It does not appear that many of the commentators on Virgil have

taken the trouble to study Varro thoroughly. They are usually better

scholars than farmers.]

[Footnote 7: It is not remarkable that Virgil failed to make

acknowledgment to Varro in the _Georgics_ when he failed to make

acknowledgment to Homer in the _Aeneid_. See Petrarch's _Epistle to

Homer_ for a loyal but vain attempt to justify this neglect.]

[Footnote 8: _Cf_. W.H. Myers' _Classical Essays_, p. 110: "For in the

face of some German criticism it is necessary to repeat that in order

to judge poetry it is, before all things, necessary to enjoy it. We

may all desire that historical and philological science should push

her dominion into every recess of human action and human speech, but

we must utter some protest when the very heights of Parnassus are

invaded by a spirit which surely is not science, but her unmeaning

shadow; a spirit which would degrade every masterpiece of human genius

into the mere pabulum of hungry professors, and which values a poet's

text only as a field for the rivalries of sterile pedantry and

arbitrary conjecture."]

[Footnote 9: It was perhaps this encomium upon the farmer at the

expense of the banker which inspired Horace's friend Alfius to

withdraw his capital from his banking business and dream a delicious

idyl of a simple carefree country life: but, it will be recalled

(Epode II, the famous "Beatus ille qui procul negotiis") that Alfius,

like many a modern amateur farmer, recruited from town, soon repented

that he had ever listened to the alluring call of "back to the land"

and after a few weeks of disillusion in the country, returned to town

and sought to get his money out again at usury.

Columella (I, praef.) is not content with Cato's contrast of the

virtue of the farmer with the iniquity of the banker, but he brings

in the lawyer's profession for animadversion also. This, he says, the

ancient Romans used to term a canine profession, because it consisted

in barking at the rich.]

[Footnote 10: The Roman numerals at the beginning of the paragraphs

indicate the chapters of Cato from which they are translated. If

Cato had not pretended to despise every thing which smacked of Greek

literary art he might have edited and arranged his material, in which

event his book would have been easier to read than it is, and no less

valuable. Modern scholarship would not now venture to perform such an

office for such a result, because it involves tampering with a text

(as who should say, shooting a fox!) and yet modern scholarship

wonders at the decay of classical studies in an impatient age. At the

risk of anathema the present version has attempted to group Cato's

material, and in so doing has omitted most of those portions which are

now of merely curious interest.]

[Footnote 11: This, of course, means buying at a high price, except

in extraordinary cases. There is another system of agriculture which

admits of the pride of making two blades of grass grow where none was

before, and the profit which comes of buying cheap and selling dear.

This is farming for improvement, an art which was well described two

hundred years before Cato. Xenophon (_Economicus_ XX, 22) says:

"For those who are able to attend to their affairs, however, and

who will apply themselves to agriculture earnestly, my lather both

practised himself and taught me a most successful method of making

profit; for he would never allow me to buy ground already cultivated,

but exhorted me to purchase such as from want of care or want of means

in those who had possessed it, was left untilled and unplanted. He

used to say that well cultivated land cost a great sum of money and

admitted of no improvement, and he considered that land which is

unsusceptible of improvement did not give the same pleasure to the

owner as other land, but he thought that whatever a person had or

bought up that was continually growing better afforded him the highest

gratification."]

[Footnote 12: Every rural community in the Eastern part of the United

States has grown familiar with the contrast between the intelligent

amateur, who, while endeavoring earnestly to set an example of good

agriculture, fails to make expenses out of his land, and the born

farmer who is self-supporting in the practice of methods contemned

by the agricultural colleges. Too often the conclusion is drawn that

scientific agriculture will not pay; but Cato puts his finger on the

true reason. The man who does not depend on his land for his living

too often permits his farm to get what Cato calls the "spending

habit." Pliny (_H.N._ XVIII, 7) makes some pertinent observations on

the subject:

"I may possibly appear guilty of some degree of rashness in making

mention of a maxim of the ancients which will very probably be looked

upon as quite incredible, 'that nothing is so disadvantageous as to

cultivate land in the highest style of perfection.'"

And he illustrates by the example of a Roman gentleman, who, like

Arthur Young in eighteenth century England, wasted a large fortune in

an attempt to bring his lands to perfect cultivation. "To cultivate

land well is absolutely necessary," Pliny continues, "but to cultivate

it in the very highest style is mere extravagance, unless, indeed, the

work is done by the hands of a man's own family, his tenants, or those

whom he is obliged to keep at any rate."]

[Footnote 13: In this practice has been the delight of men of affairs

of all ages who turn to agriculture for relaxation. Horace cites it

with telling effect in the ode (III, 5) in which he describes the

noble serenity of mind with which Regulus returned to the torture

and certain death which awaited him at Carthage: and Homer makes an

enduring picture of it in the person of the King supervising his

fall ploughing, which Hephsestus wrought upon the shield of Achilles

(_Iliad_, XVIII, 540). "Furthermore, he set in the shield a soft fresh

ploughed field, rich tilth and wide, the third time ploughed, and many

ploughers therein drove their yokes to and fro as they wheeled about.

Whensoever they came to the boundary of the field and turned, then

would a man come to each and give into his hands a goblet of sweet

wine: while others would be turning back along the furrows, fain to

reach the boundary of the deep tilth, ... and among them the King was

standing in silence, with his staff, rejoicing in his heart."]

[Footnote 14: This advice to sell the worn out oxen and the sick slaves

justly excited Plutarch's generous scorn, and has been made the text

of a sweeping denunciation by Mommsen of the practice of husbandry by

men of affairs in Cato's time. "The whole system," says Mommsen, "was

pervaded by the utterly unscrupulous spirit characteristic of

the power of capital." And he adds, "If we have risen to that

little-to-be-envied elevation of thought which values no feature of

an economy save the capital invested in it, we cannot deny to the

management of the Roman estates the praise of consistency, energy,

punctuality, frugality and solidity." Without any desire to defend

Cato, one may suggest, out of an experience in a kind of farm

management not very different from that Cato pictures, that it is

doubtful whether even Cato himself was quite as economical and

efficient, and so as capitalistic in his farming, as he advises others

to be: certainly a whole race of contemporary country gentlemen was

not equal to it. It is much easier to write about business-like

farming than to practise it.]

[Footnote 15: Hesiod (W. & D. 338) had already given this same advice

to the Greek farmer:

"Invite the man that loves thee to a feast, but let alone thine enemy,

and especially invite him that dwelleth near thee, for if, mark you,

any thing untoward shall have happened at home neighbours are wont to

come ungirt, but kinsfolk gird themselves first." This agreement of

the Socialist Hesiod with the Capitalist Cato is remarkable only as

it illustrates that both systems when wisely expounded rest on human

nature. That upon which they here agree is the foundation of the

modern European societies for rural co-operative credit which

President Taft recommended to the American people. These societies,

says the bulletin of the International Institute of Agriculture

published at Rome in 1912, rest on three chief safeguards:

(a) That membership is confined to persons residing within a small

district, and, therefore, the members are personally known to one

another;

(b) That the members, being mutually responsible, it will be to the

interest of all members to keep an eye upon a borrower and to see that

he makes proper use of the money lent to him;

(c) That in like manner, it is to the interest of all members to help

a member when he is in difficulties.]

[Footnote 16: This was an estate of average size, probably within

Virgil's precept, (_Georgic_ II, 412). "Laudato ingentia rura, exiguum

colito." Some scholars have deemed this phrase a quotation from Cato,

but it is more likely derived from Mago the Carthaginian who is

reported to have said: "Imbecilliorem agrum quam agricolam, esse

debere,"--the farmer should be bigger than his farm.]

[Footnote 17: The philosophy of Cato's plan, of laying out a farm is

found in the agricultural history of the Romans down to the time of

the Punic wars. Mommsen (II, 370) gives the facts, and Ferrero in his

first volume makes brilliant use of them. There is sketched the old

peasant aristocrat living on his few acres, his decay and the

creation of comparatively large estates worked by slaves in charge of

overseers, which followed the conquest of the Italian states about

B.C. 300. This was the civilization in which Cato had been reared,

but in his time another important change was taking place. The Roman

frontier was again widened by the conquest of the Mediterranean basin:

the acquisition of Sicily and Sardinia ended breadstuff farming as the

staple on the Italian peninsular. The competition of the broad and

fertile acres of those great Islands had the effect in Italy which the

cultivation of the Dakota wheat lands had upon the grain farming of

New York and Virginia. About 150 B.C. the vine and the olive became

the staples of Italy and corn was superseded. Although this was not

accomplished until after Cato's death, he foresaw it, and recommended

that a farm be laid out accordingly, and his scheme of putting one's

reliance upon the vine and the olive was doubtless very advanced

doctrine, when it first found expression.]

[Footnote 18: Pliny quotes Cato as advising to buy what others have

built rather than build oneself, and thus, as he says, enjoy the

fruits of another's folly. The _cacoethes aedificandi_ is a familiar

disease among country gentlemen.]

[Footnote 19: Columella (I,4) makes the acute observation that the

country house should also be agreeable to the owner's wife if he

wishes to get the full measure of enjoyment out of it. Mago, the

Carthaginian, advised to, "if you buy a farm, sell your house in town,

lest you be tempted to prefer the cultivation of the urban gods to

those of the country."]

[Footnote 20: According to German scholarship the accepted text of

Cato's version of this immemorial epigram is a model of the brevity

which is the test of wit, "Frons occipitio prior est." Pliny probably

quoting from memory, expands it to "Frons domini plus prodest quam

occípitíum." Palladius (I, 6) gives another version: "Praesentia

domini provectus est agri." It is found in some form in almost every

book on agriculture since Cato, until we reach the literature in which

science has taken the place of wisdom--in the Byzantine _Geoponica_,

the Italian _Crescenzi_, the Dutch _Heresbach_, the French _Maison

Rustique_, and the English _Gervase Markkam. Poor Richard's Almanack_

gives it twice, as "the foot of a master is the best manure" and

"the eye of a master will do more work than both his hands." It is

perennial in its appeal. The present editor saw it recently in the

German comic paper _Fliegende Blätter_. But the jest is much older

than Cato. It appears in Aeschylus, _Persae_, 171 and Xenophon employs

it in _Oeconomicus_ (XII, 20):

"The reply attributed to the barbarian," added Ischomachus, "appears

to me to be exceedingly to the purpose, for when the King of Persia

having met with a fine horse and wishing to have it fattened as soon

as possible, asked one of those who were considered knowing about

horses what would fatten a horse soonest, it is said that he answered

'the master's eye.'"]

