Natural History — Book XVIII

Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder · a new plain-English translation from the Latin

1| Next comes the nature of grain crops, of gardens and of flowers, and of everything else besides trees and shrubs that the bountiful earth produces, a vast subject for study even in the plants alone, if one considers their variety, their number, their flowers, scents and colours, and their juices and powers, which the earth brings forth for the health or the pleasure of mankind. In this part, first

2| of all, it pleases me to defend the cause of the earth and to stand by the parent of all things, although I defended her at the beginning of this work. Since, however, the subject itself brings us to consider that she also brings forth harmful things, we load her with our own crimes and charge our guilt to her. She has produced poisons. But who has discovered them except man? For birds and beasts it is enough to beware of them and avoid them. And though elephants and uri sharpen and file their horns on a tree, rhinoceroses on a rock, and boars the daggers of their tusks on both, and though animals know how to prepare themselves to do harm, which of them except man dips its weapons in poison as well?

3| We dip our arrows too, and we give iron itself something more harmful than itself; we pollute even the rivers and the elements of nature, and turn the very thing by which we live into a means of destruction. Nor should we suppose that these things are unknown to the animals: we have shown what they prepare for their battles against serpents and what they devise for healing after the fight. Yet none except man fights with poison not its own.

4| Let us therefore admit our guilt, we who are not content even with what grows naturally; for how many more kinds of poison are made by human hands! What? Are not some human beings, too, born like poisons? Their black tongue flickers like a serpent's, and the corruption of their mind scorches whatever it touches as they find fault with everything; and like birds of ill omen they begrudge even the darkness that is their own and the quiet of the very nights with their groaning, which is their only voice, so that, like ill-omened creatures, even meeting them forbids one to act or to be of use to life. And they know no other reward for their abominable spirit than to hate everything.

5| But in this too the majesty of nature is the same. How many more good people she has produced, as she has produced grain! How much more fertile she is in the things that help and nourish! In valuing them and rejoicing in them, we too shall leave those human brambles to their own burning and go on with our work of improving life, all the more steadfastly because we seek our reward in the work more than in fame. For our discourse concerns the countryside and the practices of farming, but these are what life rests on, and among the ancients they received the highest honour.

6| Romulus first of all instituted the priests of the fields, and called himself the twelfth brother among them, the sons of his nurse Acca Larentia. He gave this priesthood, as its most sacred emblem, a crown of ears of grain bound with a white fillet; this was the first crown among the Romans, and the honour ends only with life and goes with its holders even into exile and captivity. In those days 2 iugera were enough for each of the Roman people,

7| and he assigned no one a larger measure. Which of the slaves of the emperor Nero, a short while ago, would have been content with pleasure gardens of this size? They like to have fishponds larger than that, and one may be thankful if some do not have kitchens larger. Numa instituted the worship of the gods with grain and supplication with salted meal, and, as Hemina records, the roasting of far, since roasted far was more wholesome as food; he achieved this in the only possible way, by ruling that nothing was pure for divine worship unless it had been roasted.

8| He also instituted the Fornacalia, a festival for roasting far, and one equally sacred to the Termini of the fields. For these were the gods they knew best in those days; and they named Seia from sowing and Segesta from the crops, whose statues we see in the Circus (it is forbidden by religion to name the third of these under a roof). And they would not even taste the new grain or wine before the priests had offered the first fruits.

9| A iugum was the name for the area that could be ploughed in a day by a single yoke of oxen; an actus, the distance the oxen were driven with the plough in one proper stretch. This was 120 feet, and doubled in length it made a iugerum. The most generous gifts to generals and brave citizens were as much land as each could plough round in a single day at most, and also quartarii of far or heminae, contributed by the people.

10| The first surnames too came from this: Pilumnus, for the man who had invented the pestle for the mills; Piso, from pounding; and then those of the Fabii, the Lentuli and the Cicerones, according as each sowed some particular crop best. In the family of the Junii they gave the name Bubulcus to the man who handled oxen best. Indeed, in sacred matters nothing was more binding than the bond of confarreatio, and newly married brides carried a cake of far before them.

11| To farm one's land badly was judged a disgrace worthy of the censor's mark; and, as Cato tells us, when men praising a good man called him a good farmer and a good tenant, they were thought to have praised him in the highest terms. From this too they called men locupletes, "rich", as being full of loci, that is, of land. Pecunia, "money", itself was named from pecus, "livestock". Even now everything from which the people receive revenue is called "pastures" in the censors' records, because for a long time this was the only public revenue. Fines too were reckoned only in sheep and oxen, and the kindliness of the ancient laws should not be passed over: it was laid down that whoever imposed a fine should name a sheep before he named an ox.

12| They called those who celebrated games in honour of oxen Bubetii. King Servius was the first to stamp bronze with the image of sheep and oxen. Under the Twelve Tables it was a capital offence for an adult to have pastured his animals by stealth at night on crops obtained by ploughing, or to have cut them, and they ordered him to be hanged and put to death as an offering to Ceres, a heavier punishment than for one convicted of homicide; a person under age was to be flogged at the praetor's discretion, or a judgement given for the damage or for double the damage.

13| Then the distinction and honour of the citizenship itself came from nowhere else. The rustic tribes were the most praised, those of men who held lands in the country, while the urban tribes, into which to be transferred was a disgrace, were a reproach of idleness. And so there were only four, named from the parts of the City in which they lived: Suburana, Palatina, Collina, Esquilina. On market days they revisited the City, and for that reason it was not lawful to hold the assemblies on market days, so that the rural plebs might not be called away.

