Nor were the Romans contented with merely labouring the ground: They also delivered precepts for its proper cultivation, which, being committed to writing, formed, as it were, a new science, and, being derived from actual experience, had an air of originality rarely exhibited in their literary productions. Such maxims were held by the Romans in high respect, since they were considered as founded on the observation of men who had displayed the most eminent capacity and knowledge in governing the state, in framing its laws, and leading its armies.
These precepts which formed the works of the agricultural writers—the Rusticæ rei scriptores—are extremely interesting and comprehensive. The Romans had a much greater variety than we, of grain, pulse, and roots; and, besides, had vines, olives, and other plantations, which were regarded as profitable crops. The situation, too, and construction of a villa, with the necessary accommodation for slaves and workmen, the wine and oil cellars, the granaries, the repositories for preserving fruit, the poultry yard, and aviaries, form topics of much attention and detail. These were the appertenancies of the villa rustica, or complete farm-house, which was built for the residence only of an industrious husbandman, and with a view towards profit from the employments of agriculture. As luxury, indeed, increased, the villa was adapted to the [pg 10]accommodation of an opulent Roman citizen, and the country was resorted to rather for recreation than for the purpose of lucrative toil. What would Cato the Censor, distinguished for his industry and unceasing attention to the labours of the field, have thought of the following lines of Horace?
“O rus, quando ego te aspiciam? quandoque licebit
Nunc veterum libris, nunc somno et inertibus horis,
Ducere sollicitæ jucunda oblivia vitæ?”
It was this more refined relish for the country, so keenly enjoyed by the Romans in the luxurious ages of the state, that furnished the subject for the finest passages and allusions in the works of the Latin poets, who seem to vie with each other in their praises of a country life, and the sweetness of the numbers in which they celebrate its simple and tranquil enjoyments. The Epode of Horace, commencing,
“Beatus ille, qui procul negotiis,”
which paints the charms of rural existence, in the various seasons of the year—the well-known passages in Virgil’s Georgics, and those in the second book of Lucretius, are the most exquisite and lovely productions of these triumvirs of Roman poetry. But the ancient prose writers, with whom we are now to be engaged, regarded agriculture rather as an art than an amusement, and a country life as subservient to profitable employment, and not to elegant recreation. In themselves, however, these compositions are highly curious; they are curious, too, as forming a commentary and illustration of the subjects,
“Quas et facundi tractavit Musa Maronis.”
It is likewise interesting to compare them with the works of the modern Italians on husbandry, as the Liber Ruralium Commodorum of Crescenzio, written about the end of the thirteenth century,—the Coltivazione Toscana of Davanzati,—Vittorio’s treatise, Degli Ulivi,—and even Alamanni’s poem Coltivazione, which closely follows, particularly as to the situation and construction of a villa, the precepts of Cato, Varro, and Columella. The plough used at this day by the peasantry in the Campagna di Roma, is of the same form as that of the ancient Latian husbandmen[10]; and many other points of resemblance may be discovered, on a perusal of the [pg 11]most recent writers on the subject of Italian cultivation[11]. Dickson, too, who, in his Husbandry of the Ancients, gives an account of Roman agriculture so far as connected with the labours of the British farmer, has shown, that, in spite of the great difference of soil and climate, many maxims of the old Roman husbandmen, as delivered by Cato and Varro, corresponded with the agricultural system followed in his day in England.