[Footnote 21: The English word "orchard" scarcely translates

_arbustum_, but every one who has been in Italy will recall the

endless procession of small fields of maize and rye and alfalfa

through which serried ranks of mulberry or feathery elm trees, linked

with the charming drop and garland of the vines, seem to dance toward

one in the brilliant sunlight, like so many Greek maidens on a frieze.

These are _arbusta_.]

[Footnote 22: Cato was a strong advocate of the cabbage; he called

it the best of the vegetables and urged that it be planted in every

garden for health and happiness. Horace records (Odes. III, 21, 11)

that old Cato's virtue was frequently warmed with wine, and Cato

himself explains (CLVI) how this could be accomplished without loss

of dignity, for, he says, if, after you have dined well, you will eat

five cabbage leaves they will make you feel as if you had had nothing

to drink, so that you can drink as much more as you wish--"bibesque

quantum voles!"

This was an ancient Egyptian precaution which the Greeks had learned.

Cf. Athenaeus, I, 62.]

[Footnote 23: Henry Home, Lord Kames, a Scots judge of the eighteenth

century, whom Dr. Johnson considered a better farmer than judge and a

better judge than scholar, but who had many of the characteristics of

our _priscus_ Cato, argues (following an English tradition which

had previously been voiced by Walter of Henley and Sir Anthony

Fitzherbert) in his ingenious _Gentleman Farmer_ against the expense

of ploughing with horses and urges a return to oxen. He points out

that horses involve a large original investment, are worn out in farm

work, and after their prime steadily depreciate in value; while, on

the other hand, the ox can be fattened for market when his usefulness

as a draught animal is over, and then sell for more than his original

cost; that he is less subject to infirmities than the horse; can

be fed per tractive unit more economically and gives more valuable

manure. These are strong arguments where the cost of human labour is

small and economical farm management does not require that the time of

the ploughman shall be limited if the unit cost of ploughing is to be

reasonable. The ox is slow, but in slave times he might reasonably

have been preferred to the horse. Today Lord Kames, (or even old

Hesiod, who urged that a ploughman of forty year and a yoke of eight

year steers be employed because they turned a more deliberate and so a

better furrow) would be considering the economical practicability of

the gasolene motor as tractive power for a gang of "crooked" ploughs.]

[Footnote 24: Cato adds a long list of implements and other necessary

equipment.]

[Footnote 25: The Roman overseer was usually a superior, and often a

much indulged, slave. Cf. Horace's letter (_Epist._ I, 14) to his

overseer.]

[Footnote 26: This was the traditional wisdom which was preached also

in Virginia in slave times. In his Arator (1817) Col. John Taylor of

Caroline says of agricultural slaves:

"The best source for securing their happiness, their honesty and

their usefulness is their food.... One great value of establishing a

comfortable diet for slaves is its convenience as an instrument of

reward and punishment, so powerful as almost to abolish the thefts

which often diminish considerably the owner's ability to provide for

them."]

[Footnote 27: Reading "compitalibus in compito," literally "the cross

roads altar on festival days."]

[Footnote 28: It is evident that Cato's housekeeper would have welcomed

a visit from Mr. Roosevelt's Rural Uplift Commission. We may add to

this Sir Anthony Fitzherbert's description of the duties of a farmer's

wife in sixteenth century England:

"It is a wyues occupation to wynowe all maner of cornes, to make

malte, to wasshe and wrynge, to make heye, shere corne, and in tyme of

nede to helpe her husbande to fyll the mucke-wayne or dounge-carte,

dryue the ploughe, to loode hey, corne and suche other. And to go

or ride to the market, to sel butter, chese, mylke, egges, chekyns,

capons, hennes, pygges, gese, and all maner of cornes. And also to bye

all maner of necessarye thynges belongynge to houssholde, and to make

a trewe rekenynge and acompte to her husbande what she hath payed."

Sir Anthony Fitzherbert (1470-1538) was the English judge whose

law books are, or should be, known to all lawyers. His _Boke of

Husbandry_, published in 1534, is one of the classics of English

agriculture, and justly, for it is full of shrewd observation and

deliberate wisdom expressed in a virile style, with agreeable leaven

of piety and humour. Fitzherbert anticipated a modern poet, Henley, in

one of his most happy phrases: "Ryght so euery man is capitayne of his

owne soule". The Husbandry is best available to the modern reader in

the edition by Skeat published for the English Dialect Society in

1882.]

[Footnote 29: Cato is careful not to undertake to say how this may be

assured; another evidence of his wisdom.]

[Footnote 30: In his instructive discourse on ploughing, Columella (II,

4) gives the key to Cato's warning against ploughing land when it is

in the condition he calls rotten (_cariosa_):

"Rich land, which holds moisture a long time, should be broken up

(_proscindere_) at the season when the weather is beginning to be warm

and the weeds are developing, so that none of their seed may mature:

but it should be ploughed with such close furrows that one can with

difficulty distinguish where the plough share has been, for in that

way all the weeds are uprooted and destroyed.

"The spring ploughing should be followed up with frequent stirring

of the soil until it is reduced to dust, so that there may be no

necessity, or very little, of harrowing after the land is seeded: for

the ancient Romans said that a field was badly ploughed which had to

be harrowed after the seed had been sown.

"A farmer should himself make sure that his ploughing has been well

done, not alone by inspection, for the eye is often amused by a smooth

surface which in fact conceals clods, but also by experiment, which is

less likely to be deceived, as by driving a stout stick through the

furrows: if it penetrates the soil readily and without obstruction, it

will be evident that all the land there about is in good order: but if

some part harder than the rest resists the pressure, it will be clear

that the ploughing has been badly done. When the ploughmen see this

done from time to time they are not guilty of clod hopping.

"Hence wet land should be broken up after the Ides of April, and, when

it has been ploughed at that season, it should be worked again, after

an interval of twenty days, about the time of the solstice, which is

the eighth or ninth day before the Kalends of July, and again the

third time about the Kalends of September, for it is not the practice

of experienced farmers to till the land in the interval after the

summer solstice, unless the ground shall have been soaked with a heavy

down-pour of sudden rain, like those of winter, as does some times

happen at this season. In that event there is no reason why the fallow

should not be cultivated during the month of July. But when you do

till at this season beware lest the land be worked while it is muddy:

or when, having been sprinkled by a shower, it is in the condition

which the country people call _varia_ and _cariosa_, that is to say,

when, after a long drought, a light rain has moistened the surface of

the upturned sod but has not soaked to the bottom of the furrow.

"Those plough lands which are cultivated when they are miry are

rendered useless for an entire year--they can be neither seeded nor

harrowed nor hoed--but those which are worked when they are in the

state which has been described as varia, remain sterile for three

years on end. We should, therefore, follow a medium course and plough

when the land neither lacks moisture nor yet is deep in marsh."]

[Footnote 31: Columella (II, 13) justly says about manure, "Wherefore

if it is, as it would seem to be, the thing of the greatest value to

the farmer, I consider that it should be studied with the greatest

care, especially since the ancient authors, while they have not

altogether neglected it, have nevertheless discussed it with too

little elaboration." He goes on (II, 14) to lay down rules about the

compost heap which should be written in letters of gold in every farm

house.

"I appreciate that there are certain kinds of farms on which it is

impossible to keep either live stock or birds, yet even in such places

it is a lazy farmer who lacks manure: for he can collect leaves,

rubbish from the hedge rows, and droppings from the high ways: without

giving offence, and indeed earning gratitude, he can cut ferns from

his neighbour's land: and all these things he can mingle with the

sweepings of the courtyard: he can dig a pit, like that we have

counselled for the protection of stable manure, and there mix together

ashes, sewage, and straw, and indeed every waste thing which is swept

up on the place. But it is wise to bury a piece of oak wood in the

midst of this compost, for that will prevent venomous snakes from

lurking in it. This will suffice for a farm without live stock."

One can see in Flanders today the happy land smiling its appreciation

of farm management such as this, but what American farmer has yet

learned this kind of conservation of his natural resources.]

[Footnote 32: The occupants of the motor cars which now roll so swiftly

and so comfortably along the French national highway from Paris to

Tours, through the pleasant _pays de Beauce_, can see this admirable

and economical method of manuring still in practice. The sheep are

folded and fed at night, under the watchful eye of the shepherd

stretched at ease in his wheeled cabin, on the land which was ploughed

the day before.]

[Footnote 33: These of course are all legumes. The intelligent farmer

today sits under his shade tree and meditates comfortably upon the

least expensive and most profitable labour on his farm, the countless

millions of beneficent bacteria who, his willing slaves, are

ceaselessly at work during hot weather forming root tubercles on his

legumes, be it clover or cow peas, and so fixing for their lord the

free atmospheric nitrogen contained in the soil. As Macaulay would

say, "every school boy knows" now that leguminous root nodules are

endotrophic mycorrhiza,--but the Romans did not! Nevertheless their

empirical practice of soil improvement with legumes was quite as good

as ours. Varro (I, 23) explains the Roman method of green manuring

more fully than Cato. Columella (II, 13) insists further that if the

hay is saved the stubble of legumes should be promptly ploughed for he

says the roots will evaporate their own moisture and continue to pump

the land of its fertility unless they are at once turned over.

If the Romans followed this wise advice they were better farmers than

most of us today, for we are usually content to let the stubble dry

out before ploughing.]

[Footnote 34: Was this ensilage? The ancients had their silo pits, but

they used them chiefly as granaries, and as such they are described,

by Varro (I, 57, 63), by Columella (I, 6), and by Pliny (XVIII, 30,

73).]

[Footnote 35: The extravagant American farmer has not yet learned

to feed the leaves of trees, but in older and more economical

civilizations the practice is still observed.]

[Footnote 36: Amurca was the dregs of olive oil. Cato recommends its

use for many purposes in the economy of the farm, for a moth proof

(XCVIII), as a relish for cattle (CIII), as a fertilizer (CXXX), and

as an anointment for the threshing floor to kill weevil (XCI).]

