Book I. AGRICULTURE OF THE ROMANS. IS 



47. Publius VirgUius Maro, called the prince of the Latin poets, was born at a village 

 near Mantua in Lombardy about 70 B.C., and died B.C. 19, aged 51. He culti- 

 vated his own estate till he was 30 years old, and spent the rest of his life chiefly at 

 the court of Augustus. His works are the Bucolics, Georgics, and JEneid. The 

 Genvics is to be considered as a poetical compendium of agriculture, taken from the 

 Greek and Roman writers then extant, but especially from Varro. 



48. Luc. Jun. Moderatus Columella was a native of Gades, now Cadiz, in Spain, 

 but passed most of his time in Italy. The time of his birth and death are not known, 

 but he is supposed to have lived under Claudius in the first century. His work De 

 lie Rustica, lib. xii. is a complete treatise on rural affairs ; including field operations, 

 timber-trees, and gardens. 



^9. C. Plifiius Secundus, surnamed the elder, was born at Verona in Lombardy, and 

 suflbcated at the destruction of Pompeii in his 56th year, A.D. 79. He was of a noble 

 family ; distinguished himself in the field and in the fleet ; was governor of Spain ; was a 

 o-reat naturalist, and an extensive writer. Of the works which he composed none are 

 extant but his Naturcd History in thirty-seven books ; a work full of the erudition of the 

 time, accompanied with much erroneous, useless, and frivolous matter. It treats of the 

 stars, the heavens, wind, rain, hail, minerals, trees, .flowers, and plants; an account of 

 all living animals, birds, fishes, and beasts ; a geographical description of every place 

 on the globe ; a history of every art and science, commerce, and navigation, with their 

 rise, progress, and several improvements. His work may be considered as a compen- 

 dium of all preceding writers on these subjects, with considerable additions from his 

 personal experience and observation. 



50. Rutilius Taurus Emilianus Palladius is by some supposed to have lived under 

 Antoninus Pius, in the second, and by others in the fourth century. His work De Re 

 Rustica is a poem in fourteen books, and is little more than a compendium of those which 

 preceded it on the same subject. The editor of the article Agriculture, in the Encyclo^ 

 j)edie Methodique, says it is too dull to be read as a poem, and too concise to be useful as 

 a didactic work. 



51. These works have been rendered accessible to all by translations; and a judicious 

 and instructive treatise comjwsedfrom them by Adam Dickson, a Scotch clergyman, was 

 published in 1788, under the title of The Husbandry of the ^indents. To this last 

 work we are indebted for the greater part of what we have to submit on Roman 

 agriculture. 



52. The Roman authors, as Rozier has observed (Diet, de VAgr. art. Hist.), do not 

 enable us to trace the rise and progress of agriculture, either in Italy or in any other country 

 under their dominion. What they contain is a picture of their rural economy in its 

 most perfect state : delivered in precepts, generally founded on experience, though some- 

 times on superstition ; never, however, on theory or hypothesis. For, as the Rev. Adam 

 Dickson states, *' instead of schemes produced by a lively imagination, which we receive 

 but too frequently from authors of genius unacquainted with the practice of agriculture, 

 we have good reason to believe that they deliver in their writings, a genuine account of 

 the most approved practices ; practices, too, the goodness of which they had themselves 

 experienced." (Husb. of the Anc. p. 16.) He adds, that if in the knowledge of the 

 theory of agriculture, the Roman cultivators are inferior to our modern improvers ; yet 

 in attention to circumstances and exactness of execution, and in economical manage- 

 ment, they are greatly superior. 



Sect. II. Of the Proprietorship , Occupancy, and General Management of Landed Property 



among the Romans. 



53. The Roman nation originated from a company of robbers and runaway slaves, who 

 placed tliemselves under their leader Romulus. This chief having conquered a small 

 part of Italy divided the land among his followers, and by what is called the Agrarian 

 Law, allowed 2 jugera or li acre to every citizen. After the expulsion of the kings in the 

 6th century B. C, 7 yoke, or 3| acres were allotted. The custom of distributing the 

 conquered lands, by giving 7 jugera to every citizen, continued to be observed in latter 

 times ; but when each soldier had received his share, the remainder was sold in lots of 

 various sizes, even to 50 jugera ; and no person was prevented from acquiring as large 

 a landed estate as he could, till a law passed by Stolo, the second plebeian consul, B. C. 

 377, that no one should possess more than 500 jugera. This law appears to have remained 

 in force during the greater period of the Roman power. Whatever might be the size of 

 the estate, it was held by the proprietor as an absolute right, without acknowledgment 

 to any superior power ; and passed to his successors, agreeably to testament, if he made 

 one ; or if not, by common law to his nearest relations. 



54. 1)1 the first ages of the commonwealth, the lands were occupied and cultivated by 

 the vroprietors themselves; and as this state of things continued for four or five centuries, 

 it was probably the chief cause of the agricultural eminence of the Romans. When a 



