Roman Farm Management Part 1

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 scholarship 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 courtship.

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]

From this time Varro eschewed politics and devoted himself to letters, although his troubles were not yet at an end: after the death of Caesar, the ruthless Antony despoiled his villa at Casinum (where Varro had built the aviary described in book Three), and like Cicero he was included in the proscriptions which followed the compact of the triumvirs, but in the end unlike Cicero he escaped and spent his last years peacefully at his villas at c.u.mae and Tusculum.

His literary activity was astonishing: he wrote at least six hundred books covering a wide range of antiquarian research. St. Augustine, who dearly loved to turn a balanced phrase, says that Varro had read so much that it is difficult to understand when he found time to write, while on the other hand he wrote so much that one can scarcely read all his books. Cicero, who claimed him as an intimate friend, describes (_Acad_. Ill) what Varro had written before B.C. 46, but he went on producing to the end of his long life, eighteen years later: "For," says Cicero, "while we are sojourners, so to speak, in our own city and wandering about like strangers, your books have conducted us, as it were, home again, so as to enable us at last to recognize who and whence we are. You have discussed the antiquities of our country and the variety of dates and chronology relating to it. You have explained the laws which regulate sacrifices and priests: you have unfolded the customs of the city both in war and peace: you have described the various quarters and districts: you have omitted mentioning none of the names, or kinds, or functions, or causes of divine or human things: you have thrown a flood of light on our poets and altogether on Latin literature and the Latin language: you have yourself composed a poem of varied beauties and elegant in almost every part: and you have in many places touched upon philosophy in a manner sufficient to excite our curiosity, though inadequate to instruct us."

Of Varro's works, beside the _Rerum Rusticarum_, there have survived only fragments, including a considerable portion of the treatise on the Latin language: the story is that most of his books were deliberately destroyed at the procurement of the Church (something not impossible, as witness the Emperor Theodosius in _Corpus Juris Civilis_. Cod. Lib. I, t.i.t. I, cap. 3, -- I) to conceal St. Augustine's plagiarism from them; yet the _De Civitate Dei_, which is largely devoted to refuting Varro's pagan theology, is a perennial monument to his fame. St. Augustine says (VI, 2): "Although his elocution has less charm, he is so full of learning and philosophy that ... he instructs the student of facts as much as Cicero delights the student of style."

Varro's treatise on farm management is the best practical book on the subject which has come down to us from antiquity. It has not the spontaneous originality of Cato, nor the detail and suave elegance of Columella. Walter Harte in his _Essays on Husbandry_ (1764) says that Cato writes like an English squire and Varro like a French academician. This is just comment on Cato but it is at once too much and too little to say of Varro: a French academician might be proud of his antiquarian learning, but would balk at his awkward and homely Latin, as indeed one French academician, M. Boissier, has since done.

The real merit of Varro's book is that it is the well digested system of an experienced and successful farmer who has seen and practised all that he records.

The authority from which Virgil drew the practical farming lore, for which he has been extolled in all ages, was Varro: indeed, as a farm manual the _Georgics_ go astray only when they depart from Varro. It is worth while to elaborate this point, which Professor Sellar, in his argument for the originality of Virgil, only suggests.[6]

After Philippi the times were ripe for books on agriculture. The Roman world had been divided between Octavian and Antony and there was peace in Italy: men were turning "back to the land."

An agricultural regeneration of Italy was impending, chiefly in viticulture, as Ferrero has pointed out. With far sighted appreciation of the economic advantages of this, Octavian determined to promote the movement, which became one of the completed glories of the Augustan Age, when Horace sang

Tua, Caesar, aetas Fruges et agris rettulit uberes.

Varro's book appeared in B.C. 37 and during that year Maecenas commissioned Virgil to put into verse the spirit of the times; just as, under similar circ.u.mstances, Cromwell pensioned Samuel Hartlib.

Such is the co-incidence of the dates that it is not impossible that the _Rerum Rusticarum_ suggested the subject of the _Georgics_, either to Virgil or to Maecenas.

There is no evidence in the _Bucolics_ that Virgil ever had any practical knowledge of agriculture before he undertook to write the _Georgics_. His father was, it is true, a farmer, but apparently in a small way and unsuccessful, for he had to eke out a frugal livelihood by keeping bees and serving as the hireling deputy of a _viator_ or constable. This type of farmer persists and may be recognized in any rural community: but the agricultural colleges do not enlist such men into their faculties. So it is possible that Virgil owed little agricultural knowledge to his father's precepts or example. Virgil perhaps had tended his father's flock, as he pictures himself doing under the guise of t.i.tyrus; certainly he spent many hours of youth "patulae recubans sub tegmine f.a.gi" steeping his Celtic soul with the beauty and the melancholy poetry of the Lombard landscape: and so he came to know and to love bird and flower and the external aspects of

wheat and woodland tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd,

but it does not appear that he ever followed the plough, or, what is more important, ever laid off a ploughgate. As a poet of nature no one was ever better equipped (the highest testimony is that of Tennyson), but when it came to writing poetry around the art of farm management it was necessary for him to turn to books for his facts. He acknowledges (_Geo_. I, 176) his obligation only to _veterum praecepta_ without naming them, but as M. Gaston Boissier says he was evidently referring to Varro "le plus moderne de tous les anciens."[7]

Virgil evidently regarded Varro's treatise as a solid foundation for his poem and he used it freely, just as he drew on Hesiod for literary inspiration, on Lucretius for imaginative philosophy, and on Mago and Cato and the two Sasernas for local colour.

