BOOK I. I. 2-5 



do or the ability to make the outlay -will be of no use 

 without knowledge of the art, since the main thing 

 in every enterprise is to know what has to be done 

 — and especially so in agriculture, where ■willingness 

 and means, -without knowledge, frequently bring 

 great loss to owners when work which has been done 

 in ignorance brings to naught the expense incurred. 

 Accordingly, an attentive head of a household, whose 

 heart is set on pursuing a sure method of increasing 

 his fortune from the tillage of his land, will take 

 especial pains to consult on every point the most 

 experienced farmers of his own time ; he should 

 study zealously the manuals of the ancients, gauging 

 the opinions and teachings of each of them, to see 

 whether the records handed dowTi by his forefathers 

 are suited in their entirety to the husbandry of his 

 day or are out of keeping in some respects. For 

 I have found that many authorities now worthy of 

 remembrance were convinced that with the long 

 wasting of the ages, weather and climate undergo 

 a change ; and that among them the most learned 

 professional astronomer, Hipparchus,'' has put it 

 on record that the time will come when the 

 celestial poles will change position, a statement to 

 which Saserna, no mean authority on husbandry, 

 seems to have given credence. For in that book on 

 agriculture which he has left behind he concludes 

 that the position of the heavens has changed from 

 this evidence : that regions Avhich formerly, because 

 of the unremitting severity of winter, could not 

 safeguard any shoot of the \ine or the olive planted 

 in them, now that the earlier coldness has abated 

 and the weather is becoming more clement, produce 

 olive harvests and the vintages of Bacchus in the 



29 



