Homer describes these cattle and some 3,000 years later, yesterday, I passed them grazing in a field in Switzerland as we drove to Geneva on a sunny Sunday afternoon. It was unusual to see horned cattle and these were distinctly curved, and we commented on them. Then this morning I find them again in Homer.
‘… but you, Phoibus, herded his shambling horn-curved cattle
along the spurs of Ida with all her folds and forests.’
And 3,000 years from now? Will they still be grazing?
Source: Homer, The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1961 (1951)), book XXI, p. 430
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