Roman Farm Management: The Treatises of Cato and Varro — Edition Insights

I. Introduction: the literary tradition of country life

Of the definition of Agriculture: II. a. What it is not III. b. What it is IV. The purposes of Agriculture are profit and pleasure V. The four-fold division of the study of Agriculture

_I° Concerning the farm itself_: VI. How conformation of the land affects Agriculture VII. How character of soil affects Agriculture VIII. (A digression on the maintenance of vineyards) IX. Of the different kinds of soils X. Of the units of area used in measuring land

Of the considerations on building a steading: XI. a. Size b. Water supply XII. c. Location, with regard to health XIII. d. Arrangement

Of the protection of farm boundaries: XIV. a. Fences XV. b. Monuments XVI. Of the considerations of neighbourhood

_2° Concerning the equipment of a farm_: XVII. } & }Of agricultural labourers XVIII.} XIX. } & }Of draught animals XX. } XXI. Of watch dogs XXII. Of farming implements

_3° Concerning the operation of a farm_: XXIII. Of planting field crops XXIV. Of planting olives XXV. } & } Of planting vines XXVI.}

_4° Concerning the agricultural seasons_: XXVII. } & }Of the solar measure of the year, illustrated by XXVIII.}

A CALENDAR OF AGRICULTURAL OPERATIONS throughout the year, in eight seasons, viz:

XXIX. 1° February 7-March 24 XXX. 2° March 24-May 7 XXXI. 3° May 7-June 24 XXXII. 4° June 24-July 21 XXXIII. 5° July 21-September 26 XXXIV. 6° September 26-October 28 XXXV. 7° October 28-December 24 XXXVI. 8° December 24-February 7 XXXVII. Of the influence of the moon on Agriculture to which is added

ANOTHER CALENDAR OF SIX AGRICULTURAL SEASONS with a commentary on their several occupations, viz:

CHAPTER _1° Preparing time_: Of tillage, XXXVIII. Of manuring,

XXXIX. _2° Planting time_: Of the four methods of propagating plants, viz:

XL. a. Seeding and here of seed selection b. Transplanting c. Cuttage d. Graftage, and e. A "new" method, inarching XLI. Of when to use these different methods XLII. Of seeding alfalfa XLIII. Of seeding clover and cabbage XLIV. Of seeding grain

_3° Cultivating time_: XLV. Of the conditions of plant growth XLVI. Of the mechanical action of plants XLVII. Of the protection of nurseries and meadows XLVIII. Of the structure of a wheat plant

XLIX. _4° Harvest time_: Of the hay harvest

L. Of the wheat harvest LI. The threshing floor LII. Threshing and winnowing LIII. Gleaning LIV. Of the vintage LV. Of the olive harvest

_5° Housing time_: LVI. Of storing hay LVII. Of storing grain LVIII. Of storing legumes LIX. Of storing pome fruits LX. Of storing olives LXI. Of storing amurca

LXII. _6° Consuming time_: LXIII. Of cleaning grain LXIV. Of condensing amurca LXV. Of racking wine LXVL. Of preserved olives LXVIL. Of nuts, dates and figs LXVIII. Of stored fruits LXIX. Of marketing grain

Epilogue: the dangers of the streets of Rome

THE HUSBANDRY OF LIVE STOCK

Introduction:--the decay of country life

I. Of the origin, the importance and the economy of live stock husbandry II. Of sheep III. Of goats IV. Of swine V. Of neat cattle VI. Of asses VII. Of horses VIII. Of mules IX. Of herd dogs N. Of shepherds XI. Of milk and cheese and wool

THE HUSBANDRY OF THE STEADING

I. Introduction: the antiquity of country life II. Of the definition of a Roman villa III. Of the Roman development of the industries of the steading IV. Of aviaries V. a. for profit b. for pleasure (including here the description of Varro's own aviary) VI. Of pea-cocks VII. Of pigeons VIII. Of turtle doves IX. Of poultry X. Of geese XI. Of ducks XII. Of rabbits XIII. Of game preserves XIV. Of snails XV. Of dormice XVI. Of bees XVII. Of fish ponds

ROMAN FARM MANAGEMENT

NOTE UPON THE ROMAN AGRONOMISTS

Quaecunque autem propter disciplinam ruris nostrorum temporum cum priscis discrepant, non deterrere debent a lectione discentem. Nam multo plura reperiuntur, apud veteres, quae nobis probanda sint, quam quae repudianda.

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 "Romanus sedendo vincit," which illustrates 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 Titus. 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 assizes, 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 coarse 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 snatched 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 Cumae 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, tit. 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 circumstances, 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 Tityrus; certainly he spent many hours of youth "patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi" 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 Cumae: 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 Africanus, 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 God 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 entitled to the appreciation which is always due the schoolmaster of a genius.

NOTE ON THE OBLIGATION OF VIRGIL TO VARRO