Roman Farm Management Part 23

We may permit Montesquieu (_Esprit des Lois_ II, 23, 14) to voice the French side of this question. "Les pais de paturage sont pen peuples.

Les terres a bled occupent plus d'hommes et les vign.o.bles infiniment d'avantage. En Angleterre on s'est souvent plaint que l'augmentation des paturage diminuoit les habitans."

In the introduction to his Book Two (_post_, p. 179) Varro states the sound conclusion, that the two kinds of husbandry should be combined on the same land. Sir Anthony Fitzherbert knew this: "An housbande can not well thryue by his corne without he haue other cattell, nor by his cattell without corne. For els he shall be a byer, a borrower or a beggar."]

[Footnote 64: This is the explanation of why Aesop's fox found the grapes to be sour which grew on a trellis, for he had expected to find them of easy access on the ground. Aesop was a Phrygian, and, while Bentley has proved that Aesop never wrote the existing fables which go by that name, yet it is recognized that they are of Oriental origin and it is evident that that of the Fox and the Grapes came out of Asia, where, as Varro says, the grapes were usually allowed to grow on the ground.]

[Footnote 65: One is tempted to include here Pliny's observations upon the tests of good soil if only for the sake of his description of one of the sweetest sensations of the farmer every where, the aroma of new ploughed fertile land:--

"Those unguents which have a taste of earth are better," says Cicero, "than those which smack of saffron," it seeming to him more to the purpose to express himself by the word taste than smell. And such is the fact no doubt, that soil is the best which has the savour of a perfume. If the question should be put to us, what is this odour of the earth that is held in such estimation; our answer is that it is the same that is often to be recognized at the moment of sunset without the necessity even of turning up the ground, at the spots where the extremities of the rainbow have been observed to meet the earth: as also, when after long continued drought, the rain has soaked the ground. Then it is that the earth exhales the divine odour that is so peculiarly its own, and to which, imparted to it by the sun, there is no perfume however sweet that can possibly be compared. It is this odour which the earth, when turned up, ought to emit, and which, when once found, can never deceive any person: and this will be found the best criterion for judging of the quality of the soil. Such, too, is the odour that is usually perceived in land newly cleared when an ancient forest has been just cut down; its excellence is a thing that is universally admitted.]

[Footnote 66: The _actus_ was the head land or as much land as a yoke of oxen could plough at a single spell without stopping, and measured 120 feet in length and four feet in width. Cf. Pliny, H.N. XVIII, 3.

Hence the square of the head land became the basis of the Roman land measure. With the derivation of the _actus_ may be compared that of the English furlong (furrow-long) and the French _arpent_ (literally, head land).]

[Footnote 67: On the socialistic principle of Strepsiades in Aristophanes' _Clouds_ that the use of geometry is to divide the land into _equal_ parts.]

[Footnote 68: As it is difficult to appreciate that the Roman Campagna was formerly populous with villas, when one contemplates its green solitudes today, so when one faces the dread malaria which there breeds, one wonders how the Romans of the Republic maintained so long their hardy const.i.tutions. It is now agreed that there was no malaria in the Land of Saturn so long as the volcanos in the Alban hills were active, because their gases purified the air and kept down the mosquitoes, and geology tells us that Monte Pila was in eruption for two or three centuries after the foundation of Rome. By the beginning of the second century B.C. the fever seems to have become endemic.

Plautus and Terence both mention it and Cato (CLVII) describes its symptoms unmistakably. In his book on the effect of malaria in history, W.H. Jones expresses the opinion that the malady was brought into Italy from Africa by Hannibal's soldiers, but it is more probable that it was always there. See the discussion in Lanciani's _Wanderings in the Roman Campagna_. In Varro's time the Roman fever had begun to sap the vitality of the Roman people, and the "animalia minuta" in this pa.s.sage suggests that Varro had a curious appreciation of what we call the modern science of the subject. Columella (I, 5, 6) indeed specifically mentions mosquitoes (infestis aculeis armata animalia) as one of the risks incident to living near a swamp.]

[Footnote 69: In the thirteenth century Ibn-al-Awam, a learned Moor, wrote at Seville his _Kitab al-felahah_, or Book of Agriculture, which has preserved for us not only the wisdom of the Moorish practice in agriculture and gardening which made Spain an enchanted paradise, but also the tradition of the Arabs in such matters, purporting to go back, through the Nabataeans to the Chaldaean books, which recorded the agricultural methods that obtained "by the waters of Babylon."

