ROMAN FARM MANAGEMENT: THE TREATISES OF CATO AND VARRO TEXT

[Footnote 144: In his essay,_Notre ami le chien_, Maeterlinck maintains eloquently that the dog alone among the domestic animals has given his confidence and friendship to man. "We are alone, absolutely alone, on this chance planet: and amid all the forms of life that surround us not one excepting the dog has made alliance with us. A few creatures fear us, most are unaware of us, and not one loves us. In the world of plants, we have dumb and motionless slaves: but they serve us in spite of themselves.... The rose and the corn, had they wings, would fly at our approach, like birds. Among the animals, we number a few servants who have submitted only through indifference, cowardice or stupidity: the uncertain and craven horse, who responds only to pain and is attached to nothing ... the cow and the ox happy so long as they are eating and docile because for centuries they have not had a thought of their own.... I do not speak of the cat, to whom we are nothing more than a too large and uneatable prey: the ferocious cat whose side long contempt tolerates us only as encumbering parasites in our own homes. She at least curses us in her mysterious heart: but all the others live beside us as they might live beside a rock or a tree." The effective use of this thesis in the scene of the revolt of the domestic animals in the Blue Bird will be remembered.] [Footnote 145: This method of securing the faithful affection of a dog is solemnly recommended, without acknowledgment to Saserna, in the seventeenth century editions of the _Maison Rustique_ (I, 27).] [Footnote 146: Keil happily points out that in his book on the Latin language (VII, 31), Varro quotes the "ancient proverb" to which he here refers, viz.: "canis caninam non est" dog doesn't eat dog.] [Footnote 147: Aristotle (_H.A._ VI, 20) says that puppies are blind from twelve to seventeen days, depending upon the season of the year at which they are born. Pliny (_H N._ VIII, 62) says from seven to twenty days, depending upon the supply of the mother's milk.] [Footnote 148: It was among these hardy shepherd slaves that Spartacus recruited his army in 72-71 B.C., as did Caelius and Milo in 48 B.C., while their descendants were the brigands who infested Southern Italy even in the nineteenth century.] [Footnote 149: Gaius, I, 119, II, 24, 41, describes in detail the processes here referred to by which a slave was acquired under the Roman law.] [Footnote 150: Dennis, in his _Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_, draws a picture of modern Italy which may serve to illustrate Varro's sketch of the mountain life of the shepherds of his day: "Occasionally in my wanderings on this site (Veii) I have entered, either from curiosity or for shelter, one of the _capanne_ scattered over the downs. These are tall conical thatched huts which the shepherds make their winter abode. For in Italy, the lowlands being generally unhealthy in summer, the flocks are driven to the mountains about May, and as soon as the great heats are past are brought back to the rich pastures of the plains. It is a curious sight, the interior of a _capanna_, and affords an agreeable diversity to the antiquity hunter. A little boldness is requisite to pass through the pack of dogs, white as new dropt lambs, but large and fierce as wolves, which, were the shepherd not at hand, would tear in pieces whoever might venture to approach the hut: but with one of the _pecoraj_ for a Teucer, nothing is to be feared. The _capanne_ are of various sizes. One I entered not far from Veii was thirty or forty feet in diameter and fully as high, propped in the centre by two rough masts, between which a hole was left in the roof for the escape of smoke. Within the door lay a large pile of lambs, there might be a hundred, killed that morning and already flayed, and a number of shepherds were busied in operating on the carcases of others: all of which were to be dispatched forthwith to the Roman market. Though a fierce May sun blazed without, a huge fire roared in the middle of the hut: but this was for the sake of the _ricotta_, which was being made in another part of the _capanna_. Here stood a huge cauldron, full of boiling ewes' milk. In a warm state this curd is a delicious jelly and has often tempted me to enter a _capanna_ in quest of it, to the amazement of the _pecoraj_, to whom it is _vilior alga_. Lord of the cauldron, stood a man dispensing ladlefuls of the rich simmering mess to his fellows, as they brought their bowls for their morning allowance: and he varied his occupation by pouring the same into certain small baskets, the serous part running off through the wicker and the residue caking as it cooled. On the same board stood the cheeses, previously made from the cream. In this hut lived twenty-five men, their nether limbs clad in goat skins, with the hair outwards, realizing the satyrs of ancient fable: but they had no nymphs