BOOK I. IV. 1-3 



IV. Next in order is the precept of Caesonius,'* 

 which Marcus Cato * also is said to have employed, 

 that land which one intends to purchase should be 

 visited again and again ; for at the first exanaination 

 it does not reveal the hidden quahties, bad or good, 

 which are more readily apparent to those who go over 

 it again soon afterwards. Our ancestors, too, have 

 handed down to us what may be called a standard 

 for the appraisal of rich and fertile land, of whose 

 properties we shall speak in a fitting place, when we 

 come to the discussion of types of soil.<^ I have, 

 however, a general rule which should be an attesting 

 \\itness, so to speak, and should be proclaimed again 

 and again ; a rule which Marcus Atilius Regulus, a 

 general of the greatest renown in the first Punic War, 

 is reported to have laid do'>vn : that as a farm, even 

 of the richest soil, is not to be purchased if it be 

 unwholesome, just so we are not to buy a piece of 

 wom-out land even though it be most wholesome.** 

 This ad\ice Atilius gave to the husbandmen of his day 

 with the greater authority as coming from the kjiow- 

 ledge of experience ; for history relates that he was 

 once the tiller of a pestilential and lean piece of 

 ground in Pupinia.* Wherefore, though it may be 

 the part of a wise man not to buy anywhere and 

 everywhere and not to be beguiled by either the 

 allurements of fruitful land or the charm of its 

 beauty, it is just as truly the part of an industrious 

 master to render fruitful and profitable any land 

 that he has acquired by purchase or othen\ise ; for 

 our predecessors have left to us many means of 

 relief from a noxious chmate, whereby pernicious 

 plagues may be alleviated, and even on lean land 

 the good sense and painstaking of the husbandman 



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