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Animal Rights History Timeline » [BCE-CE] Antiquity » Ovid

Ovid

Fasti

[1st c.] Ovid, Fasti, translated by James George Frazer, Loeb Classical Library Volume (Harvard University Press, 1959;Online at Archive.org).

Death claims the sheep: shameless it cropped the holy herbs which a pious beldame used to offer to the rural gods. What creature is safe, when even the wool-bearing sheep and ploughing oxen lay down their lives upon the altars? (29)

Ye birds, the solace of the countryside, ye haunters of the woods, ye harmless race, that built your nests and warm your eggs under your plumes, and with glib voices utter descant sweet, ye were inviolate once. (33)

What but bland pleasure brings into being the whole brood of birds? Cattle, too, would not come together, were loose love wanting. The savage ram butts at the wether, but would not hurt the forehead of the ewe he loves. The bull, whom all the woodland pastures, all the groves of dread, puts off his fierceness and follows the heifer. The same force preserves all living things under the broad bosom of the deep, and fills the waters with unnumbered fish. (195)