Delphi Complete Works of Varro

by Marcus Terentius Varro

  5 HOUSING TIME

  LVI. “Up to this moment,” cried Agrius, “I have been sitting in the barn with the keys in my hands waiting for you, Stolo, to bring in the harvest.”

  “Lo, I am here at the threshold,” replied Stolo. “Open the gates for me.”

  Of storing hay

  In the first place, it is better to house your hay than to leave it stacked in the field, for thus it makes more palatable provender, as may be proven by putting both kinds before the cattle.

  Of storing grain

  LVII. But corn should be stored in an elevated granary, exposed to the winds from the east and the north, and where no damp air may reach it from places near at hand. The walls and the floors should be plastered with a stucco of marble dust or at least with a mixture of clay and chaff and amurca, for amurca will serve to keep out mice and weevil and will make the grain solid and heavy. Some men even sprinkle their grain with amurca in the proportion of a quadrantal to every thousand modii of grain: others crumble or scatter over it, for the same purpose, other vermifuges like Chalcidian or Carian chalk or wormwood, and other things of that kind. Some farmers have their granaries under ground, like caverns, which they call silos, as in Cappadocia and Thrace, while in hither Spain, in the vicinity of Carthage, and at Osca pits are used for this purpose, the bottoms of which are covered with straw: and they take care that neither moisture nor air has access to them, except when they are opened for use, a wise precaution because where the air does not move the weevil will not hatch. Corn stored in this way is preserved for fifty years, and millet, indeed, for more than a century.

  On the ether hand again, in hither Spain and in certain parts of Apulia they build elevated granaries above ground, which the winds keep cool, not only by windows at the sides but also from underneath the floor.

  Of storing legumes

  LVIII. Beans and other legumes keep safe a long time in oil jars covered with ashes. Cato says the little Aminnean grape, as well as the large variety and that called Apician, keep very well when buried in earthen pots: or they may be preserved quite as well in boiled new wine, or in fresh after-wine. The varieties which keep best when hung up are the hard grapes and those known as the Aminnean Scantian.

  Of storing pome fruits

  LIX. The pome fruits, like the preserving sparrow apples, quinces and the varieties of apples known as Scantian, and ‘little rounds’ (orbiculata) and those which formerly were called winesap (mustea), and now are called honey apples (melimela), can all be kept safely in a cold and dry place when laid on straw, and so those who build fruit houses take care to have the windows give upon the north wind and that it may blow through them: but they should not be left without shutters for fear that the fruits should lose their moisture and become shrivelled by the effect of the continuous wind.

  The vaults, the walls and the pavements of these fruiteries are usually laid in stucco to keep them cool: thus rendering them such pleasant resorts that some men even spread there their dining couches: as well they may, for if the pursuit of luxury impels some of us to turn our dining rooms into picture galleries in order to regale even our eyes with works of art [while we eat], should we not find still greater gratification in contemplating the works of nature displayed in a savory array of beautiful fruits, especially if this was not procured, as has been done, by setting up in your fruitery on the occasion of a party a supply of fruit purchased for the purpose in town?

  Some think best to dispose their apples in the fruitery on concrete tables, others on beds of straw, and some even on flocks of wool.

  Pomegranates are preserved by sticking their twigs in jars of sand, quinces and sparrow apples are strung together and hung up, but the late maturing Anician pears are best preserved in boiled must. Sorbs and pears also are some times cut up and dried in the sun, though the sorb may be easily preserved intact by keeping them in a dry place: turnips are cut up and preserved in mustard, while walnuts keep well in sand, as I have explained with respect to ripe pomegranates. There is a similar way of ripening pomegranates: put the fruit, while it is still green and attached to its branch, in a pot without a bottom, bury this in the earth and scrape the soil around the protruding branch so as to keep out the air, and when the pomegranates are dug up they will be found to be not only intact but larger than if they had hung all the time on the tree.