14| Rest and sleep were on straw. The very glory, finally, they named adoria from the honour of far. For myself I admire even the words of ancient meaning; for so it stands in the commentaries of the pontiffs: For the performing of the dog-augury the days are to be fixed before the grain comes out of the sheaths and not before it comes to the sheaths.

15| Therefore with these habits not only did the crops suffice, no province feeding Italy, but the cheapness of the corn supply too was incredible. Manius Marcius, aedile of the plebs, first gave grain to the people at an as a modius. Lucius Minucius Augurinus, who had convicted Spurius Maelius, reduced the price of far to an as at three market days running, as eleventh tribune of the plebs, for which reason a statue was set up to him outside the Porta Trigemina by the people, the money being collected.

16| Seius in his aedileship furnished grain to the people at an as, for which reason statues were also dedicated to him on the Capitol and the Palatine, and he himself on his last day was carried on the shoulders of the people to the pyre. In the year when the Mother of the gods was conveyed to Rome, they relate that in that summer a greater harvest was made than in the ten preceding years.

17| Marcus Varro is our authority that when Lucius Metellus led very many elephants in his triumph, the modii of far were at an as each, likewise congii of wine, and 30 pounds of dried fig, 10 pounds of oil, 12 pounds of meat. Nor did this come from the great estates of individuals who kept off their neighbours, since even by the law of Licinius Stolo, with a limit of only five hundred iugera enclosed, he himself was condemned under his own law, when he held more by putting his son in his place.

18| That measure belonged to a commonwealth already running to luxury. Indeed the address of Manius Curius, after his triumphs and the immeasurable extent of lands added to the empire, is well known: that the citizen was understood to be dangerous for whom seven iugera were not enough. This was the measure assigned to the plebs after the kings were driven out.

19| What then was the cause of so great fertility? The fields were then tilled by the very hands of the generals, as it is right to believe, the earth rejoicing in a laurelled ploughshare and a ploughman who had triumphed, whether they handled the seed with the same care as wars, and laid out the fields with the same diligence as camps, or because all things come forth more joyfully under honourable hands, since they are done more carefully.

20| Serranus was found sowing when the honours were given him, whence also his surname. To Cincinnatus, ploughing his four iugera on the Vatican, which are called the Quintian meadows, the messenger brought the dictatorship, and, as is handed down, while he was naked, and the messenger full of delays said: Cover your body, so that I may deliver the commands of the senate and people of Rome.

21| Such then were even the viatores, a name given in turn to those who summoned the senate and generals from the fields. But now those same lands are worked by fettered feet, condemned hands and branded faces, and yet the earth, which is called parent and is said to be tended, is not so deaf, even with that very honour taken from her by these men, that we should not believe this is done against her will and to her indignation. And we wonder that the estates of slave prisons do not yield the same returns that those of the generals did!

22| Therefore to give precepts on the cultivation of the field was a chief concern even among foreigners, since kings did so, Hiero, Philometor, Attalus, Archelaus, and generals, Xenophon and the Carthaginian Mago, to whom indeed our senate paid so great an honour when Carthage was captured that, when it gave the libraries to the petty kings of Africa, it decreed that the twenty-eight volumes of him alone should be translated into the Latin language, although Marcus Cato had already composed his precepts,

23| and that the task should be given to men skilled in Punic, in which Decimus Silanus, a man of a most famous family, surpassed all. As for the authorities on wisdom, and those excellent in verse, and the other famous men who have composed, whom we should follow, we have prefixed them in this volume, naming Marcus Varro not in the crowd, who in the 81st year of his life thought the matter should be handed on.

24| With the Romans, vine cultivation began much later, and at first, as was necessary, they tilled only the arable fields, the system of which will now be treated by us, not in the common way only, but, as we have done so far, with every care searched out in both the ancient and the later discoveries, the cause and reason of things being dug out at once. We shall speak also of the stars and give the indubitable earthly signs of the stars themselves, since those who have so far treated them with more diligence can seem to have written for anyone rather than for farmers.

25| And first of all we shall deal for the most part with oracles, which in no other kind of life are more numerous or more certain. For why should they not seem oracles, proceeding from a most certain and most truthful god, through experience?

26| We shall take our beginning from Cato: The bravest men and the most vigorous soldiers are born of farmers, and those who think least ill.—Do not buy an estate greedily. In farm business do not spare labour, least of all in buying land. What is badly bought one always regrets. Those who are going to acquire land ought to look before all things at water, road, neighbour. Each has great interpretations and not doubtful ones.

27| Cato orders that in the case of adjoining farms this too be assessed, in what condition they are flourishing. For in a good region, he says, they flourish well. Atilius Regulus, that famous man, twice consul during the Punic war, used to say that an unhealthy farm is not to be acquired even in the most fertile places, nor a most healthy one in worn-out ones. The healthiness of a place is not always revealed by the complexion of the inhabitants, since people accustomed to it hold out even in plague-ridden places. Besides, there are some places healthy in parts of the year, but nothing is wholesome unless it is healthy the whole year. A farm is bad with which the owner has to wrestle.

28| Cato orders it to be looked at among the first things, that the soil should be strong by its own virtue, then by position as has been said, that there should be a supply of labourers near and a strong town, a means of exit for ships or roads, that it should be well built and cultivated. In this I see most people deceived; for they take the sloth of the former owner as being in the buyer's favour. Nothing is more ruinous than a deserted farm. And so Cato says it is better bought from a good owner, and another's system is not to be rashly despised, and that for a farm as for a man, however profitable it is, if it is also costly, not much remains over.