[Footnote 37: There is a similar remedy for scratches in horses, which

is traditional in the cavalry service today, and is extraordinarily

efficacious.]

[Footnote 38: Cf. Pliny _H.N._ XVII, 267 and Fraser, _The Golden

Bough_, XI, 177. The principle is one of magical homeopathy: as the

split reed, when bound together, may cohere and heal by the medicine

of the incantation, so may the broken bone.]

[Footnote 39: These examples will serve to illustrate how far Cato's

veterinary science was behind his agriculture, and what a curious

confusion of native good sense and traditional superstition there was

in his method of caring for his live stock. On questions of preventing

malady he had the wisdom of experience, but malady once arrived he was

a simple pagan. There was a notable advance in the Roman knowledge of

how to treat sick cattle in the century after Cato. Cf. Varro, II, 5.

The words of the incantations themselves are mere sound and fury

signifying nothing, like the "counting out" rhythms used by children

at their games.]

[Footnote 40: Cato gives many recipes of household as well as

agricultural economy. Out of respect for the pure food law most of

them have been here suppressed, but these samples are ventured because

Varro mentions them and the editor is advised that some enterprising

young ladies in Wisconsin have recently had the courage to put them to

the test, and vow that they ate their handiwork! As they live to tell

the tale, it is assumed that the recipes are harmless.]

[Footnote 41: Cf. the following traditional formula as practised in

Virginia:

A VIRGINIA RECIPE FOR CURING HAMS

"Rub each ham separately with ½ teaspoonful of saltpetre (use a small

spoon); then rub each ham with a large tablespoonfulof best black

pepper; then rub each ham with a gill of molasses (black strap is

best).

Then for 1,000 lbs. of ham take

3-1/4 pecks of coarse salt,

2-1/2 lbs. of saltpetre,

2 qts. hickory ashes,

2 qts. molasses,

2 teacupfuls of red pepper.

"Mix all together on the salting table. Then rub each ham with this

mixture, and, in packing, spread some of it on each layer of ham. Use

no more salt than has been mixed. Pack skin down and let stand for

five weeks, then hang in the smoke house for five or six weeks, and

smoke in damp weather, using hickory wood.

"As a ham, however well cured, is of no use to civilized man until it

is cooked, and as this crowning mystery is seldom revealed out of

Virginia, it may not be out of place to record here the process."

A VIRGINIA RECIPE FOR COOKING HAMS

Soak over night in cold water, having first scrubbed the ham with a

small brush to remove all the pepper, saltpetre, etc., left from the

curing process.

Put on to boil next morning in tepid water, skin downwards, letting

it simmer on back of stove, never to boil hard. This takes about four

hours (or until it is done, when the ham is supposed to turn over,

skin upwards, of its own accord, as it will if the boiler is large

enough). Set aside over another night in the water it has boiled in.

The _following_ day, skin and bake in the oven, having covered the ham

well with brown sugar, basting at intervals with cider. When it is

well baked, take it out of the oven and baste another ten to twenty

minutes in the pan on top of the stove. The sugar crust should be

quite brown and crisp when done.

To be thoroughly appreciated a ham should be carved on the table, by a

pretty woman. A thick slice of ham is a crime against good breeding.]

[Footnote 42: It is interesting that Varro has realized the hope,

here expressed, that his wisdom might survive for the benefit of the

"uttermost generations of men" chiefly in the case of this treatise

on Husbandry among the many monuments of his industry and learning.

Petrarch in his _Epistle to Varro_ in that first delightful book of

Letters to Dead Authors (_de rebus familiaribus_ XXIV, 6) rehearses

the loss of Varro's books and, adapting the thought here expressed in

the text, regrets for that reason that Varro cannot be included in

that company of men "whom we love even after their death owing to

the good and righteous deeds that live after them, men who mold our

character by their teaching and comfort us by their example, when

the rest of mankind offends both our eyes and our nostrils; men who,

though they have gone hence to the common abode of all (as Plautus

says in Casina), nevertheless continue to be of service to the

living." If Petrarch had been a farmer he might have saved some of his

regret, for Varro is surely, by virtue of the _Rerum Rusticarum_, a

member of the fellowship Petrarch describes.]

[Footnote 43: Varro was essentially an antiquary and it is amusing

to observe that he is unable to suppress his learning even in his

prayers. One is reminded of the anecdote of the New England minister,

who, in the course of an unctuous prayer, proclaimed, with magisterial

authority, "Paradoxical as it may appear, O Lord, it is nevertheless

true, etc."]

[Footnote 44: Following Plato and Xenophon and Cicero, Varro cast his

books into the form of dialogues to make them entertaining ("and what

is the use of a book," thought Alice in Wonderland, "without pictures

or conversations."): for the same reason he was careful about his

local colour. Thus the scene of this first book, which relates to

agriculture proper, is laid at Rome in the temple of Earth on the

festival of the Seed Sowing, and the characters bear names of punning

reference to the tilling of the soil. Varro was strong on puns,

avowing (Cicero _Acad_. I, 2) that that form of humour made it easier

for people of small intelligence to swallow his learning.]

[Footnote 45: The story is that when Scipio captured Carthage he

distributed the Punic libraries among the native allies, reserving

only the agricultural works of Mago, which the Roman Senate

subsequently ordered to be translated into Latin, so highly were they

esteemed. Probably more real wealth was brought to Rome in the pages

of these precious volumes than was represented by all the other

plunder of Carthage. "The improving a kingdom in matter of husbandry

is better than conquering a new kingdom," says old Samuel Hartlib,

Milton's friend, in his _Legacie_. It is a curious fact that as the

Romans derived agricultural wisdom from their ancient enemies, so did

the English. Cf. Thorold Rogers' _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_.

"We owe the improvements in English agriculture to Holland. From this

country we borrowed, at the beginning of the seventeenth century,

the cultivation of winter roots, and, at that of the eighteenth, the

artificial grasses. The Dutch had practised agriculture with the

patient and minute industry of market gardeners. They had tried

successfully to cultivate every thing to the uttermost, which could be

used for human food, or could give innocent gratification to a refined

taste. They taught agriculture and they taught gardening. They were

the first people to surround their homesteads with flower beds, with

groves, with trim parterres, with the finest turf, to improve fruit

trees, to seek out and perfect edible roots and herbs at once for man

and cattle. We owe to the Dutch that scurvy and leprosy have been

banished from England, that continuous crops have taken the place of

barren fallows, that the true rotation of crops has been discovered

and perfected, that the population of these islands has been increased

and that the cattle and sheep in England are ten times what they were

in numbers and three times what they were in size and quality."]

[Footnote 46: The Roman proverb which Agrius had in mind reminds one of

the witty French woman's comment upon the achievement of St. Denis in

walking several miles to Montmartre, after his head had been cut off,

(as all the world can still see him doing in the verrières of Notre

Dame de Chartres): "en pareil cas, ce n'est que le premier pas qui

coûte."]

[Footnote 47: To this glowing description of agricultural Italy in

the Augustan age may be annexed that of Machiavelli on the state of

Tuscany in his youth: "Ridotta tutta in somma pace e tranquillità,

coltivata non meno ne' luoghi più montuosi e più sterili che nelle

pianure e regioni più fertili...." It is our privilege to see the

image of this fruitful cultivation of the mountain tops not only in

Machiavelli's prose, but on the walls of the Palazzo Riccardi in

Gozzoli's _Journey of the Magi_, where, like King Robert of Sicily,

the Magi crossed

"Into the lovely land of Italy

Whose loveliness was more resplendent made

By the mere passing of that cavalcade."

It seems almost a pity to contrast with these the comment of a careful

and sympathetic student of the agricultural Italy of the age of

King Umberto: "To return to the question of the natural richness of

agricultural Italy," says Dr. W.N. Beauclerk in his _Rural Italy_

(1888), "we may compare the words of the German ballad: 'In Italy

macaroni ready cooked rains from the sky, and the vines are festooned

with sausages,' with the words today rife throughout the Kingdom,

'Rural Italy is poor and miserable, and has no future in store for

her.' The fact is that Italy is rich in capabilities of production,

but exhausted in spontaneous fertility. Her vast forests have been cut

down, giving place to sterile and malarious ground: the plains and

shores formerly covered with wealthy and populous cities are now

deserted marshes: Sardinia and other ancient granaries of the Roman

Empire are empty and unproductive: two-thirds of the Kingdom are

occupied by mountains impossible of cultivation, and the remainder is

to a large extent ill-farmed and unremunerative. To call Italy the

'Garden of Europe' under these circumstances seems cruel irony."]

[Footnote 48: As we may assume that the yields of wine of which

Fundanius boasts were the largest of which Varro had information in

the Italy of his time, it is interesting to compare them with the

largest yields of the most productive wine country of France today.

Fifteen cullei, or three hundred amphorae per jugerum, is the

equivalent of 2700 gallons per acre: while according to P. Joigneaux,

in the _Livre de la Ferme_, the largest yields in modern France are

in the Midi (specifically Herault), where in exceptional cases they

amount to as much as 250 hectolitres to the hectare, or say 2672

gallons per acre. It may be noted that the yields of the best modern

wines, like Burgundy, are less than half of this, and it is probable

that the same was true of the _vinum Setinum_ of Augustus, if not of

the Horatian Massic.]

[Footnote 49: The modern Italian opinion of farming in a fertile but

unhealthy situation is expressed with a grim humour in the Tuscan

proverb: "in Maremma s'arricchisce in un anno, si muore in sei mesi."]

[Footnote 50: This is Keil's ingenious interpretation of an obscure

passage. We may compare the English designation of a church yard as

"God's acre." What Licinius Crassus actually did was, while haranguing

from the rostra, to turn his back upon the Comitium, where the

Senators gathered, and address himself directly to the people

assembled in the Forum. The act was significant as indicating that the

sovereignty had changed place.]

[Footnote 51: Tremelius Scrofa was the author of a treatise on

agriculture, which Columella cites, but which has not otherwise

survived.]

