12 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. Part I. 



39. Itcdyy and a part of the south of France, would probably be partially cultivated, 

 from the influence of the Carthaginians in Sicily and Marseilles ; but the north of 

 France, and the rest of Europe, appear to have been chiefly, if not entirely, in a wild 

 state, and the scene of the pastoral and hunting employments of the nomadic nations, 

 the Kelts or Celts, the Goths, and the Slaves. 



40. The Indian and Chinese nations appear to be of equal antiquity with the Egyptians. 

 Joseph de Guignes, an eminent French Oriental scholar, who died in the first year of 

 the present century, has written a memoir (in 1759, 12mo), to prove that the Chinese 

 were a colony from Egypt ; and M. de Guignes, a French resident in China, who pub- 

 lished at Paris a Chinese dictionary in 1813, is of the same opinion. The histories of 

 the Oriental nations, however, are not yet sufficiently developed from the original sources, 

 to enable us to avail ourselves of the information they may contain, as to the agriculture 

 of so remote a period as that now under consideration. 



41. With respect to the American nations, during this period, there are no facts on 

 record to prove either their existence or their civilisation, though Bishop Huet and the 

 Abbe Clavigero think that they also are descendants of Noah, who, while in a nomadic 

 state, arrived in the western world, through the northern parts of the eastern continent. 



Chap. II. 



History of Agriculture among the Romans, or from the Second Century B. C. to the Fifth 

 Century of our uSra. 



42. We have now amved at a period of our history where certainty sxippUes the place 

 of conjecture, and which may be considered as not only entertaining but instructive. 

 The attention of the Romans to agriculture is well known. The greatest men amongst 

 them applied themselves to the study and practice of it, not only in the first ages of the 

 state, but after they had carried their arms into every country of Europe, and into many 

 countries of Asia and Africa. Some of their most learned men and one of their greatest 

 poets wrote on it ; and all were attached to the things of the country. Varro, speaking 

 of the farms of C. Tremellius Scrofa, says, " they are to many, on account of their 

 culture, a more agreeable spectacle than the royally ornamented edifices of others." 

 (Var. de R. R., lib. i. cap. 2.) In ancient times, Pliny observes, the lands were culti- 

 vated by the hands even of generals, and the earth delighted to be ploughed with a share 

 adorned with laurels, and by a ploughman who had been honoured with a triumph. (Nat. 

 Hist., lib. xviii. c. 3.) The Romans spread their arts with their conquests; and their 

 agriculture became that of all Europe at an early period of our aera. 



43. The sources from which we have drawn our information being first related, we 

 shall review, in succession, the proprietorship, occupancy, soil, culture, and produce of 

 Roman agriculture. 



Sect. I. Of the Roman Agricultural Writers. 



44. The Roman authors on agriculture, whose works have reached tiie present age, 

 are Cato, Varro, Virgil, Columella, Pliny, and Palladius ; there were many more, 

 whose writings are lost. The compilation of Constantine Poligonat, or, as others 

 consider, of Cassius Bassus, entitled Geoponika, already mentioned (18.), is also to be 

 considered as a Roman production, though published in the Greek language at Constan- 

 tinople, after the removal thither of the seat of government. 



45. M. Porcius Cato, called the Censor, and the father of the Roman rustic writers, 

 lived in the seventh century of the republic, and died at an extreme old age, B. C. 150. 

 He recommended himself, at the age of seventeen, by his valour in a battle against 

 Annibal ; and afterwards rose to all the honours of the state. He particularly distinguished 

 himself as a censor, by his impartiality and opposition to all luxury and dissipation ; and 

 was remarkably strict in his morals. He wrote several works, of which only some 

 fragments remain, under the tities of Origines and Be Re Rustica. Tlie latter is tiie 

 oldest Roman work on agriculture : it is much mutilated, and more curious for the 

 account it contains of Roman customs and sacrifices, than valuable for its georgical 

 information. , -rr i j 



46. M. Terentius Varro died B. C. 28, in the 88th year of his age. He was a learned 

 writer, a distinguished soldier both by sea and land, and a consul. He was a grammarian, 

 a philosopher, a historian, and an astronomer ; and is thought to have written five hundred 

 volumes on different subjects, all of which are lost, except his treatise De Re Rusiica. 