29| He judges the vine the most profitable thing on a farm, not without reason, since before all things he took care for the reckoning of expense; next, watered gardens, and that not falsely, if they are under a town; and the ancients called meadows parata, and the same Cato, being asked which profit was the most certain, answered: if you pasture well; which the next: if you pasture fairly well.

30| The sum of all in looking at this was that that produce was most approved which would cost as little as possible in outlay. This is decided differently in different places according to the opportunity of the locality. And to the same end belongs

31| what he said, that the farmer ought to be a seller, that a farm should be planted in youth without delay, that building should be done only on a planted field, and then too hesitantly, and the best thing, as they commonly said, is to enjoy another man's folly, but so that the guarding of the villas is not a burden. Yet he who lives well should visit the farm oftener, and they do not lie when they say the master's face does more good than the back of his head.

32| This measure is approved, that neither the farm should seek the villa nor the villa the farm, not as Lucius Lucullus and Quintus Scaevola did, by contrasting examples in the same age, when Scaevola's villa could not take in his crops, and Lucullus's field could not take in his villa; in which kind the censors' reproof was that the man ploughed less than he swept. Nor is this without a certain art. Most recently Gaius Marius, 7 times consul, placed a villa in the territory of Misenum, but with such skill in marking out a camp that Sulla Felix said even the others compared with him were blind.

33| It is agreed that it should not be placed beside marshes nor facing a river, although Homer has most truly handed down that the breezes before dawn from a river are always unwholesome. In hot places it ought to look to the north, in cold places to the south, in temperate ones to the equinoctial east.

34| By what proofs the goodness of the land itself is to be judged, although in discussing the best kind of earth we may seem to have said enough, still we shall subjoin the signs handed down, chiefly in Cato's words: ebulum, or wild plum, or bramble, small bulb, trefoil, meadow grass, oak, the wild pear and apple are signs of grain-bearing soil, likewise earth that is black and of ash colour. All chalk will bake, unless very lean, and sand, unless this too is very thin, and the same answer much better in level places than on hills.

35| The ancients thought that the measure of land should be observed above all, for they judged it better to sow less and plough better; in which opinion I see Virgil too stood. And, if we confess the truth, great estates have ruined Italy, and now the provinces too—six owners possessed half of Africa when the emperor Nero put them to death—, not cheating Gnaeus Pompey of this, his own greatness too, who never bought a field adjoining. Mago ruled that when a farm was bought the house should be sold, harshly and not for the advantage of the public condition, beginning to unfold his precepts with this opening, so that it may nevertheless appear that constant attendance was what he desired.

36| Next the skill of bailiffs is to be taken care of, and Cato laid down much about them. Let it be enough for us to have said that he ought to be as near as possible to the master in heart and yet not seem so to himself. To have the country worked by slave prisons is worst, as whatever is done by men in despair. It may seem rash to have set down a single saying of the ancients, and perhaps incredible, unless it is thoroughly weighed, that nothing is less profitable than to cultivate land in the best way.

37| Lucius Tarius Rufus, of the lowest humility of birth, who deserved a consulship by soldierly industry, in other respects a man of old-fashioned thrift, drained a sum of about 100,000,000 sesterces, heaped together by the generosity of the deified Augustus, until his heir refused it, by buying up and cultivating lands in Picenum for glory. Do we then approve ruin and famine? No, by Hercules, but measure, the most useful judge of all things.

38| To cultivate well is necessary, to cultivate in the best way is ruinous, except where the colonus works with his own offspring or with people he must feed in any case. For the master to gather some harvests does not pay, if the outlay of labour is reckoned, nor rashly to cultivate the olive, nor certain lands carefully, as they relate in Sicily, and so strangers are deceived.

39| In what manner, then, are fields most profitably cultivated? By the oracle, of course: by bad ones, with good ones. But it is fair to defend our great-great-grandfathers, who looked to life in their precepts. For when they said bad ones, they meant the cheapest, and the height of their foresight was that the outlay should be as small as possible. Those taught these things who made it a charge against men who had triumphed that they had ten pounds of silver apiece in their furniture, who demanded, when a bailiff died, to leave their victories and return to their own fields, whose small holdings the commonwealth undertook to have cultivated, and who led armies while the senate acted as bailiff for them.

40| Hence those other oracles: that he is a worthless farmer who buys what his farm could provide him; that he is a bad head of a household who does by day what he could do at night, except in bad weather; worse the man who does on working days what he owed to holidays; worst the man who, on a clear day, works under a roof rather than in the field.

41| I cannot restrain myself from bringing forward one example of antiquity, from which it can be understood that there was a custom of pleading before the people even about cultivation, and how those men were wont to be defended. Gaius Furius Cresimus, freed from slavery, when on a quite small plot he took much richer crops than the neighbourhood from its very large ones, was in great ill will, as though he lured other men's crops away by poisonings.

42| Wherefore, a day having been appointed against him by Spurius Albinus, curule aedile, and fearing condemnation, when the tribes had to go to the vote, he brought all his farm equipment into the forum and led in his household, strong and, as Piso says, well cared for and clothed, tools excellently made, heavy mattocks, weighty ploughshares, well-fed oxen.

43| Afterwards he said: These, Quirites, are my poisonings, nor can I show you or bring into the forum my night labours and my watchings and my sweat. So he was acquitted by the votes of all. Cultivation indeed consists in work, not outlay, and therefore our forefathers said that the most fertilizing thing in a field is the master's eye.