to tease, nor shepherdesses to woo, and never 'sat all day Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love To amorous Phillida.' They were a band of celibates without the vows. In such huts they dwell all the year round, flaying lambs or shearing sheep, living on bread, _ricotta_ and water, very rarely tasting meat or wine and sleeping on shelves ranged round the hut, like berths in a ship's cabin. Thus are the dreams of Arcadia dispelled by realities."] [Footnote 151: In modern Italy the shepherds do not take their women with them to the _saltus_, but, as Dennis says, lead there the life of "celibates, without the vows."] [Footnote 152: In the Venitian provinces of Italy today the women are still seen at work in the harvest and rice fields with their babes in their bosoms: but the most amazing modern spectacle of this kind is that of women coaling ships in the East, carrying their unhappy youngsters up and down the coal ladders throughout the work.] [Footnote 153: The author of _Maison Rustique_ did not agree with Varro in this opinion. I quote from Surflet's translation of 1606 (I, 7): "And for writing and reading it skilleth not whether he be able to doe it or no, or that he should have any other charge to looke unto besides that of yours, or else that he should use another to set downe in writing such expences as he hath laid out: for paper will admit any thing."] [Footnote 154: This temple and fig tree stood in Rome at the foot of the Palatine hill, in the neighbourhood of the Lupercal. It was under this fig tree that Romulus and Remus were supposed to have been suckled by the wolf.] [Footnote 155: 'That is the beste grease that is to a shepe, to grease hym in the mouthe with good meate,' says Sir Anthony Fitzherbert.] [Footnote 156: Pliny (VII, 59) says that most nations learn the use of barbers next after that of letters, but that the Romans were late in this respect. Varro himself wore a beard, as appears on the coin he struck during the war with the Pirates. It is reproduced in Smiths _Dict. Gr. and Rom. Biog_., III, p. 1227.] [Footnote 157: Cowper's verse in _The Task_ seems to be all that is happy in the way of translation of Varro's text, "divina natura dedit agros, ars humana aedificavit urbes": but Cowley's "God the first garden made, and the first city Cain" was probably Cowper's source. Cowley was a reader of Varro, as his pleasant and sane essay _Of Agriculture_ shows.] [Footnote 158: Following the precedent of the first and second books in the matter of local colour, the scene of this third book, relating to villas and the "small deer," which were there reared, is laid in the _villa publica_ at Rome, and the characters of the dialogue are selected for the suggestion which their names may make of the denizens of the aviary, the barn yard and the bee-stand.] [Footnote 159: This Appius Claudius Pulcher served in Asia under his brother-in-law Lucullus, was Augur in B.C. 59, Consul in 54 and Censor in 50. He wrote a book on augural law and the habits of birds at which Cicero poked some rather mean fun. He fixes the date of the dialogue.] [Footnote 160: In Varro's time, as today, the river Velinus drained the fresh pastures of the Umbrian prairie of Rosea, "the nurse of Italy," which lay below the town of Reate (the modern Rieti), and was originally the bed of a lake. Its waters are so strongly impregnated with carbonate of lime that by their deposit of travertine they tend to block their own channel. The drainage of Rosea has, therefore, always been a matter of concern to the live stock industry of Reate, and in B.C. 272 M. Curius Dentatus opened the first of several successful artificial canals (the last dating from the sixteenth century, A.D.), which still serve to lead the Velinus into the Nar at the renowned Cascate delle Marmore. For two hundred years the people of Interamna (the modern Terni) had complained that their situation below the falls was endangered by Curius' canal, and finally in B.C. 54 the Roman Senate appointed the commission to which Appius Claudius refers in the text, to hear the controversy. Cicero was retained as counsel for the people of Reate, and during the hearing stopped, as Appius Claudius did, with our friend Axius at his Reatine villa, and wrote about the visit to the same Atticus whom we met in Varro's second book, as follows (_ad Atticum_, IV, 15): "After this was over the people of Reate summoned me to their Tempe to plead their cause against the people of Interamna, before the Consul and ten commissioners, the question being concerning the Veline lake, which, drained by M. Curius by means of a channel cut through the mountain, now flows into the Nar: by this means the famous Rosea has been reclaimed from the swamp, though still fairly moist. I stopped with Axius, who took me also to visit the Seven Waters." What was once deemed a danger is a double source of profit to the modern folk of Interamna. Tourists today crowd to see the same waterfall