Roman Farm Management Part 24

Varro's statement that at Byzacium in Africa wheat yielded 100 for one, which Pliny (_II.N._ XVIII, 23) increases to 150 for one, means from 175 to 260 bushels per acre, seems incredible to us, but is confirmed by the testimony of agricultural practice in Palestine.

Isaac claimed to reap an hundred fold, and the parable of the Sower alludes to yields of 30, 60 and 100 fold.

Harte _Essays on Husbandry_, 91, says that the average yield in England in the middle of the eighteenth century was seven for one, though he records the case of an award by the Dublin Society in 1763 to an Irish gentleman who raised 50 bushels of wheat from a single peck of seed! Harte was a parson, but apparently he did not bring the same unction into his agriculture as did the Rev. Robert Herrick to the husbandry of his Devons.h.i.+re glebe, a century earlier. In Herrick's _Thanksgiving to G.o.d for his House_ he sings:

"Lord, 'tis thy plenty dropping hand That soils my land And giv'st me for my bushel sown Twice ten for one.

Thou makst my teeming hen to lay Her egg each day: Besides my healthful ewes to bear Me twins each year."]

[Footnote 96: As the Gallic header here described by Varro is the direct ancestor of our modern marvellous self-binding harvester, it is of interest to rehea.r.s.e the other ancient references to it.

Pliny (_H. N_. XVIII, 72) says:

"In the vast domains of the provinces of Gaul a large hollow frame armed with teeth and supported on two wheels is driven through the standing corn, the beasts being yoked behind it, the result being that the ears are torn off and fall within the frame." Palladius (VII, 2) goes more into detail:

"The people of the more level regions of Gaul have devised a method of harvesting quickly and with a minimum of human labour, for thereby a single ox is made to bear the burden of the entire harvest. A cart is constructed on two low wheels and is furnished with a square body, of which the side boards are adjusted to slope upward and outward to make greater capacity. The front of the body is left open and there across the width of the cart are set a series of lance shaped teeth s.p.a.ced to the distance between the grain stalks and curved upward. Behind the cart two short shafts are fas.h.i.+oned, like those of a litter, where the ox is yoked and harnessed with his head towards the cart: for this purpose it is well to use a well broken and sensible ox, which will not push ahead of his driver. When this machine is driven through the standing grain all the heads are stripped by the teeth and are thrown back and collected in the body of the cart, the straw being left standing. The machine is so contrived that the driver can adjust its height to that of the grain. Thus with little going and coming and in a few short hours the entire harvest is made. This method is available in level or prairie countries and to those who do not need to save the straw."

That ingenious Dutchman Conrad Heresbach refers, in his _Husbandry_, to Palladius' description of the Gallic header with small respect, which indicates that in the sixteenth century it was no longer in use.

I quote from Barnaby Googe's translation of Heresbach (the book which served Izaak Walton as the model for his _Compleat Angler_): "This tricke might be used in levell and champion countries, but with us it would make but ill-favoured worke."

Dondlinger, in his excellent _Book of Wheat_ (1908), which should be in the hands of every grain farmer, gives a picture reproducing the Gallic header and says:

"After being used during hundreds of years the Gallic header disappeared, and it seems to have been completely forgotten for several centuries. Only through literature did it escape the fate of permanent oblivion and become a heritage for the modern world. The published description of the machine by Pliny and Palladius furnished the impulse in which modern harvesting inventions originated. Its distinctive features are retained in several modern inventions of this cla.s.s, machines which have a practical use and value under conditions similar to those which existed on the plains of Gaul. Toward the close of the eighteenth century, the social, economic and agricultural conditions in England, on account of increasing compet.i.tion and the higher value of labour, were ripe for the movement of invention that was heralded by the printed account of the Gallic header. The first header was constructed by William Pitt in 1786. It was an attempted improvement on the ancient machine in that the stripping teeth were placed in a cylinder which was revolved by power transmitted from the wheels. This 'rippling cylinder' carried the heads of the wheat into the box of the machine, and gradually evolved into the present day reel."

It may be added that the William Pitt mentioned was not the statesman, but a contemporary agricultural writer of the same name.]