44| The remaining precepts will be given in their places, those which will be proper to single kinds. Meanwhile we shall not omit the common ones that occur to us, and first of all Cato's most humane and most useful: that one must act so that the neighbours may be fond of one. He gives the reasons; we think they are doubtful to no one.—Among the first things he takes care likewise that the household be not ill off.—All hold that nothing in agriculture is to be done late, and that each thing is to be done in its own season, and that by the third precept things neglected are called back in vain.—The curse of Cato on rotten land has been abundantly shown, although he never ceases to forewarn of it.—Whatever can be done by a donkey is done at the cheapest cost.—Fern dies in two years,

45| if you do not allow it to put out foliage. This is achieved most effectively by knocking down the budding branches with a stick; for the juice flowing from it itself kills the roots. They say too that those pulled out about the solstice do not grow again, nor those cut with a reed or ploughed up with a reed laid on the share. Likewise they direct that a reed be ploughed up with fern laid on the share.

46| —A rushy field ought to be turned with a spade or, in a stony one, with mattocks.

47| Thickets are best removed by fire. It is most useful for a damper field to be cut up with ditches and dried, and for the ditches in chalky places to be left open, in looser earth to be strengthened with hedges or to lie sloping on inclined and upturned sides; some are blinded and led into others larger and wider and, if there is opportunity, are paved with flint or gravel, and their mouths are propped on either side with two stones and covered over with another. The method of extirpating a wood Democritus handed down, by soaking the flower of lupine in hemlock juice for a single day and sprinkling it on the roots.

48| And since the field has been prepared, now the nature of the crops will be shown. There are two chief kinds of them: grains, as wheat, barley, and pulses, as bean, chickpea. The difference is too well known for it to be fitting to point it out.

49| Of grain itself there are as many kinds, divided by the times of sowing: winter ones, which are sown about the setting of the Vergiliae and fed in the earth through the winter, as wheat, barley; summer ones, which are sown in summer before the Vergiliae rise, as millet, panic, sesame, horminum, irio, by the practice of Italy at least. Otherwise in Greece and in Asia everything is sown from the setting of the Vergiliae, but some in Italy at both times, and of these some also at a third, in spring.

50| Some call millet, panic, lentil, chickpea, alica spring crops, and wheat, barley, bean, turnip sowing crops. And in the kind of wheat some part is sown for fodder for four-footed beasts, as farrago, and among pulses, as vetch; for the common use of four-footed beasts and men, lupin.

51| All pulses have single roots except the bean, and these full of shoots, because they are not divided into many, and the chickpea has the deepest. Grains are rooted with many fibres, without branches. Barley bursts forth from the first sowing on the seventh day, a pulse on the fourth or, when slowest, the seventh, the bean from the 15th to the 20th, pulses in Egypt on the third day. From the barley one head of the grain goes out into the root, the other into the herb, which also flowers first. The thicker part of the grain sends forth the root, the thinner the flower; in the other seeds the same part sends forth both root and flower.

52| Grains in winter are in the blade, in the spring those of the winter kind rise to a point into the stalk, but millet and panic into a jointed and hollow culm, sesame into a reed-like stem.

53| The fruit of all sown crops is either contained in ears, as of wheat and barley, and fortified with a rampart of awns against birds and small quadrupeds, or is enclosed in pods, as of pulses, or in little vessels, as of sesame and poppy. Millet and panic alone are left exposed, undivided, to the small birds; for they are undefended and held only in membranes. Panic is named from its panicles, the top nodding languidly, the stalk gradually thinning almost into a twig, and heaped with very dense grains, the longest phoba being a foot long. In millet the tufts, enclosing the grain, are bent over with a fringed hair. There are also kinds of panic that are breast-shaped,

54| from the pano, clustered with small panicles, and with a double top; they are distinguished also by colour, white, black, red, even purple. Bread is made in many ways from millet, rarely from panic; but no grain is heavier or swells more in the cooking. From a modius they yield 60 pounds of bread, and a modius of porridge from three sextarii of the soaked grain.

55| Within the last 10 years a millet has been brought from India into Italy, black in colour, large in grain, reed-like in stalk. It grows up to a height of 7 feet, with very large tufts—they call them manes—the most fertile of all crops. From one grain three sextarii are produced. It ought to be sown in damp ground.

56| Some grains begin to conceive the ear at the third joint, some at the fourth, but still hidden. The joints, however, are four in wheat, six in far, eight in barley. But the conception of the ear does not take place before the above-mentioned number of joints; when it has given hope of itself, they begin to flower in 4 or 5 days at the slowest, and finish flowering in as many or a few more, barley, however, at the slowest, in 7 days. Varro relates that crops are brought to completion in four times nine days and are reaped in the ninth month.

57| Beans go out into leaves and then send up a stalk marked by no internodes. The remaining pulses are full of shoots. Of these chickpea, ervum and lentil are branching. The stalks of some spread over the ground if they have no support; peas climb, if they have had it, or become worse. Of the pulses the bean alone has a single stalk, and the lupin has one, but [….], the others are branching with a very thin shoot, and all are hollow.

58| Some put out the leaf from the root, some from the top, as wheat and barley. Both, and whatever is on a stalk, have one leaf at the top—but in barley they are rough, in the others smooth—, on the contrary the bean, chickpea and pea have many leaves. Wheats have a reed-like leaf, beans round ones, and so a great part of the pulses, the ervilia and pea longer ones, the phasioli veined ones, sesame and irio blood-red ones.

