts a blood-bounding vein.

Of tribes Bisaltic such the wonted use, And keen Gelonian, when to Rhodope He flies, or Getic desert, and quaffs milk With horse-blood curdled.

Seest one far afield Oft to the shade's mild covert win, or pull The grass tops listlessly, or hindmost lag, Or, browsing, cast her down amid the plain, At night retire belated and alone;With quick knife check the mischief, ere it creep With dire contagion through the unwary herd.

Less thick and fast the whirlwind scours the main With tempest in its wake, than swarm the plagues Of cattle; nor seize they single lives alone, But sudden clear whole feeding grounds, the flock With all its promise, and extirpate the breed.

Well would he trow it who, so long after, still High Alps and Noric hill-forts should behold, And Iapydian Timavus' fields, Ay, still behold the shepherds' realms a waste, And far and wide the lawns untenanted.

Here from distempered heavens erewhile arose A piteous season, with the full fierce heat Of autumn glowed, and cattle-kindreds all And all wild creatures to destruction gave, Tainted the pools, the fodder charged with bane.

Nor simple was the way of death, but when Hot thirst through every vein impelled had drawn Their wretched limbs together, anon o'erflowed A watery flux, and all their bones piecemeal Sapped by corruption to itself absorbed.

Oft in mid sacrifice to heaven- the white Wool-woven fillet half wreathed about his brow-Some victim, standing by the altar, there Betwixt the loitering carles a-dying fell:

Or, if betimes the slaughtering priest had struck, Nor with its heaped entrails blazed the pile, Nor seer to seeker thence could answer yield;Nay, scarce the up-stabbing knife with blood was stained, Scarce sullied with thin gore the surface-sand.