Part 1 (1/2)
Roman Farm Management.
by Marcus Porcius Cato.
PREFACE
The present editor made the acquaintance of Cato and Varro standing at a book stall on the Quai Voltaire in Paris, and they carried him away in imagination, during a pleasant half hour, not to the vineyards and olive yards of Roman Italy, but to the blue hills of a far distant Virginia where the corn was beginning to ta.s.sel and the fat cattle were loafing in the pastures. Subsequently, when it appeared that there was then no readily available English version of the Roman agronomists, this translation was made, in the spirit of old Piero Vettori, the kindly Florentine scholar, whose portrait was painted by t.i.tian and whose monument may still be seen in the Church of Santo Spirito: in the preface of his edition of Varro he says that he undertook the work, not for the purpose of displaying his learning, but to aid others in the study of an excellent author. Victorius was justified by his scholars.h.i.+p and the present editor has no such claim to attention: he, therefore, makes the confession frankly (to antic.i.p.ate perhaps such criticism as Bentley's ”a very pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but don't call it Homer”) and offers the little book to those who love the country, and to read about the country amidst the crowded life of towns, with the hope that they may find in it some measure of the pleasure it has afforded the editor.
The texts and commentaries used have been those of Schneider and Keil, the latter more accurate but the former more sympathetic.
F.H. BELVOIR, Fauquier County, Virginia.
December, 1912.
ROMAN FARM MANAGEMENT
NOTE UPON THE ROMAN AGRONOMISTS
Quaecunque autem propter disciplinam ruris nostrorum temporum c.u.m priscis discrepant, non deterrere debent a lectione discentem. Nam multo plura reperiuntur, apud veteres, quae n.o.bis probanda sint, quam quae repudianda.
COLUMELLA I, I.
The study of the Roman treatises on farm management is profitable to the modern farmer however practical and scientific he may be. He will not find in them any thing about bacteria and the ”nodular hypothesis”
in respect of legumes, nor any thing about plant metabolism, nor even any thing about the effects of creatinine on growth and absorption; but, important and fascinating as are the illuminations of modern science upon practical agriculture, the intelligent farmer with imagination (every successful farmer has imagination, whether or not he is intelligent) will find some thing quite as important to his welfare in the body of Roman husbandry which has come down to us, namely: a background for his daily routine, an appreciation that two thousand years ago men were studying the same problems and solving them by intelligent reasoning. Columella well says that in reading the ancient writers we may find in them more to approve than to disapprove, however much our new science may lead us to differ from them in practice. The characteristics of the Roman methods of farm management, viewed in the light of the present state of the art in America, were thoroughness and patience. The Romans had learned many things which we are now learning again, such as green manuring with legumes, soiling, seed selection, the testing of soil for sourness, intensive cultivation of a fallow as well as of a crop, conservative rotation, the importance of live stock in a system of general farming, the preservation of the chemical content of manure and the composting of the rubbish of a farm, but they brought to their farming operations some thing more which we have not altogether learned--the character which made them a people of enduring achievement. Varro quotes one of their proverbs ”Roma.n.u.s sedendo vincit,” which ill.u.s.trates my present point. The Romans achieved their results by thoroughness and patience.
It was thus that they defeated Hannibal and it was thus that they built their farm houses and fences, cultivated their fields, their vineyards and their oliveyards, and bred and fed their live stock.
They seem to have realized that there are no short cuts in the processes of nature, and that the law of compensations is invariable.
The foundation of their agriculture was the fallow[1] and one finds them constantly using it as a simile--in the advice not to breed a mare every year, as in that not to exact too much tribute from a bee hive. Ovid even warns a lover to allow fallow seasons to intervene in his courts.h.i.+p.
While one can find instruction in their practice even today, one can benefit even more from their agricultural philosophy, for the characteristic of the American farmer is that he is in too much of a hurry.
The ancient literature of farm management was voluminous. Varro cites fifty Greek authors on the subject whose works he knew, beginning with Hesiod and Xenophon. Mago of Carthage wrote a treatise in the Punic tongue which was so highly esteemed that the Roman Senate ordered it translated into Latin, but, like most of the Greeks,[2] it is now lost to us except in the literary tradition.
Columella says that it was Cato who taught Agriculture to speak Latin.
Cato's book, written in the middle of the second century B. C, was the first on the subject in Latin; indeed, it was one of the very first books written in that vernacular at all. Of the other Latin writers whose bucolic works have survived, Varro and Virgil wrote at the beginning of the Augustan Age and were followed by the Spanish Columella under Tiberius, and by Pliny (with his Natural History) under t.i.tus. After them (and ”a long way after,” as Mr. Punch says) came in the fourth century the worthy but dull Palladius, who supplied the hornbook used by the agricultural monks throughout the Dark Ages.
MARCUS PORCIUS CATO (B.C. 234-149), known in history as the elder Cato, was the type of Roman produced by the most vigorous days of the Republic. Born at Tusculum on the narrow acres which his peasant forefathers had tilled in the intervals of military service, he commenced advocate at the country a.s.sizes, followed his fortunes to Rome and there became a leader of the metropolitan bar. He saw gallant military service in Spain and in Greece, commanded an army, held all the curule offices of state and ended a contentious life in the Senate denouncing Carthage and the degeneracy of the times.
He was an upstanding man, but as coa.r.s.e as he was vigorous in mind and in body. Roman literature is full of anecdotes about him and his wise and witty sayings.
Unlike many men who have devoted a toilsome youth to agricultural labour, when he attained fame and fortune he maintained his interest in his farm, and wrote his _De re rustica_ in green old age. It tells what sort of farm manager he himself was, or wanted to be thought to be, and, though a mere collection of random notes, sets forth more shrewd common sense and agricultural experience than it is possible to pack into the same number of English words. It remains today of much more than antiquarian interest.
MARCUS TERENTIUS VARRO (B.C. 116-28) whom Quintilian called ”the most learned of the Romans,” and Petrarch ”il terzo gran lume Romano,”
ranking him with Cicero and Virgil, probably studied agriculture before he studied any thing else, for he was born on a Sabine farm, and although of a well to do family, was bred in the habits of simplicity and rural industry with which the poets have made that name synonymous. All his life he amused the leisure s.n.a.t.c.hed from his studies with intelligent supervision of the farming of his several estates: and he wrote his treatise _Rerum Rusticarum_ in his eightieth year.[3]
He had his share of active life, but it was as a scholar that he distinguished himself.[4] Belonging to the aristocratic party, he became a friend and supporter of Pompey, and, after holding a naval command under him in the war against the Pirates in B.C. 67, was his legatus in Spain at the beginning of the civil wars and there surrendered to Caesar. He was again on the losing side at the battle of Pharsalia, but was pardoned by Caesar, who selected him to be librarian of the public library he proposed to establish at Rome.[5]