[Footnote 97: According to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert it was the custom in England to shear wheat and rye and to leave the straw standing after the third method described by Varro, the purpose being to preserve the straw to be cut later for thatching, as thres.h.i.+ng it would necessarily destroy its value for thatching. It was the custom in England, however, to mow barley and oats.]

[Footnote 98: Pliny advises that the grain which collects on the circ.u.mference of a thres.h.i.+ng floor of this description be saved for seed because it is evidently the heaviest.]

[Footnote 99: In the Apennines today the thres.h.i.+ng floor, or _aja_, is anointed with cow dung smeared smooth with water, doubtless for the same reason that the Romans so used amurca.]

[Footnote 100: Between harvests the winnowing basket is quite generally used in Italy today for a cradle, as it was from the beginning of time, for there is an ancient gem representing the infant Bacchus asleep in a winnowing basket.]

[Footnote 101: What the French call, from the same practice, _vin de rognure_.]

[Footnote 102: Varro does not mention the season of the olive harvest, but Virgil tells us (G. II, 519) that in their day as now it was winter. Cato (XX-XXII) described the construction and operation of the _trapetus_ in detail. 'It can still be seen in operation in Italy, turned by a patient donkey and flowing with the new oil of an intense blue-green colour. It is always flanked by an array of vast storage jars (Cato's _dolii_ now called _orci_), which make one realize the story of _Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves_.]

[Footnote 103: The Roman waste of amurca, through ignorance of its value, was like the American waste of the cotton seed, which for many years was thrown out from the gin to rot upon the ground, even its fertilizing use being neglected. Now cotton seed has a market value equivalent to nearly 20 per cent of that of the staple. It is used for cattle feed and also is made into lard and "pure olive oil," being exported in bulk and imported again in bottles with Italian labels.]

[Footnote 104: Cf. Fowler, _Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero_.

"Let us consider that in a large city today the person and property of all, rich or poor, are adequately protected by a sound system of police and by courts of first instance which are sitting every day.

a.s.sault and murder, theft and burglary are exceptional. It might be going too far to say that at Rome they were the rule: but it is the fact that in what we may call the slums of Rome there was no machinery for checking them.... It is the great merit of Augustus that he made Rome not only a city of marble but one in which the persons and property of all citizens were fairly secure."

There are several contemporary references to the crowded and dangerous condition of the streets of Rome at the end of the Republic. Cicero (_Plancius_, 7) tells how he was pushed against the arch of Fabius while struggling through the press of the Via Sacra, and exonerates from blame the man who was the immediate cause of his inconvenience, holding that the one next beyond was more responsible: in which judgment Cicero was of the opinion of Mr. Justice Blackstone in the famous leading case of Scott _v_. Shepherd (1 _Smith's L.C._, 480), where the question was who was liable for the damage eventually done by the burning squib which was pa.s.sed about the market house by successive hands. The majority of the court held, however, against Blackstone and Cicero, and established the doctrine of proximate cause.]

[Footnote 105: The Roman week (_nundinum_, or more properly _inter nundinum_) was of eight days, the last being the market day on which the citizens rested from agricultural labour and came into town to sell and buy and talk politics. Cf. Pliny, XVIII, 3. This custom which Varro regrets had fallen into desuetude so far as Rome was concerned was in his day still practised in the provinces. Thus the five tenants on Horace's Sabine farm were wont to go every _nundinum_ to the market town of Varia (the modern Vicovaro) to transact public business (_Epist_. I, 14, 2).]

[Footnote 106: Varro here refers to the great economic change which was coming over Italian husbandry in the last days of the Republic, the disappearance of the small farms, the "septem jugera" which nurtured the early Roman heroes like Cincinnatus and Dentatus, and even the larger, but still comparatively small, farms which Cato describes, and the development of the _latifundia_ given over to grazing.]

[Footnote 107: The tradition is, says Pliny, that King Augeas was the first in Greece to use manure, and that Hercules introduced the practice into Italy. To the wise farmer the myth of the Augean stables is the genesis of good agriculture.]

[Footnote 108: This was the "crowded hour" in Varro's life, and, as M.

