:

30. On the agriculture of the Jews, we find there are various incidental remarks in the books of the Old Testament. On the conquest of Canaan, it appears that the different tribes had their territory assigned them by lot; that it was equally divided among the heads of families, and by them and their posterity held by absolute right, and impartial succesion. Thus every family had originally the same extent of territory; but as it became customary afterwards to borrow money on its security and as some families. became indolent and were obliged to sell, and others extinct by death without issue, landed estates soon varied in point of extent. In the time of Nehemiah a famine occurred, on which account many had "mortgaged their lands, their vineyards, and houses, that they might buy corn for their sons and daughters; and to enable them to pay the king's tribute." (Nehem. v. 2.) Some were unable to redeem their lands otherwise than by selling their children as slaves, and thereby "bringing the sons and daughters of God into bondage." Boaz came into three estates by inheritance, and also a wife, after much curious ceremony. (Ruth i. 8. iv. 16.) Large estates, however, were not approved of. Isaiah pronounces a curse on those "that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst." While some portions of land near the towns were enclosed, the greater part was in common, or in alternate proprietorship and occupation, as in our common fields. This appears both from the laws and regulations laid down by Moses as to herds and flocks; and from the story of widow Naomi, who in the progress of her manœuvres to ingratiate herself with Boaz, "came and gleaned in the field after the reapers, and her hap was to light on a part of the field, (that is, of the common field,) belonging unto Boaz." (Ruth ii. 3.)

31. It would appear that every proprietor cultivated his own lands, however extensive; and that agriculture was held in high esteem even by their princes. The crown-lands, in King David's time, were managed by seven officers: one was over the store-houses, and others over the work of the field, and tillage of the ground-over the vineyards and wine-cellars-over the olive and oil-stores, and sycamore (Ficus sycamorus, Linn.) plantations-over the herds-over the camels and asses-and over the flocks. (1 Chron., xxvii. 25.) King Uzziah " built towers in the desert, and digged many wells; for he had much cattle both in the low country and in the plains; husbandmen also and vinedressers in the mountains, and in Carmel, for he loved husbandry." (2 Chron. xxvi. 10.) Even private individuals cultivated to a great extent, and attended to the practical part of the business themselves. Elijah found Elisha in the field with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and himself with the twelfth. Job had five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels. Both asses and oxen were used in ploughing; for Moses forbade the Jews to yoke an ass with an ox, their step or progress being different, and of course their labors unequal.

32. Among the operations of agriculture are mentioned watering by machinery, ploughing, digging, reaping, threshing, &c. "The ploughman plougheth all day to sow; he openeth and breaketh the clods of his ground. When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin (Cuminum cyminum, Linn.), and cast in the principal wheat, and the appointed barley, and the rye, in their place?" (Isaiah xxviii. 24, 25.) The plough was probably a clumsy instrument, requiring the most vigilant attention from the ploughman, for Luke (ch. ix. 62.) uses the figure of a man at plough looking back as one of utter worthlessness. Covered threshing-floors were in use; and as appears from the case of Boaz and Naomi, it was no uncommon thing to sleep in them during harvest. Corn was threshed in different ways, "the fitches," says Isaiah, "are not threshed with a threshing-instrument, neither is a cart-wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and cummin with a rod (flail); bread-corn is bruised, because he will not be ever threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen." (Ch. xxviii. 27, 28.) The bread-corn here mentioned was probably the far of the Romans (maize, Zea mays, L.), which was commonly separated by hand-mills, or hand picking, or beating, as is still the case in Italy and other countries where this corn is grown. Corn was "winnowed with the shovel and with the van." (Id. xxx. 24.) Sieves were also in use, for Amos says, "I will sift the house of Israel as corn is sifted in a sieve." (Ch. ix. 9.) And Christ is represented by St. Luke as saying, “Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat." Isaiah mentions (vii. 25.) the "digging of hills with the mattock" to which implement the original e pick (fig. 2.) would gradually arrive, first, by having the head put on at right angles, and pointed (fig. 8. a); next, by having it flattened, sharpened, and shod with iron (b,c); E and lastly, by forming the head entirely of

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metal, and forked (d), such probably as we see it in use in Judea, and the land of Canaan, at the present day.