Ibn-al-Awam's book has, therefore, a double interest for us, and we are fortunate in having it available in an admirable French translation from the Arabic by J.J. Clement-Mullet (Paris, Librairie A. Franck, 1864). Not the least profitable chapters in this book are those devoted to the preparation of manure in composts, to be ripened in pits as Varro advises in the text. They show a thoroughness, a care and an art in the mixing of the various animal dungs, with straw, woodsearth and cinders, which few modern gardeners could equal. German scholars.h.i.+p has questioned the Chaldaean origin of the authorities quoted, but there is internal evidence which smacks of an oriental despotism that might well be Babylonian. In a recipe for a rich compost suitable for small garden plants, we are advised (I, 2, I, p.

95), without a quiver, to mix in blood--that of the camel or the sheep if necessary--_but human blood is to be preferred!_]

[Footnote 70: What Varro describes as the military fence of ditch and bank was doubtless the typical Herefords.h.i.+re fence of modern England which Arthur Young, in _The Farmers' Letters_, recommends so highly as at once most effective and most economical. The bank is topped with a plashed hedge of white thorn in which sallow, ash, hazel and beech are planted for "firing." The fencing practice of the American farmer has followed the line of least resistance and is founded on the lowest first cost: the original "snake" fences of split rails, upon the making of which a former generation of pioneer American boys qualified themselves for Presidential campaigns, being followed by woven wire "made by a trust" and not the most enduring achievement of Big Business. The practical farmer, as well as the lover of rural scenery, has cause for regret that American agricultural practice has not yet had the patience to enclose the land within live hedges and ditches.]

[Footnote 71: The kind of fence which Varro here describes as "ex terra et lapillis compositis in formis" is also described by Pliny (H.N.

x.x.xV, 169), as formaceos or moulded, and he adds, "aevis durant." It would thus clearly appear to have been of gravel concrete, the use of which the manufacturers of cement are now telling us, is the badge of the modern progressive farmer. Cato (x.x.xVIII) told how to burn lime on the farm, and these concrete fences were, of course, formed with lime as the matrix. When only a few years ago, Portland cement was first produced in America at a cost and in a quant.i.ty to stimulate the development of concrete construction, engineers began with rough broken stone and sand as the const.i.tuents of what they call the aggregate, but some one soon "discovered" that the use of smooth natural gravel made more compact concrete and "gravel concrete" became the last word in engineering practice. But it was older even than Varro. A Chicago business man visiting Mycenae picked up and brought home a bit of rubbish from Schliemann's excavations of the ancient masonry: lying on his office desk it attracted the attention of an engineering friend who exclaimed, "That is one of the best samples of the new gravel concrete I have seen. Did it come out of the Illinois tunnel?" "No," replied the returned traveller, "it came out of the tomb of Agamemnon!"]

[Footnote 72: Varro here seems to forget the unities. He speaks in his own person, when Scrofa has the floor.]

[Footnote 73: It will be recalled that Aristotle described slaves as living tools. In Roman law a slave was not a _persona_ but a _res_.

Cf. Gaius II, 15.]

[Footnote 74: One of the most interesting of these freemen labourers of whom we know is that Ofellus whom Horace (Satire II, 2) tells us was working with cheerful philosophy as a hired hand upon his own ancestral property from which he had been turned out in the confiscations following the battle of Philippi. This might have been the fate of Virgil also had he not chanced to have powerful friends.]

[Footnote 75: "Mais lorsque, malgre le degout de la chaine domestique, nous voyons naitre entre les males et les femelles ces sentiments que la nature a partout fondes sur un libre choix: lorsque l'amour a commence a unir ces couples captifs, alors leur esclavage, devenu pour eux aussi doux que la douce liberte, leur fait oublier peu a peu leur droits de franchise naturelle et les prerogatives de leur etat sauvage; et ces lieux des premiers plaisirs, des premieres amours, ces lieux si chers a tout etre sensible, deviennent leur demeure de predilection et leur habitation de choix: l'education de la famille rend encore cette affection plus profonde et la communique en meme temps aux pet.i.ts, qui s'etant trouves citoyens par naissance d'un sejour adopte par leur parents, ne cherchent point a en changer: car ne pouvant avoir que pen ou point d'idee d'un etat different ni d'un autre sejour ils s'attachent au lieu ou ils sont nes comme a leur patrie; et l'on sait que la terre natale est chere a ceux meme qui l'habitent en esclaves."

One might a.s.sume that this eloquent and comfortable essay on contentment in slavery had been written to ill.u.s.trate Varro's text at this point, but, as a matter of fact, it is Buffon's observation (VIII, 460) on the domestication of wild ducks!]

