Roman Farm Management Part 26

[Footnote 161: Sicilian honey was famous for its flavour because of the bee pasture of thyme which there abounded, especially at Hybla.

Theophrastus (H.P. III, 15, 5) explains that the honey of Corsica had an acrid taste, because the bees pastured there largely on box trees.]

[Footnote 162: These denizens of the Roman villa are all enumerated by Martial in his delightful verses (III, 38) upon Faustinus' villa at Baiae. The picture of the barn yard is very true to life in all ages, especially the touch of the hungry pigs sniffing after the pail of the farmer's wife:

"Vagatur omnis turba sordidae cortis Argutus anser, gemmeique pavones Nomenque debet quae rubentibus pennis, Et picta perdix, Numidicaeque guttatae Et impiorum phasiana Colchorum.

Rhodias superbi feminas prement galli Sonantque turres plausibus columbarum, Gemit hinc palumbus, inde cereus turtur Avidi sequuntur villicae sinum porci: Matremque plenam mollis agnus exspectat."]

[Footnote 163: The _sestertius_ was one quarter of a _denarius_, or, say, the equivalent of five cents. It was also called _nummus_, as we say "nickel." The ordinary unit used by the Romans in reckoning considerable sums of money was 1,000 sesterces, which may accordingly be translated as the equivalent of (say) $50. Axius' jacka.s.s thus cost $2,000, while Seius' income from his villa was $2,500 per annum, that of Varro's aunt from her aviary was $3,000, and that of Axius from his farm $1,500. Cicero records that Axius was a money lender, which explains the fun here made of his avarice.]

[Footnote 164: Columella, writing about one hundred years after Varro, refers to this pa.s.sage and says that luxury had so developed since Varro's time that it no longer required an extraordinary occasion, like a triumph, to bring the price of thrushes to three _denarii_ a piece, but that that had become a current quotation.]

[Footnote 165: A minerval was the fee (of Minerva) paid to a school teacher.]

[Footnote 166: The inventor of the auspices _ex tripudiis_ or the feeding of chickens was evidently an ingenious poultry fancier who succeeded in securing the care of his favourites at the public charge.]

[Footnote 167: This was L. Marcius Philippus, the orator mentioned by Horace (_Epist_. I, 7, 46), who was Consul in B.C. 91, and was celebrated for his luxurious habits, which his wealth enabled him to gratify. His son married the widow of C. Octavius and so became the step-father of the Emperor Augustus.]

[Footnote 168: This was _t.u.r.dus pilaris_, the variety of thrush which is called field fare.]

[Footnote 169: The traveller by railway from Rome to Naples pa.s.ses near Varro's estate of Casinum, and if he stops at the mediaeval town of San Germano to visit the neighbouring Badia di Monte Ca.s.sino, where the "angelic doctor" Thomas Aquinas was educated, he will find Varro's memory kept green: for he will be entertained at the _Albergo Varrone_ ("very fair but bargaining advisable," sagely counsels Mr. Baedeker) and on his way up the long winding road to the Abbey there will be pointed out to him the river Rapido, on the banks of which Varro's aviary stood, and nearby what is reputed to be the site of the old polymath's villa which Antony polluted with the orgies Cicero described in the second Philippic. Antony's destruction of his library was a great blow to Varro, but one likes to think that his ghost can take satisfaction in the maintenance, so near the haunts of his flesh, of such a n.o.ble collection of books as is the continuing pride of the Abbey on the mountain above.]

[Footnote 170: Varro's Museum, or study where he wooed the Muses, on his estate at Casinum was not unlike that of Cicero at his native Arpinum, which he described (de Leg. II, 3) agreeably as on an island in the cold and clear Fibrenus just above its confluence with the more important river Liris, where, like a plebeian marrying into a patrician family, it lost its name but contributed its freshness. The younger Pliny built a study in the garden of his Laurentine villa near Ostia, which he describes (II, 17) with enthusiasm: "horti diaeta est, amores mei, re vera amores": and here he found refuge from the tumult of his household during the festivities of the Saturnalia, which corresponded with our Christmas. In the ante bellum days every Virginia gentleman had such an "office" in his house yard where he pretended to transact his farm business, but where actually he was wont to escape from the obligations of family and continuous hospitality.]

