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FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: "The manner in which the ancients managed their fallow
is certainly most worthy of our attention: their care in ploughing,
according to the situation of the land, and nature of the climate, and
their manner of adapting the kind of ploughing to answer the purposes
intended by the operation, are also most worthy of our imitation.
Their exactness in these things exceeds any thing of the kind found
amongst the moderns, and is even beyond what any practical writer on
agriculture has proposed. This is an evidence that tillage is not even
in this age brought to that perfection of which it is capable: and
that, notwithstanding all the improvements lately introduced, we may
yet receive some instruction from a proper attention to the precepts
and practices of the ancients. I am desirous to add that this
attention may be useful by preventing improvers from running into
every specious scheme of agriculture produced by a lively imagination
and engaging them to study the great variety of soils and even
climates in this island, and to be careful in adapting to these their
several operations." Dickson Husbandry of the Ancients, XXIII.
The Rev. Andrew Dickson, who died in 1776, was minister of Aberlady in
the county of East Lothian, the son of a progressive and successful
Scots farmer, and had experience in practical agriculture, as well as
in scholarship, as his book shows.]
[Footnote 2: The compilation of rural lore, known as the Geoponica,
which exists in Greek, was made at Byzantium for the Emperor
Constantine VII about the middle of the tenth century A.D. It is very
largely a paraphrase of the Roman authors, and is useful principally
in elucidating their textual difficulties.]
[Footnote 3: Donald G. Mitchell made an interesting collation, in his
Wet Days at Edgewood, of the large number of books on agriculture
which have been written in old age and by men of affairs, in many
lands and many languages.]
[Footnote 4: It is interesting to record, however, that Varro received
the Navalis Corona for personal gallantry in the war against the
pirates. This distinction was even more rare than our modern Medal of
Honor or Victoria Cross, and was awarded only to a commander who leapt
under arms on the deck of an enemies' ship and then succeeded in
capturing her.]
[Footnote 5: Caesar did not live to accomplish this, but some years
after his death a public library was established at Rome by Asinius
Pollio, which Pliny says (H.N. VII, 31) was the first ever built,
those at Alexandria and Pergamus having been private institutions of
the kings.
In a land where public libraries have been every where founded out
of the accumulations of Big Business, it is interesting to note that
Pollio derived the funds with which this the first of their kind was
endowed, from the plunder of the Illyrians!]
[Footnote 6: Cf. Sellar, Roman Poets of the Augustan Age. Virgil Ch.
-
Boissier, Etudes sur M.T. Varron, Ch. IX. Servius _Comm. in Verg.
Georg_. I, 43.
It does not appear that many of the commentators on Virgil have
taken the trouble to study Varro thoroughly. They are usually better
scholars than farmers.]
[Footnote 7: It is not remarkable that Virgil failed to make
acknowledgment to Varro in the Georgics when he failed to make
acknowledgment to Homer in the Aeneid. See Petrarch's Epistle to
Homer for a loyal but vain attempt to justify this neglect.]
[Footnote 8: Cf. W.H. Myers' Classical Essays, p. 110: "For in the
face of some German criticism it is necessary to repeat that in order
to judge poetry it is, before all things, necessary to enjoy it. We
may all desire that historical and philological science should push
her dominion into every recess of human action and human speech, but
we must utter some protest when the very heights of Parnassus are
invaded by a spirit which surely is not science, but her unmeaning
shadow; a spirit which would degrade every masterpiece of human genius
into the mere pabulum of hungry professors, and which values a poet's
text only as a field for the rivalries of sterile pedantry and
arbitrary conjecture."]
[Footnote 9: It was perhaps this encomium upon the farmer at the
expense of the banker which inspired Horace's friend Alfius to
withdraw his capital from his banking business and dream a delicious
idyl of a simple carefree country life: but, it will be recalled
(Epode II, the famous "Beatus ille qui procul negotiis") that Alfius,
like many a modern amateur farmer, recruited from town, soon repented
that he had ever listened to the alluring call of "back to the land"
and after a few weeks of disillusion in the country, returned to town
and sought to get his money out again at usury.
Columella (I, praef.) is not content with Cato's contrast of the
virtue of the farmer with the iniquity of the banker, but he brings
in the lawyer's profession for animadversion also. This, he says, the
ancient Romans used to term a canine profession, because it consisted
in barking at the rich.]
[Footnote 10: The Roman numerals at the beginning of the paragraphs
indicate the chapters of Cato from which they are translated. If
Cato had not pretended to despise every thing which smacked of Greek
literary art he might have edited and arranged his material, in which
event his book would have been easier to read than it is, and no less
valuable. Modern scholarship would not now venture to perform such an
office for such a result, because it involves tampering with a text
(as who should say, shooting a fox!) and yet modern scholarship
wonders at the decay of classical studies in an impatient age. At the
risk of anathema the present version has attempted to group Cato's
material, and in so doing has omitted most of those portions which are
now of merely curious interest.]
[Footnote 11: This, of course, means buying at a high price, except
in extraordinary cases. There is another system of agriculture which
admits of the pride of making two blades of grass grow where none was
before, and the profit which comes of buying cheap and selling dear.
