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It was believed that crows had not only torn with their beaks some gold in the Capitol, but had even eaten it. At Antium mice gnawed a golden crown. An immense quantity of locusts filled the whole country around Capua, nor could it be made appear satisfactorily whence they came. At Reate a foal was produced with five feet.
A further proof that country life was earlier than that of town is found in the name of the town of Thebes, which was bestowed from the character of its situation rather than from the name of its founder: for in the ancient language, and among the Aeolians who had their origin in Boeotia, a small hill is called tebas without the aspirate; and in the Sabine country, where Pelasgians from Greece settled, they still have the same locution: witness that hill called Tebae which stands in the Sabine country on the via Salaria not far from the mile stone of Reate.
"Of course, I do," Axius replied, "for it is there that I am wont to divide the day in summer on my way from Reate to town and to spend the night when I come thence in winter."
It is true that we have hardly any evidence of this but tradition; but when Varro, in one of the precious fragments of his book on education, describes his own bringing up in his Sabine home at Reate, we may be fairly sure that it adequately represents that of the old Roman farmer.
No one had seen Annius in the neighborhood, yet it is generally assumed that he managed to abduct Greia in broad daylight without any one sighting him either coming or going: which, if the fact, would be an almost miraculous feat. "Certainly Greia has disappeared. The magistrates of Reate searched Annius' farmstead, but found neither Greia nor, indeed, any trace of Annius himself.
"At Reate, for some years past, there lived a worthy couple, freedman and freedwoman of Vedius Vindex. The husband died more than a year ago, leaving a young and childless widow, named Greia Posis, possessed of a good town-house and of three small farms not far out in the country. Naturally as she was comely and well-off, Greia soon had suitors aplenty.
Where we still meet with the urbane tone of conversation, as in Varro's Satires and Cicero's Letters, it is an echo of the old fashion which was not yet so obsolete in Reate and Arpinum as in Rome. Germs of State Training-Schools
Although Helvidius was on Greia's side of our local feud, while Annius was on the other, idlers at Reate were laying wagers that Annius would win Greia, considering him most in her favor. "Recently, however, Greia had some sort of a quarrel with Annius, and announced her intention of marrying Helvidius.
It is customary to construct this kind of fence along the public roads or along streams. Mounds are some times built without ditches and are called walls, as in the country around Reate. The fourth and last kind of fence is of built up masonry.
He who wishes to establish a good herd of asses should see in the first place that he procures jacks and jennies of prime age so that they may breed as long as possible, strong, well made in all parts, of full body and of a good breed, that is to say derived from those localities whence the best specimens come; thus the Peloponnesians, so far as possible, buy asses bred in Arcadia and we in Italy those from the valley of Reate.
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