[Footnote 171: The commentators on this interesting but obscure description of Varro's aviary have at this point usually endeavoured to explain the arrangements of the chamber under the lantern of the _tholus_ with respect to its use as a dining room which Varro frequented himself, and hence have been amused into all kinds of difficulties of interpretation. The references to the _convivae_ are what lead them astray, and it remained for Keil to suggest that this was a playful allusion to the birds themselves, a conclusion which is strengthened by Varro's previous statement of the failure of Lucullus'

attempt to maintain a dining room in his aviary.]

[Footnote 172: Cf. Vitruvius, I, 6: "Andronicus Cyrrhestes built at Athens an octagonal marble tower, on the sides of which were carved images of the eight winds, each on the side opposite that from which it blew. On the pyramidal roof of this tower he placed a bronze Triton holding a rod in his right hand, and so contrived that the Triton, revolving with the wind, always stood opposed to that which prevailed, and thus pointed with his rod to the image on the tower of the wind that was blowing at the moment." The ruins of this Tower of the Winds may still be seen in Athens. There is a picture of it in Harper's Dictionary of Cla.s.sical Antiquities in the article _Andronicus_.]

[Footnote 173: One ventures to translate _athletoe comitiorum_ by Mr.

Gladstone's famous phrase.]

[Footnote 174: Reading "tesserulas coicientem in loculum."]

[Footnote 175: A French translator might better convey the intention of the pun, contained in the _ducere serram_ of the text, by the locution, _une prise de bec_.]

[Footnote 176: It probably will not comfort the ultimate consumer who holds in such odium the celebrated "Schedule K" of the Payne-Aldrich tariff, to realize that the American wool grower puts no higher value on his sheep than did his Roman ancestor, as revealed by this quotation from the stock yards of Varro's time. It is interesting, however, to the breeder to know that a good price for wool has always stimulated the production of the best stock. Strabo says that the wool of t.u.r.detania in Spain was so celebrated in the generation after Varro that a ram of the breed (the ancestors of the modern Merino) fetched a talent, say $1,200; a price which may be compared with that of the prize ram recently sold in England for export to the Argentine for as much as a thousand pounds sterling, and considered a good commercial investment at that. Doubtless the market for Rosean mules comforted Axius in his investment of the equivalent of 400 in a breeding jack.]

[Footnote 177: In feudal times the right to maintain a dove cote was the exclusive privilege of the lord of the manor. According to their immemorial custom, which Varro notices, the pigeons preyed on the neighbourhood crops and were detested by the community in consequence.

During the French revolution they were one of the counts in the indictment of the land-owning aristocracy, and in the event the pigeons as well as their owners had the sins of their forefathers justly visited upon them. The American farmer who has a pigeon-keeping neighbour and is restrained by the pettiness of the annoyance from making a point on their trespa.s.ses, feels something of the blind and impotent wrath of the French peasant against the whole pigeon family.]

[Footnote 178: It appears that the Romans actually hired men to chew the food intended for cramming birds, so as to relieve the unhappy victims even of such exercise as they might get from a.s.similating their diet.

Columella (VII, 10) in discussing the diet of thrushes deprecates this practice, sagely saying that the wages of the chewers are out of proportion to the benefit obtained, and that any way the chewers swallow a good part of what they are given to macerate.

The typical tramp of the comic papers who is forever looking for occupation without work might well envy these Roman professional chewers. Not even Dr. Wiley's "poison squad" employed to test food products could compare with them.]

[Footnote 179: These prices of $10 and $50 and even $80 a pair for pigeons, large as they seem, were surpa.s.sed under the Empire.

Columella says (VIII, 8): "That excellent author, M. Varro, tells us that in his more austere time it was not unusual for a pair of pigeons to sell for a thousand sesterces, a price at which the present day should blush, if we may believe the report that men have been found to pay for a pair as much as four thousand _nummi_." ($200.)]

[Footnote 180: The market for chickens and eggs in the United States would doubtless astonish the people of Delos as much as the statistics do us (ipsa suas mirantur Gargara messes!). It is solemnly recorded that the American hen produces a billion and a quarter dozen eggs per annum, of a value greater than that of either the wheat or cotton crops, and yet there are many of us who cannot get our hens to lay more than a hundred eggs a year!]

[Footnote 181: Reading _ad infirma crura_. This practice is explained more at length by Columella (VIII, 2, 3) who specifies the spurs, _calcaribus inustis_.

