Cato*s Farm Management 



praise." Personally, I think highly 

 of a man actively and diligently 

 engaged in commerce, who seeks 

 thereby to make his fortune, yet, as 

 I have said, his career is full of 

 risks and pitfalls. But it is from 

 the tillers of the soil that spring the 

 best citizens, the stanchest soldiers; 

 and theirs are the enduring rewards 

 which are most grateful and least 

 envied. Such as devote themselves 

 to that pursuit are least of all men 

 given to evil counsels. 



1 It was perhaps this encomium upon the farmer 

 at the expense of the banker which inspired Horace's 

 friend Alfius to withdraw his capital from his bank- 

 ing business and dream a delicious idyl of a simple 

 carefree country life: but, it will be recalled (Epode 

 II, the famous "Beatus tile qui procul negotiis") that 

 Alfius, like many a modern amateur farmer, re- 

 cruited from town, soon repented that he had ever 

 listened to the alluring call of "back to the land" 

 and after a few weeks of disillusion in the country, 

 returned to town and sought to get his money out 

 again at usury. 



Columella (I, praef.) is not content with Cato's 

 contrast of the virtue of the farmer with the iniquity 

 of the banker, but he brings in the lawyer's profes- 

 sion for animadversion also. This, he says, the an- 

 cient Romans used to term a canine profession, be- 

 cause it consisted in barking at the rich. 



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