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So, Cato. Did a lot of legal stuff, wrote a lot of legal stuff. But this text that I’m translating is his work on agriculture, in which he was wildly unusual for his time period: namely, he wrote it in Latin, instead of (like other Romans of that era and before) writing it in Greek. He wasn’t the very first, but this is the only complete text of this sort that we have surviving from that era, and he was certainly among the early adopters of this sort of approach. Its style (though it has several) tends towards repetition of vocabulary, bluntness, a lack of special connectives showing the logical connection between different thoughts, and an occasional redundancy as he seems to have added to it and edited it over a long period of time.
It also includes a hymn to cabbages. How cool is that? But I’m not sure we’ll be getting to it.
De Agricultura, Section 1.
Hold thus in your mind a farm which you will think to make ready, so that you do not buy it by passion, nor abstain from looking over your works; and do not consider it enough to walk around it once. As often as you will go there, you will be that much more pleased that it will be good. By which agreement your neighbors may be sleek*, attend to that! In a good region it is fitting to be sleek. And you may look around as to where you may enter, and from where you can exit; so that it will have a good sky, and not be disastrous; so that it may be strong by only one good thing, your virtue.
If you can, it should be at the foot of a mountain,** [and] it should face south, to a healthy place; there should be plenty of laborers, and good water; it should be near a thriving town or a sea or a river that ships travel, or a good, well-traveled road. It should be in those fields which don’t often change their owners, and may those who sold farms in those fields regret to have sold them. Let it thus be well equipped with buildings.
Take care not to heedlessly scorn the methods of the other farmers. [It] will be better bought from a good farmer-master*** and a good builder. When you come to the villa, see that the equipment isn’t tangled up and the wine-jars aren’t many; where they aren’t, know that the growing is done with a plan. Let it not [need] great equipment [to work], let it be at a good place. See that it requires as little equipment possible and that the field is not expensive. Know that a field is the same as a man: however profitable it is, if it’s expensive, it won’t have much left.
If you ask me which farm is first, I will say this: regarding all farms, a vineyard is first for the best place of a field of a hundred acres, if it is [given to] good and plentiful wine; in the second place a watered garden; third, a willow-grove; fourth, an olive-oil grove; fifth, a meadow; sixth, a field of corn;^ seventh, a timber forest; eighth, a plantation of trees; ninth, an oak forest.^^
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* “be sleek” or “shine”; It’s a term used of well-fed cattle; my notes suggest it’s being used humorously, in the sense of tending to neighbors as one does to livestock.
** Lit. “under the root of a mountain”, so I’m guessing a bit at meaning here.
*** This is a “bono domino colono”, which is to say, a good farmer master/lord. I assume it’s using the “domino” to distinguish a land-owner who knows his business from a skilled farmer who merely rents, or is a slave.
^ Or possibly wheat; my dictionary uses “corn” in the sense of cattle feed or general provisions for armies, rather than in the ear-of-corn sense.
^^ Several of these words are either vague as given in the dictionary, or are too archaic to be in my dictionary in this format and thus have me guessing based on related words. I assume the types of forests being described here are more distinct than I’ve managed to lay out.
It also includes a hymn to cabbages. How cool is that? But I’m not sure we’ll be getting to it.
De Agricultura, Section 1.
Hold thus in your mind a farm which you will think to make ready, so that you do not buy it by passion, nor abstain from looking over your works; and do not consider it enough to walk around it once. As often as you will go there, you will be that much more pleased that it will be good. By which agreement your neighbors may be sleek*, attend to that! In a good region it is fitting to be sleek. And you may look around as to where you may enter, and from where you can exit; so that it will have a good sky, and not be disastrous; so that it may be strong by only one good thing, your virtue.
If you can, it should be at the foot of a mountain,** [and] it should face south, to a healthy place; there should be plenty of laborers, and good water; it should be near a thriving town or a sea or a river that ships travel, or a good, well-traveled road. It should be in those fields which don’t often change their owners, and may those who sold farms in those fields regret to have sold them. Let it thus be well equipped with buildings.
Take care not to heedlessly scorn the methods of the other farmers. [It] will be better bought from a good farmer-master*** and a good builder. When you come to the villa, see that the equipment isn’t tangled up and the wine-jars aren’t many; where they aren’t, know that the growing is done with a plan. Let it not [need] great equipment [to work], let it be at a good place. See that it requires as little equipment possible and that the field is not expensive. Know that a field is the same as a man: however profitable it is, if it’s expensive, it won’t have much left.
If you ask me which farm is first, I will say this: regarding all farms, a vineyard is first for the best place of a field of a hundred acres, if it is [given to] good and plentiful wine; in the second place a watered garden; third, a willow-grove; fourth, an olive-oil grove; fifth, a meadow; sixth, a field of corn;^ seventh, a timber forest; eighth, a plantation of trees; ninth, an oak forest.^^
---
* “be sleek” or “shine”; It’s a term used of well-fed cattle; my notes suggest it’s being used humorously, in the sense of tending to neighbors as one does to livestock.
** Lit. “under the root of a mountain”, so I’m guessing a bit at meaning here.
*** This is a “bono domino colono”, which is to say, a good farmer master/lord. I assume it’s using the “domino” to distinguish a land-owner who knows his business from a skilled farmer who merely rents, or is a slave.
^ Or possibly wheat; my dictionary uses “corn” in the sense of cattle feed or general provisions for armies, rather than in the ear-of-corn sense.
^^ Several of these words are either vague as given in the dictionary, or are too archaic to be in my dictionary in this format and thus have me guessing based on related words. I assume the types of forests being described here are more distinct than I’ve managed to lay out.
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Also I wonder how he is ordering these things...earnings per acre? cost per acre? water use?
And lastly I wonder why I'm more interested in farming than exciting! battles! Oh wait, no I don't. Because I'm a hobbit.
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I'm a little surprised at how interesting this is, too. But I shouldn't be; I've always said I want to hear more about culture, not just Big Events, and this is definitely a slice of how people lived--or at least how one person thought they should--right here.
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