Quotenor during its life can it afford any other service, as the other animals do, which either afford a vehicle for riding, or aid in the cultivation of the fields, or draw waggons by their neck, or carry burthens on their back, or furnish a covering with their skins, or abound with a supply of milk, or keep watch for guarding our houses.
This is patently false. Pigs provide excellent services. They clear tenacious, thorny and invasive weeds by digging up the roots; they turn and till the soil; they produce manure for fertilization; they are used to establish new ponds, for by their wallowing they compact and seal the ground to hold water; in Florida they are kept to drive off snakes, which protects people and animals (especially children and young); they are used to hunt for truffles; In medieval Europe, and in New York City as late as the nineteenth century, pigs were used to clean city streets of thrown out food.
And they are curiously intelligent and companionable. I know of at least one instance where a pig saved a woman's life. She had a debilitating heart attack, and when her pig found her he managed to get out to the nearby road where he flagged down a car! The driver got out and followed the pig back to where the woman had collapsed, and she was rushed to a hospital.
If Lactantius was incapable of imagining a use for this noble beast, he ought to have let the pig do his thinking for him!