  Of storing olives

  LX. With respect to preserving olives, Cato advises that table olives, both the round and the bitter berried kinds, keep best in brine both when they are dry and when they are green, but if they are bruised it is well to put them in mastich oil. Round olives will retain their black colour if they are packed in salt for five days, and then, the salt having been brushed away, are exposed for two days in the sun: or they may be preserved in must boiled down to one-third, without the use of salt.

  Of storing amurca

  LXI. Experienced farmers do well to save their amurca as they do their oil and their wine. The method of preserving it is this: immediately after the oil has been pressed out, draw off the amurca and boil it down to one-third and, when it has cooled, store it in vats. There are other methods also, as that in which must is mingled with the amurca.

  6 CONSUMING TIME

  LXII. Since no one stores his crops except to bring them out again, it remains to make a few observations upon the sixth and last operation in our round of agriculture.

  Crops which have been stored are brought out either to care for them, to consume them or to sell them, and as all crops are not alike there are different times for caring for them and for consuming them.

  Of cleaning grain

  LXIII. Grain is taken out of store to be cleaned, when the weevil begins to damage it. When this is apparent the grain should be laid out in the sun and bowls of water placed nearby and the weevil will swarm on this water and drown themselves. Those who store their grain in the pits which are called silos should not attempt to bring out the grain for some time after the silo has been opened because there is danger of suffocation in entering a recently opened silo. The corn which, during the harvest time, you stored in the ear and which you contemplate using for food, should be brought out during the winter to be crushed and ground in the grist mill.

  Of condensing amurca

  LXIV. When it flows from the oil mill, amurca is a watery fluid full of dregs. It is the custom to store it in this state in earthen jars and fifteen days later to skim off the scum from the top and transfer this to other jars, an operation which is repeated at regular intervals twelve times during the following six months, taking care that the last skimming is done on the wane of the moon. Then it is boiled in a copper kettle over a slow fire until it is reduced two-thirds, when it may be drawn off for use.

  Of racking wine

  LXV. When the must is stored in the vat to make wine, it should not be racked off while it is fermenting nor until this process has advanced so far that the wine may be considered to be made. If you wish to drink old wine, it is not made until a year is completed; when it is a year old, then draw it out. But if your vineyard contains that kind of grape which turns sour early, you should eat the fruit, or sell it before the succeeding vintage. There are kinds of wine, like that of Falernum, which improve the longer you keep them.

  Of preserved olives

  LXVI. If you attempt to eat white olives immediately after you have put them up and before they are cured your palate will reject them on account of their bitterness (and the same is true of the black olive) unless you dip them in salt to make them palatable.

  Of nuts, dates and figs

  LXVII. The sooner you use nuts, dates and figs after they have been stored, the more palatable they will be, for by keeping figs lose their flavour, dates rot and nuts dry up.

  Of stored fruits

  LXVIII. Fruits which are strung, such as grapes, apples and sorbs show by their appearance when they may be taken down for use, for by their change of colour and shrinking they reveal themselves as destined to the gar
bage pile unless they are eaten in time. Sorbs which have been laid by when they are already dead-ripe should be used promptly, but those which were picked green are slower to decay: for green fruit in the store house must there go through the process of ripening which was denied it on the tree.

  Of marketing grain

  LXIX. The spelt which you wish to have prepared for food should be taken out in the winter to be ground in the mill: but your seed corn should not be taken out until the fields are ready to receive it, a rule which obtains in respect of all kinds of seed. What you have for sale should be taken out at the appropriate time also, for some things which cannot be kept long without spoiling should be taken out and sold promptly, while others which keep should be retained so that you may sell when the price is high, for often commodities which are kept on hand a long time, will, if put on the market at the proper time, not only yield interest for the time you held them but even a double profit.

  As Stolo was speaking, the freedman of the Sacristan ran up to us with his eyes full of tears and, begging our pardon for having kept us waiting so long, invited us to come to the funeral on the following day. We all sprang up and cried out together “What? To the funeral? Whose funeral? What has happened?”