This is farming for improvement, an art which was well described two
hundred years before Cato. Xenophon (Economicus XX, 22) says:
"For those who are able to attend to their affairs, however, and
who will apply themselves to agriculture earnestly, my lather both
practised himself and taught me a most successful method of making
profit; for he would never allow me to buy ground already cultivated,
but exhorted me to purchase such as from want of care or want of means
in those who had possessed it, was left untilled and unplanted. He
used to say that well cultivated land cost a great sum of money and
admitted of no improvement, and he considered that land which is
unsusceptible of improvement did not give the same pleasure to the
owner as other land, but he thought that whatever a person had or
bought up that was continually growing better afforded him the highest
gratification."]
[Footnote 12: Every rural community in the Eastern part of the United
States has grown familiar with the contrast between the intelligent
amateur, who, while endeavoring earnestly to set an example of good
agriculture, fails to make expenses out of his land, and the born
farmer who is self-supporting in the practice of methods contemned
by the agricultural colleges. Too often the conclusion is drawn that
scientific agriculture will not pay; but Cato puts his finger on the
true reason. The man who does not depend on his land for his living
too often permits his farm to get what Cato calls the "spending
habit." Pliny (H.N. XVIII, 7) makes some pertinent observations on
the subject:
"I may possibly appear guilty of some degree of rashness in making
mention of a maxim of the ancients which will very probably be looked
upon as quite incredible, 'that nothing is so disadvantageous as to
cultivate land in the highest style of perfection.'"
And he illustrates by the example of a Roman gentleman, who, like
Arthur Young in eighteenth century England, wasted a large fortune in
an attempt to bring his lands to perfect cultivation. "To cultivate
land well is absolutely necessary," Pliny continues, "but to cultivate
it in the very highest style is mere extravagance, unless, indeed, the
work is done by the hands of a man's own family, his tenants, or those
whom he is obliged to keep at any rate."]
[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
noble 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 shield of Achilles
(Iliad, XVIII, 540). "Furthermore, he set in the shield 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 illustrates 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 Institute of Agriculture
published at Rome in 1912, rest on three chief safeguards:
-
That membership is confined to persons residing within a small
district, and, therefore, the members are personally known to one
another;
-
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;
-
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 competition 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 gods to
those of the country."]
[Footnote 20: According to German scholarship 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
occípitíum." 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 Blätter. 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 wishing 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 establishing 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 wasshe 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 butter, 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."
Sir Anthony Fitzherbert (1470-1538) was the English judge whose
law books are, or should be, known to all lawyers. His Boke of
Husbandry, published in 1534, is one of the classics of English
agriculture, and justly, for it is full of shrewd observation and
deliberate wisdom expressed in a virile style, with agreeable leaven
of piety and humour. Fitzherbert anticipated a modern poet, Henley, in
one of his most happy phrases: "Ryght so euery man is capitayne of his
owne soule". The Husbandry is best available to the modern reader in
the edition by Skeat published for the English Dialect Society in
1882.]
[Footnote 29: Cato is careful not to undertake to say how this may be
assured; another evidence of his wisdom.]
[Footnote 30: In his instructive discourse on ploughing, Columella (II,
-
gives the key to Cato's warning against ploughing land when it is
in the condition he calls rotten (cariosa):
"Rich land, which holds moisture a long time, should be broken up
(proscindere) at the season when the weather is beginning to be warm
and the weeds are developing, so that none of their seed may mature:
but it should be ploughed with such close furrows that one can with
difficulty distinguish where the plough share has been, for in that
way all the weeds are uprooted and destroyed.
"The spring ploughing should be followed up with frequent stirring
of the soil until it is reduced to dust, so that there may be no
necessity, or very little, of harrowing after the land is seeded: for
the ancient Romans said that a field was badly ploughed which had to
be harrowed after the seed had been sown.
"A farmer should himself make sure that his ploughing has been well
done, not alone by inspection, for the eye is often amused by a smooth
surface which in fact conceals clods, but also by experiment, which is
less likely to be deceived, as by driving a stout stick through the
furrows: if it penetrates the soil readily and without obstruction, it
will be evident that all the land there about is in good order: but if
some part harder than the rest resists the pressure, it will be clear
that the ploughing has been badly done. When the ploughmen see this
done from time to time they are not guilty of clod hopping.
"Hence wet land should be broken up after the Ides of April, and, when
it has been ploughed at that season, it should be worked again, after
an interval of twenty days, about the time of the solstice, which is
the eighth or ninth day before the Kalends of July, and again the
third time about the Kalends of September, for it is not the practice
of experienced farmers to till the land in the interval after the
summer solstice, unless the ground shall have been soaked with a heavy
down-pour of sudden rain, like those of winter, as does some times
happen at this season. In that event there is no reason why the fallow
should not be cultivated during the month of July. But when you do
till at this season beware lest the land be worked while it is muddy:
or when, having been sprinkled by a shower, it is in the condition
which the country people call varia and cariosa, that is to say,
when, after a long drought, a light rain has moistened the surface of
the upturned sod but has not soaked to the bottom of the furrow.
