MARCUS TERENTIUS VARRO 

 ON FARMING 



BOOK I 

 AGRICULTURE 



CHAPTER I 



INTRODUCTORY 



My dear Fundania/ if I had leisure I would give 

 a better form to this treatise. As I have not, I 

 will do what a man may who has to bear in mind 

 the need of haste. Man is a bubble, they say ; in 

 which case the proverb must be the more true of an 

 old man. And I am in my eightieth year, which 

 warns me to pack up my baggage in readiness to 

 journey out of this world. 



Well, as you have bought an estate, and want 

 to farm it to advantage, and as you ask me to give 

 the matter my attention, I will try what I can do, 



' Fundaniay Varro's wife. She is mentioned again In the 

 preface to the second book, § 6. Her father, C. Fundanius, 

 one of the interlocutors in this book — like Varro, of plebeian 

 family — was a tribune of the people and curator viarum in 

 72 B.C. Possibly Cicero's friend, mentioned in his letter to his 

 brother (Ad Q, Cic, i, 3, 10), is this same Fundanius. 



B 