59| The leaves fall only in the lupin and the poppy. Pulses flower longer, and of these the ervum and chickpea, but longest the bean, for 40 days, though not each single stalk so long, since when one ceases another begins, nor the whole crop together, as of grain. All, however, form pods on different days and first at the lowest part, the flower gradually coming up.

60| Grains, when they have finished flowering, thicken and ripen, at the most in 40 days, so also the bean, in the fewest the chickpea. For this is completed in 40 days from sowing. Millet and panic and sesame and all summer crops ripen in 40 days from the flower, a great difference of land and sky. In Egypt barley is reaped in the sixth month from sowing, grains in the seventh, in Hellas barley in the 7th, in the Peloponnese in the eighth, and grains still later. The grains in the stalk form ears with a hair-like weave. In the bean and pulses they form pods on alternate sides. Grains are stronger against winters, pulses are for food.

61| Grain has several coats. Barley is mostly naked, and arinca, but especially oats. The stalk is taller in grain than in barley, the awn sharper in barley. On the threshing floor wheat and siligo and barley are threshed out. So they are also sown clean, just as they are ground, because they are not parched. On the other hand far, millet, panic cannot be cleaned unless parched. And so these are sown raw with their own husks. And far they keep in its own little sheaths for sowing and do not roast it.

62| The lightest of these, barley, seldom exceeds 15 pounds, and bean 22. Far is heavier and wheat still more. Far in Egypt is made from olyra. This is there the third kind of ear. The Gauls also have given their own kind of far, which they call brace there, among us scandala, of the brightest grain. There is also another difference, that it yields about four pounds more bread than other far. Verrius relates that the Roman people used far alone of grain for 300 years.

63| Of wheat there are several kinds, which the nations have made. With the Italian I for my part would compare none in whiteness and weight, by which it is chiefly judged. Foreign wheat may be compared only with that of the mountain fields of Italy, in which Boeotia held the first place, then Sicily, soon Africa. The third weight was the Thracian, the Syrian, then also the Egyptian, by the decree of the athletes [when], whose capacity, like that of beasts of burden, had made the order we have mentioned. Greece praised the Pontic also, which did not come to Italy.

64| Of every kind of grain, however, he preferred the dracontias and the strangias and the Selinusian, on the proof of its very thick stalk. And so he assigned these kinds to rich soil. The lightest and most empty, the speudias, of the thinnest stalk, he ordered to be sown in damp places, since it needed much nourishment.

65| These were the opinions when Alexander the Great was reigning, when Greece was most famous and most powerful in the whole world, yet in such a way that about 145 years before his death the poet Sophocles in the play Triptolemus praised Italian wheat above all, the sense being translated word for word: and to sow fortunate Italy with white grain. This praise is peculiar to the Italian even today; wherefore I the more wonder that the successors of the Greeks made no mention of this grain.

66| Now of these kinds that are brought to Rome, the lightest is the Gallic and that carried from the Chersonese, since the modii do not exceed twenty pounds each, if one weighs the grain itself. The Sardinian adds half a pound, the Alexandrian a third as well—this is the Sicilian weight also—, the Baetic adds a whole pound, the African also three-quarters. In Transpadane Italy I know that modii of far weigh twenty-five pounds each, around Clusium even twenty-six.

67| It is a fixed law of nature that in any kind a third part is added to the weight of the grain in army bread, as also that the best grain is that which takes in a congius of water for kneading. In some kinds the weight is in themselves, as in the Balearic: from a modius of wheat it yields 35 pounds of bread; in some two kinds mixed, as the Cyprian and the Alexandrian, which do not exceed nearly 20 pounds.

68| The Cyprian is dark and makes black bread, and so the white Alexandrian is mixed with it, and they come back to 25 pounds. The Theban adds a pound. To knead with sea water, which most people do in maritime places for the chance of gaining salt, is most unprofitable. For no other reason do bodies become more open to diseases. In Gaul and Spain the grain is dissolved into a drink, of the kinds we have mentioned, and the foam so thickened they use in place of leaven, for which reason their bread is lighter than others'.

69| There is a difference also in the stalk, a thicker one being of a better kind. Thracian wheat is clothed in very many coats, a wheat sought out for that region on account of its excessive cold. The same cause found also the three-month wheat, as the snows keep the lands, which is reaped about the third month from sowing, when it is reaped in the rest of the world too. This is known throughout the Alps, and in the wintry provinces there is none more welcome than this grain, one-stalked besides and nowhere ample, and it is sown only in thin earth.

70| There is also a two-month wheat around Aenus in Thrace, which ripens on the 40th day from that on which it was sown, and it is wonderful that no grain has more weight and that it has no bran. Both Sicily and Achaia use it, each in its mountainous parts, Euboea also around Carystus. Columella is so far mistaken that he did not think even the three-month a proper kind, though it is the most ancient. The Greeks call it setanion. They relate that in Bactria grains grow of such size that single ones equal our ears.

71| Barley is sown first of all the grains. We shall give also the days for sowing each kind, the nature of each having been set out. Among the Indians there is cultivated and wild barley, of which with them bread is chief, and alica. They delight most of all in oryza, of which they make tisana, as all other mortals do from barley. The leaves of oryza are fleshy, like the leek, but broader, the height a cubit, the flower purple, the root of the roundness of a gem.

72| Barley is the most ancient among foods, as appears from the custom of the Athenians on the authority of Menander and from the nickname of gladiators, who were called hordearii. The Greeks also prefer polenta from no other source. It is made in many ways. The Greeks dry barley soaked in water for one night and roast it the next day, then break it in mills.

