When the owner of the farm and slaves visits his country villa, after
saluting the household god, he should the same day, if possible, go
round the farm; if not the same day, he should do so the day after. On
seeing how the farm is being cultivated, and what work has been done
or left undone, he should call for his steward and inquire for his
account of what work has been done and what remains to be done. He
should ask whether the work has been completed in good time and
whether what is left uncompleted can be finished. He should find what
wine has been made, and what wheat stored. When he has gone into these
particulars, he should ask for an account of the days spent in
accomplishing the work.
If the work does not seem satisfactory and the steward should excuse
himself by declaring that he has done his best, that the slaves were
good for nothing, that the weather was bad, that some slaves had run
away, that he himself had been called off on public service, and
should allege other such excuses, he should still be strictly called
to account. He should be asked if on rainy or tempestuous days he had
seen that indoor operations had been carried on. Had the wine-casks
been scoured and lined with pitch; had the house-cleaning been done;
had the grain been taken from the thrashing-floor to the granary; had
manure been thrown from the stables and cow-houses and piled into
heaps; had the seed been winnowed; had any rope been made; had the old
rope been repaired, and had he seen that the slaves mended their coats
and caps. He should be reminded that on religious festivals old
ditches might have been cleared out, the public road mended, briers
cut down, the garden dug over, the meadow cleared, the trees trimmed,
thorns pulled up by the roots, the grain ground and a general clearing
up carried through. He should also be told that when slaves were sick
their rations should be cut down.
When the matters have been settled to the master's satisfaction, he
should take measures to see that what has not been done be at once
accomplished. He should then proceed to consider the account of the
farm, and a consideration of the amount of grain which has been
prepared for fodder. He should have returns made of wine and
olive-oil, and learn how much has been consumed, how much sold, how
much is left over and may be put on sale. If there is a deficit any
year, he should order it to be made up from the outside, and whatever
is above the needs of the farm sold. If there is anything to let out
on contract, he should order this to be done, and concerning the work
which he wishes to be thus accomplished he should give his order in
writing. As regards the cattle he should order them to be sold by
auction, and in the same way should sell the oil, if the price of oil
has risen; likewise the superfluous wine and corn of the estate. He
should also order to be sold worn-out bulls, blemished cattle,
blemished sheep, wool, hides, any plow that is old, old tools, old
slaves, slaves who are diseased, or anything else which is useless,
for the owner of a farm must be a seller and not a purchaser.
The owner of a farm and of slaves must begin to study in early manhood
the cultivation and sowing of the land. He should, however, think a
long time before building his villa, but not about farming his
property, which he should set about at once. Let him wait until his
thirty-sixth year and then build, provided his whole property is under
cultivation. So build that neither the villa be disproportionately
small in comparison with the farm nor the farm in comparison with the
villa. It behooves a slave-owner to have a well-built country house,
containing a wine-cellar, a place for storing olive-oil, and casks in
such numbers that he may look forward with delight to a time of
scarcity and high prices, and this will add not only to his wealth,
but to his influence and reputation. He must have wine-presses of the
first order, that his wine may be well made. When the olives have been
picked, let oil be at once made or it will turn out rancid. Recollect
that every year the olives are shaken from the trees in great number
by violent storms. If you gather them up quickly and have vessels
ready to receive them, the storm will have done them no harm and the
oil will be all the greener and better. If the olives be on the ground
or even on the barn floor too long, the oil made from them will be
fetid. Olive-oil will be always good and sweet if it be promptly made.
The following are the duties of a steward: He must maintain strict
discipline, and see that the festivals are observed. While he keeps
his hands off the property of a neighbor, let him look well to his
own. The slaves are to be kept from quarreling. If any of them commits
a fault, he should be punished in a kindly manner. The steward must
see that the slaves are comfortable and suffer neither from cold nor
hunger. By keeping them busy he will prevent them from running into
mischief or stealing. If the steward sets his face against evil doing,
evil will not be done by them. His master must call him to task if he
let evil doing go unpunished. If one slave do him any service, he
should show gratitude that the others may be encouraged to do right.
The steward must not be a gadder or a diner-out, but must give all his
attention to working the slaves, and considering how best to carry out
his master's instructions....
It is at times worth while to gain wealth by commerce, were it not so
perilous; or by usury, were it equally honorable. Our ancestors,
however, held, and fixt by law, that a thief should be condemned to
restore double, a usurer quadruple. We thus see how much worse they
thought it for a citizen to be a money-lender than a thief. Again,
when they praised a good man, they praised him as a good farmer or a
good husbandman. Men so praised were held to have received the highest
praise. For myself, I think well of a merchant as a man of energy and
studious of gain; but it is a career, as I have said, that leads to
danger and ruin. However, farming makes the bravest men and the
sturdiest soldiers, and of all sources of gain is the surest, the most
natural, and the least invidious, and those who are busy with it have
the fewest bad thoughts.[3]