[Footnote 52: "It was a received opinion amongst the antients that a

large, busy, well peopled village, situated in a country thoroughly

cultivated, was a more magnificent sight than the palaces of noblemen

and princes in the midst of neglected lands." Harte's _Essays on

Husbandry_, p. 11. This is a delightful book, the ripe product of a

gentleman and a scholar. In the middle of the eighteenth century it

advocated what we are still advocating--that agriculture, as the basis

of national wealth, deserves the study and attention of the highest

intelligence; specifically it proposed the introduction of new grasses

and forage crops (alfalfa above all others) to enable the land to

support more live stock. It was published in 1764, just after France

had ceded to England by the Treaty of Paris all of her possessions in

America east of the Mississippi River; and not the least interesting

passages of Harte's book are those proposing an agricultural

development of the newly acquired territory between Lake Illinois

(Michigan) and the Mississippi, which he suggests may be readily

brought under cultivation with the aid of the buffaloes of the

country. He shrewdly says: "Maize may be raised in this part of Canada

to what quantity we please, for it grows there naturally in great

abundance." It happened, however, that a few years later, in 1778,

Col. George Rogers Clark of Virginia made a certain expedition through

the wilderness to the British outpost at Vincennes, which saved

England the trouble of taking Harte's advice, but that it has not been

neglected may be evident from the fact that less than a century and

a half later, or in 1910, the State of Illinois produced 415 million

bushels of maize, besides twice as much oats and half as much wheat as

did old England herself in the same year of grace.

Harte was the travelling governor of that young Mr. Stanhope, to whom

my lord Chesterfield wrote his famous worldly wise letters. He was the

author also of a _Life of Gustavus Adolphus_, which was a failure. Dr.

Johnson, who liked Harte, said: "It was unlucky in coming out on the

same day with Robertson's _History of Scotland_. His _Husbandry_,

however, is good." (_Boswell_, IV, 91). With this judgment of Dr.

Johnson there has been, and must be, general concurrence.]

[Footnote 53: Pliny records (H.N. XVIII, 7) that at Lucullus' farm

there was less ground for ploughing than of floor for sweeping.]

[Footnote 54: Eggs were the first course, as apples were the last, at a

Roman dinner, hence the saying "ab ovo usque ad mala."]

[Footnote 55: Cf. Gilbert Murray's version of Euripides' _Troades_,

799:

In Salamis, filled with the foaming

Of billows and murmur of bees,

Old Telamon stayed from his roaming,

Long ago, on a throne of the seas;

Looking out on the hills olive laden,

Enchanted, where first from the earth.

The gray-gleaming fruit of the Maiden

Athena had birth.

The physical reason why the olive flourished in Attica, as

Theophrastus points out (C.P.V. II, 2), was because it craves a thin

soil, and that of Attica, with its out-croppings of calcareous rock,

suits the olive perfectly, while fit for little else agricultural.]

[Footnote 56: In the _Geoponica_ (XIII, 15) there has been preserved a

remedy for a similar evil, which, in all fairness, should be credited

to Saserna. In any event, it is what the newspapers used to call

"important, if true," viz: "If ever you come into a place where fleas

abound, cry Och! Och! ([Greek: och, och]) and they will not touch

you."]

[Footnote 57: The editor of an Iowa farm journal, who has been making

a study of agricultural Europe, has recently reported an interesting

comparison between the results of extensive farming as practised in

Iowa and intensive farming as practised in Bavaria. He begins with

the thesis that the object of agriculture is to put the energy of the

sun's rays into forms which animals and human beings can use, and,

reducing the crop production of each country to thermal units, he

finds "that for every man, woman and child connected with farming in

Iowa 14,200 therms of sun's energy were imprisoned, while for every

man, woman and child connected with farming in Bavaria only 2,600

therms were stored up. In other words, the average Iowa farmer is six

times as successful in his efforts to capture the power of the sun's

rays as the average Bavarian farmer. On the other hand, the average

acre of Iowa land is only about one-seventh as successful as the

average acre of Bavarian land in supporting those who live on it. If

we look on land as the unit, then the Bavarians get better results

than we in Iowa, but if we look on human labor as the unit, then the

Iowa farmers are far ahead of those of Bavaria."

It may be remarked that if the Iowa farmer, who gets his results by

the use of machinery, was to adopt also the intensive practice of the

Bavarian farmer, he would secure at once the greatest efficiency per

acre and per man, and that is the true purpose of agriculture.]

[Footnote 58: It is one of the charms of Varro's treatise that he

always insists cheerfully on the pleasure to be derived from the land.

It is the same spirit which Conington has remarked cropping out in

many places in Virgil's _Georgics_--the joy of the husbandman in his

work, as in the "iuvat" of

"iuvat Ismara Baccho

Conserere, atque olea magnum vestire Taburnum."

This is the blessed "surcease of sorrow" of which the crowded life of

the modern city knows nothing: but, as the practical Roman indicates,

it will not support life of its own mere motion. Cf. Dr. Johnson's

picture of Shenstone: "He began from this time to entangle his walks

and to wind his waters: which he did with such judgment and such fancy

as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of

the skillful. His house was mean, and he did not improve it: his care

was of his grounds.... In time his expences brought clamours about

him, that overpowered the lambs' bleat and the linnets' song; and his

groves were haunted by beings very different from fawns and fairies."]

[Footnote 59: Walter of Henley, in thirteenth century England, drove

home a shrewd comment on the country gentleman who farms without

keeping accounts and thinks he is engaged in a profitable industry.

"You know surely," he says, "that an acre sown with wheat takes three

ploughings, except lands which are sown yearly, and that one with

another each ploughing is worth six pence, and harrowing a penny,

and on the acre it is necessary to sow at least two bushels. Now two

bushels at Michaelmas are worth at least twelve pence, and weeding a

half penny and reaping five pence, and carrying in August a penny: the

straw will pay for the threshing. At three times your sowing you ought

to have six bushels, worth three shillings; and the cost amounts to

three shillings and three half pence, and the ground is yours and not

reckoned."

Of Walter of Henley little is known, but it is conjectured that he was

the bailiff of the manors near Henley which belonged to the Abbey of

Canterbury. His curious and valuable _Dite de Hosebondrie_, which is

as original in its way as Cato's treatise, being entirely free from

mere literary tradition, is now available to the modern reader in

a translation, from the original barbarous English law French, by

Elizabeth Lamond, made for the Royal Historical Society in 1890.]

[Footnote 60: This was just before Pharsalia, and the army was that of

Pompey which Varro had joined after surrendering to Caesar in Spain.]

[Footnote 61: In this enumeration of trees Varro does not include the

chestnut which is now one of the features of the Italian mountain

landscape and furnishes support for a considerable part of the Italian

population, who subsist on _necci_, those indigestible chestnut flour

cakes, just as the Irish peasants do on potatoes. The chestnut was

late in getting a foothold in Italy but it was there in Varro's day.

He mentions the nuts as part of the diet of dormice (III, 15).

By the thirteenth century chestnuts had become an established article

of human food in Italy. Pietro Crescenzi (1230-1307) describes two

varieties, the cultivated and the wild, and quotes the Arabian

physician Avicenna to the effect that chestnuts are "di tarda

digestione ma di buono nuttimento." It is perhaps for this very reason

that chestnut bread is acceptable to those engaged in heavy labor.

Fynes Moryson says in his _Itinerary_ (1617) that maslin bread made

of a mixture of rye and wheat flour was used by labourers in England

because it "abode longer in the stomach and was not so soon digested

with their labour."

Crescenzi, who was a lawyer and a judge, says in his preface that he

had left his native Bologna because of the civil strifes, had taken

foreign service in several parts of Italy, and so had opportunity to

see the world. He wrote his book on agriculture because, as he says,

of all the things he learned on his travels there was nothing "piu a

bondevole, niuna piu dolce, et niuna piu degna de l'huomo libero," a

sentiment which Socrates had expressed sixteen hundred years earlier

and which was echoed six hundred years later by another far-sighted

Italian, the statesman Cavour.]

[Footnote 62: The white chalk which Scrofa saw used as manure in

Transalpine Gaul, when he was serving in the army under Julius Caesar,

was undoubtedly marl, the use of which in that region as in Britain

was subsequently noted by Pliny (H.N. XVII, 4).

There were no deposits of marl in Italy, and so the Romans knew

nothing of its use, from experience, but Pliny's treatment of the

subject shows a sound source of information. In England, where several

kinds of marl are found in quantities, its use was probably never

discontinued after the Roman times. Walter of Henley discusses its use

in the thirteenth century, and Sir Anthony Fitzherbert continues the

discussion in the sixteenth century. In connection with the history of

the use of marl in agriculture may be cited the tender tribute which

Arthur Young recorded on the tombstone of his wife in Bradfield

Church. The lady's chief virtue appears to have been, in the memory

of her husband, that she was "the great-grand-daughter of John

Allen, esq. of Lyng House in the County of Norfolk, the first person

according to the Comte de Boulainvilliers, who there used marl."

The Romans did not have the fight against sour land which is the

heritage of the modern farmer after years of continuous application

to his land of phosphoric and sulphuric acid in the form of mineral

fertilizers. What sour land the Romans had they corrected with humus

making barnyard manure, or the rich compost which Cato and Columella

recommend. They had, however, a test for sourness of land which is

still practised even where the convenient litmus paper is available.

Virgil (_Georgic_ II, 241) gives the formula: "Fill a basket with

soil, and strain fresh water through it. The taste of water strained

through sour soil will twist awry the taster's face."]

[Footnote 63: This sounds like the boast of the modern proprietor of an

old blue grass sod in Northern Virginia or Kentucky. On the general

question of pasture vs. arable land, cf. Hartlib's _Legacie_: "It is a

misfortune that pasture lands are not more improved. England abounds

in pasturage more than any other country, and is, therefore, richer.

In France, acre for acre, the land is not comparable to ours: and,

therefore, Fortescue, chancellor to Henry VI, observes that we get

more in England by standing still (alluding to our meadows) than the

French do by working (that is, cultivating their vineyards and corn

lands)."

We may permit Montesquieu (_Esprit des Lois_ II, 23, 14) to voice the

French side of this question. "Les pais de pâturage sont pen peuplês.

Les terres à bled occupent plus d'hommes et les vignobles infiniment

d'avantage. En Angleterre on s'est souvent plaint que l'augmentation

des pâturage diminuoit les habitans."

