ROMAN FARM MANAGEMENT: THE TREATISES OF CATO AND VARRO TEXT

introduced into the brother's life and possessions. At first he expostulates, accusing the slave of the brother, who has mistaken his identity, 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 passage, 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 superstitious 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 Warwickshire 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 grassy 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.] [Footnote 127: Macrobius (_Saturn_. I, 6) tells another story of the origin of this cognomen, which, if not so heroic as that in the text, is entertaining. It is related that a neighbour's sow strayed on Tremelius' land and was caught and killed as a vagrant. When the owner came to claim it and asserted the right to search the premises Tremelius hid the carcass in the bed in which his wife was lying and then took a solemn oath that there was no sow in his house except that in the bed.] [Footnote 128: It would seem, as Gibbon says of the Empress Theodora, that this passage could be left "veiled in the obscurity of a learned language"; but it may be noted that the _locus classicus_ for the play on the word is the incident of the Megarian "mystery pigs" in Aristophanes' _Acharnians_, 728 ff. Cf. also Athenaeus, IX, 17, 18.] [Footnote 129: Cf. Pliny (_H.N._ VIII, 77): "There is no animal that affords a greater variety to the palate of the epicure: all the others have their own peculiar flavour, but the flesh of the hog has nearly fifty different flavours."] [Footnote 130: In his stimulating book, _Comment la route crée le type Social_, Edmond Desmolins submits an ingenious hypothesis to explain the pre-eminence of the Gauls in the growing and making of pork, and how that pre-eminence was itself the explanation of their early success in cultivating the cereals. He describes their migrating ancestors, the Celts, pushing their way up the Danube as hordes of nomad shepherds with their vast flocks and herds of horses and cattle, on the milk of which they had hitherto subsisted. So long as they journeyed through prairie steppes, the last of which was Hungary, they maintained their shepherd character, but when they once passed the site of the present city of Vienna and entered the plateau of Bavaria, they found new physical conditions which caused them to reduce and to separate their herds of large cattle--an unbroken forest affording little pasture of grass. Here they found the wild boar subsisting upon the mast of the forest, and him they domesticated out of an economic necessity, to take the place of their larger cattle as a basis of food supply. Until then they had not been meat eaters, and so had known no necessity for cereals, for milk is a balanced ration in itself. But this change of diet required them also to take to agriculture and so to abandon their nomad life. 'By reason of the habits of the animal, swine husbandry has a tendency in itself to confine those engaged in it to a more or less sedentary life, but we are about to see how the Celts were compelled to accomplish this important evolution by an even more powerful force. Meat cannot be eaten habitually except in conjunction with a cereal ... and of all the meats pork is the one which demands this association most insistently, because it is the least easily digested and the most heating of all the meats.... So that is how the adoption of swine husbandry and a diet of pork compelled our nomad Celts to take the next step and settle down to agriculture.'] [Footnote 131: This Gallic _tomacina_ was doubtless the ancestor of the _mortadella_ now produced in the Emilia and known to English speaking consumers as "Bologna" sausage.] [Footnote 132: The Gaul of which Cato was here writing is the modern Lombardy, one of the most densely populated and richest agricultural districts in the world. Here are found today those truly marvellous "marchite" or irrigated meadows which owe the initiative for their existence to the Cistercian monks of the Chiaravalle Abbey, who began their fruitful agricultural labours in the country near Milan in the twelfth century. There is a recorded instance of one of these meadows which yielded in a single season 140 tons of grass per hectare, equal to 75 tons of hay, or 30 tons per acre! The meadows are mowed six times a year, and the grass is fed green to Swiss cows, which are kept in great numbers for the manufacture of "frommaggio di grana," or Parmesan cheese. This system of green soiling maintains the fertility of the meadows, while the by-product of the dairies is the feeding of hogs, which are kept in such quantity that they are today exported as they were in the times of Cato and Varro. There is no region of the earth, unless it be Flanders, of which the aspect so rejoices the heart of a farmer as the Milanese. Well may the Lombard proverb say, "Chi