ROMAN AGRICULTURE. 397 



coulters ; with and without wheels ; with broad and narrow 

 pointed shares ; and with shares not only with sharp sides and 

 points, but also with high raised cutting tops. Amid all this 

 variety of plows, no one has been able to depict the simplest 

 form of that implement in use among the Romans. The plow 

 described by Virgil had a mould-board, and was used for cover- 

 ing seed and for ridging, but that which we have depicted was 

 the common form used in stirring the soil. To supply the place 

 of our mould-boards, this plow required either a sort of diverging 

 stick inserted in the share-head, or to be held obliquely and 

 sloping towards the side to which the earth was to be turned. 

 The Romans did not plow their fields in beds, by circumvolving 

 furrows, as we do, but the cattle returned always on the same 

 side, as in plowing with a turn-wrist plow. 



"Wheel plows," Lasteyrie says, "were invented in or not 

 long before the time of Pliny, who attributes the invention to 

 the inhabitants of Cisalpine Gaul." Virgil seems to have known 

 such plows, and refers to them in his Georgics. In the Greek 

 monuments of antiquity are only four or five examples of these. 

 Lasteyrie has given figures of these wheel plows, from Caylus* 

 "Collection of Antiquities," and from a Sicilian medal. The 

 urpex seems to have been a plank with several teeth, used as our 

 break or cultivator, to break rough ground and tear out roots 

 and weeds ; the crates seems to have been a kind of harrow ; the 

 rastmm, a rake used in manual labor ; the sarculum, a hand hoe, 

 similar to our draw hoe ; the marra, a hand hoe of smaller size ; 

 the bidens seems to have been a two-pronged hoe of large size, 

 with a hammer at the other end, used to break clods. These 

 were used chiefly in cultivating vineyards. The ligo seems to 

 have been a spade ; and the pala a shovel, or a sort of a spade, 

 probably a synonym. The ligo and pala were made of wood 

 only, of oak shod with iron, or with the blade entirely of iron. 

 The securis seems to have been an axe, and the same term was 

 applied to the blade of the pruning-knife, which was formed like 

 a crescent. The dolabra was a kind of adze for cutting roots, in 

 tree culture. The reaping-hook seems to have been the same as 

 that in modern times. Some were used for cutting off the ears 

 of corn, and these, it may be presumed, were not serrated like 