33. Vineyards were planted on rising grounds, fenced round, the soil well prepared, and a vintage-house and watch-tower built in a centrical situation (Isaiah v. 2.), as is still done in European Turkey and Italy. Moses gives directions to the Jews for cultivating the vine and other fruit-trees; the three first years after planting, the fruit is not to be eaten; the fourth, it is to be given to the Lord; and it is not till the fifth year that they are "to eat of the fruit thereof." (Levit. xix. 25.) The intention of these precepts was to prevent the trees from being exhausted by bearing before they had ac quired sufficient strength and establishment in the soil.

S4. Of other agricultural operations and customs, it may be observed with Dr. Brown, (Antiq. of the Jews, vol. ii. part xii. sect. 5, 6.), that they differed very little from the existing practices in the same countries as described by modern travellers.

35. The agricultural produce of the Jews was the same as among the Egyptians; corn, wine, oil, fruits, milk, honey, sheep, and cattle, but not swine. The camel then, as now, was the beast of burden, and long journeys (fig. 9.); and the horse, the animal of war and luxury. The fruit of the sycamore-fig was abundant, and in general use; and grapes

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attained an astonishing size, both of berry and bunch; the melon and gourd tribes were common. The returns of corn were in general good; but as neither public stores, nor corn monopolisers, seem to have existed, dearths, and their attendant miseries, happened occasionally. A number of these are mentioned in Scripture, and some of extraordinary severity.

36. Of the agriculture of the other civilized and stationary nations of this period, scarcely any thing is known. According to Herodotus, the soil of Babylon was rich, well cultivated, and yielded two or three hundred for one. Xenophon, in his book of Economics, bestows due encomiums on a Persian king, who examined, with his own eyes, the state of agriculture throughout his dominions; and in all such excursions, according as occasion required, bountifully rewarded the industrious, and severely discountenanced the slothful. In another place he observes, that when Cyrus distributed premiums with his own hand to diligent cultivators, it was his custom to say, "My friends, I have a like title with yourselves to the same honors and remuneration from the public; I give you no more than I have deserved in my own person; having made the self-same attempts with equal diligence and success." (Econom. c. iv. sect. 16.) The same author else. where remarks, that a truly great prince ought to hold the arts of war and agriculture in the highest esteem; for by such means he will be enabled to cultivate his territories effectually, and protect them when cultivated. (Harte's Essays, p. 19.)

$7. Phoenicia, a country of Asia, at the east of the Mediterranean, has the reputation of having been cultivated at an early period, and of having colonised and introduced agriculture at Carthage, Marseilles, and other places. The Phoenicians are said to have been the original occupiers of the adjoining country of Canaan; and when driven out by the Jews, to have settled in Tyre and Sidon (now Sur and Saida), in the fifteenth century B. C. They were naturally industrious; and their manufactures acquired such a superiority over those of other nations, that among the ancients, whatever was elegant, great, or pleasing, either in apparel or domestic utensils, was called Sidonian: but of their agriculture it can only be conjectured that it was Egyptian, as far as local circumstances would permit.

38. The republic of Carthage included Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia, and flourished for upwards of seven centuries previous to the second century B. C. Agriculture was practised at an early period in Sicily; and, according to some, Greece received that art from this island. It must have been also considerably advanced in Spain, and in the Carthaginian territory, since they had books on the subject. In 147 B. C., when Carthage was destroyed by Scipio, and the contents of the libraries were given in presents to the princes, allies of the Romans, the senate only reserved the twenty-eight books on agriculture of the Carthaginian general Magon, which Decius Syllanus was directed to translate; and of which the Romans preserved, for a long time, the original and the translation. (Encyc. Méthodique, art. Agriculture.)

39. Italy, and a part of the south of France, would probably be partially cultivated from the influence of the Carthaginians in Sicily and Marseilles; but the north of France, and the rest of Europe, appear to have been chiefly, if not entirely, in a wild

state, and the scene of the pastoral and hunting employments of the nomadic nations, the Kelts or Celts, the Goths, and the Slaves.

40. The Indian and Chinese nations appear to be of equal antiquity with the Egyptians. Joseph de Guignes, an eminent French Oriental scholar, who died in the first year of the present century, has written a memoir (in 1759, 12mo.), to prove that the Chinese were a colony from Egypt: and M. de Guignes, a French resident in China, who published at Paris a Chinese dictionary in 1813, is of the same opinion. The histories of the Oriental nations, however, are not yet sufficiently developed from the original sources, to enable us to avail ourselves of the information they may contain as to the agriculture of so remote a period as that now under consideration.