In the introduction to his Book Two (_post_, p. 179) Varro states the

sound conclusion, that the two kinds of husbandry should be combined

on the same land. Sir Anthony Fitzherbert knew this: "An housbande can

not well thryue by his corne without he haue other cattell, nor by his

cattell without corne. For els he shall be a byer, a borrower or a

beggar."]

[Footnote 64: This is the explanation of why Aesop's fox found the

grapes to be sour which grew on a trellis, for he had expected to find

them of easy access on the ground. Aesop was a Phrygian, and, while

Bentley has proved that Aesop never wrote the existing fables which go

by that name, yet it is recognized that they are of Oriental origin

and it is evident that that of the Fox and the Grapes came out of

Asia, where, as Varro says, the grapes were usually allowed to grow on

the ground.]

[Footnote 65: One is tempted to include here Pliny's observations upon

the tests of good soil if only for the sake of his description of one

of the sweetest sensations of the farmer every where, the aroma of new

ploughed fertile land:--

"Those unguents which have a taste of earth are better," says Cicero,

"than those which smack of saffron," it seeming to him more to the

purpose to express himself by the word taste than smell. And such is

the fact no doubt, that soil is the best which has the savour of a

perfume. If the question should be put to us, what is this odour of

the earth that is held in such estimation; our answer is that it

is the same that is often to be recognized at the moment of sunset

without the necessity even of turning up the ground, at the spots

where the extremities of the rainbow have been observed to meet the

earth: as also, when after long continued drought, the rain has soaked

the ground. Then it is that the earth exhales the divine odour that is

so peculiarly its own, and to which, imparted to it by the sun, there

is no perfume however sweet that can possibly be compared. It is this

odour which the earth, when turned up, ought to emit, and which, when

once found, can never deceive any person: and this will be found the

best criterion for judging of the quality of the soil. Such, too, is

the odour that is usually perceived in land newly cleared when an

ancient forest has been just cut down; its excellence is a thing that

is universally admitted.]

[Footnote 66: The _actus_ was the head land or as much land as a yoke

of oxen could plough at a single spell without stopping, and measured

120 feet in length and four feet in width. Cf. Pliny, H.N. XVIII, 3.

Hence the square of the head land became the basis of the Roman land

measure. With the derivation of the _actus_ may be compared that of

the English furlong (furrow-long) and the French _arpent_ (literally,

head land).]

[Footnote 67: On the socialistic principle of Strepsiades in

Aristophanes' _Clouds_ that the use of geometry is to divide the land

into _equal_ parts.]

[Footnote 68: As it is difficult to appreciate that the Roman Campagna

was formerly populous with villas, when one contemplates its green

solitudes today, so when one faces the dread malaria which there

breeds, one wonders how the Romans of the Republic maintained so long

their hardy constitutions. It is now agreed that there was no malaria

in the Land of Saturn so long as the volcanos in the Alban hills

were active, because their gases purified the air and kept down the

mosquitoes, and geology tells us that Monte Pila was in eruption for

two or three centuries after the foundation of Rome. By the beginning

of the second century B.C. the fever seems to have become endemic.

Plautus and Terence both mention it and Cato (CLVII) describes its

symptoms unmistakably. In his book on the effect of malaria in

history, W.H. Jones expresses the opinion that the malady was brought

into Italy from Africa by Hannibal's soldiers, but it is more probable

that it was always there. See the discussion in Lanciani's _Wanderings

in the Roman Campagna_. In Varro's time the Roman fever had begun to

sap the vitality of the Roman people, and the "animalia minuta" in

this passage suggests that Varro had a curious appreciation of what

we call the modern science of the subject. Columella (I, 5, 6) indeed

specifically mentions mosquitoes (infestis aculeis armata animalia) as

one of the risks incident to living near a swamp.]

[Footnote 69: In the thirteenth century Ibn-al-Awam, a learned Moor,

wrote at Seville his _Kitab al-felahah_, or Book of Agriculture, which

has preserved for us not only the wisdom of the Moorish practice in

agriculture and gardening which made Spain an enchanted paradise, but

also the tradition of the Arabs in such matters, purporting to go

back, through the Nabataeans to the Chaldaean books, which recorded

the agricultural methods that obtained "by the waters of Babylon."

Ibn-al-Awam's book has, therefore, a double interest for us, and

we are fortunate in having it available in an admirable French

translation from the Arabic by J.J. Clement-Mullet (Paris, Librairie

A. Franck, 1864). Not the least profitable chapters in this book are

those devoted to the preparation of manure in composts, to be ripened

in pits as Varro advises in the text. They show a thoroughness, a care

and an art in the mixing of the various animal dungs, with straw,

woodsearth and cinders, which few modern gardeners could equal. German

scholarship has questioned the Chaldaean origin of the authorities

quoted, but there is internal evidence which smacks of an oriental

despotism that might well be Babylonian. In a recipe for a rich

compost suitable for small garden plants, we are advised (I, 2, I, p.

95), without a quiver, to mix in blood--that of the camel or the sheep

if necessary--_but human blood is to be preferred!_]

[Footnote 70: What Varro describes as the military fence of ditch and

bank was doubtless the typical Herefordshire fence of modern England

which Arthur Young, in _The Farmers' Letters_, recommends so highly as

at once most effective and most economical. The bank is topped with a

plashed hedge of white thorn in which sallow, ash, hazel and beech are

planted for "firing." The fencing practice of the American farmer has

followed the line of least resistance and is founded on the lowest

first cost: the original "snake" fences of split rails, upon the

making of which a former generation of pioneer American boys qualified

themselves for Presidential campaigns, being followed by woven wire

"made by a trust" and not the most enduring achievement of Big

Business. The practical farmer, as well as the lover of rural scenery,

has cause for regret that American agricultural practice has not yet

had the patience to enclose the land within live hedges and ditches.]

[Footnote 71: The kind of fence which Varro here describes as "ex terra

et lapillis compositis in formis" is also described by Pliny (H.N.

XXXV, 169), as formaceos or moulded, and he adds, "aevis durant." It

would thus clearly appear to have been of gravel concrete, the use of

which the manufacturers of cement are now telling us, is the badge of

the modern progressive farmer. Cato (XXXVIII) told how to burn lime on

the farm, and these concrete fences were, of course, formed with lime

as the matrix. When only a few years ago, Portland cement was first

produced in America at a cost and in a quantity to stimulate the

development of concrete construction, engineers began with rough

broken stone and sand as the constituents of what they call the

aggregate, but some one soon "discovered" that the use of smooth

natural gravel made more compact concrete and "gravel concrete" became

the last word in engineering practice. But it was older even than

Varro. A Chicago business man visiting Mycenae picked up and brought

home a bit of rubbish from Schliemann's excavations of the ancient

masonry: lying on his office desk it attracted the attention of an

engineering friend who exclaimed, "That is one of the best samples of

the new gravel concrete I have seen. Did it come out of the Illinois

tunnel?" "No," replied the returned traveller, "it came out of the

tomb of Agamemnon!"]

[Footnote 72: Varro here seems to forget the unities. He speaks in his

own person, when Scrofa has the floor.]

[Footnote 73: It will be recalled that Aristotle described slaves as

living tools. In Roman law a slave was not a _persona_ but a _res_.

Cf. Gaius II, 15.]

[Footnote 74: One of the most interesting of these freemen labourers of

whom we know is that Ofellus whom Horace (Satire II, 2) tells us

was working with cheerful philosophy as a hired hand upon his

own ancestral property from which he had been turned out in the

confiscations following the battle of Philippi. This might have been

the fate of Virgil also had he not chanced to have powerful friends.]

[Footnote 75: "Mais lorsque, malgré le dégoût de la chaîne domestique,

nous voyons naître entre les males et les femelles ces sentiments

que la nature a partout fondés sur un libre choix: lorsque l'amour a

commencé a unir ces couples captifs, alors leur esclavage, devenu pour

eux aussi doux que la douce liberté, leur fait oublier peu à peu

leur droits de franchise naturelle et les prérogatives de leur état

sauvage; et ces lieux des premiers plaisirs, des premières amours,

ces lieux si chers à tout être sensible, deviennent leur demeure de

prédilection et leur habitation de choix: l'éducation de la famille

rend encore cette affection plus profonde et la communique en même

temps aux petits, qui s'étant trouvés citoyens par naissance d'un

séjour adopté par leur parents, ne cherchent point à en changer: car

ne pouvant avoir que pen ou point d'idée d'un état different ni d'un

autre séjour ils s'attachent au lieu ou ils sont nés comme à leur

patrie; et l'on sait que la terre natale est chère a ceux même qui

l'habitent en esclaves."

One might assume that this eloquent and comfortable essay on

contentment in slavery had been written to illustrate Varro's text

at this point, but, as a matter of fact, it is Buffon's observation

(VIII, 460) on the domestication of wild ducks!]

[Footnote 76: Saserna's rule would be the equivalent of one hand to

every five acres cultivated. With slave labour, certainly with negro

slave labour, the experience of American cotton planters in the

nineteenth century very nearly confirmed this requirement, but one of

the economic advantages of the abolition of slavery is illustrated by

this very point. In Latimer's _First Sermon before King Edward VI_,

animadverting on the advance in farm rents in his day, he says that

his father, a typical substantial English yeoman of the time of the

discovery of America, was able to employ profitably six labourers in

cultivating 120 acres, or, say, one hand for each twenty acres, which

was precisely what Arthur Young recommended as necessary for high

farming at the end of the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the

twentieth century the American farmer seldom employs more than one

hand for every eighty acres cultivated, but this is partly due to the

use of improved machinery and partly to the fact that his land is not

thoroughly cultivated.]

[Footnote 77: This example of Roman cost accounting is matched by

Walter of Henley in thirteenth century England.

"Some men will tell you that a plough cannot work eight score or nine

score acres yearly, but I will show you that it can. You know well

that a furlong ought to be forty perches long and four wide, and the

King's perch is sixteen feet and a half: then an acre is sixty-six

feet in width. Now in ploughing go thirty-six times round to make

the ridge narrower, and when the acre is ploughed then you have made

seventy-two furlongs, which are six leagues, for be it known that

twelve furlongs are a league. And the horse or ox must be very poor

that cannot from the morning go easily in pace three leagues in length

from his starting place and return by three o'clock. And I will show

you by another reason that it can do as much. You know that there are

in the year fifty-two weeks. Now take away eight weeks for holy days

and other hindrances, then are there forty-four working weeks left.