Boissier has pointed out, he loved to dwell upon its episodes. It will be recalled that Pompey divided the Mediterranean into thirteen districts for the war with the Pirates and put a responsible lieutenant in command of each, thus enabling him by concurrent action in all the districts to clear the seas in three months. Appian gives the list of officers and the limits of their commands, saying: "The coasts of Sicily and the Ionian sea as far as Acarnania were entrusted to Plotius and Varro." It is difficult to understand Varro's own reference to Delos, but Appian makes clear how it happened that Varro was stationed on the coast of Epirus and so fell in with the company of "half Greek shepherds" who are the _dramatis personae_ of the second book. As the scene of the first book was laid in a temple of Tellus, so this relating to live stock is cast in a temple of Pales, the G.o.ddess of shepherds, on the occasion of the festival of the Parilia, and the names of the characters have a punning reference to live stock.]

[Footnote 109: The codices here contain an interpolation of the words "HIC INTERMISIMUS," to indicate that a part of the text is missing, with which judgment of some early student of the archetype Victorius, Scaliger and Ursinus, as well as their successors among the commentators on Varro, have all agreed. It is a pleasure to record the agreement on this point, because it is believed to be unique: but many precedents for plunging the reader _in medias res_, as does the surviving text, might be found in the modern short story of the artist in style. As M. Boissier points out Varro might have cited the beginning of the Odyssey as a precedent for this.]

[Footnote 110: This is a paraphase of a favorite locution of Homer's heroes, whose characteristic modesty does not, however, permit them to apply it to themselves, as Varro does. Thus in _Iliad_, VII, 114, Agamemnon advises Menelaos not to venture against Hector, whom "even Achilles dreadeth to meet in battle, wherein is the warrior's glory, and Achilles is better far than thou."]

[Footnote 111: Virgil (Aen. VII, 314) made a fine line out of this tradition, endowing the st.u.r.dy race of Fauns and Nymphs who inhabited the land of Saturn before the Golden Age, with the qualities of the trees on whose fruit they subsisted, "gensque virum truncis et duro robore nata."]

[Footnote 112: In the registers of the censors every thing from which the public revenues were derived was set down under the head of _pascua_, or "pasture lands," because for a long time the pasture lands were the only source of such revenue. Cf. Pliny, _H.N._ XVIII, 3.]

[Footnote 113: Olisippo is the modern Lisbon. This tradition about the mares of the region is repeated by Virgil (Geo. III, 272) by Columella (VI, 27) and by Pliny (VIII, 67). Professor Ridgeway in _The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse_ describes it as "an aetiological myth to explain the swiftness of horses" for the fleetest horses came out of the West; thus Pegasus was born at the springs of the ocean, and there is the pa.s.sage in Homer (_Iliad_, XVI, 149) about the horses "that flew as swift as the winds, the horses that the harpy Podarge (Swift Foot) bare to the West Wind as she grazed on the meadows by the stream of the Ocean." Hence we may conclude that there was a race of swift horses in Portugal in the earliest times, which Professor Ridgeway would doubtless like very much to prove, in support of his interesting thesis, were derived from Libya.]

[Footnote 114: _Hypenemia_, or barren eggs, are described intelligently by Aristotle (H.A.V. 1, 4, VI. 2, 5), and, with Varro's confidence in the country traditions, by Pliny, H.N. X, 80.

If he had known it, Varro might have here cited the fact that the unfertilized queen bee is parthenogenetic, though producing only male bees; i.e., drones: but it remained for a German clergyman, Dzierzon, to discover this in the eighteenth century.]

[Footnote 115: Cf. Plautus _Menaechmi_, II, 2, 279. One of the two Menaechmi is, on his arrival at Epid.a.m.nus, mistaken for his brother, of whose existence he does not know, and much to his amazement is introduced into the brother's life and possessions. At first he expostulates, accusing the slave of the brother, who has mistaken his ident.i.ty, of being crazy and offers to exorcise him by a sacrifice of weanling pigs, wherefore he asks the question quoted in the text.

Varro was evidently fond of this pa.s.sage, as he quotes it again, _post_, p. 221. The _Menaechmi_ is one of the immortal comedies and has survived in many forms on the modern stage all over Europe. From it Shakespeare derived the plot of the _Comedy of Errors_.]

[Footnote 116: It is interesting to compare these sane therapeutics with Cato's practice less than two hundred years previous (_ante_, p. 47), which was characteristic of the superst.i.tious peasant who in Italy still seeks the priest to bless his ailing live stock.]