ha prato, ha tutto."] [Footnote 133: Virgil (_Aen_. VII, 26) subsequently made good use of this tradition of the founding of Lavinium, the sacred city of the Romans where the Penates dwelt and whither solemn processions were wont to proceed from Rome until Christianity became the State religion. The site has been identified as that of the modern village of Practica, where a few miserable shepherds collect during the winter months, fleeing to the hills at the approach of summer and the dread _malaria_.] [Footnote 134: Cf. Polybius, XII, 4: 'For in Italy the swineherds manage the feeding of their pigs in the same way. They do not follow close behind the beasts, as in Greece, but keep some distance in front of them, sounding their horn every now and then: and the animals follow behind and run together at the sound. Indeed, the complete familiarity which the animals show with the particular horn to which they belong seems at first astonishing and almost incredible. For, owing to the populousness and wealth of the country, the droves of swine in Italy are exceedingly large, especially along the sea coast of the Tuscans and Gauls: for one sow will bring up a thousand pigs, or some times even more. They, therefore, drive them out from their night styes to feed according to their litters and ages. When if several droves are taken to the same place they cannot preserve these distinctions of litters: but they, of course, get mixed up with each other both as they are being driven out and as they feed, and as they are being brought home. Accordingly, the device of the horn blowing has been invented to separate them when they have got mixed up together, without labour or trouble. For as they feed one swineherd goes in one direction sounding his horn, and another in another and thus the animals sort themselves of their own accord and follow their own horn with such eagerness that it is impossible by any means to stop or hinder them. But in Greece when the swine get mixed up in the oak forests in their search for the mast, the swineherd who has most assistants and the best help at his disposal, when collecting his own animals drives off his neighbours' also. Some times, too, a thief lies in wait and drives them off without the swineherd knowing how he has lost them, because the beasts straggle a long way from their drivers in their eagerness to find acorns, when they are just beginning to fall.' Bishop Latimer in one of his sermons quotes the phrase used in his youth, at the time of the discovery of America, in calling hogs: 'Come to thy minglemangle, come pur, come pur.' It would be impossible to transcribe the traditional call used in Virginia. One some times thinks that it was the original of the celebrated 'rebel yell' of General Lee's army.] [Footnote 135: The use of the Greek salutation was esteemed by the more austere Romans of the age of Scipio an evidence of preciosity, to be laughed at: and so Lucienus' jesting apology for the use of it here doubtless was in reference to Lucilius' epigram which Cicero has preserved, _de Finibus_, I, 3. "Graece ergo praetor Athenis Id quod maluisti te, quum ad me accedi, saluto [Greek: Chaire] inquam, Tite: lictores turma omni cohorsque [Greek: Chaire] Tite! Hinc hostis mi Albucius, hinc inimicus." It was the word which the Romans taught their parrots. Cf. Persius, _Prolog_. 8.] [Footnote 136: The working ox was respected by the ancient Romans as a fellow labourer. Valerius Maximus (VIII, 8 _ad fin_.) cites a case of a Roman citizen who was put to death, because, to satisfy the craving of one of his children for beef to eat, he slew an ox from the plough. Ovid puts this sentiment in the mouth of Pythagoras, when he agrees that pigs and goats are fit subjects for sacrifice, but protests against such use of sheep and oxen. (_Metamor_. XV, 139.) "Quid meruere boves, animal sine fraude dolisque Innocuum, simplex, natum tolerare labores? Immemor est demum, nee frugum manere dignus Qui potuit curvi demto modo pondere arati Ruricolam mactare suum: qui trita labore Ilia quibus toties durum renovaverat arvum Tot dederse messes, percussit colla securi."] [Footnote 137: The learned commentators have been able to discover nothing about either this Plautius or this Hirrius, but it appears that Archelaus wrote a book under the title Bugonia, of which nothing survives. It may be conjectured, however, on the analogy of Samson's riddle to the Philistines, "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness," (_Judges_, XIV, 14), that Plautius meant to imply that some good might be the consequence of the evil Hirrius had done: and that Vaccius cited the allusion to suggest to Varro that, while he might know nothing much about cattle, his attempt to deal with the subject might provoke some useful discussion.] [Footnote 138: Darwin, _Animals and Plants_, II, 20, cites this passage and says that "at the present day the natives