[Footnote 76: Saserna's rule would be the equivalent of one hand to every five acres cultivated. With slave labour, certainly with negro slave labour, the experience of American cotton planters in the nineteenth century very nearly confirmed this requirement, but one of the economic advantages of the abolition of slavery is ill.u.s.trated by this very point. In Latimer's _First Sermon before King Edward VI_, animadverting on the advance in farm rents in his day, he says that his father, a typical substantial English yeoman of the time of the discovery of America, was able to employ profitably six labourers in cultivating 120 acres, or, say, one hand for each twenty acres, which was precisely what Arthur Young recommended as necessary for high farming at the end of the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century the American farmer seldom employs more than one hand for every eighty acres cultivated, but this is partly due to the use of improved machinery and partly to the fact that his land is not thoroughly cultivated.]

[Footnote 77: This example of Roman cost accounting is matched by Walter of Henley in thirteenth century England.

"Some men will tell you that a plough cannot work eight score or nine score acres yearly, but I will show you that it can. You know well that a furlong ought to be forty perches long and four wide, and the King's perch is sixteen feet and a half: then an acre is sixty-six feet in width. Now in ploughing go thirty-six times round to make the ridge narrower, and when the acre is ploughed then you have made seventy-two furlongs, which are six leagues, for be it known that twelve furlongs are a league. And the horse or ox must be very poor that cannot from the morning go easily in pace three leagues in length from his starting place and return by three o'clock. And I will show you by another reason that it can do as much. You know that there are in the year fifty-two weeks. Now take away eight weeks for holy days and other hindrances, then are there forty-four working weeks left.

And in all that time the plough shall only have to plough for fallow or for spring or winter sowing three roods and a half daily, and for second fallowing an acre. Now see if a plough were properly kept and followed, if it could not do as much daily."]

[Footnote 78: Stolo is quibbling. Cato's unit of 240 jugera was based on the duodecimal system of weights and measures which the Romans had originally derived from Babylon but afterwards modified by the use of a decimal system. The enlightened and progressive nations of the modern world who have followed the Romans in adopting a decimal system may perhaps approve Stolo's remarks, but it behooves those of us who still cling to the duodecimal system to defend Cato, if only to keep up our own courage.]

[Footnote 79: Here, in a few words, is the whole doctrine of intelligent agriculture. Cf. Donaldson's _Agricultural Biography, t.i.t_. Jethro Tull. "The name of Tull will ever descend to posterity as one of the greatest luminaries, if not the very greatest benefactor, that British agriculture has the pride to acknowledge. His example furnishes the vast advantages of educated men directing their attention to the cultivation of the soil, as they bring enlightened minds to bear upon its practice and look at the object in a naked point of view, being divested of the dogmas and trammels of the craft with which the pract.i.tioners of routine are inexpugnably provided and entrenched."]

[Footnote 80: Pliny quotes Cato: "What ever can be done by the help of the a.s.s costs the least money," which is the philosophy of modern power machinery on the farm, as elsewhere. It is largely a question of the cost of fuel, as Varro says.]

[Footnote 81: Green manuring is one of the oldest, as it is one of the best, of agricultural practices. Long before Varro, Theophrastus (II.P. 9, I) had recorded what the agricultural colleges teach today--that beans are valuable for this purpose because they rot readily, and, he adds, in Macedonia and Thessaly it has always been the custom to turn them under when they bloom.]

[Footnote 82: Although Varro advises the first ploughing in the spring, the ancients were not unmindful of the advantages of winter ploughing of stiff and heavy clay. Theophrastus, who died in B.C. 287, advises it "that the earth may feel the cold." Indeed, he was fully alive to the reasons urged by the modern professors of agronomy for intensive cultivation. "For the soil," he says (C.P. III, 25), "often inverted becomes free, light and clear of weeds, so that it can most easily afford nourishment."

King Solomon gives the same advice, "The sluggard will not plough by reason of the winter, therefore shall he begin harvest and have nothing." _Proverbs_, XX, 4.]

[Footnote 83: The Romans understood the advantages of thorough cultivation of the soil. As appears from the text, they habitually broke up a sod in the spring, ploughed it again at midsummer, and once more in September before seeding. Pliny prescribes that the first ploughing should be nine inches deep, and says that the Etruscans some times ploughed their stiff clay as many as nine times. The accepted Roman reason for this was the eradication of weeds, but it also accomplished in some measure the purpose of "dry farming"--the conservation of the moisture content of the soil, as that had been practised for countless generations in the sandy Valley of Mesopotamia. Varro makes no exception to this rule, but Virgil was here, as in other instances, induced to depart from Varro's wisdom, with the result that he imposed upon Roman agriculture several thoroughly bad practices. Thus, while he applies Varro ploughing rules to rich land and bids the farmer "exercetque frequens tellurem atque imperat arvis," he says (Geo. I, 62) that it will suffice to give sandy land a single shallow ploughing in September immediately before seeding, for fear, forsooth, that the summer suns will evaporate whatever moisture there is in it! Again, Virgil recommends, what Varro does not, cross-ploughing and burning the stubble and Virgil's advice was generally followed.

