Nor would a marriage with the daughter of a
small artisan of the towns be deemed a very acceptable one. The
chances are that the young centaur marries a girl of his own centaur
breed, and all the prejudice and barriers of caste are thus propagated
and intensified. It must not be supposed that the buttero or his
family lives on the malaria-stricken plains which his occupation
requires him to be constantly riding over. The wretched shepherd is
constrained to do so, and sleeps in the vicinity of his flock,
finding, if he can, the shelter of a ruined tomb or of the broken arch
of an aqueduct, or even of a cave from which _pozzolana_ has been dug,
and strives to exorcise the malaria fiend by kindling a big fire and
sleeping with his head in the thick smoke of it. But the buttero, well
mounted, to whom it is a small matter to ride eight or ten miles to
his home every night, lives with his family either in Rome or in one
of the small towns on the slopes of the hills which enclose the
Campagna. And it is thus that these strikingly picturesque figures may
often be seen traversing the streets and _piazze_ of Rome, and
especially of those parts of it which lie on the far side of the Tiber
or to the southward of the Quirinal Hill and the Piazza di Venezia.
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