Cum accepissem condicionem et meae partes essent primae, non quo non ego pecuarias in Italia habeam, sed non omnes qui habent citharam sunt citharoedi: Igitur, inquam, et homines et pecudes cum semper fuisse sit necesse natura'sive enim aliquod fuit principium generandi animalium, ut putavit Thales Milesius et Zeno Citieus, sive contra principium horum extitit nullum, ut credidit Pythagoras Samius et Aristoteles Stagerites'necesse est humanae vitae ab summa memoria gradatim descendisse ad hanc aetatem, ut scribit Dicaearchus, et summum gradum fuisse naturalem, cum viverent homines ex his rebus, quae inviolata ultro ferret terra, ex hac vita in secundam descendisse pastoriciam, e feris atque agrestibus ut arboribus ac virgultis decarpendo glandem, arbutum, mora, poma colligerent ad usum, sic ex animalibus cum propter eandem utilitatem, quae possent, silvestria deprenderent ac concluderent et mansuescerent.
When I had accepted the proposal and was to open the play'not that I do not own flocks myself in Italy, but not all who own a harp are harpers'I began: As it is a necessity of nature that people and flocks have always existed (whether there was an original generating principle of animals, as Thales of Miletus and Zeno of Citium thought, or, on the contrary, as was the view of Pythagoras of Samos and of Aristotle of Stagira, there was no point of beginning for them), it is a necessity that from the remotest antiquity of human life they have come down, as Dicaearchus teaches, step by step to our age, and that the most distant stage was that state of nature in which man lived on those products which the virgin earth brought forth of her own accord; they descended from this stage into the second, the pastoral, in which they gathered for their use acorns, arbutus berries, mulberries, and other fruits by plucking them from wild and uncultivated trees and bushes, and likewise caught, shut up, and tamed such wild animals as they could for the like advantage.
final_alignments\Varro_Agriculture_Book2.json