Roman Farm Management Part 3

and continue until the free ends of the reed are brought slowly together in front of you. Meanwhile, wave a knife above the reeds, and when they come together and one touches the other, seize them in your hand and cut them right and left. These pieces of reed bound upon a dislocated or fractured bone will cure it.[38]

But every day repeat the incantation, or in place of it this one:

"Huat Hanat Huat Ista Pista Sista Domiabo d.a.m.naustra"[39]

_Of cakes and salad_[40]

(LXXV) This is the recipe for cheese cake (_lib.u.m_): Bray well two pounds of cheese in a mortar, and, when this is done, pour in a pound of corn meal (or, if you want to be more dainty, a half pound of flour) and mix it thoroughly with the cheese. Add one egg and beat it well. Pat into a cake, place it on leaves and bake slowly on a hot hearth stone under a dish.

(CXIX) This is the recipe for olive salad (_epityrum_): Select some white, black and mottled olives and stone them. Mix and cut them up.

Add a dressing of oil, vinegar, coriander, c.u.min, fennel, rue and mint. Mix well in an earthen ware dish, and serve with oil.

(CXXI) This is the recipe for must cake (_mustaceus_): Sprinkle a peck of wheat flour with must. Add anise, c.u.min, two pounds of lard, a pound of cheese and shredded laurel twigs. When you have kneaded the dough, put laurel leaves under it and so bake.

_Of curing hams_

(CLXII) This is the way to cure hams in jars or tubs: When you have bought your hams trim off the hocks. Take a half peck (_semodius_) of ground Roman salt for each ham. Cover the bottom of the jar or tub with salt and put in a ham, skin down. Cover the whole with salt and put another ham on top, and cover this in the same manner. Be careful that meat does not touch meat. So proceed, and when you have packed all the hams, cover the top with salt so that no meat can be seen, and smooth it out even. When the hams have been in salt five days, take them all out with the salt and repack them, putting those which were on top at the bottom. Cover them in the same way with salt and press them down.

After the twelfth day remove the hams finally, brush off the salt and hang them for two days in the wind. On the third day wipe them off clean with a sponge and rub them with (olive) oil. Then hang them in smoke for two days, and on the third day rub them with a mixture of (olive) oil and vinegar.

Then hang them in the meat house, and neither bats nor worms will touch them.[41]

VARRO'S RERUM RUSTICARUM

LIBRI TRES

BOOK I

THE HUSBANDRY OF AGRICULTURE

_Introduction: the literary tradition of country life_

I

Had I leisure, Fundania, this book would be more worthy of you, but I write as best I may, conscious always of the necessity of haste: for, if, as the saying is, all life is but a bubble, the more fragile is that of an old man, and my eightieth year admonishes me to pack my fardel and prepare for the long journey.

You have bought a farm and wish to increase its fertility by good cultivation, and you ask me what I would do with it were it mine. Not only while I am still alive will I try to advise you in this, but I will make my counsel available to you after I am dead. For as it befel the Sibyl to have been of service to mankind not alone while she lived, but even to the uttermost generations of men after her demise (for we are wont after so many years still to have solemn recourse to her books for guidance in interpretation of strange portents), so may not I, while I still live, bequeath my counsel to my nearest and dearest.[42] I will then write three books for you, to which you may have recourse for guidance in all things which must be done in the management of a farm.

And since, as men say, the G.o.ds aid those who propitiate them, I will begin my book by invoking divine approval, not like Homer and Ennius, from the Muses, nor indeed from the twelve great G.o.ds of the city whose golden images stand in the forum, six male and as many female, but from a solemn council of those twelve divinities who are the tutelaries of husbandmen.

First: I call upon Father Jupiter and Mother Earth, who fecundate all the processes of agriculture in the air and in the soil, and hence are called the great parents.

_Second_: I invoke the Sun and the Moon by whom the seasons for sowing and reaping are measured.

_Third_: I invoke Ceres and Bacchus because the fruits they mature are most necessary to life, and by their aid the land yields food and drink.

_Fourth_: I invoke Robigus and Flora by whose influence the blight is kept from crop and tree, and in due season they bear fruit (for which reason is the annual festival of the _robigalia_ celebrated in honour of Robigus, and that of the _floralia_ in honour of Flora).[43]

_Next_: I supplicate Minerva, who protects the olive; and Venus, G.o.ddess of the garden, wherefore is she wors.h.i.+pped at the rural wine festivals.

_And last_: I adjure Lympha, G.o.ddess of the fountains, and Bonus Eventus, G.o.d of good fortune, since without water all vegetation is starved and stunted and without due order and good luck all tillage is in vain.

And so having paid my duty to the G.o.ds, I proceed to rehea.r.s.e some conversations[44] concerning agriculture in which I have recently taken part. From them you will derive all the practical instruction you require, but in case any thing is lacking and you wish further authority, I refer you to the treatises of the Greeks and of our own countrymen.

The Greek writers who have treated incidentally of agriculture are more than fifty in number. Those whom you may consult with profit are Hieron of Sicily and Attalus Philometor, among the philosophers; Democritus the physicist; Xenophon the disciple of Socrates; Aristotle and Theophrastus, the peripatetics; Archytas the pythagorean; likewise the Athenian Amphilochus, Anaxipolis of Thasos, Apollodorus of Lemnos, Aristophanes of Mallos, Antigonus of Cyme, Agathocles of Chios, Apollonius of Pergamum, Aristandrus of Athens, Bacchius of Miletus, Bion of Soli, Chaeresteus and Chaereas of Athens, Diodorus of Priene, Dion of Colophon, Diophanes of Nicaea, Epigenes of Rhodes, Evagon of Thasos, Euphronius of Athens, and his name sake of Amphipolis, Hegesias of Maronea, the two Menanders, one of Priene, the other of Heraclaea, Nicesius of Maronea, Pythion of Rhodes. Among the rest whose countries I do not know, are Andiotion, Aeschrion, Aristomenes, Athenagoras, Crates, Dadis, Dionysius, Euphiton, Euphorion, Eubulus, Lysimachus, Mnaseas, Menestratus, Plentiphanes, Persis, and Theophilus.

