4 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. [Book XVIII. 



always attends its owner. In those early days, two jugera of 

 land were considered enough for a citizen of Kome, and t 

 W fiS than thisallotted. And yet al ; flu presen 

 day men who but lately were the slaves of the Emperor ] 

 have been hardly content with P^aim^ 

 the same space as this ; while they must have fishpond for- 

 sooth, of still greater extent, and in some instances I might 

 add, perhaps, kitchens even as well. 



Numa first established the custom of offering corn ^to the 

 gods, and of propitiating them with the salted 8 cake; he was 

 the first, too, as we learn from Hemina, to parch spelt, from 

 the fact that, when in this state, it is more wholesome as 

 aliment. 9 This method, however, he could only establish one 

 way by making an enactment, to the effect that spelt is not 

 in a pure state for offering, except when parched, 

 too, who instituted the Fornacalia, 10 festivals appropriated 

 for the parching of corn, and others, 11 observed with equal 

 solemnity, for the erection and preservation of the termini, 

 or boundaries of the fields : for these termini, in those days, 

 they particularly regarded as gods; while to other divinities 

 they gave the names of Seia, 12 from " sero," " to sow, and of 

 Segesta, from the " segetes," or "crops of standing corn, the 

 statues of which goddesses we still see erected m the^Circus. 

 A third divinity it is forbidden by the rules of our religion to 

 name even 13 beneath a roof. In former days, too, they would 

 not so much as taste the corn when newly cut, nor yet wine 

 when just made, before the priests had made a libation of the 

 first-fruits. 



CHAP. 3. (3.) THE JTJGEKTO OF LAND. 



That portion of land used to be known as a " jugerum," 



8 Made of salt and the meal or flour of spelt. Salt was the emblem of 

 wisdom, friendship, and other virtues. 



9 This, Fee observes, is not the case with any kind of wheat ; with 

 manioc, which has an acrid principle, the process may he necessary, in 

 order to make it fit for food. 



10 Or Feast of the Furnace or Ovr-n. See Ovid's Fasti, B. ii. 1. 5 25. 



11 Called the Terminalia. See Ovid's Fasti, B. ii. 1. 641, et seq. 



12 Tertullian, De Spect. i. 16, calls this goddess by the name of Sessia. 



13 Coelius Rhodiginus, Turncbus, and Vossius, conjecture that the name 

 of this goddess, who might only he named in the field, was Tutelina. 

 Ilardouin thinks that it was Segesta, here mentioned. 



