16 PLINY'S NATUEAL niSTOET. [Book XVIII. 



it in the very highest style is mere extravagance, unless, in- 

 deed, the work is done by the hands of a man's own family, his 

 tenants, or those whom he is obliged to keep at any rate. Eut 

 besides this, even when the owner tills the land itself, there 

 are some crops which it is really not worth the while to gather, 

 if we only take into account the manual labour expended upon 

 them. The olive, too, should never be too highly 75 cultivated, 

 nor must certain soils, it is said, be too carefully tilled, those 

 of Sicily, 76 for instance ; hence it is, that new comers there so 

 often find themselves deceived. 77 



CHAP. 8. MAXIMS OF THE ANCIENTS ON AGRICULTURE. 



In what way, then, can land be most profitably cultivated ? 

 "Why, in the words of our agricultural oracles, " by making 

 good out of bad." But here it is only right that we should say 

 a word in justification of our forefathers, who in their precepts 

 on this subject had nothing else in view but the benefit of 

 mankind : for when they use the term " bad " here, they only 

 mean to say that which costs the smallest amount of money. 

 The principal object with them was in all cases to cut down 

 expenses to the lowest possible sum ; and it was in this spirit 

 that they made the enactments which pronounced it criminal 

 for a person who had enjoyed a triumph, to be in possession, 

 among his other furniture, of ten pounds' weight of silver 

 plate : which permitted a man, upon the death of his farm- 

 steward, to abandon all his victories, and return to the culti- 

 vation of his lands such being the men the culture of whose 

 farms the state used to take upon itself; and thus, while they 

 led our armies, did the senate act as their steward. 



It was in the same spirit, too, that those oracles of ours 

 have given utterance to these other precepts, to the effect that 

 he is a bad agriculturist who has to buy what his farm might 

 have supplied him with ; that the man is a bad manager who 

 does in the day-time what he might have done in the night, 

 except, indeed, when the state of the weather does not allow 



75 He means to say that it is so much labour lost, as it will take care of 

 itself; but this is hardly in accordance with his numerous directions 

 given in B. xv. Virgil, Geor. B. ii. 421, et seq., speaks of the olive as re- 

 quiring no attention when it lias once taken root. 



76 See B. xvii. c. 3. 



77 In throwing away money and labour upon land that does not require it. 