Buffon, who describes a 'practice of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the combs of capons, adds (V, 302) an interesting account of an experiment which he says he had made "une espece de greffe animale": after tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the comb of a growing c.o.c.kerel his budding spurs were cut out and grafted on the roots of the comb, where they took root and flourished, growing to a length of two and a half inches, in some cases curving forward like the horns of a ram, and in others turning back like those of a goat.]

[Footnote 182: The dusting yard which Varro here describes was in the open, but Columella (VIII, 3) advises what modern poultry farmers pride themselves upon having recently discovered,--a covered scratching pen strewn with litter to afford exercise for the hens in rough weather. It will be observed that, so far as ventilation is concerned, Varro recommends a hen house open to the weather: this is another standard of modern practice which has had a hard struggle against prejudice. Columella adds two more interesting bits of advice, that for the comfort of the hens the roosts should be cut square, and for cleanliness their water trough should be enclosed leaving only openings large enough to receive a hen's head. With so much enlightenment and sanitation one would expect one or the other of these Romans to tell us of some "teeming hen" like Herrick's who laid "her egg each day."

We are proud to be able to cite the eminent Roseburg Industrious Biddy who, in the year of grace 1912, achieved the championship of America with a record of 266 eggs in ten months and nineteen days, and was sold for $800: but Varro is content to suggest that a hen will lay more eggs in a season than she can hatch, and the conservative Columella (VIII, 5) that the number of eggs depends upon diet.]

[Footnote 183: The guinea fowl got their Greek name, _meleagrides_, because the story was that the sisters of Meleager were turned into guinea hens. Pliny (_H.N._ X, 38) says that they fight every year on Meleager's tomb. It is a fact that they are a pugnacious fowl. Buffon says that guinea fowl disappeared from Europe in the Dark Ages and were not known again until the route to the Indies via the Cape of Good Hope was opened when they were imported anew from the west coast of Africa.]

[Footnote 184: Reading, "propter fastidium hominum." Cf. Pliny (X, 38), whose explanation is "propter ingratum virus."]

[Footnote 185: There is a Virginia practice of feeding a fat turkey heavily on bread soaked in wine or liquor just before he is killed, the result being that as the turkey gets into that condition which used to put our ancestors under the table, he relaxes all his tendons and so is sweeter and more tender when he comes above the table. There is a humanitarian side to the practice which should recommend it even to the W.C.T.U. as well as to the epicure.]

[Footnote 186: Many thousands of geese used to be driven every year to Rome from the land of the Morini in Northern Gaul, but the Germans are the modern consumers. A British consular report says that in addition to the domestic supply a special "goose train" of from fifteen to forty cars is received daily in Berlin from Russia. It would seem that the goose that lays the golden egg has emigrated to Muscovy. Buffon says that the introduction of the Virginia turkey into Europe drove the goose off the tables of all civilized peoples.]

[Footnote 187: Columella (VIII, 14) repeats this myth, but Aristotle (_H.A._ V, 2, 9) says that geese bathe _after_ breeding. Buffon gives a Gallic touch, "ces oiseaux preludent aux actes de l'amour en allant d'abord s'egayer dans l'eau."]

[Footnote 188: Reading _seris_. It is the _Cichorium endivia_ of Linnaeus. Cf. Pliny (_H.N._ XX, 32.)]

[Footnote 189: Varro does not mention it, but the Romans knew and prized _pate de foie gras_ under the name _ficatum_, which indicates that they produced it by cramming their geese with a diet of figs. Cf.

Horace's verse "pinguibus et ficis pastum iecur anseris albi."

In Toulouse, whence now comes the best of this dainty of the epicure, the geese are crammed daily with a dough of corn meal mixed with the oil of poppies, fed through a tin funnel, which is introduced into the esophagus of the unhappy bird. At the end of a month the stertorous breathing of the victim proclaims the time of sacrifice to Apicius.

The liver is expected to weigh a kilogram, (say two pounds), while at least two kilograms of fat are saved in addition, to garnish the family _plat_ of vegetables during the remainder of the year.]

[Footnote 190: Reading _foeles_, which Keller, in his account of the fauna of ancient Italy in the Cambridge _Companion to Latin Studies_, identifies with _Martes vulgaris_. Sir Anthony Fitzherbert calls them fullymartes. It does not appear that the Romans had in Varro's time brought from Egypt our household cat, _F. maniculata_. They used weasels and tame snakes for catching mice.]

