ISf HISTORY OF AGHIOTLTyilE. I?^iii I. 



state, and the scene of the pasftoial and hunting employments of the; ho!haiic nations, 

 the Kelts or Celts, the Goths, and the Slaves. 



40." The Indian, emd Cfnese nations appear to be of equal antiquity with the Egyptians. 

 Joseph de Guigpes, an eminent French Orient^l scholar, who died in the first year of 

 the present century, has written a memoir (in 1759, 12mo.), to prove that the Chinese 

 were a colony from Egypt : and M. de Guignes, a French resident in China, who pub- 

 lislied at Paris a Chinese dictionary in 1813, is of the same opinion. The histories of 

 the Oriental nations, however, are not yet sufficiently developed from the original sources, 

 to enable us to avail ourselves pf the information they may contain as to tlie agriculture 

 of so remote a period as that how under consideration. 



41. Withr respect to the American nations during this period, there are no facts on 

 record to prov^ either their ejcistence or their civilisation, though Bishop Huet, and the 

 Abb^ Clavigero, think that they ^Iso are descendants of Noah, who, while in a nomadic 

 state^ arrived in the western, through the northern parts of the eastern continent. 



Chap. II. 



History of Agrictdture among the Romans, or from the Second Centwy B. C. to the Fiflk 



Century of our cera, 



42. We have now arrived at a period of our history where certainty supplies the place 

 of conjecture^ and which may be considered as not only entertaining but instructive. 

 The attention of the Romans to agriculture is well known.- The greatest men amongst 

 them applied themselves to the study and practice of it, not only in the first ages of the 

 state, but after they had carried their arms into every country of Europe, and into many 

 countries of Asia and Africa. Some of their most learned men, and one of their greatest 

 poets viTOte on it ; and all were attached to the things of the country. Varro, speaking 

 of the farms of G. Tremellius Scrofa, says, " they are to many, on account of their 

 culture, a more agreeable spectacle than the royally ornamented edifices of others." 

 (^Var. de R. R. lib. i. cap. 2.) In ancient times, Pliny observes, the lands were culti- 

 vated by the hands, even of generals, and the earth delighted to be ploughed with a share 

 adorned with laurels, and by a ploughman who had been honored with a triumph. (Nat. 

 Hist. lib. xviii. c. 3. ) The Romans spread their arts with their conquests ; and their 

 agriculture became that of all Europe at an early period of our aera. 



43. Tlie sources from which we have drawn our information being first related, we 

 shall review, in succession, the proprietorship, occupancy, soil, culture, and produce of 

 Roman agriculture. 



Sect. I. Of the Roman Agricultural Writers. 



44. The Roman authors on agriculture, whose works have reached the present age, 

 are Cato, Varro, Virgil, Columella, Pliny, and Palladius. There were many more, 

 whose writings are lost. The compilation of Constantine Poligonat, or, as others 

 consider, of Cassius Bassus, entitled Geoponicka, already mentioned (18.), is also to be 

 considered as a Roman production, though published in the Greek language at Constan- 

 tinople, after the removal thither of the seat of government. 



45. M. Porcius Cato, called the Censor, and the father of the Roman rustic writers, 

 lived in the seventh century of the repubhc, and died at an extreme old age, B. C. 1 50. 

 He recommended himself, at the age of seventeen, by his valor in a battle against 

 Annibal ; and afterwards rose to all the honors of the state. He particularly distinguished 

 himself as censor, by his impartiality and opposition to all luxury and dissipation ; and 

 was remarkably strict in his morals. He wrote several works, of which only some 

 fragments remain, under the titles of Origines and De Re Rustica. The latter is the 

 oldest Roman work on agriculture : it is much mutilated, and more curious for the 

 account it contains of Roman customs and sacrifices, than valuable for its georgical 

 information. 



46. M. Terentius Varro died B. C. 28, in tlie 88th year of his age. He was a learned 

 writer, a distinguished soldier both by sea and land, and a consul. He was a grammarian, 

 a philosopher, a historian, and astronomer ; and is thought to have written five hundred 

 volumes on different subjects, all of which are lost, except his treatise De Re Rustica, 

 This is a complete system of directions in three books, on the times proper for, and the 

 different kinds of, rural labour ; it treats also of live stock, and of the villa and offices. 

 As Varro was for some time lieutenant-general in Spain and Africa, and afterwards retired 

 and cultivated his own estate in Italy, his experience and observation must have been very 

 considerable. 