And in all that time the plough shall only have to plough for fallow

or for spring or winter sowing three roods and a half daily, and for

second fallowing an acre. Now see if a plough were properly kept and

followed, if it could not do as much daily."]

[Footnote 78: Stolo is quibbling. Cato's unit of 240 jugera was based

on the duodecimal system of weights and measures which the Romans had

originally derived from Babylon but afterwards modified by the use

of a decimal system. The enlightened and progressive nations of the

modern world who have followed the Romans in adopting a decimal system

may perhaps approve Stolo's remarks, but it behooves those of us who

still cling to the duodecimal system to defend Cato, if only to keep

up our own courage.]

[Footnote 79: Here, in a few words, is the whole doctrine of

intelligent agriculture. Cf. Donaldson's _Agricultural Biography,

tit_. Jethro Tull. "The name of Tull will ever descend to posterity as

one of the greatest luminaries, if not the very greatest benefactor,

that British agriculture has the pride to acknowledge. His example

furnishes the vast advantages of educated men directing their

attention to the cultivation of the soil, as they bring enlightened

minds to bear upon its practice and look at the object in a naked

point of view, being divested of the dogmas and trammels of the craft

with which the practitioners of routine are inexpugnably provided and

entrenched."]

[Footnote 80: Pliny quotes Cato: "What ever can be done by the help

of the ass costs the least money," which is the philosophy of modern

power machinery on the farm, as elsewhere. It is largely a question of

the cost of fuel, as Varro says.]

[Footnote 81: Green manuring is one of the oldest, as it is one of

the best, of agricultural practices. Long before Varro, Theophrastus

(II.P. 9, I) had recorded what the agricultural colleges teach

today--that beans are valuable for this purpose because they rot

readily, and, he adds, in Macedonia and Thessaly it has always been

the custom to turn them under when they bloom.]

[Footnote 82: Although Varro advises the first ploughing in the spring,

the ancients were not unmindful of the advantages of winter ploughing

of stiff and heavy clay. Theophrastus, who died in B.C. 287, advises

it "that the earth may feel the cold." Indeed, he was fully alive to

the reasons urged by the modern professors of agronomy for intensive

cultivation. "For the soil," he says (C.P. III, 25), "often inverted

becomes free, light and clear of weeds, so that it can most easily

afford nourishment."

King Solomon gives the same advice, "The sluggard will not plough

by reason of the winter, therefore shall he begin harvest and have

nothing." _Proverbs_, XX, 4.]

[Footnote 83: The Romans understood the advantages of thorough

cultivation of the soil. As appears from the text, they habitually

broke up a sod in the spring, ploughed it again at midsummer, and once

more in September before seeding. Pliny prescribes that the first

ploughing should be nine inches deep, and says that the Etruscans some

times ploughed their stiff clay as many as nine times. The accepted

Roman reason for this was the eradication of weeds, but it also

accomplished in some measure the purpose of "dry farming"--the

conservation of the moisture content of the soil, as that had

been practised for countless generations in the sandy Valley of

Mesopotamia. Varro makes no exception to this rule, but Virgil was

here, as in other instances, induced to depart from Varro's wisdom,

with the result that he imposed upon Roman agriculture several

thoroughly bad practices. Thus, while he applies Varro ploughing rules

to rich land and bids the farmer "exercetque frequens tellurem atque

imperat arvis," he says (Geo. I, 62) that it will suffice to give

sandy land a single shallow ploughing in September immediately before

seeding, for fear, forsooth, that the summer suns will evaporate

whatever moisture there is in it! Again, Virgil recommends, what Varro

does not, cross-ploughing and burning the stubble and Virgil's advice

was generally followed.

In William Benson's edition (1725) of the _Georgics_ "with notes

critical and rustick," it is stated that "the husbandry of England

in general is Virgilian, which is shown by paring and burning the

surface: by raftering and cross-ploughing, and that in those parts of

England where the Romans principally inhabited all along the Southern

coast Latin words remain to this hour among shepherds and ploughmen in

their rustick affairs: and what will seem more strange at first sight

to affirm though in fact really true, there is more of Virgil's

husbandry put in practice in England at this instant than in Italy

itself." That this was the fact in the thirteenth century is clear

from the quotations we have made from Walter of Henley's _Dite de

Hosebondrie_. Cf. also Sir Anthony Fitzherbert and the account of the

manorial system of farming in England in Prothero's _English Farming

Past and Present_.

It remained for Jethro Tull of the _Horseshoeing Husbandry_ to unloose

in England the long spell of the magic of Virgil's poetry upon

practical agriculture.]

[Footnote 84: The Julian calendar, which took effect on January 1, B.C.

45, had been in use only eight years when Varro was writing.]

[Footnote 85: Schneider and others have attempted to emend the

enumeration of the days in this succession of seasons, but Keil

justly observes: "As we do not know what principle Varro followed in

establishing these divisions of the year, it is safer to set them

down as they are written in the codex than to be tempted by uncertain

emendation." I have accordingly followed Keil here.]

[Footnote 86: The practice of ridging land seeded to grain was

necessary before the invention of the modern drill. Dickson, in his

_Husbandry of the Ancients_, XXIV, argues that, while wasteful of

land, it had the advantage of preventing the grain from lodging.

Walter of Henley, who followed the Roman methods by tradition without

knowing it, advises with them that to be successful in this kind of

seeding the furrow at the last ploughing of the fallow should be so

narrow as to be indistinguishable. "At sowing do not plough large

furrows," he says, "but little and well laid together that the seed

may fall evenly: if you plough a large furrow to be quick you will do

harm. How? I will tell you. When, the ground is sown then the harrow

will come and pull the corn into the hollow which is between the two

ridges and the large ridge shall be uncovered, then no corn shall grow

there. And will you see this? When the corn is above ground go to the

end of the ridge and you will see that I tell you truly. And if the

land must be sown below the ridge see that it is ploughed with small

furrows and the earth raised as much as you are able. And see that the

ridge which is between the two furrows is narrow. And let the earth,

which lies like a crest in the furrow under the left foot after the

plough, be over-turned, and then shall the furrow be narrow enough."]

[Footnote 87: Farrago was a mixture of refuse _far_, or spelt, with

vetch, sown thick and cut green to be fed to cattle in the process

now called soiling. The English word "forage" comes from this Latin

original.]

[Footnote 88: Spanish American engineers today insert in their

specifications for lumber the stipulation that it be cut on the wane

of the moon. The rural confidence in the influence of the moon upon

the life of a farm still persists vigorously: thus as Pliny (H.N.

XVIII, 75) counselled that one wean a colt only when the moon is on

the wane, so it will be found that the moon is consulted before a colt

is weaned on most American farms today: for that may be safely done,

says the rural oracle, only when the moon's sign, as given in the

almanack, corresponds with a part of the almanack's "moon's man" or

"anatomic" at or below the knees, i.e., when the moon is in one or the

other of the signs Pisces, Capricornus or Aquarius: but never at a

time of day when the moon is in its "Southing."]

[Footnote 89: Modern agricultural chemistry has contradicted this

judgment of Cassius, for the manure of sea birds, especially that

brought from the South American islands in the Pacific, known

commercially as Peruvian guano, is found on analysis to be high in the

elements which are most beneficial to plant life.]

[Footnote 90: Seed selection, which is now preached so earnestly by

the Agricultural Department of the United States as one of the things

necessary to increase the yield of wheat and corn, has ever been good

practice. Following Varro Virgil (_Georgic_ I, 197) insists upon it:

"I have seen those seeds on whose selection much time and labour

had been spent, nevertheless degenerate if men did not every year

rigorously separate by hand all the largest specimens."]

[Footnote 91: Cicero (de Div. II, 24) records a _mot_ of Cato's that

he wondered that an haruspex did not laugh when he saw another--"qui

mirari se aiebat, quod non rideret aruspex, aruspicem quum vidisset."]

[Footnote 92: This process of propagation which Varro describes as

"new" is still practised by curious orchardists under the name

"inarching." The free end of a growing twig is introduced into a

limb of its own tree, back of a specimen fruit, thus pushing its

development by means of the supplemental feeding so provided. Cf. Cyc.

Am. Hort. II, 664.]

[Footnote 93: _Alfalfa_ is the Moorish name which the Spaniards brought

to America with the forage plant _Medicago Sativa_, Linn., which all

over Southern Europe is known by the French name _lucerne_. It is

proper to honour the Moors by continuing in use their name for this

interesting plant, because undoubtedly they preserved it for the use

of the modern world, just as undoubtedly they bequeathed to us that

fine sentiment known as personal honour.

Alfalfa was one of the standbys of ancient agriculture. According to

Pliny, it was introduced into Italy from Greece, whence it had been

brought from Asia during the Persian wars, and so derived its Greek

and Roman name _Medica_. As Cato does not mention it with the other

legumes he used, it is probable that the Romans had not yet adopted

it in Cato's day, but by the time of Varro and Virgil it was well

established in Italy. In Columella's day it was already a feature of

the agriculture of Andalousia, and there the Moors, who loved plants,

kept it alive, as it were a Vestal fire, while it died out of Italy

during the Dark Ages: from Spain it spread again all over Southern

Europe, and with America it was a fair exchange for tobacco. Alfalfa

has always been the subject of high praise wherever it has been known.

The Greek Amphilochus devoted a whole book to it, as have the English

Walter Harte in the middle of the eighteenth century and the American

Coburn at the beginning of the twentieth century, but none of them is

more instructive on the subject of its culture than is Columella in a

few paragraphs. Because of the difficulty of getting a stand of it in

many soils, it is important to realize the pains which the Romans took

with the seed bed, for it is on this point that most American farmers

fail. Says Columella (II, 10):

"But of all the legumes, alfalfa is the best, because, when once it is

sown, it lasts ten years: because it can be mowed four times, and even

six times, a year: because it improves the soil: because all lean

cattle grow fat by feeding upon it: because it is a remedy for sick

beasts: because a jugerum (two-thirds of an acre) of it will feed

three horses plentifully for a year. We will teach you the manner of

cultivating it, as follows: The land which you wish to set in alfalfa

the following spring should be broken up about the Kalends of October,

so that it may mellow through the entire winter. About the Kalends of

February harrow it thoroughly, remove all the stones and break up the

clods. Later, about the month of March, harrow it for the third time.

