Book I. AGRICULTURE OF ANTIQUITY. 11 



horns. Oxen of four years and a half old are recommended to be purchased, as most 

 serviceable. In winter, both oxen and mules were fed under cover, on hay and straw, 

 mast, and the leaves of vines and various trees. 



33. The most desirable age for a ploughman is forty. He must be well fed, go naked 

 in summer, rise and go to work very early, and have a sort of annual feast, proper rest, 

 good food, and clothing consisting of coats of kid skins, worsted socks, and half boots of 

 ox hides in winter. He must not let his eye wander about while at the plough, but cut a 

 straight furrow ; nor be absent in mind when sowing the seed, lest he sow the same furrow 

 twice. The vine is to be pruned and stalked in due season ; the vintage made in fine 

 weather, and the grapes left a few days to dry, and then carried to the press. 



34. The products of Grecian agriculture were, the grains and legumes at present in 

 cultivation, with tlie vine, fig, olive, apple, date, and other fruits : the live stock con- 

 sisted of sheep, goats, swine, cattle, mules, asses, and horses. It does not appear that 

 artificial grasses or herbage plants were in use ; but recourse was had, in times of scarcity, 

 to the mistletoe and the cytisus : what plant is meant by the latter designation is not 

 agreed on; some consider it the Medicago arborea L., and others the common lucerne. 

 Hay was, in all probability, obtained from the meadows and pastures, which were used 

 in common; flax, and probably hemp, were grown. Wood for fuel, and timber for 

 construction, were obtained from the natural forests, which, in Solon's time, abounded with 

 wolves. Nothing is said of the olive or fig by Hesiod ; but they were cultivated in the 

 fields for oil and food, as well as the vine for wine. One of Solon's laws directs that olive 

 and fig trees must be planted nine feet from a neighbour's ground, on account of their 

 spreading roots ; other trees might be planted within five feet. 



35. In Hesiod^ s time almost evert/ citizen ivas a husbandman, and had a portion of land 

 which he cultivated himself, with the aid of his family, and perhaps of one or two slaves ; 

 and the produce, whether for food or clothing, appears to have been manufactured at 

 home. The progress of society would, no doubt, introduce the usual division of labour 

 and of arts ; and commercial cultivators, or such as raised produce for the purpose of 

 exchange, would in consequence arise ; but when this state of things occurred, and to 

 what extent it was carried at the time Greece became a Roman province (B. C. 100), 

 the ancient writers afford us no means of ascertaining. 



Sect. IV. Of the Agriculture oftlw Persians, Carthaginians, and other Nations of Antiquity. 



36. Of the agriculture of the other civilised and stationary nations of this period, scarcely 

 any thing is known. According to Herodotus, the soil of Babylon was rich, well cul- 

 tivated, and yielded two or three hundred for one. Xenophon, in his book of CEco- 

 nomics, bestows due encomiums on a Persian king, who examined, with his own eyes, 

 the state of agriculture throughout his dominions ; and in all such excursions, as 

 occasion required, bountifully rewarded the industrious, and severely discountenanced 

 the slothful. In another place he observes, that when Cjttis distributed premiums with 

 his own hand to diligent cultivators, it was his custom to say, " My friends, I have a like 

 title with yourselves to the same honours and remuneration from the public ; I give you 

 no more than I have deserved in my own person ; having made the selfsame attempts 

 with equal diligence and success." (CEconom., c. iv. sect. 16.) The same author else- 

 where remarks, that a truly great prince ought to hold the arts of war and agriculture in 

 the highest esteem ; for by such means he will be enabled to cultivate his territories 

 eflPectually, and protect them when cultivated. (Harte's Essays, p. 19.) 



37. Phoenicia, a country of Asia, at the east of the Mediterranean, has the reputation 

 of having been cultivated at an early period, and of having colonised and introduced 

 agriculture at Carthage, Marseilles, and other places. The Phoenicians are said to 

 have been the original occupiers of the adjoining country of Canaan ; and when driven 

 out by the Jews, to have settled in Tyre and Sidon (now Sur and Saida), in the fifteenth 

 century B. C. They were naturally industrious ; and their manufactures acquired such a 

 superiority over those of other nations, that, among the ancients, whatever was elegant, 

 great, or pleasing, either in apparel or domestic utensils, was called Sidonian ; but of their 

 agriculture it can only be conjectured that it was Egyptian, as far as local circumstances 

 would permit. 



38. The republic of Carthage included Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia, and flourished for 

 upwards of seven centuries previous to the second century B. C. Agriculture was 

 practised at an early period in Sicily ; and, according to some, Greece received that art 

 from this island. It must have been also considerably advanced in Spain, and in the 

 Carthaginian territory, since they had books on the subject. In 147 B. C, when Car- 

 thage was destroyed by Scipio, and the contents of the libraries were given in presents to 

 the princes, allies of the Romans, the senate only reserved the twenty-eight books on 

 agriculture of the Carthaginian general Magon, which Decius Syllanus was directed to 

 translate, and of which the Romans preserved, for a long time, the original and the 

 translation. (Encyc Methodique, art. Agriculture.) 



