ANCIENT AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE. 153 



complacent orator, advocate, senator, and poet, is a most 

 discontented landowner. His farms are a constant trouble 

 to him : 



" To Naso. A storm of hail, I am informed, has de- 

 stroyed all the produce of my estate in Tuscany ; while 

 that which I have on the other side the Po, though it has 

 proved extremely fruitful this season, yet, from the exces- 

 sive cheapness of everything, turns to small account." 



" To Genitor. Nor is this all ; for not only the farmers 

 claim a sort of prescription to try my patience as they 

 please by their continual complaints ; but also the necessity 

 of letting out my farms gives me much trouble, as it is ex- 

 ceedingly difficult to find proper tenants." 



The desirable size for a farm is discussed by several of 

 the writers, and generally in the prudential spirit of Virgil's 

 maxim : 



" laudato ingentia rura, 

 Exiguum colito." 



Columella prefaces the maxim, " That the farm ought to 

 be weaker than the farmer," by saying that it was " de- 

 rived from the Carthaginians, who were a very acute people." 

 Palladius says epigrammatically, " foecundior est culta exi- 

 guitas, quam magnitude neglecta." But on this point Pliny 

 is most diffuse though we believe that Dickson erroneously 

 interprets expressions which Pliny applied to ownership, 

 and not to occupation. When he says " sex domi semis- 

 sem Africse possidebant, cum interficit eos Nero princeps," 

 we cannot suppose that half of the province was absorbed 

 by what we should call six farms, and that the bailiffs of 

 these six unfortunate gentlemen were the sole occupiers. 

 He declares, however, by less equivocal expressions, that 

 the ancients were of opinion that it was very desirable to 

 limit the size of farms.* The stories which he tells have 



* Nevertheless large arable farms were known to remote antiquity. 

 It may not be safe to found on the numbers in the highly poetical and 

 figurative book of Job; but we learn from a purely-historical statement 

 in the book of Kings, that Elisha was ploughing with twelve yoke of 



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