When you have so got the land in good order, lay it off after the

manner of a garden, in beds ten feet wide and fifty feet long, so that

it may be possible to let in water by the paths, and access on every

side may be had by the weeders. Then cover the beds with well rotted

manure. At last, about the end of April, sow plentifully so that a

single measure (cyanthus) of seed will cover a space ten feet long

and five wide. When you have done this brush in the seed with wooden

rakes: this is most important for otherwise the sprouts will be

withered by the sun. After the sowing no iron tool should touch the

beds; but, as I have said, they should be cultivated with wooden

rakes, and in the same manner they should be weeded so that no foreign

grass can choke out the young alfalfa. The first cutting should be

late, when the seed begins to fall: afterwards, when it is well

rooted, you can cut it as young as you wish to feed to the stock. Feed

it at first sparingly, until the stock becomes accustomed to it, for

it causes bloat and excess of blood. After cutting, irrigate the beds

frequently, and after a few days, when the roots begin to sprout, weed

out all other kinds of grass. Cultivated in this way alfalfa can be

mowed six times a year, and it will last for ten years."]

[Footnote 94: See the explanation of what the Romans meant by _terra

varia_ in the note on Cato V. _ante_, p. 40.]

[Footnote 95: It is interesting to note from the statements in the text

that in Varro's time the Roman farmer in Italy both sowed and reaped

substantially the same amount of wheat as does the American farmer

today. Varro says that the Romans sowed five modii of wheat to the

jugerum and reaped on the maximum fifteen for one. As the modius was

nearly the equivalent of our peck, the Roman allowance for sowing

corresponds to the present American practice of sowing seven pecks

of wheat to the acre: and on this basis a yield of 26 bushels to the

acre, which is not uncommon in the United States, is the equivalent of

the Roman harvest of fifteen for one.

It is fair to the average Italian farmer of the present day who is

held up by the economists to scorn because he does not produce

more than eleven bushels of wheat to the acre, to record that in

Columella's time, when agriculture had declined as compared with

Varro's experience, the average yield of grain in many parts of Italy

did not exceed four for one (_Columella_, III, 3), or say seven and a

half bushels to the acre.

Varro's statement that at Byzacium in Africa wheat yielded 100 for

one, which Pliny (_II.N._ XVIII, 23) increases to 150 for one, means

from 175 to 260 bushels per acre, seems incredible to us, but is

confirmed by the testimony of agricultural practice in Palestine.

Isaac claimed to reap an hundred fold, and the parable of the Sower

alludes to yields of 30, 60 and 100 fold.

Harte _Essays on Husbandry_, 91, says that the average yield in

England in the middle of the eighteenth century was seven for one,

though he records the case of an award by the Dublin Society in 1763

to an Irish gentleman who raised 50 bushels of wheat from a single

peck of seed! Harte was a parson, but apparently he did not bring the

same unction into his agriculture as did the Rev. Robert Herrick to

the husbandry of his Devonshire glebe, a century earlier. In Herrick's

_Thanksgiving to God for his House_ he sings:

"Lord, 'tis thy plenty dropping hand

That soils my land

And giv'st me for my bushel sown

Twice ten for one.

Thou makst my teeming hen to lay

Her egg each day:

Besides my healthful ewes to bear

Me twins each year."]

[Footnote 96: As the Gallic header here described by Varro is the

direct ancestor of our modern marvellous self-binding harvester, it is

of interest to rehearse the other ancient references to it.

Pliny (_H. N_. XVIII, 72) says:

"In the vast domains of the provinces of Gaul a large hollow frame

armed with teeth and supported on two wheels is driven through the

standing corn, the beasts being yoked behind it, the result being that

the ears are torn off and fall within the frame." Palladius (VII, 2)

goes more into detail:

"The people of the more level regions of Gaul have devised a method of

harvesting quickly and with a minimum of human labour, for thereby a

single ox is made to bear the burden of the entire harvest. A cart is

constructed on two low wheels and is furnished with a square body, of

which the side boards are adjusted to slope upward and outward to make

greater capacity. The front of the body is left open and there across

the width of the cart are set a series of lance shaped teeth spaced to

the distance between the grain stalks and curved upward. Behind the

cart two short shafts are fashioned, like those of a litter, where the

ox is yoked and harnessed with his head towards the cart: for this

purpose it is well to use a well broken and sensible ox, which will

not push ahead of his driver. When this machine is driven through the

standing grain all the heads are stripped by the teeth and are thrown

back and collected in the body of the cart, the straw being left

standing. The machine is so contrived that the driver can adjust its

height to that of the grain. Thus with little going and coming and in

a few short hours the entire harvest is made. This method is available

in level or prairie countries and to those who do not need to save the

straw."

That ingenious Dutchman Conrad Heresbach refers, in his _Husbandry_,

to Palladius' description of the Gallic header with small respect,

which indicates that in the sixteenth century it was no longer in use.

I quote from Barnaby Googe's translation of Heresbach (the book which

served Izaak Walton as the model for his _Compleat Angler_): "This

tricke might be used in levell and champion countries, but with us it

would make but ill-favoured worke."

Dondlinger, in his excellent _Book of Wheat_ (1908), which should be

in the hands of every grain farmer, gives a picture reproducing the

Gallic header and says:

"After being used during hundreds of years the Gallic header

disappeared, and it seems to have been completely forgotten for

several centuries. Only through literature did it escape the fate of

permanent oblivion and become a heritage for the modern world. The

published description of the machine by Pliny and Palladius furnished

the impulse in which modern harvesting inventions originated. Its

distinctive features are retained in several modern inventions of this

class, machines which have a practical use and value under conditions

similar to those which existed on the plains of Gaul. Toward the close

of the eighteenth century, the social, economic and agricultural

conditions in England, on account of increasing competition and the

higher value of labour, were ripe for the movement of invention that

was heralded by the printed account of the Gallic header. The first

header was constructed by William Pitt in 1786. It was an attempted

improvement on the ancient machine in that the stripping teeth were

placed in a cylinder which was revolved by power transmitted from the

wheels. This 'rippling cylinder' carried the heads of the wheat into

the box of the machine, and gradually evolved into the present day

reel."

It may be added that the William Pitt mentioned was not the statesman,

but a contemporary agricultural writer of the same name.]

[Footnote 97: According to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert it was the custom in

England to shear wheat and rye and to leave the straw standing after

the third method described by Varro, the purpose being to preserve the

straw to be cut later for thatching, as threshing it would necessarily

destroy its value for thatching. It was the custom in England,

however, to mow barley and oats.]

[Footnote 98: Pliny advises that the grain which collects on the

circumference of a threshing floor of this description be saved for

seed because it is evidently the heaviest.]

[Footnote 99: In the Apennines today the threshing floor, or _aja_, is

anointed with cow dung smeared smooth with water, doubtless for the

same reason that the Romans so used amurca.]

[Footnote 100: Between harvests the winnowing basket is quite generally

used in Italy today for a cradle, as it was from the beginning of

time, for there is an ancient gem representing the infant Bacchus

asleep in a winnowing basket.]

[Footnote 101: What the French call, from the same practice, _vin de

rognure_.]

[Footnote 102: Varro does not mention the season of the olive harvest,

but Virgil tells us (G. II, 519) that in their day as now it was

winter. Cato (XX-XXII) described the construction and operation of the

_trapetus_ in detail. 'It can still be seen in operation in Italy,

turned by a patient donkey and flowing with the new oil of an intense

blue-green colour. It is always flanked by an array of vast storage

jars (Cato's _dolii_ now called _orci_), which make one realize the

story of _Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves_.]

[Footnote 103: The Roman waste of amurca, through ignorance of its

value, was like the American waste of the cotton seed, which for many

years was thrown out from the gin to rot upon the ground, even its

fertilizing use being neglected. Now cotton seed has a market value

equivalent to nearly 20 per cent of that of the staple. It is used for

cattle feed and also is made into lard and "pure olive oil," being

exported in bulk and imported again in bottles with Italian labels.]

[Footnote 104: Cf. Fowler, _Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero_.

"Let us consider that in a large city today the person and property

of all, rich or poor, are adequately protected by a sound system of

police and by courts of first instance which are sitting every day.

Assault and murder, theft and burglary are exceptional. It might be

going too far to say that at Rome they were the rule: but it is the

fact that in what we may call the slums of Rome there was no machinery

for checking them.... It is the great merit of Augustus that he made

Rome not only a city of marble but one in which the persons and

property of all citizens were fairly secure."

There are several contemporary references to the crowded and dangerous

condition of the streets of Rome at the end of the Republic. Cicero

(_Plancius_, 7) tells how he was pushed against the arch of Fabius

while struggling through the press of the Via Sacra, and exonerates

from blame the man who was the immediate cause of his inconvenience,

holding that the one next beyond was more responsible: in which

judgment Cicero was of the opinion of Mr. Justice Blackstone in the

famous leading case of Scott _v_. Shepherd (1 _Smith's L.C._, 480),

where the question was who was liable for the damage eventually done

by the burning squib which was passed about the market house by

successive hands. The majority of the court held, however, against

Blackstone and Cicero, and established the doctrine of proximate

cause.]

[Footnote 105: The Roman week (_nundinum_, or more properly _inter

nundinum_) was of eight days, the last being the market day on which

the citizens rested from agricultural labour and came into town to

sell and buy and talk politics. Cf. Pliny, XVIII, 3. This custom which

Varro regrets had fallen into desuetude so far as Rome was concerned

was in his day still practised in the provinces. Thus the five tenants

on Horace's Sabine farm were wont to go every _nundinum_ to the market

town of Varia (the modern Vicovaro) to transact public business

(_Epist_. I, 14, 2).]