  The freedman, weeping, told us that his master had been struck down by a blow with a knife, but who did it he had been unable to discover by reason of the crowd, all that he heard being an exclamation that a mistake had been made. He added that when he had carried his master home and had sent the servants to call a doctor, whom they brought back with them quickly, he trusted that it might seem reasonable to us that he had waited to attend upon the doctor rather than come to notify us at once, and while he had not been able to be of any service to his master, who had given up the ghost in a few minutes, yet he hoped we might approve his conduct.

  Accepting these excuses as amply justified, we descended from the temple bewildered more by the hazard of human life than surprised that such a fate should be possible at Rome:63 and so we went our several ways.

  BOOK II

  THE HUSBANDRY OF LIVE STOCK

  Introduction: the decay of country life

  Those great men our ancestors did well to esteem the Romans who lived in the country above those who dwelt in town. For as our peasants today contemn the tenant of a villa as an idler in comparison with the busy life of an agricultural labourer, so our ancestors regarded the sedentary occupations of the town as waste of time from their habitual rural pursuits: and in consequence they so divided their time that they might have to devote only one day of the week to their affairs in town, reserving the remaining seven for country life.64

  So long as they persisted in this practice they accomplished two things both that their farms were fertile through good cultivation and that they themselves enjoyed the best of health: they felt no need of those Greek gymnasia which now every one of us must have in his town house, nor did they deem that in order to enjoy a house in the country one must give sounding Greek names to all its apartments, such as [Greek: prokoiton] (antechamber) [Greek: palaistra] (exercising room) [Greek: apodutaerion] (dressing room) [Greek: peristulon] (arcade) [Greek: ornithon] or (poultry house) [Greek: peristereon] (dove cote) [Greek: oporothaekae] (fruitery) and the like.

  Since now forsooth most of our gentry crowd into town, abandoning the sickle and the plough and prefer to exercise their hands in the theatre and the circus rather than in the corn field and the vineyard, it has resulted that we must fain buy the very corn that fills our bellies and have it hauled in for us, yea, out of Africa and Sardinia, while we bring home the vintage in ships from the islands of Cos and Chios!

  And so it has happened that those lands which the shepherds who founded the city taught their children to cultivate are now, by their later descendants, converted again from corn fields back to pastures, thus in their greed of gain violating even the law, since they fail to distinguish the difference between agriculture and grazing.65 For a shepherd is one thing and a ploughman another, nor for all that he may feed his stock on farm land is a drover the same as a teamster: herded cattle, indeed, do nothing to create what grows in the land, but destroy it with their teeth, while the yoked ox on the contrary conduces to the maturity of grain in the corn fields and forage in the fallow land. The practice and the art of the farmer is one thing, I say; that of the shepherd another; the farmer’s object being that what ever may be produced by cultivating the land should yield a profit; that of the shepherd to make his profit from the increase of his flock; and yet the relation between them is intimate because it is much more desirable for a farmer to feed his forage on the land than to sell it, and a herd of cattle is the best source of supply of that which is the most available food of growing plants, namely, manure:66 so it follows that whoever has a farm ought to practise both arts, that of agriculture and that of grazing cattle, indeed, also that of feeding game, as is done at our country houses, since no little profit may be derived from aviaries and rabbit warrens and fish ponds. And since I have written a book concerning the first of these occupations — that of the husbandry of agriculture — for my wife Fundania because of her interest in that subject, now, my dear Turranius Niger, I write this one on the husbandry of live stock for you, who are so keen a stock fancier that you are a frequent attendant at the cattle market at Macri Campi, where, by your fortunate speculations, you have found means to make provision for many crying expenses.

  I could do this on my own authority because I am myself a considerable owner of live stock with my flocks of sheep in Apulia and my stud of horses at Reate, but I will run through the subject, briefly and summarily rehearsing what I gathered from conversation with certain large stock feeders in Epirus at the time when, being in command of the fleet in Greece during the war with the pirates, I lay between Delos and Sicily.67

  Of the origin, the importance and the economy of live stock husbandry

  I.68 When Menates had gone, Cossinius said to me: “We shall not let you go until you have explained those three points which you began to discuss the other day when we were interrupted.”

