48 VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



farm requires, while selling to them at the same 

 time your superfluities — props for example, or poles 

 or reeds — the farm is more profitable than if these 

 things should have to be brought from a distance, 

 and sometimes, too, than if you could produce 



4 them on your own land. And so, for example, 

 farmers prefer to employ the doctors, fullers, car- 

 penters, etc., in the neighbourhood, to whom they 

 can give work year by year, rather than have their 

 own on the farm ; for the death of a single one of 

 these craftsmen is apt to do away with the farm's 

 profit. 



Rich men, with large estates, look to the home 

 resources for the supply of this branch of the staff. 

 For where towns or villages are too far away they 

 procure smiths and all the other skilled workmen 

 they need, and keep them on the farm so that 

 their gang of slaves may not have to quit work 

 and walk about making holiday on work-days, in- 

 stead of rendering the land more profitable by their 



5 labour. Hence the rule given in Saserna's book, 

 that no one is to leave the farm save the bailiff, the 

 house-steward, and one other to be appointed by 

 the bailiff; if any one does so, he is not to go un- 

 punished; if he does get off, the bailiff is to be 

 severely dealt with. Better had been the rule, that 

 no one should leave without the bailiff's permission, 

 and that the bailiff should not go without the 

 master's leave so far away as to be unable to return 

 on the same day, and that no oftener than the farm 

 required. 



