You may still find the legendary shepherds here--curly-haired
striplings, reclining _sub tegmine fagi_ in the best Theocritean style,
and piping wondrous melodies to their flocks. These have generally come
up for the summer season from the Ionian lowlands. Or you may encounter
yet more primitive creatures, forest boys, clad in leather, with wild
eyes and matted locks, that take an elvish delight in misdirecting you.
These are the Lucanians of old. "They bring them up from childhood in
the woods among the shepherds," says Justinus, "without servants, and
even without any clothes to cover them, or to lie upon, that from their
early years they may become inured to hardiness and frugality, and have
no intercourse with the city. They live upon game, and drink nothing but
water or milk." But the majority of modern Sila shepherds are shrewd
fellows of middle age (many of them have been to America), who keep
strict business accounts for their masters of every ounce of cheese and
butter produced. The local cheese, which Cassiodorus praises in one of
his letters, is the _cacciacavallo_ common all over South Italy; the
butter is of the kind which has been humorously, but quite wrongly,
described by various travellers.

Although the old wolves are shot and killed by spring guns and dynamite
while the young ones are caught alive in steel traps and other
appliances, their numbers are still formidable enough to perturb the
pastoral folks. One is therefore surprised to see what a poor breed of
dogs they keep; scraggy mongrels that run for their lives at the mere
sight of a wolf who can, and often does, bite them into two pieces with
one snap of his jaws. They tell me that there is a government reward for
every wolf killed, but it is seldom paid; whoever has the good fortune
to slay one of these beasts, carries the skin as proof of his prowess
from door to door, and receives a small present everywhere--half a
franc, or a cheese, or a glass of wine.