41. With respect to the American nations during this period, there are no facts on record to prove either their existence or their civilisation, though Bishop Huet, and the Abbé Clavigero, think that they also are descendants of Noah, who, while in a nomadic state, arrived in the western, through the northern parts of the eastern continent.

CHAP. II.

History of Agriculture among the Romans, or from the Second Century B. C. to the Fifth Century of our æra.

42. We have now arrived at a period of our history where certainty supplies the place of conjecture, and which may be considered as not only entertaining but instructive. The attention of the Romans to agriculture is well known. The greatest men amongst them applied themselves to the study and practice of it, not only in the first ages of the state, but after they had carried their arms into every country of Europe, and into many countries of Asia and Africa. Some of their most learned men, and one of their greatest poets wrote on it; and all were attached to the things of the country. Varro, speaking of the farms of C. Tremellius Scrofa, says, "they are to many, on account of their culture, a more agreeable spectacle than the royally ornamented edifices of others." (Var. de R. R. lib. i. cap. 2.) In ancient times, Pliny observes, the lands were cultivated by the hands even of generals, and the earth delighted to be ploughed with a share adorned with laurels, and by a ploughman who had been honored with a triumph. (Nat. Hist. lib. xviii. c. 3.) The Romans spread their arts with their conquests; and their agriculture became that of all Europe at an early period of our æra.

43. The sources from which we have drawn our information being first related, we shall review, in succession, the proprietorship, occupancy, soil, culture, and produce of Roman agriculture.

SECT. I. Of the Roman Agricultural Writers.

44. The Roman authors on agriculture, whose works have reached the present age, are Cato, Varro, Virgil, Columella, Pliny, and Palladius. There were many more, whose writings are lost. The compilation of Constantine Poligonat, or, as others consider, of Cassius Bassus, entitled Geoponicka, already mentioned (18.), is also to be considered as a Roman production, though published in the Greek language at Constantinople, after the removal thither of the seat of government.

45. M. Porcius Cato, called the Censor, and the father of the Roman rustic writers, lived in the seventh century of the republic, and died at an extreme old age, B. C. 150. He recommended himself, at the age of seventeen, by his valor in a battle against Annibal; and afterwards rose to all the honors of the state. He particularly distinguished himself as censor, by his impartiality and opposition to all luxury and dissipation; and was remarkably strict in his morals. He wrote several works, of which only some fragments remain, under the titles of Origines and De Re Rustica. The latter is the oldest Roman work on agriculture: it is much mutilated, and more curious for the account it contains of Roman customs and sacrifices, than valuable for its georgical information.

46. M. Terentius Varro died B. C. 28, in the 88th year of his age. He was a learned writer, a distinguished soldier both by sea and land, and a consul. He was a grammarian, a philosopher, a historian, and astronomer; and is thought to have written five hundred volumes on different subjects, all of which are lost, except his treatise De Re Rustica. This is a complete system of directions in three books, on the times proper for, and the different kinds of, rural labour; it treats also of live stock, and of the villa and offices. As Varro was for some time lieutenant-general in Spain and Africa, and afterwards retired and cultivated his own estate in Italy, his experience and observation must have been very considerable.

47. Publius Virgilius Maro, called the prince of the Latin poets, was born at a village near Mantua in Lombardy about 70 B. C., and died B. C. 19, aged 51. He cultivated his own estate, till he was 30 years old, and spent the rest of his life chiefly at the court of Augustus. His works are the Bucolics, Georgics, and Eneid. The Georgies is to be considered as a poetical, compendium of agriculture, taken from the Greek and Roman writers then extant, but especially from Varro.

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48. Luc. Jun. Moderatus Columella was a native of Gades, now Cadiz, in Spain, but passed most of his time in Italy. The time of his birth and death are not known, but he is supposed to have lived under Claudius in the first century. His work De Re Rustica, lib. xii. is a complete treatise on rural affairs; including field operations, timber-trees, and gardens.