[Footnote 191: Darwin (_Animals and Plants_, I, 8) cites this pa.s.sage and argues that Varro's advice to cover the duck yard with netting to keep the ducks from flying out is evidence that in Varro's time ducks were not entirely domesticated, and hence that the modern domestic duck is the same species as the wild duck. It may be noted, however, that Varro gives the same advice about netting the chicken yard, having said that chickens had been domesticated from the beginning of time.]

[Footnote 192: The ancient Etruscan city of Tarquinii is now known as Corneto. The wild sheep which Lippinus there kept in his game preserves were probably the _mouflon_ which are still hunted in Sardinia and Corsica, though they may have been the Phrygian wild sheep (_Aegoceros argali_) which Varro mentions in Book II. Pliny (_H.N._ VIII, 211) says that this Lippinus was the first of the Romans to keep wild animals enclosed; that he established his preserves shortly before the Civil Wars, and that he soon had imitators.]

[Footnote 193: Reading * * * * [Transcriber's note: the preceding four *s are actually four instances of the "infinity" symbol (like a digit 8 rotated horizontally)]_pa.s.sum_. The Roman mile, _mille pa.s.suum_, was 142 yards less than the English mile.]

[Footnote 194: Of the three kinds of hares mentioned by Varro the "common Italian kind" was _L. timidus_, a roast shoulder of which Horace vaunts as a delicacy: the Alpine hare was _L. variabilis_, which grows white on the approach of winter: and the _cuniculus_ was the common rabbit known to our English ancestors as the coney. Strabo records (Casaub, 144) that the inhabitants of the Gymnesian (Balearic) Islands in Spain sent a deputation to Augustus to request a military force to exterminate the pest of rabbits, for such was their mult.i.tude that the people were being crowded out of their homes by them, in which their plight was that of modern Australia. They were usually hunted in Spain with muzzled ferrets imported from Africa.]

[Footnote 195: The edible snail, _helix pomatia_, L., is still an article of commerce in France and Italy. They prey upon vines and give evidence of their appreciation of the best by abounding in the vineyards of the _Cote d'or_, the ancient Burgundy. There at the end of summer they are gathered for the double purpose of protecting the vines and delighting the epicure: are then stored in a safe place until cold weather, when they considerately seal up their own sh.e.l.ls with a calcareous secretion and so are shipped to market.

Here is the recipe for 'escargots a la bourguignonne,' which despite the prejudice engendered by _Leviticus_ (XI, 30.) may be recommended to the American palate jaded by beefsteak and potatoes and the high cost of living: "Mettre les escargots a bouillir pendant 5 a 10 minutes dans de l'eau salee, les retirer de leur coquille, les laver a l'eau froide pour les debarra.s.ser du limon, les cuire dans un court-bouillon fortement a.s.saisonne. Apres cuisson les replacer dans le coquille bien nettoyee, en les garnissant au fond et par dessus d'une farce de beurre frais manipule avec un fin hachis de persil, cerfeuil, ail, echalote, sel et poivre. Avant de servir, faire chauffer au four."]

[Footnote 196: Reading Lx.x.x _quadrantes_. A comparison may be made of this capacity with that of the ordinary snail known to the Romans, for their smallest unit of liquid measure was called a _cochlear_, or snail sh.e.l.l, and contained.02 of a modern pint, or, as we may say, a spoonful: indeed the French word _cuiller_ is derived from _cochlear_.]

[Footnote 197: It is perhaps well to remind the American reader that the European dormouse (_Myoxus glis_. Fr. _loir_. Ger. _siebenschlafer_) is rather a squirrel than a mouse, and that he is still esteemed a dainty edible, as he was by the Romans: indeed when fat, just before he retires to hibernate, he might be preferred to 'possum and other strange dishes on which some hospitable Americans regale themselves and the patient palates of touring Presidents. In his treatise _De re culinaria_ Apicius gives a recipe for a ragout of dormice which sounds appetizing.]

[Footnote 198: Darwin (_Animals and Plants_, XVIII) says: "I have never heard of the dormouse breeding in captivity."]

[Footnote 199: Varro makes no mention of tea and bread and b.u.t.ter as part of the diet of a dormouse; so we are better able to understand his abstinence at the mad tea party in _Alice in Wonderland_. As Martial (III, 58) calls him _somniculosus_, it is probable that his table manners on that occasion were nothing new and that his English and German names were always justified.]