73| There are those who sprinkle with a little water again that which has been more strongly roasted and dry it before they grind. Others take barley beaten from green ears, clean it fresh, and when moist pound it in a mortar and wash it in baskets, and when dried in the sun pound it again, and grind it when cleaned. Whatever way it is prepared, to every twenty pounds of barley they mix three pounds of linseed and half a pound of coriander and an acetabulum of salt, roasting everything first, in the mill.

74| Those who wish to keep it longer store it with its own flour and bran in new earthenware. Italy grinds it roasted without soaking into fine meal, with the same additions and millet as well. Bread from barley, which was in use among the ancients, life has condemned, and it is mostly the food of four-footed beasts, though the use of tisana made from it is approved so greatly as very strong and wholesome.

75| Hippocrates, one of the most famous in medical knowledge, devoted a single volume to its praises. The excellence of tisana is chiefly that of Utica. In Egypt, however, there is a kind made from barley which has two corners. In Baetica and Africa Turranius calls the barley from which it is made the smooth kind. The same man thinks olyra and oryza are the same. The common method of making tisana is known.

76| In like manner from the seed of wheat tragum is made, in Campania only and Egypt, amylum however from all wheat and siligo, but best from the three-month wheat. The invention of it is due to the island of Chios; and today the most praised comes from there. It is named from the fact that it is made without a mill. Next to the three-month is that from the least heavy wheat. It is soaked in fresh water in wooden vessels, so that it is covered, the water changed five times a day; better if at night also, so that it is mixed together.

77| Softened before it turns sour, it is strained through linen or baskets and poured on to a tile smeared with leaven, and so is thickened in the sun. After the Chian, the Cretan is most praised, soon the Egyptian—it is approved by smoothness and lightness and by being fresh—, and among us it was already mentioned by Cato.

78| Barley meal is used also for healing, and it is wonderful that in the use of beasts of burden, when hardened with fire and afterwards ground, and morsels let down into the belly by human hand, greater strength and muscles of the body result. Some ears have two rows, some more up to six. In the grain itself there are several differences: longer and lighter, or shorter and rounder, whiter or blacker, the one with a purple tinge being rich for polenta. Against storms the white has the greatest weakness. Barley is the softest of all crops.

79| It does not wish to be sown except in dry and loose earth and only if rich. The chaff is among the best, but with straw none is compared. Barley is of all grain the least liable to disaster, because it is taken in before rust seizes wheat—and so wise farmers sow wheat only for provisions, and say that barley is sown for the purse—, and for that reason it comes back soonest,

80| and the most fertile is that which at Carthage in Spain is gathered in the month of April. It is sown in the same month in Celtiberia, and is born twice in the same year. All of it is snatched up from the first moment of ripeness, more hurriedly than the rest. For the grain is held in a brittle stalk and the thinnest chaff. They relate that polenta is made better too, if it is taken in before it is cooked through by ripeness.

81| The kinds of grain are not the same everywhere, nor, where they are the same, under the same names. The commonest and most powerful of them is far, which the ancients called adoreum, siligo, wheat. These are common to very many lands. Arinca is proper to the Gauls, and is plentiful in Italy also; peculiar to Egypt, Syria and Cilicia, and Asia and Greece are zea, oryza, tiphe.

82| Egypt makes similago from its own wheat, by no means equal to the Italian. Those who use zea have no far. This too is found in Italy, in Campania most, and is called semen. This name belongs to a thing of great fame, as we shall soon teach, on account of which Homer said zeidoros arura, not, as some suppose, because it gave life. Amylum too is made from it, thicker than the former;

83| this is the only difference. Of every kind far is the hardest and strongest against winters. It endures the coldest places and those less worked, or hot and thirsty ones. It was the first food of the ancients of Latium, a great proof in the gifts of the adoria, as we have said. That the Romans lived for a long time on porridge, not bread, is clear,

84| since relishes are even today called pulmentaria and Ennius, the oldest of poets, expressing the hunger of a siege, records that fathers snatched a morsel from their weeping children. And today the ancient rites and those of birthdays are made with fitilla porridge, and it seems that porridge was as unknown to Greece as polenta was to Italy.

85| No seed is more greedy than that of wheat, nor draws more nourishment. Siligo I would call properly the delicacy of wheat in whiteness, or in strength, or in weight. It suits damp tracts, such as those of Italy and of Gallia Comata, but across the Alps it persists only in the land of the Allobroges and of the Remi, in the other parts there it turns into wheat in two years. The remedy is that all its heaviest grains be sown.

86| From siligo comes the most elegant bread and the most praised work of the bakeries. It excels in Italy, if the Campanian is mixed with that born at Pisae. The Campanian is redder, but the Pisan is whiter and the chalky heavier. It is fair for a modius of the Campanian grain, which they call castrata, to return 4 sextarii of siligo, or of the common one without castration 5 sextarii,

87| besides half a modius of flower and 4 sextarii of cibarium, which they call secundarium, as many sextarii of bran, but from the Pisan 5 sextarii of siligo, the rest are alike. The Clusian and Arretine moreover add sextarii of siligo, in the rest they are equal. But if one wishes to make pollen, 16 pounds of bread come back, and 3 of cibarium and half a modius of bran. This is determined by the difference of the mill. For what is ground dry yields more meal, what is sprinkled with salt water a whiter pith, but they keep more in the bran. Farina is named from far, as the name itself shows.