All those whom I have named wrote in prose, but there are those also who have written in verse, as Hesiod of Ascra and Menecrates of Ephesus.

The agricultural writer of the greatest reputation is, however, Mago the Carthaginian[45] who wrote in the Punic tongue and collected in twenty-eight books all the wisdom which before him had been scattered in many works. Ca.s.sius Dionysius of Utica translated Mago into Greek in twenty books (and dedicated his work to the praetor s.e.xtilius), and notwithstanding that he reduced Mago by eight books he cited freely from the Greek authors whom I have named. Diophanes made a useful digest of Ca.s.sius in six books, which he dedicated to Deiotarus, King of Bithynia. I have ventured to compress the subject into the still smaller compa.s.s of three books, the first on the husbandry of agriculture, the second on the husbandry of live stock and the third on the husbandry of the steading.

From the first book I have excluded all those things which I do not deem to relate immediately to agriculture: thus having first limited my subject I proceed to discuss it, following its natural divisions.

My information has been derived from three sources, my own experience, my reading, and what I have heard from others.

_Of the definition of agriculture_

_a. What it is not_

II. On the holiday which we call s.e.m.e.ntivae I came to the temple of Tellus at the invitation of the Sacristan (I was taught by my ancestors to call him _Aeditumus_ but the modern purist tells me I must say _Aedituus_). There I found a.s.sembled C. Fundanius, my father-in-law, C. Agrius, a Roman Knight and a disciple of the Socratic school, and P. Agrasius, of the Revenue service: they were gazing on a map of Italy painted on the wall. "What are you doing here?" said I. "Has the festival of the seed-sowing drawn you hither to spend your holiday after the manner of our ancestors, by praying for good crops?" "We are here," said Agrius, "for the same reason that you are, I imagine--because the Sacristan has invited us to dinner. If this be true, as your nod admits, wait with us until he returns, for he was summoned by his chief, the aedile, and has not yet returned though he left word for us to wait for him."

"Until he comes then," said I, "let us make a practical application of the ancient proverb that 'The Roman conquers by sitting down.'"

"You're right," cried Agrius, and, remembering that the first step of a journey is the most difficult,[46] he lead the way to the benches forthwith and we followed. When we were seated Agrasius spoke up.

"You who have travelled over many lands," said he, "have you seen any country better cultivated than Italy?"

"I, for one, don't believe," replied Agrius, "that there is any country which is so intensely cultivated. By a very natural division Eratosthenes has divided the earth into two parts, that facing South and that facing North: and as without doubt the North is healthier than the South, so it is more fertile, for a healthy country is always the most fertile. It must be admitted then that the North is fitter for cultivation than Asia, and particularly is this true of Italy; first, because Italy is in Europe, and, second, because this part of Europe has a more temperate climate than the interior. For almost everlasting winter grips the lands to the North of us. Nor is this to be wondered at since there are regions within the Arctic Circle and at the pole where the sun is not seen for six months at a time. Yea, it is even said that it is not possible to sail a s.h.i.+p in those parts because the very sea is frozen over."

"Would you think it possible," said Fundanius, "for any thing to grow in such a region, and, if it did grow, how could it be cultivated? The tragedian Pacuvius has spoken sooth where he says:

'Should sun or night maintain e'er lasting reign, Then all the grateful fruits of earth must die, Nipped by the cold, or blasted by the heat.'

Even here in this pleasant region, where night and day revolve punctually, I am not able to live in summer unless I divide the day with my appointed midday nap. How is it possible to plant or to cultivate or to harvest any thing there where the days and nights are six months long. On the other hand, what useful thing is there which does not only grow but flourish in Italy? What spelt shall I compare with that of Campania? What wheat with that of Apulia? What wine with that of Falernum? What oil with that of Venafrum? Is not Italy so covered with fruit trees that it seems one vast orchard? Is Phrygia, which Homer calls [Greek: ampeloessa], more teeming with vines, or is Argos, which the same poet calls [Greek: polupuros] more rich in corn?[47] In what land does one jugerum produce ten, nay even fifteen, cullei of wine, as in some regions of Italy? Has not M. Cato written in his book of _Origines_ 'That region lying this side of Ariminium and beyond Picenum, which was allotted to colonists, is called Roman Gaul. There in several places a single jugerum of land produces ten cullei of wine.' Is it not the same in the region of Faventia where the vines are called _tre centaria_ because a jugerum yields three hundred amphorae of wine," and, looking at me, he added, "indeed L.

Martius, your chief engineer, said that the vines on his Faventine farm yielded that much.[48] The Italian farmer looks chiefly for two things in considering a farm, whether it will yield a harvest proportioned to the capital and labour he must invest, and whether the location is healthy. Whoever neglects either of these considerations and despite them proposes to carry on a farm, is a fool and should be taken in charge by a committee of his relatives.[49] For no sane man is willing to spend on an agricultural operation time and money which he knows he cannot recoup, nor even if he sees a likely profit, if it must be at the risk of losing all by an evil climate.