49. C. Plinius Secundus, surnamed the elder, was born at Verona in Lombardy, and suffocated at the destruction of Pompeii in his 56th year, A. D. 79. He was of a noble family; distinguished himself in the field and in the fleet; was governor of Spain; was a great naturalist, and an extensive writer. Of the works which he composed none are extant but his Natural History in thirty-seven books; a work full of the erudition of the time, accompanied with much erroneous, useless, and frivolous matter. It treats of the stars, the heavens, wind, rain, hail, minerals, trees, flowers, and plants; an account of all living animals, birds, fishes, and beasts; a geographical description of every place on the globe; a history of every art and science, commerce, and navigation, with their rise, progress, and several improvements. His work may be considered as a compendium of all preceding writers on these subjects, with considerable additions from his personal experience and observation.

50. Rutilius Taurus Emilianus Palladius is by some supposed to have lived under Antoninus Pius, in the second, and by others in the fourth century. His work De Re Rustica is a poem in fourteen books, and is little more than a compendium of those which preceded it on the same subject. The editor of the article Agriculture, in the Encyclopédie Méthodique, says it is too dull to be read as a poem, and too concise to be useful as a didactic work.

51. These works have been rendered accessible to all by translations; and a judicious and instructive treatise composed from them by Adam Dickson, a Scotch clergyman, was published in 1788, under the title of The Husbandry of the Ancients. To this last work we are indebted for the greater part of what we have to submit on Roman agriculture.

52. The Roman authors, as Rozier has observed (Dict. de l'Agr. art. Hist.), do not enable us to trace the rise and progress of agriculture, either in Italy or in any other country under their dominion. What they contain is a picture of their rural economy in its most perfect state: delivered in precepts, generally founded on experience, though sometimes on superstition; never, however, on theory or hypothesis. For, as the Rev. Adam Dickson states, "instead of schemes produced by a lively imagination, which we receive but too frequently from authors of genius unacquainted with the practice of agriculture, we have good reason to believe that they deliver in their writings, a genuine account of the most approved practices; practices, too, the goodness of which they had themselves experienced." (Husb. of the Anc. p. 16.) He adds, that if in the knowledge of the theory of agriculture, the Roman cultivators are inferior to our modern improvers; yet in attention to circumstances and exactness of execution, and in economical management, they are greatly superior.

SECT. II. Of the Proprietorship, Occupancy, and General Management of Landed Property among the Romans.

53. The Roman nation originated from a company of robbers and runaway slaves, who placed themselves under their leader Romulus. This chief having conquered a small part of Italy divided the land among his followers, and by what is called the Agrarian Law, allowed 2 jugera or 1 acre to every citizen. After the expulsion of the kings in the 6th century B. C., 7 yoke, or 3 acres were allotted. The custom of distributing the conquered lands, by giving 7 jugera to every citizen, continued to be observed in latter times; but when each soldier had received his share, the remainder was sold in lots of various sizes, even to 50 jugera; and no person was prevented from acquiring as large a landed estate as he could, till a law passed by Stolo, the second plebeian consul, B. Č. $77, that no one should possess more than 500 jugera. This law appears to have remained in force during the greater period of the Roman power. Whatever might be the size of the estate, it was held by the proprietor as an absolute right, without acknowledgment to any superior power; and passed to his successors, agreeably to testament, if he made one; or if not, by common law to his nearest relations.

54. In the first ages of the commonwealth, the lands were occupied and cultivated by the proprietors themselves; and as this state of things continued for four or five centuries, it was probably the chief cause of the agricultural eminence of the Romans. When a

person has only a small portion of land assigned to him, and the maintenance of, his family depends entirely upon its productions, it is natural to suppose that the culture of it employs his whole attention. A person who has been accustomed to regular and systematic habits of action, such as those of a military life, will naturally carry those habits into whatever he undertakes. Hence, it is probable, a degree of industrious application, exactness, and order in performing operations, by a soldier-agriculturist, which would not be displayed by men who had never been trained to any regular habits of action. The observation of Pliny confirms this supposition: he asserts that the Roman citizens, in early times, " ploughed their fields with the same diligence that they pitched their camps, and sowed their corn with the same care that they formed their armies for battle." (Nat. Hist. lib. xviii. c. 3.) Corn, he says, was then both abundant and cheap.