of Java some times drive their cattle into the forests to cross with the wild Banteng." The crossing of wild blood on domestic animals is not, however, always successful. A recent visitor to the German agricultural experiment station at Halle describes "a curious hairy beast with great horns, a wild look in his eye, a white streak down his back and a bumpy forehead, which had in it blood from cattle which had lived on the plains of Thibet, which had grazed on the lowland pastures of Holland, which had roamed the forests of northeast India and of the Malay Peninsular, and had wandered through the forests of Germany. We Americans had sympathy for this beast. He was some thing like ourselves, with the blood of many different races flowing through his veins."] [Footnote 139: Pliny (VIII, 66) cites the fact that the Scythians always preferred mares to stallions for war, and gives an ingenious reason for the preference. Aristotle (_H.A._ VI, 22) says that the Scythians rode their pregnant mares until the very last, saying that the exercise rendered parturition more easy. Every breeder of heavy draft horses has seen a mare taken from the plough and have her foal in the field, with no detriment to either: and the story of the mare Keheilet Ajuz, who founded the best of the Arab families, is well known, but bears repetition. I quote from Spencer Borden, _The Arab Horse_, p. 44: "It is related that a certain Sheik was flying from an enemy, mounted on his favourite mare. Arab warriors trust themselves only to mares, they will not ride a stallion in war. The said mare was at the time far along toward parturition: indeed she became a mother when the flying horseman stopped for rest at noonday, the new comer being a filly. Being hard pressed the Sheik was compelled to remount his mare and again seek safety in flight, abandoning the newborn filly to her fate. Finally reaching safety among his own people, great was the surprise of all when, shortly after the arrival of the Sheik on his faithful mare, the little filly less than a day old came into camp also, having followed her mother across miles of desert. She was immediately given into the care of an old woman of the tribe (Ajuz = an old woman), hence her name Keheilet Ajuz, 'the mare of the old woman,' and grew to be the most famous of all the animals in the history of the breed."] [Footnote 140: Varro does not describe the livery of the horses of his day, as he does of cattle, but Virgil (_Georg_. III, 81) supplies the deficiency, asserting that the best horses were bay (_spadices_) and roan (_glauci_) while the least esteemed were white (_albi_) and dun (_gilvi_), which is very interesting testimony in support of the most recent theory of the origin of the thoroughbred horse. Professor Ridgeway who, opposing Darwin's conclusion, contends for a multiple origin of the historic and recent races of horses, has collected a mass of information about the marking of famous horses of all ages in his _Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse_. He maintains that a bay livery, with a white star and stockings, the development of protective coloration from an originally striped coat, such as has gone on more recently in the case of the quaggas, is absolute evidence of the North African origin of a horse, and he shows that all the swiftest horses mentioned in history are of that race, while the heavier and less mettlesome horses of Northern origin have been, when pure bred, dun coloured or white. Of the Italian breeds mentioned by Varro, Professor Ridgeway conjectures that the Etruscan (or Rosean) was probably an improved Northern horse, while the Apulian, from the South of Italy, represented an admixture of Libyan blood.] [Footnote 141: Aristotle (_H.A._ VI, 22) preceded Varro with this good advice, saying that a mare "produces better foals at the end of four or five years. It is quite necessary that she should wait one year and should pass through a fallow, as it were--[Greek: poiein osper neion]."] [Footnote 142: Mules were employed in antiquity from the earliest times. In Homer they were used for drawing wagons: thus Nausicaa drove a mule team to haul out the family wash, and Priam made his visit to Achilles in a mule litter. Homer professes to prefer mules to oxen for ploughing. There were mule races at the Greek games. Aristotle (_Rhetoric_, III, 2) tells an amusing story of Simonides, who, when the victor in the mule race offered him only a poor fee, refused to compose an ode, pretending to be shocked at the idea of writing about "semi-asses," but, on receipt of a proper fee, he wrote the ode beginning: "Hail, daughters of storm-footed mares," although they were equally daughters of the asses.] [Footnote 143: The breed of Maremma sheep dogs, still preferred in Italy, is white. He is doubtless the descendant of the large woolly "Spitz" or Pomeranian wolf dog which is figured on Etruscan coins.]