Chap. 5.] WRITEES VVOls AGRICULTURE. 9 



or whether it is that under the hands of honest men every- 

 thing prospers all the better, from being attended to with a 

 scrupulous exactness. The honours awarded to Serranus^* 

 found him engaged in sowing his fields, a circumstance to 

 which he owes his surname. ^^ Cincinnatus was ploughing his 

 four jugera of land upon the Yaticanian Hill — the same that are 

 still known as the ''Quintian Meadows," ^^ when the mes- 

 senger brought him the dictatorship — finding him, the tradi- 

 tion says, stripped to the work, and his very face begrimed 

 with dust. '' Put on your clothes," said he, ** that I may de- 

 liver to you the mandates of the senate and people of Rome.'* 

 In those days these messengers bore the name of " viator,'* or 

 *' wayfarer," from the circumstance that their usual employ- 

 ment was to fetch the senators and generals from their fields. 



But at the present day these same lands are tilled by slaves 

 whose legs are in chains, by the hands of malefactors and men 

 with a branded face ! And yet the Earth is not deaf to our 

 adjurations, when we address her by the name of '* parent," 

 and say that she receives our homage^ ^ in being tilled by 

 hands such as these ; as though, forsooth, we ought not to be- 

 lieve that she is reluctant and indignant at being tended in 

 such a manner as this ! Indeed, ought we to feel any surprise 

 were the recompense she gives us when worked by chastised 

 slaves,*- not the same that she used to bestow upon the labours 

 of warriors ? 



CHAP. 5. ILLUSTRIOUS MEN WHO HAVE WRITTEN UPON AGRI- 

 CULTURE. 



Hence it was that to give precepts upon agriculture became 

 one of the principal occupations among men of the highest 

 rank, and that in foreign nations even. For among those who 



38 A.u.c. 497. 



39 From '' sero," to sow. See the ^neid, B. vi. 1. 844, where this cir- 

 cumstance is alluded to. 



*° '* Prata Quintia." Hardouin says that in his time this spot was still 

 called / Prati : it lay beyond the Tiber, between tlie \ineyard of the Me- 

 dici and the castle of Sant Angelo. 



*^ He alludes to the twofold meaning of the word " coli," " to be tilled," 

 or "to receive homage from." 



*2 «' Ergastulorum." The " Ergastula" were places of punishment at- 

 tached to the country houses of the wealthy, for the chastisement of 

 refractory slaves, who were usually made to work in chains. 