88| A modius of siligo meal of Gaul yields 20 pounds of bread, of the Italian two or three more in artopticius bread. For to oven loaves they add two pounds in whatever kind.

89| Similago is made from wheat, the most praised from the African. It is fair for a modius to return half a modius and 5 sextarii of pollen—so they call in wheat what flower is in siligo; this the coppersmiths' workshops and the paper-makers use—, besides 4 sextarii of secundarium and as much bran, and bread from a modius of similago 22 pounds,

90| from a modius of flower 16 pounds. The price of this, at a middling price of corn, is 40 asses the modius of meal, for similago eight asses more each, for castrated siligo double. There is also another distinction, once [….] pollinated yields 17 pounds of bread, twice 18, thrice 19 and a third, and of secundarium bread five half-pounds each, as many of cibarium and 6 sextarii of bran.

91| Siligo never ripens all together, nor does any of the crops endure delay less because of its tenderness, those that have ripened letting their grain fall at once. But it runs less risk in the stalk than other grains, since it always has an upright ear and does not hold the dew that makes rust.

92| From arinca comes the sweetest bread. It is itself thicker than far, and the ear larger, and the same also heavier. Seldom does a modius of grain fail to fill 16 pounds. It is threshed out with difficulty in Greece, for which reason Homer is said to give it to beasts of burden. For this is what he calls olyra. The same in Egypt is easy and fertile.

93| Far is without awn, likewise siligo, except that which is called Laconian. To these are added the kinds bromos and tragos, all foreign, like the oryza brought from the east. Tiphe too is itself of the same kind, from which oryza is made in our part of the world. Among the Greeks there is also zea, and they hand down that it and tiphe, when degenerate, return to grain if they are pounded and sown, not at once, but in the third year.

94| Nothing is more fertile than wheat—nature gave it this, since by it she chiefly fed man—, inasmuch as from a modius, if the soil is suitable, such as in the Byzacian plain of Africa, a hundred and fifty modii are returned. From that place the procurator of the deified Augustus sent him from a single grain, hardly credible to say, 400 shoots less a few, and letters on the matter exist.

95| He sent also to Nero likewise 360 stalks from one grain. At a hundredfold indeed the plains of Leontini in Sicily also yield, and others too; the whole of Baetica and in the first place Egypt. The most fertile kinds of wheat are the branching one and that which they call centigranium. A single stalk has now been found loaded with a hundred beans.

96| Summer grains we have said to be sesame, millet, panic. Sesame comes from the Indians. From it they make oil also; its colour is white. Like this in Asia and Greece is erysimum, and it would be the same, were it not fatter, as that which among us they call irio, to be counted rather among medicines than among crops. Of the same nature is the horminum called by the Greeks, but like cumin; it is sown with sesame. On this and on irio no animal feeds while green.

97| Pounding is not easy for all, since Etruria pounds the ear of roasted far with a pestle shod with iron, with a notched tube and a toothed star inside, so that, if they pound with attention, the grains are cut up and the iron is broken. The greater part of Italy uses the bare pestle, and also wheels which water turns, and by the way the mill. On the method of pounding itself I shall set forth the opinion of Mago:

98| he orders wheat to be drenched first with plenty of water, afterwards husked, then dried in the sun and pounded again in the mortar, barley in like manner. Of this 20 sextarii are to be sprinkled with 2 sextarii of water. Lentil is to be roasted first, then pounded lightly with its bran, or with a piece of raw brick added for every 20 sextarii and half a modius of sand. Ervilia in the same ways as lentil. Sesame is to be soaked in hot water and spread out, then rubbed and plunged in cold, so that the chaff floats, and spread out again in the sun over linen cloths, which if it is not done in haste, it grows mouldy with a livid colour.

99| And the things that are husked themselves have various methods of the bakeries. It is called acus when the ear alone is pounded by itself, for the uses of goldsmiths; if, however, it is threshed on the floor with the stalk, it is chaff, for the greater part of the world for fodder for beasts of burden. The sweepings of millet and panic and sesame they call adpluda, and elsewhere by other names.

100| Campania takes especial delight in millet and makes from it a white porridge. A very sweet bread is made too. The Sarmatian nations also are fed chiefly on this porridge and on raw meal besides, with mare's milk or blood from the veins of the leg mixed in. The Ethiopians have known no other crop than millet and barley,

101| Panic is used by the Gauls too, especially Aquitania, but also Italy round the Po, with bean added, without which [….]. The nations of Pontus prefer no food to panic.—The other summer grains delight even more in irrigation than in rains, millet and panic least in waters, when they are going out into leaves. They forbid them to be sown among vines or fruit-bearing trees, supposing that the earth is wasted by this sowing.

102| The chief use of millet is for leaven, kneaded with must for a year's time. A similar one is made from the fine bran of wheat itself, the best, steeped three days in white must, kneaded and dried in the sun. From this they make little cakes, which in making bread they dilute with similago of seed, bring to the boil, and so mix with the meal, thinking that in this way the best bread is made. The Greeks laid it down that two-thirds of a pound of leaven is enough for every two semodii of meal.

103| And these kinds indeed are made only at the vintage; but at whatever time one pleases, two-pound cakes of water and barley are roasted on a hot hearth or an earthenware dish in ash and charcoal until they redden. Afterwards they are covered up in vessels until they turn sour. From this leaven is diluted. When barley bread was made, however, it was itself leavened with meal of ervum or chickpea; the proper amount was 2 pounds to 5 semodii.

