a picture of savage life

“70. Beneventum was built by Diomede, the nephew of Meleager (Cluver, tom. ii. p. 1195, 1196). The Calydonian hunt is a picture of savage life (Ovid. Metamorph. l. viii.). Thirty or forty heroes were leagues against a hog: the brutes (not the hog) quarreled with a lady for the head.”

(Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. IV, chapter XLI; p. 646 in volume 2 of the Penguin edition.)

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