55. Afterwards, when Rome extended her conquests, and acquired large territories, rich individuals purchased large estates; the culture of these fell into different hands, and was carried on by bailiffs and farmers much in the same way as in modern times. Columella informs us that it was so in his time, stating, that "the men employed in agriculture are either farmers or servants; the last being divided into free servants and slaves." (Col. lib. i. cap. 7.) It was a common practice to cultivate land by slaves during the time of the elder Pliny; but his nephew and successor let his estates to farmers.

seer.

56. In the time of Cato the Censor, the author of The Husbandry of the Ancients observes, though the operations of agriculture were generally performed by servants, yet the great men among the Romans continued to give a particular attention to it, studied its improvement, and were very careful and exact in the management of all their country affairs. This appears from the directions given them by this most attentive farmer. Those great men had both houses in town, and villas in the country; and as they resided frequently in town, the management of their country affairs was committed to a bailiff or overNow their attention to the culture of their lands and to every other branch of husbandry, appear from the directions given them how to behave upon their arrival from the city at their villas. "After the landlord," says Cato," has come to the villa, and performed his devotions, he ought that very day, if pos sible, to go through his farm; if not that day, at least the next. When he has considered in what manner his fields should be cultivated, what work should be done, and what not; next day he ought to call the bailiff, and enquire what of the work is done, and what remains; whether the laboring is far enough advanced for the season, and whether the things that remain might have been finished; and what is done about the wine, corn, and all other things. When he has made himself acquainted with all these, he ought to take an account of the workmen and working days. If a sufficiency of work does not appear, the bailiff will say that he was very diligent, but that the servants were not well; that there were violent storms; that the slaves had run away; and that they were employed in some public work. When he has given these and many other excuses, call him again to the account of the work and the workmen. When there have been storms, enquire for how many days, and consider what work might be done in rain; casks ought to have been washed and mended, the villa cleaned, corn carried away, dung carried out, a dunghill made, seed cleaned, old ropes mended, new ones made, and the servants' clothes mended. On holidays, old ditches may have been scoured, a highway repaired, briers cut, the garden digged, meadows cleared from weeds, twigs bound up, thorns pulled, far (bread-corn, maize) pounded, all things made clean. When the servants have been sick, the ordinary quantity of meat ought not to have been given them. When he is fully satisfied in all these things, and has given orders that the work that remains be finished, he should inspect the bailiff's accounts, his account of money, of corn, fodder, wine, oil, what has been sold, what exacted, what remains, what of this may be sold, whether there is good security for what is owing. He should inspect the things that remain, buy what is wanting for the year, and let out what is necessary to be employed in this manner. He should give orders concerning the works he would have executed, and the things he is inclined to let, and leave his orders in writing. He should inspect his flocks, make a sale, sell the superfluous oil, wine, and corn; if they are giving a proper price, sell the old oxen, the refuse of the cattle and sheep, wool, hides, the old carts, old iron tools, and old and diseased slaves. Whatever is superfluous he ought to sell; a farmer should be a seller, not a buyer." (Cat. cap. ii.)

57. The landlord is thus supposed by Cato to be perfectly acquainted with every kind of work proper on his farm, and the seasons of performing it, and also a perfect judge how much work both without and within doors ought to be performed by any number of servants and cattle, in a given time; the knowledge of which is highly useful to a farmer and what very few perfectly acquire. It may be observed likewise, that the landlord is here supposed to enquire into all circumstances, with a minuteness of which there is scarcely even an actual farmer in this age that has any conception.

58. Varro complains that, in his time, the same attention to agriculture was not given as in former times; that the great men resided too much within the walls of the city, and employed themselves more in the theatre and circus, than in the corn-fields and vineyards. (Var. de R. R. lib. i. Præf.)

59. Columella complains that, in his time, agriculture was almost entirely neglected. However, from the directions which he gives to the proprietors of land, it appears that there were still a few that continued to pay a regard to it; for, after mentioning some things, which he says, by the justice and care of the landlord, contribute much to improve his estate, he adds, "But he should likewise remember, when he returns from the city, immediately after paying his devotions, if he has time, if not, next day, to view his marches, inspect every part of his farm, and observe whether in his absence any part of discipline or watchfulness has been dispensed with; and whether any vine, any other tree, or any fruits are missing. Then likewise he ought to review the cattle and servants, all the instruments of husbandry, and household furniture. If he continues to do all these things for some years, he will find a habit of discipline established when he is old; and