The superintendence and care of
these is the work of the buttero. Large flocks of sheep and goats
also are fed upon the herbage of the Campagna. But the shepherds who
tend them are quite a different race of men from the buttero, and are
deemed, especially by himself, to hold a far inferior position in the
social scale. And, as is ever the case, social prejudice justifies
itself by producing the phenomenon it has declared to exist. The
shepherd of the Campagna, having long been deemed the very lowest of
the low, has become such in reality. Clad in the dried but untanned
skin of one of his flock, he has almost the appearance of a savage,
and, unless common fame belies him, he is the savage he looks. The
buttero looks down upon him from a very pinnacle of social elevation
in the eyes of every inhabitant of the towns and villages around Rome,
especially in those of the youthful female population. While the poor
shepherd, shaggy as his sheep, wild-looking as his goats, and savage
as his dogs, squalid, fever-stricken and yellow, spending long weeks
and even months in solitude amid the desolation of the Campagna,
saunters after his sauntering flock, crawling afoot, the gallant
buttero, in the saddle from morning to night, represents that
aristocracy which among all uncivilized races and in all uncivilized
times is the attribute of the mounted as distinguished from the
unmounted portion of mankind.
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