In William Benson's edition (1725) of the _Georgics_ "with notes critical and rustick," it is stated that "the husbandry of England in general is Virgilian, which is shown by paring and burning the surface: by raftering and cross-ploughing, and that in those parts of England where the Romans princ.i.p.ally inhabited all along the Southern coast Latin words remain to this hour among shepherds and ploughmen in their rustick affairs: and what will seem more strange at first sight to affirm though in fact really true, there is more of Virgil's husbandry put in practice in England at this instant than in Italy itself." That this was the fact in the thirteenth century is clear from the quotations we have made from Walter of Henley's _Dite de Hosebondrie_. Cf. also Sir Anthony Fitzherbert and the account of the manorial system of farming in England in Prothero's _English Farming Past and Present_.

It remained for Jethro Tull of the _Horseshoeing Husbandry_ to unloose in England the long spell of the magic of Virgil's poetry upon practical agriculture.]

[Footnote 84: The Julian calendar, which took effect on January 1, B.C.

45, had been in use only eight years when Varro was writing.]

[Footnote 85: Schneider and others have attempted to emend the enumeration of the days in this succession of seasons, but Keil justly observes: "As we do not know what principle Varro followed in establis.h.i.+ng these divisions of the year, it is safer to set them down as they are written in the codex than to be tempted by uncertain emendation." I have accordingly followed Keil here.]

[Footnote 86: The practice of ridging land seeded to grain was necessary before the invention of the modern drill. d.i.c.kson, in his _Husbandry of the Ancients_, XXIV, argues that, while wasteful of land, it had the advantage of preventing the grain from lodging.

Walter of Henley, who followed the Roman methods by tradition without knowing it, advises with them that to be successful in this kind of seeding the furrow at the last ploughing of the fallow should be so narrow as to be indistinguishable. "At sowing do not plough large furrows," he says, "but little and well laid together that the seed may fall evenly: if you plough a large furrow to be quick you will do harm. How? I will tell you. When, the ground is sown then the harrow will come and pull the corn into the hollow which is between the two ridges and the large ridge shall be uncovered, then no corn shall grow there. And will you see this? When the corn is above ground go to the end of the ridge and you will see that I tell you truly. And if the land must be sown below the ridge see that it is ploughed with small furrows and the earth raised as much as you are able. And see that the ridge which is between the two furrows is narrow. And let the earth, which lies like a crest in the furrow under the left foot after the plough, be over-turned, and then shall the furrow be narrow enough."]

[Footnote 87: Farrago was a mixture of refuse _far_, or spelt, with vetch, sown thick and cut green to be fed to cattle in the process now called soiling. The English word "forage" comes from this Latin original.]

[Footnote 88: Spanish American engineers today insert in their specifications for lumber the stipulation that it be cut on the wane of the moon. The rural confidence in the influence of the moon upon the life of a farm still persists vigorously: thus as Pliny (H.N.

XVIII, 75) counselled that one wean a colt only when the moon is on the wane, so it will be found that the moon is consulted before a colt is weaned on most American farms today: for that may be safely done, says the rural oracle, only when the moon's sign, as given in the almanack, corresponds with a part of the almanack's "moon's man" or "anatomic" at or below the knees, i.e., when the moon is in one or the other of the signs Pisces, Capricornus or Aquarius: but never at a time of day when the moon is in its "Southing."]

[Footnote 89: Modern agricultural chemistry has contradicted this judgment of Ca.s.sius, for the manure of sea birds, especially that brought from the South American islands in the Pacific, known commercially as Peruvian guano, is found on a.n.a.lysis to be high in the elements which are most beneficial to plant life.]

[Footnote 90: Seed selection, which is now preached so earnestly by the Agricultural Department of the United States as one of the things necessary to increase the yield of wheat and corn, has ever been good practice. Following Varro Virgil (_Georgic_ I, 197) insists upon it: "I have seen those seeds on whose selection much time and labour had been spent, nevertheless degenerate if men did not every year rigorously separate by hand all the largest specimens."]

[Footnote 91: Cicero (de Div. II, 24) records a _mot_ of Cato's that he wondered that an haruspex did not laugh when he saw another--"qui mirari se aiebat, quod non rideret aruspex, aruspicem quum vidisset."]