[Footnote 117: This Atticus was Cicero's intimate friend to whom he addressed so many of his charming letters. He changed his name as stated in the text, the new name being that of an uncle who adopted him, as we learn from his life by Nepos. As is well known to all students of Cicero, Atticus had dwelt in Athens many years and derived his income from estates in Epirus, which is the point of Scrofa's jest.]

[Footnote 118: This requirement of short legs is the more remarkable because of the long journeys which Varro says the Roman sheep were required to make between their summer and winter pastures. A similar necessity and bad roads created in England, before the eighteenth century, a demand for long legged sheep. Prothero (_English Farming Past and Present_) quotes a description of the "true old Warwicks.h.i.+re ram" in 1789: "His frame large and remarkably loose. His bone throughout heavy. His legs long and thick, terminating in large splaw feet."

One of the things which Bakewell accomplished was to shorten the legs as well as to increase the mutton on his New Leicesters. Of Bakewell, Mr. Prothero justly says, "By providing meat for the million he contributed as much to the wealth of the country as Arkwright or Watt."]

[Footnote 119: Shepherds still look for the black or spotted tongue in the mouth of the ram, for the reason given by Varro, but the warning is no longer put in the shepherds' manual.]

[Footnote 120: Varro would still feel at home in Apulia, for there the sheep industry is carried on much as it was in his time, and thence the _calles publicae_, to which he refers, still lead to the summer pastures in the Apennines. Cf. Beauclerk _Rural Italy_, chap. V. "The extensive pasturages of the 'Tavoliere di Puglia' (Apulia) are of great importance and have a history of their own. This vast domain covers 750,000 acres: its origin belongs to the time of the Roman Conquests and the protracted wars of the Republic, which were fought out in the plains, whence they became deserted and uncultivated, fit only for public pastures in winter time ... the periodical emigrations of the flocks continue as in the past times: they descend from the mountains into the plains by a network of wide gra.s.sy roads which traverse the region in every direction and are called _tratturi_.

These lanes are over 100 yards in width and cover a total length of 940 miles.... Not less than 50,000 animals are pastured on the Tavoliere, requiring over 1,500 square miles of land for their subsistence.... Five thousand persons are employed as shepherds."]

[Footnote 121: Varro quite uniformly uses words which indicate that he was accustomed to see sheep driven (_abigere, propellere, adpellere_) but we can see the flocks _led_ in Italy today, as they were in Palestine soon after Varro's death, according to the testimony of that beautiful figure of the Good Shepherd (_St. John_, X, 4): "And when he putteth forth his own sheep he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice." R. Child, in his "Large Letter" in Hartlib's _Legacie_, gives the explanation of the difference in the custom:

"Our sheep do not follow their shepherds as they do in all other countries: for the shepherd goeth before and the sheep follow like a pack of dogs. This disobedience of our sheep doth not happen to us, as the Papist Priests tell their simple flocks, because we have left their great shepherd the Pope; but because we let our sheep range night and day in our fields without a shepherd: which other countries dare not for fear of wolves and other ravenous beasts, but are compelled to guard them all day with great dogs and to bring them home at night, or to watch them in their folds."]

[Footnote 122: Cf. Dante, _Purg_. XXVII, 79.

"Le capre Tacite all' ombra mentre che'l sol ferve Guardate dal pastor che'n su la verga Poggiato s'e, e lor poggiato serve."]

[Footnote 123: It will be recalled that when Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, was making his way to his house in company with the faithful swineherd Eumaeus, they met the goatherd Melanthius "leading his goats to feast the wooers, the best goats that were in all the herds."

(_Odyssey_, XVII, 216), and that subsequently he suffered a terrible punishment for this unfaithfulness to his master's interests.]

[Footnote 124: Pliny (VIII, 76) calls these excrescences _lanciniae_, or folds, and attributes them exclusively to the she goat, as Varro seems to do also, but Columella (VII, 6) attributes them to the buck.]

[Footnote 125: Aristotle (H.A. I, 9.1) refers to this opinion and denounces it as erroneous.]

[Footnote 126: The Roman _denarius_, which has been here and later translated _denier_, may be considered for the purpose of comparing values as, roughly, the equivalent of the modern franc, or lira, say 20 cents United States money.]