Nebraska advertiser. [volume] (Brownville, Nemaha County, N.T. [Neb.]) 1856-1882, 1862-09-27
From the Country Gentleman.
Agriculture OF the AnCientS.


Though from necessity, agriculture
and pastoral life were the chief occu-
patton of man in the early as we'll as
later history of the world, and though
we are assured by contemporaneous
writings that many books were written
by Greek and Roman authors, on the
subject of improving the soil and the
products thereof, yet any authentic
history of ancient agriculture has not
come down to us, and with the excep-
tion of two or three poems and an
equal number of prose fragments, we
find no information upon the subject
except in the illusions in the Bible
and the thin scatterings through pro-
fame literature, and the mysterious
hieroglyphics from disemboweled cities
Sacred history. is of course the
earliest record we have of rural affairs.
Hesiod, said by Herodotus to be a
contemporary of Homer, but whom
modern ahtiquarians have satisfactorily
shown fourished about one hundred
years after, and $50 B. c., in his poem
of works and days, gives collection
of prospects, many of them economi-
cal, and in what we should call ''Poor
Richard" style, and concludes with
a sort Of calendar for the agriculturist.
This poem is the first of its class
didactic, and looking upon personal
and practical life, and is the model
upon which Virgil framed his GeOr-
! GIGS. Zenophon, another Greek, who
] lived 45O B. c., and besides his great
merit as a military commander, as
shown in his conducting the celebrated
retreat of the ten thousand mercena-
ries in the service Of Cyrus the youn-
ger, after the disastrous battle of
Cunaxa, recorded by himself, and as a
historian, was also famous as a phil
osopher, and shared with Plato the
conversation of Socrates In the
dialogue entitled "Gconomicus," Soc
rates is represented as one of the
characters or interlocutors, and thus
gives his sanction to the views of Zer
nophon, who discOurses at large on
the science of good husbandry, the
cultivation of garden and farm, the
regulation of household, and the
relative duties of wife and husband
From this essay we obtain bette
knowledge of Greek agriculture thar
from any other source. Cicero speak
of it as very useful and worthy o
study.
Of the agriculture of the early Ro
mans, we know but little, but of it
later history and especially during
the most prosperous period of tha
great Empire, we have comparatively
; full record in the treatise of Cato, VIII
lived in the second century befOr
Christ, in the Goergies of Virgil o
: the beginning of the Christian era
and in the subsequent writings of Pin
the naturalist.
; Pliny says that some of the mos
! famous houses among the ancier
: Romans, such as the Pisones, Fabi
Lentuli, &c., took their names froI
, their favorite crops and vegetables
: They did not believe in large farm
; half cultivated. On the first divisio
/, of the lands by Romulus, no one ha
more than two acres. After the ex
! pulsion Of the kings seven acres wer
allowed. Cincinnatus had only foU
acres. which he cultivated with h
), own hands, and thus was he emplOye
when chosen to be Consul; also afte
wards, when summoned to be Dictate
: and save his country. During Il
n civil wars following the death of Julh
: Cesar, agriculture had become muc
: neglected, and SO great was the di
treSs during the reign of Augusta
that all classes began to murmur al
cast the blame upon the administr'
2 ton. In this state of things M@cena
3 3 the favorite. or as we should say. ii
m prime minister of the emperor m
patron of Virgil, Horace and 9th