which Cicero visited, taking a tram from the busy little industrial town of Terni: and the waters which flow from Velinus now serve to generate power with which armour plates are manufactured for the Italian navy on the site of the ancient Interamna.] [Footnote 161: Sicilian honey was famous for its flavour because of the bee pasture of thyme which there abounded, especially at Hybla. Theophrastus (H.P. III, 15, 5) explains that the honey of Corsica had an acrid taste, because the bees pastured there largely on box trees.] [Footnote 162: These denizens of the Roman villa are all enumerated by Martial in his delightful verses (III, 38) upon Faustinus' villa at Baiae. The picture of the barn yard is very true to life in all ages, especially the touch of the hungry pigs sniffing after the pail of the farmer's wife: "Vagatur omnis turba sordidae cortis Argutus anser, gemmeique pavones Nomenque debet quae rubentibus pennis, Et picta perdix, Numidicaeque guttatae Et impiorum phasiana Colchorum. Rhodias superbi feminas prement galli Sonantque turres plausibus columbarum, Gemit hinc palumbus, inde cereus turtur Avidi sequuntur villicae sinum porci: Matremque plenam mollis agnus exspectat."] [Footnote 163: The _sestertius_ was one quarter of a _denarius_, or, say, the equivalent of five cents. It was also called _nummus_, as we say "nickel." The ordinary unit used by the Romans in reckoning considerable sums of money was 1,000 sesterces, which may accordingly be translated as the equivalent of (say) $50. Axius' jackass thus cost $2,000, while Seius' income from his villa was $2,500 per annum, that of Varro's aunt from her aviary was $3,000, and that of Axius from his farm $1,500. Cicero records that Axius was a money lender, which explains the fun here made of his avarice.] [Footnote 164: Columella, writing about one hundred years after Varro, refers to this passage and says that luxury had so developed since Varro's time that it no longer required an extraordinary occasion, like a triumph, to bring the price of thrushes to three _denarii_ a piece, but that that had become a current quotation.] [Footnote 165: A minerval was the fee (of Minerva) paid to a school teacher.] [Footnote 166: The inventor of the auspices _ex tripudiis_ or the feeding of chickens was evidently an ingenious poultry fancier who succeeded in securing the care of his favourites at the public charge.] [Footnote 167: This was L. Marcius Philippus, the orator mentioned by Horace (_Epist_. I, 7, 46), who was Consul in B.C. 91, and was celebrated for his luxurious habits, which his wealth enabled him to gratify. His son married the widow of C. Octavius and so became the step-father of the Emperor Augustus.] [Footnote 168: This was _turdus pilaris_, the variety of thrush which is called field fare.] [Footnote 169: The traveller by railway from Rome to Naples passes near Varro's estate of Casinum, and if he stops at the mediaeval town of San Germano to visit the neighbouring Badia di Monte Cassino, where the "angelic doctor" Thomas Aquinas was educated, he will find Varro's memory kept green: for he will be entertained at the _Albergo Varrone_ ("very fair but bargaining advisable," sagely counsels Mr. Baedeker) and on his way up the long winding road to the Abbey there will be pointed out to him the river Rapido, on the banks of which Varro's aviary stood, and nearby what is reputed to be the site of the old polymath's villa which Antony polluted with the orgies Cicero described in the second Philippic. Antony's destruction of his library was a great blow to Varro, but one likes to think that his ghost can take satisfaction in the maintenance, so near the haunts of his flesh, of such a noble collection of books as is the continuing pride of the Abbey on the mountain above.] [Footnote 170: Varro's Museum, or study where he wooed the Muses, on his estate at Casinum was not unlike that of Cicero at his native Arpinum, which he described (de Leg. II, 3) agreeably as on an island in the cold and clear Fibrenus just above its confluence with the more important river Liris, where, like a plebeian marrying into a patrician family, it lost its name but contributed its freshness. The younger Pliny built a study in the garden of his Laurentine villa near Ostia, which he describes (II, 17) with enthusiasm: "horti diaeta est, amores mei, re vera amores": and here he found refuge from the tumult of his household during the festivities of the Saturnalia, which corresponded with our Christmas. In the ante bellum days every Virginia gentleman had such an "office" in his house yard where he pretended to transact his farm business, but where actually he was wont to escape from the obligations of family and continuous hospitality.] [Footnote 171: The commentators on this interesting but obscure description of Varro's aviary have at this point usually endeavoured to explain the arrangements of the chamber under the lantern of the _tholus_ with respect to its use