[Footnote 92: This process of propagation which Varro describes as "new" is still practised by curious orchardists under the name "inarching." The free end of a growing twig is introduced into a limb of its own tree, back of a specimen fruit, thus pus.h.i.+ng its development by means of the supplemental feeding so provided. Cf. Cyc.

Am. Hort. II, 664.]

[Footnote 93: _Alfalfa_ is the Moorish name which the Spaniards brought to America with the forage plant _Medicago Sativa_, Linn., which all over Southern Europe is known by the French name _lucerne_. It is proper to honour the Moors by continuing in use their name for this interesting plant, because undoubtedly they preserved it for the use of the modern world, just as undoubtedly they bequeathed to us that fine sentiment known as personal honour.

Alfalfa was one of the standbys of ancient agriculture. According to Pliny, it was introduced into Italy from Greece, whence it had been brought from Asia during the Persian wars, and so derived its Greek and Roman name _Medica_. As Cato does not mention it with the other legumes he used, it is probable that the Romans had not yet adopted it in Cato's day, but by the time of Varro and Virgil it was well established in Italy. In Columella's day it was already a feature of the agriculture of Andalousia, and there the Moors, who loved plants, kept it alive, as it were a Vestal fire, while it died out of Italy during the Dark Ages: from Spain it spread again all over Southern Europe, and with America it was a fair exchange for tobacco. Alfalfa has always been the subject of high praise wherever it has been known.

The Greek Amphilochus devoted a whole book to it, as have the English Walter Harte in the middle of the eighteenth century and the American Coburn at the beginning of the twentieth century, but none of them is more instructive on the subject of its culture than is Columella in a few paragraphs. Because of the difficulty of getting a stand of it in many soils, it is important to realize the pains which the Romans took with the seed bed, for it is on this point that most American farmers fail. Says Columella (II, 10):

"But of all the legumes, alfalfa is the best, because, when once it is sown, it lasts ten years: because it can be mowed four times, and even six times, a year: because it improves the soil: because all lean cattle grow fat by feeding upon it: because it is a remedy for sick beasts: because a jugerum (two-thirds of an acre) of it will feed three horses plentifully for a year. We will teach you the manner of cultivating it, as follows: The land which you wish to set in alfalfa the following spring should be broken up about the Kalends of October, so that it may mellow through the entire winter. About the Kalends of February harrow it thoroughly, remove all the stones and break up the clods. Later, about the month of March, harrow it for the third time.

When you have so got the land in good order, lay it off after the manner of a garden, in beds ten feet wide and fifty feet long, so that it may be possible to let in water by the paths, and access on every side may be had by the weeders. Then cover the beds with well rotted manure. At last, about the end of April, sow plentifully so that a single measure (cyanthus) of seed will cover a s.p.a.ce ten feet long and five wide. When you have done this brush in the seed with wooden rakes: this is most important for otherwise the sprouts will be withered by the sun. After the sowing no iron tool should touch the beds; but, as I have said, they should be cultivated with wooden rakes, and in the same manner they should be weeded so that no foreign gra.s.s can choke out the young alfalfa. The first cutting should be late, when the seed begins to fall: afterwards, when it is well rooted, you can cut it as young as you wish to feed to the stock. Feed it at first sparingly, until the stock becomes accustomed to it, for it causes bloat and excess of blood. After cutting, irrigate the beds frequently, and after a few days, when the roots begin to sprout, weed out all other kinds of gra.s.s. Cultivated in this way alfalfa can be mowed six times a year, and it will last for ten years."]

[Footnote 94: See the explanation of what the Romans meant by _terra varia_ in the note on Cato V. _ante_, p. 40.]

[Footnote 95: It is interesting to note from the statements in the text that in Varro's time the Roman farmer in Italy both sowed and reaped substantially the same amount of wheat as does the American farmer today. Varro says that the Romans sowed five modii of wheat to the jugerum and reaped on the maximum fifteen for one. As the modius was nearly the equivalent of our peck, the Roman allowance for sowing corresponds to the present American practice of sowing seven pecks of wheat to the acre: and on this basis a yield of 26 bushels to the acre, which is not uncommon in the United States, is the equivalent of the Roman harvest of fifteen for one.

It is fair to the average Italian farmer of the present day who is held up by the economists to scorn because he does not produce more than eleven bushels of wheat to the acre, to record that in Columella's time, when agriculture had declined as compared with Varro's experience, the average yield of grain in many parts of Italy did not exceed four for one (_Columella_, III, 3), or say seven and a half bushels to the acre.