European agriculture reached a high degree of efficiency two thousand
years ago in the scrub-forest region around the Mediterranean Sea. To
the Greeks that part of the world alone was considered fit for
habitation by human beings. Farming by the Romans was regarded as a
highly respectable and honorable occupation. Some of their most
learned scholars wrote books on husbandry. The Romans have given us
by far the most complete and satisfactory accounts of their
agriculture of any ancient people. During the "Revival of Learning,"
these old masterpieces were rediscovered, constituting the principal
agricultural literature of Europe, prior to the eighteenth century.
Most of the early English books on husbandry were mere translations
of the Roman books on that subject, with a few original observations
added.