[Footnote 106: Varro here refers to the great economic change which was

coming over Italian husbandry in the last days of the Republic, the

disappearance of the small farms, the "septem jugera" which nurtured

the early Roman heroes like Cincinnatus and Dentatus, and even the

larger, but still comparatively small, farms which Cato describes, and

the development of the _latifundia_ given over to grazing.]

[Footnote 107: The tradition is, says Pliny, that King Augeas was the

first in Greece to use manure, and that Hercules introduced the

practice into Italy. To the wise farmer the myth of the Augean stables

is the genesis of good agriculture.]

[Footnote 108: This was the "crowded hour" in Varro's life, and, as M.

Boissier has pointed out, he loved to dwell upon its episodes. It

will be recalled that Pompey divided the Mediterranean into thirteen

districts for the war with the Pirates and put a responsible

lieutenant in command of each, thus enabling him by concurrent action

in all the districts to clear the seas in three months. Appian gives

the list of officers and the limits of their commands, saying: "The

coasts of Sicily and the Ionian sea as far as Acarnania were entrusted

to Plotius and Varro." It is difficult to understand Varro's own

reference to Delos, but Appian makes clear how it happened that Varro

was stationed on the coast of Epirus and so fell in with the company

of "half Greek shepherds" who are the _dramatis personae_ of the

second book. As the scene of the first book was laid in a temple of

Tellus, so this relating to live stock is cast in a temple of Pales,

the goddess of shepherds, on the occasion of the festival of the

Parilia, and the names of the characters have a punning reference to

live stock.]

[Footnote 109: The codices here contain an interpolation of the words

"HIC INTERMISIMUS," to indicate that a part of the text is missing,

with which judgment of some early student of the archetype Victorius,

Scaliger and Ursinus, as well as their successors among the

commentators on Varro, have all agreed. It is a pleasure to record the

agreement on this point, because it is believed to be unique: but

many precedents for plunging the reader _in medias res_, as does the

surviving text, might be found in the modern short story of the

artist in style. As M. Boissier points out Varro might have cited the

beginning of the Odyssey as a precedent for this.]

[Footnote 110: This is a paraphase of a favorite locution of Homer's

heroes, whose characteristic modesty does not, however, permit them

to apply it to themselves, as Varro does. Thus in _Iliad_, VII, 114,

Agamemnon advises Menelaos not to venture against Hector, whom "even

Achilles dreadeth to meet in battle, wherein is the warrior's glory,

and Achilles is better far than thou."]

[Footnote 111: Virgil (Aen. VII, 314) made a fine line out of this

tradition, endowing the sturdy race of Fauns and Nymphs who inhabited

the land of Saturn before the Golden Age, with the qualities of the

trees on whose fruit they subsisted, "gensque virum truncis et duro

robore nata."]

[Footnote 112: In the registers of the censors every thing from which

the public revenues were derived was set down under the head of

_pascua_, or "pasture lands," because for a long time the pasture

lands were the only source of such revenue. Cf. Pliny, _H.N._ XVIII,

3.]

[Footnote 113: Olisippo is the modern Lisbon. This tradition about the

mares of the region is repeated by Virgil (Geo. III, 272) by Columella

(VI, 27) and by Pliny (VIII, 67). Professor Ridgeway in _The Origin

and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse_ describes it as "an

aetiological myth to explain the swiftness of horses" for the fleetest

horses came out of the West; thus Pegasus was born at the springs of

the ocean, and there is the passage in Homer (_Iliad_, XVI, 149) about

the horses "that flew as swift as the winds, the horses that the

harpy Podarge (Swift Foot) bare to the West Wind as she grazed on the

meadows by the stream of the Ocean." Hence we may conclude that there

was a race of swift horses in Portugal in the earliest times, which

Professor Ridgeway would doubtless like very much to prove, in support

of his interesting thesis, were derived from Libya.]

[Footnote 114: _Hypenemia_, or barren eggs, are described intelligently

by Aristotle (H.A.V. 1, 4, VI. 2, 5), and, with Varro's confidence in

the country traditions, by Pliny, H.N. X, 80.

If he had known it, Varro might have here cited the fact that the

unfertilized queen bee is parthenogenetic, though producing only male

bees; i.e., drones: but it remained for a German clergyman, Dzierzon,

to discover this in the eighteenth century.]

[Footnote 115: Cf. Plautus _Menaechmi_, II, 2, 279. One of the two

Menaechmi is, on his arrival at Epidamnus, mistaken for his brother,

of whose existence he does not know, and much to his amazement is

introduced into the brother's life and possessions. At first he

expostulates, accusing the slave of the brother, who has mistaken his

identity, of being crazy and offers to exorcise him by a sacrifice

of weanling pigs, wherefore he asks the question quoted in the text.

Varro was evidently fond of this passage, as he quotes it again,

_post_, p. 221. The _Menaechmi_ is one of the immortal comedies and

has survived in many forms on the modern stage all over Europe. From

it Shakespeare derived the plot of the _Comedy of Errors_.]

[Footnote 116: It is interesting to compare these sane therapeutics with

Cato's practice less than two hundred years previous (_ante_, p. 47),

which was characteristic of the superstitious peasant who in Italy

still seeks the priest to bless his ailing live stock.]

[Footnote 117: This Atticus was Cicero's intimate friend to whom he

addressed so many of his charming letters. He changed his name as

stated in the text, the new name being that of an uncle who adopted

him, as we learn from his life by Nepos. As is well known to all

students of Cicero, Atticus had dwelt in Athens many years and derived

his income from estates in Epirus, which is the point of Scrofa's

jest.]

[Footnote 118: This requirement of short legs is the more remarkable

because of the long journeys which Varro says the Roman sheep were

required to make between their summer and winter pastures. A similar

necessity and bad roads created in England, before the eighteenth

century, a demand for long legged sheep. Prothero (_English Farming

Past and Present_) quotes a description of the "true old Warwickshire

ram" in 1789: "His frame large and remarkably loose. His bone

throughout heavy. His legs long and thick, terminating in large splaw

feet."

One of the things which Bakewell accomplished was to shorten the legs

as well as to increase the mutton on his New Leicesters. Of Bakewell,

Mr. Prothero justly says, "By providing meat for the million he

contributed as much to the wealth of the country as Arkwright or

Watt."]

[Footnote 119: Shepherds still look for the black or spotted tongue in

the mouth of the ram, for the reason given by Varro, but the warning

is no longer put in the shepherds' manual.]

[Footnote 120: Varro would still feel at home in Apulia, for there the

sheep industry is carried on much as it was in his time, and thence

the _calles publicae_, to which he refers, still lead to the summer

pastures in the Apennines. Cf. Beauclerk _Rural Italy_, chap. V. "The

extensive pasturages of the 'Tavoliere di Puglia' (Apulia) are of

great importance and have a history of their own. This vast domain

covers 750,000 acres: its origin belongs to the time of the Roman

Conquests and the protracted wars of the Republic, which were fought

out in the plains, whence they became deserted and uncultivated, fit

only for public pastures in winter time ... the periodical emigrations

of the flocks continue as in the past times: they descend from the

mountains into the plains by a network of wide grassy roads which

traverse the region in every direction and are called _tratturi_.

These lanes are over 100 yards in width and cover a total length

of 940 miles.... Not less than 50,000 animals are pastured on the

Tavoliere, requiring over 1,500 square miles of land for their

subsistence.... Five thousand persons are employed as shepherds."]

[Footnote 121: Varro quite uniformly uses words which indicate that he

was accustomed to see sheep driven (_abigere, propellere, adpellere_)

but we can see the flocks _led_ in Italy today, as they were in

Palestine soon after Varro's death, according to the testimony of that

beautiful figure of the Good Shepherd (_St. John_, X, 4): "And when he

putteth forth his own sheep he goeth before them, and the sheep follow

him, for they know his voice." R. Child, in his "Large Letter" in

Hartlib's _Legacie_, gives the explanation of the difference in the

custom:

"Our sheep do not follow their shepherds as they do in all other

countries: for the shepherd goeth before and the sheep follow like a

pack of dogs. This disobedience of our sheep doth not happen to us,

as the Papist Priests tell their simple flocks, because we have left

their great shepherd the Pope; but because we let our sheep range

night and day in our fields without a shepherd: which other countries

dare not for fear of wolves and other ravenous beasts, but are

compelled to guard them all day with great dogs and to bring them home

at night, or to watch them in their folds."]

[Footnote 122: Cf. Dante, _Purg_. XXVII, 79.

"Le capre

Tacite all' ombra mentre che'l sol ferve

Guardate dal pastor che'n su la verga

Poggiato s'e, e lor poggiato serve."]

[Footnote 123: It will be recalled that when Odysseus, disguised as a

beggar, was making his way to his house in company with the faithful

swineherd Eumaeus, they met the goatherd Melanthius "leading his goats

to feast the wooers, the best goats that were in all the herds."

(_Odyssey_, XVII, 216), and that subsequently he suffered a terrible

punishment for this unfaithfulness to his master's interests.]

[Footnote 124: Pliny (VIII, 76) calls these excrescences _lanciniae_, or

folds, and attributes them exclusively to the she goat, as Varro seems

to do also, but Columella (VII, 6) attributes them to the buck.]

[Footnote 125: Aristotle (H.A. I, 9.1) refers to this opinion and

denounces it as erroneous.]

[Footnote 126: The Roman _denarius_, which has been here and later

translated _denier_, may be considered for the purpose of comparing

values as, roughly, the equivalent of the modern franc, or lira, say

20 cents United States money.]

[Footnote 127: Macrobius (_Saturn_. I, 6) tells another story of the

origin of this cognomen, which, if not so heroic as that in the text,

is entertaining. It is related that a neighbour's sow strayed on

Tremelius' land and was caught and killed as a vagrant. When the

owner came to claim it and asserted the right to search the premises

Tremelius hid the carcass in the bed in which his wife was lying and

then took a solemn oath that there was no sow in his house except that

in the bed.]

[Footnote 128: It would seem, as Gibbon says of the Empress Theodora,

that this passage could be left "veiled in the obscurity of a learned

language"; but it may be noted that the _locus classicus_ for the

play on the word is the incident of the Megarian "mystery pigs" in

Aristophanes' _Acharnians_, 728 ff. Cf. also Athenaeus, IX, 17, 18.]