ROMAN AGRICULTURE. 



407 



were picked by hand, and some selected for eating. The rest 

 were laid up in lofts for future bruising, or were immediately 

 pressed. Such as could not be reached by ladders, Varro 

 directs to be " struck with a reed rather than a rod, for a deep 

 wound requires a physician." It does not appear that green 

 olives were pickled and used for food, as in modern times. 



Such are the chief agricultural operations of the Romans, of 

 which it cannot fail to be observed, as most remarkable, that 

 they differ little from the rural operations of the Jews and 

 Greeks on the one hand, and from the practices of modern 

 times on the other. The cereal grasses cultivated by the 

 Romans were chiefly the triticum, or wheat ; the far, or spelt ; 

 and the hordcinn, or barley ; but they sowed also the siligo, or 

 rye ; the holcus, or mouse-barley ; the panic grass ; and the 

 avena, or oats. Of legumes they cultivated the faba, or bean ; 

 the /;, or pea; the lupinus, or lupine; the ervum, or tare; 

 the lens, or flat tare ; the chickling vetch ; the chick, or mouse 

 pea ; and the kidney bean. The bean was used as food for the 

 servants and slaves ; the others were grown principally for food 

 to the laboring cattle. The sesamum, an oily grain, was culti- 

 vated for the seeds, from which an oil was expressed, and used 

 as a substitute for olive oil, as it still is in India and China, and 

 as the oil of the poppy is in Holland, that of the walnut in 

 Savoy, and that of the hemp in Russia. 



The herbage plants were chiefly the trifolium, or clover ; the 

 medica, or lucern ; and the cytisus. What the latter plant is, 

 has not been distinctly ascertained. The turnip and rape were 

 much esteemed and carefully cultivated. Pliny says that they 

 require a dry soil ; that the rape will grow almost anywhere ; 

 that it is nourished by mists, hoar-frosts, and cold ; and that he 

 has seen some of them upward of forty pounds in weight The 

 turnip, he says, delights equally in cold, which makes it both 

 sweeter and larger ; while by heat they grow to leaves. He 

 adds : " The more diligent husbandmen plow five times for the 

 turnip, four times for the rape, and apply manure to both." 

 Palladius recommends soot and oil, as a remedy against flies 

 and snails, in the culture of the turnip and rape. While the 

 turnips were growing it appears that persons were not much 

 restricted from pulling them. Columella observes that, in his 



