Part 21 (1/2)
[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 n.o.ble 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 s.h.i.+eld of Achilles (_Iliad_, XVIII, 540). ”Furthermore, he set in the s.h.i.+eld 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 ill.u.s.trates 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 Inst.i.tute of Agriculture published at Rome in 1912, rest on three chief safeguards:
(a) That members.h.i.+p 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 compet.i.tion 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 G.o.ds to those of the country.”]
[Footnote 20: According to German scholars.h.i.+p 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 occipitium.” 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 Blatter_. 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 establis.h.i.+ng 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 wa.s.she 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 b.u.t.ter, 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.”