"Those plough lands which are cultivated when they are miry are
rendered useless for an entire year--they can be neither seeded nor
harrowed nor hoed--but those which are worked when they are in the
state which has been described as varia, remain sterile for three
years on end. We should, therefore, follow a medium course and plough
when the land neither lacks moisture nor yet is deep in marsh."]
[Footnote 31: Columella (II, 13) justly says about manure, "Wherefore
if it is, as it would seem to be, the thing of the greatest value to
the farmer, I consider that it should be studied with the greatest
care, especially since the ancient authors, while they have not
altogether neglected it, have nevertheless discussed it with too
little elaboration." He goes on (II, 14) to lay down rules about the
compost heap which should be written in letters of gold in every farm
house.
"I appreciate that there are certain kinds of farms on which it is
impossible to keep either live stock or birds, yet even in such places
it is a lazy farmer who lacks manure: for he can collect leaves,
rubbish from the hedge rows, and droppings from the high ways: without
giving offence, and indeed earning gratitude, he can cut ferns from
his neighbour's land: and all these things he can mingle with the
sweepings of the courtyard: he can dig a pit, like that we have
counselled for the protection of stable manure, and there mix together
ashes, sewage, and straw, and indeed every waste thing which is swept
up on the place. But it is wise to bury a piece of oak wood in the
midst of this compost, for that will prevent venomous snakes from
lurking in it. This will suffice for a farm without live stock."
One can see in Flanders today the happy land smiling its appreciation
of farm management such as this, but what American farmer has yet
learned this kind of conservation of his natural resources.]
[Footnote 32: The occupants of the motor cars which now roll so swiftly
and so comfortably along the French national highway from Paris to
Tours, through the pleasant pays de Beauce, can see this admirable
and economical method of manuring still in practice. The sheep are
folded and fed at night, under the watchful eye of the shepherd
stretched at ease in his wheeled cabin, on the land which was ploughed
the day before.]
[Footnote 33: These of course are all legumes. The intelligent farmer
today sits under his shade tree and meditates comfortably upon the
least expensive and most profitable labour on his farm, the countless
millions of beneficent bacteria who, his willing slaves, are
ceaselessly at work during hot weather forming root tubercles on his
legumes, be it clover or cow peas, and so fixing for their lord the
free atmospheric nitrogen contained in the soil. As Macaulay would
say, "every school boy knows" now that leguminous root nodules are
endotrophic mycorrhiza,--but the Romans did not! Nevertheless their
empirical practice of soil improvement with legumes was quite as good
as ours. Varro (I, 23) explains the Roman method of green manuring
more fully than Cato. Columella (II, 13) insists further that if the
hay is saved the stubble of legumes should be promptly ploughed for he
says the roots will evaporate their own moisture and continue to pump
the land of its fertility unless they are at once turned over.
If the Romans followed this wise advice they were better farmers than
most of us today, for we are usually content to let the stubble dry
out before ploughing.]
[Footnote 34: Was this ensilage? The ancients had their silo pits, but
they used them chiefly as granaries, and as such they are described,
by Varro (I, 57, 63), by Columella (I, 6), and by Pliny (XVIII, 30,
-
.]
[Footnote 35: The extravagant American farmer has not yet learned
to feed the leaves of trees, but in older and more economical
civilizations the practice is still observed.]
[Footnote 36: Amurca was the dregs of olive oil. Cato recommends its
use for many purposes in the economy of the farm, for a moth proof
(XCVIII), as a relish for cattle (CIII), as a fertilizer (CXXX), and
as an anointment for the threshing floor to kill weevil (XCI).]
[Footnote 37: There is a similar remedy for scratches in horses, which
is traditional in the cavalry service today, and is extraordinarily
efficacious.]
[Footnote 38: Cf. Pliny H.N. XVII, 267 and Fraser, The Golden
Bough, XI, 177. The principle is one of magical homeopathy: as the
split reed, when bound together, may cohere and heal by the medicine
of the incantation, so may the broken bone.]
[Footnote 39: These examples will serve to illustrate how far Cato's
veterinary science was behind his agriculture, and what a curious
confusion of native good sense and traditional superstition there was
in his method of caring for his live stock. On questions of preventing
malady he had the wisdom of experience, but malady once arrived he was
a simple pagan. There was a notable advance in the Roman knowledge of
how to treat sick cattle in the century after Cato. Cf. Varro, II, 5.
The words of the incantations themselves are mere sound and fury
signifying nothing, like the "counting out" rhythms used by children
at their games.]
[Footnote 40: Cato gives many recipes of household as well as
agricultural economy. Out of respect for the pure food law most of
them have been here suppressed, but these samples are ventured because
Varro mentions them and the editor is advised that some enterprising
young ladies in Wisconsin have recently had the courage to put them to
the test, and vow that they ate their handiwork! As they live to tell
the tale, it is assumed that the recipes are harmless.]
[Footnote 41: Cf. the following traditional formula as practised in
Virginia:
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