BOOK I. I. 5-8 



gi'eatest abundance. But whether this theory be 

 true or false, we must leave it to the writings on 

 astronomy. Other precepts of husbandly are not to 6 

 be concealed from the tiller of the soil ; and while 

 Punic writers from Africa have handed them down 

 in large numbers, yet many of them are assailed as 

 erroneous by our farmers, as, for example, by 

 TremeUus, who, though he brings this very charge, 

 provides the excuse that tlie soil and the climate of 

 Italy and of Africa, being of a different nature, 

 cannot produce the same results. But whatever the 

 causes by reason of which the agricultural practice 

 of our times is at variance with the ancient prin- 

 ciples, they should not discourage the learner from 

 reading them ; for in the works of the ancients far 

 more is found to merit our approval than our 

 rejection. 



There is, furthermore, a great throng of Greeks who 7 

 give instruction on husbandry ; and the first of them, 

 that most renowned poet, Hesiod ° of Boeotia, has con- 

 tributed in no small degree to our art. It was then 

 further assisted by men who have come from the 

 well-spring of philosophy — Deinocritus of Abdera, 

 Xenophon the follower of Socrates, Archytas of 

 Tarentum, and the two Peripatetics, master and 

 pupil, Aristotle and Theophrastus. Sicilians, too, 8 

 have pursued that occupation with no ordinary zeal, 

 Hieron and Epicharmus, whose pupil was even 

 Attains Philometor.'' Athens assuredly has been the 

 mother of a host of writers, of whom our most out- 



His surviving works include Works and Days, a collection of 

 agricultural and moral teachings. 



^ For a discussion of the names and defence of the text, 

 c/. V. Lundstrom, " Litteraturhistoriska Bidrag, etc. : 2 

 Epicharmos och Attalos Philometor," Eranos, XV. 165-171. 



31 



VOL. I. C 