as a dining room which Varro frequented himself, and hence have been amused into all kinds of difficulties of interpretation. The references to the _convivae_ are what lead them astray, and it remained for Keil to suggest that this was a playful allusion to the birds themselves, a conclusion which is strengthened by Varro's previous statement of the failure of Lucullus' attempt to maintain a dining room in his aviary.] [Footnote 172: Cf. Vitruvius, I, 6: "Andronicus Cyrrhestes built at Athens an octagonal marble tower, on the sides of which were carved images of the eight winds, each on the side opposite that from which it blew. On the pyramidal roof of this tower he placed a bronze Triton holding a rod in his right hand, and so contrived that the Triton, revolving with the wind, always stood opposed to that which prevailed, and thus pointed with his rod to the image on the tower of the wind that was blowing at the moment." The ruins of this Tower of the Winds may still be seen in Athens. There is a picture of it in Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities in the article _Andronicus_.] [Footnote 173: One ventures to translate _athletoe comitiorum_ by Mr. Gladstone's famous phrase.] [Footnote 174: Reading "tesserulas coicientem in loculum."] [Footnote 175: A French translator might better convey the intention of the pun, contained in the _ducere serram_ of the text, by the locution, _une prise de bec_.] [Footnote 176: It probably will not comfort the ultimate consumer who holds in such odium the celebrated "Schedule K" of the Payne-Aldrich tariff, to realize that the American wool grower puts no higher value on his sheep than did his Roman ancestor, as revealed by this quotation from the stock yards of Varro's time. It is interesting, however, to the breeder to know that a good price for wool has always stimulated the production of the best stock. Strabo says that the wool of Turdetania in Spain was so celebrated in the generation after Varro that a ram of the breed (the ancestors of the modern Merino) fetched a talent, say $1,200; a price which may be compared with that of the prize ram recently sold in England for export to the Argentine for as much as a thousand pounds sterling, and considered a good commercial investment at that. Doubtless the market for Rosean mules comforted Axius in his investment of the equivalent of £400 in a breeding jack.] [Footnote 177: In feudal times the right to maintain a dove cote was the exclusive privilege of the lord of the manor. According to their immemorial custom, which Varro notices, the pigeons preyed on the neighbourhood crops and were detested by the community in consequence. During the French revolution they were one of the counts in the indictment of the land-owning aristocracy, and in the event the pigeons as well as their owners had the sins of their forefathers justly visited upon them. The American farmer who has a pigeon-keeping neighbour and is restrained by the pettiness of the annoyance from making a point on their trespasses, feels something of the blind and impotent wrath of the French peasant against the whole pigeon family.] [Footnote 178: It appears that the Romans actually hired men to chew the food intended for cramming birds, so as to relieve the unhappy victims even of such exercise as they might get from assimilating their diet. Columella (VII, 10) in discussing the diet of thrushes deprecates this practice, sagely saying that the wages of the chewers are out of proportion to the benefit obtained, and that any way the chewers swallow a good part of what they are given to macerate. The typical tramp of the comic papers who is forever looking for occupation without work might well envy these Roman professional chewers. Not even Dr. Wiley's "poison squad" employed to test food products could compare with them.] [Footnote 179: These prices of $10 and $50 and even $80 a pair for pigeons, large as they seem, were surpassed under the Empire. Columella says (VIII, 8): "That excellent author, M. Varro, tells us that in his more austere time it was not unusual for a pair of pigeons to sell for a thousand sesterces, a price at which the present day should blush, if we may believe the report that men have been found to pay for a pair as much as four thousand _nummi_." ($200.)] [Footnote 180: The market for chickens and eggs in the United States would doubtless astonish the people of Delos as much as the statistics do us (ipsa suas mirantur Gargara messes!). It is solemnly recorded that the American hen produces a billion and a quarter dozen eggs per annum, of a value greater than that of either the wheat or cotton crops, and yet there are many of us who cannot get our hens to lay more than a hundred eggs a year!] [Footnote 181: Reading _ad infirma crura_. This practice is explained more at length by Columella (VIII, 2, 3) who specifies the spurs, _calcaribus inustis_. Buffon, who describes a 'practice of trimming the combs of capons,