  “What three points,” said Murrius. “Are they those concerning feeding cattle, of which you spoke to me yesterday?”

  “Yes,” replied Cossinius, “they are the considerations of what was the origin, what the importance, and what the economy of the husbandry of live stock. Varro here had begun to discourse upon them while we were calling on Petus during his illness, when the arrival of the physician interrupted us.”

  “Of the three divisions of the [Greek: historikon] or interpretation of this subject, which you have mentioned, I will venture,” said I, “to speak only of the first two, of the origin and of the importance of this industry. The third division, of how it should be practised, Scrofa shall undertake for us, as one, if I may speak Greek to a company of half Greek shepherds [Greek: hos per mou pollon ameinon] (who is better qualified than I am),69 for Scrofa was the teacher of C. Lucilius Hirrus, your son-in-law, whose flocks and herds in Bruttii have such reputation.”

  “But,” interrupted Scrofa, “you shall hear what we have to say only on condition that you, who come from Epirus and are masters of the art of feeding cattle, shall recompense us and shall give public testimony of what you know on the subject: for none of us knows it all.”

  Having thus assumed that my share of the discussion should be the first or theoretical part of the subject (which I did, although I have a stock farm in Italy, because, as the proverb is, not every one who owns a lyre is a musician), I began:

  “Doubtless in the very order of nature both man and cattle have existed since the beginning of time, for whether we believe that there was a First Cause of the generation of animals, as Thales of Miletus and Zeno of Citium maintained, or that there was none as was the opinion of Pythagoras of Samos and Aristotle of Stagira, it is, as Dicaearchus points out, a necessity of human life to have descended gradually from the earliest time to the present day: thus in the beginning was the primitive age whe
n man lived on whatever the virgin soil produced spontaneously; thence he descended to the second or pastoral age, when, as he had formerly gathered for his use acorns,70 strawberries, mulberries and apples by picking them from trees and bushes, so now, to satisfy a like need, he captured in the woods such as he could of the wild beasts of the field, and, having enclosed, began to domesticate them. Among these it is considered not without reason that sheep were foremost, both because of their utility and because of their docile nature, for this animal is the gentlest of all and most readily accommodated to the life of man, and supplies him with milk and cheese for food, and skins and wool to clothe his body.

  “Finally, by the third step, man descended from the pastoral age to that of agriculture. In this there have persisted many relics of the two preceding ages, which, long remaining in their original state, are found even in our day: for in many places may yet be seen some kinds of our domestic cattle still in their wild state, such as the large flocks of wild sheep in Phrygia, and in Samothrace a species of wild goats like those which are called “big horns” (platycerotes) and abound in Italy on the mountains of Fiscellum and Tetrica. Every body knows that there are wild swine, unless you maintain that the wild boar is not a true member of the swine family.

  “There are still many cattle running at large in Dardania, Medica and Thrace, while there are wild asses in Phrygia and Lycaonia, and wild horses in certain regions of hither Spain.

  “I have now told you of the origin of the industry of feeding cattle.

  As to its importance, I have this to say:

  “The most important persons of antiquity were all keepers of live stock, as both the Greek and Latin languages reveal, as well as the earliest poets, who describe their heroes some as [Greek: polyarnos] (rich in lambs), some as [Greek: polymaelos] (rich in sheep), and others as [Greek: polyboutaes] (rich in herds), and tell of flocks which on account of their value were said to have golden fleeces, like that of Atreus in Argos which he complained that Thyestes stole away from him: or that ram which Aeetes sacrificed at Colchis, whose fleece was the quest of those princes known as the Argonauts: or again like those so called golden apples (mala) of the Hesperides that Hercules brought back from Africa into Greece, which were, according to the ancient tradition, in fact goats and sheep which the Greeks, from the sound of their voice, called [Greek: maela] indeed, much in the same way our country people, using a different letter (since the bleat of a sheep seems to make more of the sound of bee than of me) say that sheep “be-alare,” whence by the elision of a letter as often happens, is derived the word belare (or balare), to bleat.