Virgil probably had also the advantage of personal contact with Varro during the seven years he was composing and polishing the _Georgics_.

He spent them largely at Naples (_Geo_. IV, 563) and Varro was then established in retirement at c.u.mae: thus they were neighbours, and, although they belonged to different political parties, the young poet must have known and visited the old polymath; there was every reason for him to have taken advantage of the opportunity. Whatever justification there may be for this conjecture, the fact remains that Varro is in the background every where throughout the _Georgics_, as the "deadly parallel" in the appended note will indicate. This is perhaps the most interesting thing about Varro's treatise: instructive and entertaining as it is to the farmer, in the large sense of the effect of literature on mankind, Virgil gave it wings--the useful cart horse became Pegasus.

As a consequence of the chorus of praise of the _Georgics_, there have been those, in all ages, who have sneered at Virgil's farming. The first such _advocatus diaboli_ was Seneca, who, writing to Lucilius (_Ep_. 86) from the farm house of Scipio Africa.n.u.s, fell foul of the advice (_Geo_, I, 216) to plant both beans and millet in the spring, saying that he had just seen at the end of June beans gathered and millet sowed on the same day: from which he generalized that Virgil disregarded the truth to turn a graceful verse, and sought rather to delight his reader than to instruct the husbandman. This kind of cheap criticism does not increase our respect for Nero's philosophic minister.[8] Whatever may have been Virgil's mistakes, every farmer of sentiment should thank G.o.d that one of the greatest poems in any language contains as much as it does of a sound tradition of the practical side of his art, and here is where Varro is ent.i.tled to the appreciation which is always due the schoolmaster of a genius.

NOTE ON THE OBLIGATION OF VIRGIL TO VARRO

At the beginning of the first _Georgic_ (1-5) Virgil lays out the scope of the poem as dealing with three subjects, agriculture, the care of live stock and the husbandry of bees. This was Varro's plan (R.R. I, I, 2, and I, 2 pa.s.sim) except that under the third head Varro included, with bees, all the other kinds of stock which were usually kept at a Roman steading. Varro a.s.serts that his was the first scientific cla.s.sification of the subject ever made. Virgil (G. I, 5-13) begins too with the invocation of the Sun and the Moon and certain rural deities, as did Varro (R.R. I, I, 4). The pa.s.sages should be compared for, as M. Gaston Boissier has pointed out, the difference in the point of view of the two men is here ill.u.s.trated by the fact that Varro appeals to purely Roman deities, while Virgil invokes the literary G.o.ds of Greece. Following the _Georgics_ through, one who has studied Varro will note other pa.s.sages for which a suggestion may be found in Varro, usually in facts, but some times in thought and even in words, viz: Before beginning his agricultural operations a farmer should study the character of the country (G. I, 50: R.R. I, 6), the prevailing winds and the climate (G. I, 51: R.R.

I, 2, 3), the farming practice of the neighbourhood (G. I, 52: R.R. I, 18, 7), "this land is fit for corn, that for vines, and the other for trees," (G. I, 54: R.R. I, 6, 5). He should practise fallow and rotation (G. I, 71: R.R. I, 44, 2), and compensate the land by planting legumes (G. I, 74: R.R. I, 23); he should irrigate his meadows in summer (G. I, 104: R.R. I, 31, 5), and drain off surface water in winter (G. I, 113: R.R. I, 36). Man has progressed from a primitive state, when he subsisted on nuts and berries, to the domestication of animals and to agriculture (G. I, 121-159: R.R. II, 1, 3). The threshing floor must be protected from pests (G. I, 178: R.R. I, 51). Seed should be carefully selected (G. I, 197: R.R. 40, 2); the time for sowing grain is the autumn (G. I, 219: R.R. I, 34).

"Everlasting night" prevails in the Arctic regions (G. I, 247: R.R.

I, 2, 5); the importance to the farmer of the four seasons (G.I. 258; R.R. I, 27) and the influence of the Moon (G.I. 276: R.R. I, 37).

The several methods of propagating plants described (G. II, 9-34: R.R.

I, 39), but here Varro follows Theophrastus (H.P. II, 1); trees grow slowly from seed (G. II, 57; R.R. I, 41, 4); olives are propagated from truncheons (G. II, 63; R.R. I, 41, 6). "The praise of Italy" (G.