BOOK I. vii. 2-5 



the matter of demanding firewood and other trifling 

 services in addition, attention to which causes 

 country-folk more trouble than expense ; in fact, we 

 should not lay claim to all that the law allows, for 

 the ancients regarded the extreme of the law as the 

 extreme of oppression." On the other hand, we 

 must not neglect our claims altogether ; for, as Alfius 

 the usurer is reported to have said, and with entire 

 truth, " Good debts become bad ones if they are 

 not called". Furthermore, I myself remember 

 having heard Publius Volusius,* an old man who had 

 been consul and was very wealthy, declare that 

 estate most fortunate which had as tenants natives 

 of the place, and held them, by reason of long 

 association, even from the cradle, as if born on their 

 own father's property. So I am decidedly of the 

 opinion that repeated letting of a place is a bad 

 thing, but that a worse thing is the farmer who 

 lives in town and prefers to till the land through 

 his slaves rather than by his owti hand. Saserna, 4 

 used to say that from a man of this sort the return \ 

 was usually a lawsuit instead of revenue, and that for ' 

 this reason we should take pains to keep ■with us 

 tenants who are country-bred and at the same time 

 diligent farmers, when we are not at liberty to till 

 the land ourselves or when it is not feasible to 

 cultivate it vvith our own servants ; though this does 

 not happen except in districts v>hich are desolated / 

 by the severity of the climate and the barrenness / 

 of the soil. But when the climate is moderately 5 

 healthful and the soil moderately good, a man's 

 personal supervision never fails to yield a larger 

 return from his land than does that of a tenant 

 — never than that of even an overseer, unless the 



8i 