104| Now leaven is made from the meal itself, which is kneaded before the salt is added, boiled down in the manner of porridge and left until it sours. Commonly, however, they do not even boil it up, but only use material kept from the day before, and it is plain that nature is leavened by sourness, as also that bodies are stronger which are fed on leavened bread, inasmuch as among the ancients special healthfulness was ascribed to the heaviest wheat of any.

105| To go through the various kinds of bread itself seems superfluous, some named from relishes, as ostrearii, some from delicacies, as artolagani, some from haste, as speustici, and also from the method of baking, as furnacei or artopticii or those baked in clibani, and not long since also one brought from the Parthians, which they call aquaticus, because it is drawn out with water to a thin and spongy emptiness, others call it Parthicus. The highest praise rests on the goodness of the siligo and the fineness of the sieve. Some knead with eggs or milk, and with butter even nations that are at peace, the care passing on to the kinds of the baker's art.

106| Picenum keeps its own credit in the invention of bread, made from the material of alica. This, steeped for nine days, they knead on the tenth with the juice of raisins until it looks like tracta, afterwards put it in pots in the ovens, which are broken there, and bake it. Nor is it eaten except when moistened, which is done most of all with milk mixed with honey.

107| Rome had no bakers before the war with Perseus, for more than 580 years from the foundation of the City. The Quirites themselves made their bread, and it was chiefly the work of women, as it still is among very many nations. Plautus already calls them artoptae in the play which he entitled Aulularia, with great contention of the learned on that account, whether that verse is that poet's,

108| and it is made certain by the opinion of Ateius Capito that cooks then used to bake bread for the more refined, and that only those who pounded far were called bakers. Nor did they in fact have cooks among their slaves, and they hired them from the market. Kinds of sieves the Gauls invented with horses' hair, the Spains for shaking out and for flour with flax, Egypt with papyrus and rush.

109| But among the first let the system of alica be told, the most excellent and wholesome, which falls to Italy as the undoubted palm of crops. It is made without doubt in Egypt also, but quite contemptible, in Italy in several places, as in the territory of Verona and Pisae, in Campania however the most praised. It is a plain lying below rainy mountains, a level of 40,000 paces in all.

110| Its earth, to state the nature of the soil at once, is dusty on the surface, below absorbent and, like pumice, porous too. The fault of the mountains turns to good. For it strains through the frequent rains and passes them on, and has not wished to be dissolved or soaked, because of the ease of cultivation, and the same, having received the moisture, gives it back to no springs, but cooking it temperately within itself holds it in the place of sap.

111| It is sown throughout the year, once with panic, twice with far. And yet in spring the crops that have rested pour out a rose more fragrant than the cultivated. So far does the earth not cease to bear, whence the common saying that more perfume is made among the Campanians than oil among others. And as much as the Campanian plain surpasses all lands, so much does that part of it surpass itself which is called the Leboriae, which the Greeks call Phlegraean. The Leboriae are bounded on either side by the consular road, which leads from Puteoli and from Cumae to Capua.

112| Alica is made from zea, which we have called semen. Its grain is pounded in a wooden mortar, lest the hardness of stone grind it down, with a movable pestle, as is known, by the penal labour of prisoners. In the head of the pestle there is an iron box. When the coats have been shaken out from this, the pith, stripped, is cut up again with the same equipment. So three kinds of alica are made: the smallest and secundarium, but the largest they call aphaerema.

113| They do not yet have their whiteness, in which they excel, yet they are already preferred to the Alexandrian. Afterwards, wonderful to say, chalk is mixed in, which passes into the body and brings colour and tenderness.

114| This is found between Puteoli and Naples on the hill called Leucogaeus, and there is extant a decree of the deified Augustus, in which he ordered two hundred thousand a year to be counted out to the Neapolitans for it from his own treasury, when he was leading a colony to Capua, and he added the reason for the claim, since the Campanians had denied that alica could be made without that mineral. — (In the same place sulphur is found too, and springs of Araxes burst forth, for clearness of the eyes and for the healing of wounds and the firmness of teeth.) —

115| Adulterated alica is made chiefly from zea, which in Africa degenerates. Its ears are broader and blacker, with a short stalk. They pound it with sand and even so remove the husks with difficulty, and it becomes half the measure of the bare grain, and afterwards a fourth part of gypsum is sprinkled in, and, when it has held together, they sift it beneath through a flour sieve. What has remained in that is called excepticia and is the largest. Again, what passes through is sifted in a narrower one and called secundaria, likewise cribraria, which in the same way remained in the third sieve, the narrowest, which lets through only sands.

116| There is another method of adulterating everywhere, from wheat: they select the whitest and biggest grains and, half-boiled in pots, afterwards dry them in the sun to half, and sprinkled lightly again break them in the mills. From zea tragum is made more beautifully than from wheat, although that is a fault of alica. Whiteness, however, a mixture of boiled milk gives it in place of chalk.

117| There follows the nature of the pulses, among which the bean has the greatest honour, since even bread has been tried from it. Meal made from it is called lomentum, and with that and with every pulse, and even with fodder, the weight is increased in bread for sale. The use of the bean is manifold for every kind of four-footed animal, especially for man. It is mixed even with grain among very many nations, and most of all with panic, whole and more delicately broken.

118| Nay, in the ancient rite bean porridge is in the sacred rites of the gods of their own religion. Prevailing as a relish, but thought to dull the senses and also to cause dreams, for these reasons it was condemned by the Pythagorean doctrine, as others have related, since the souls of the dead are in it, for which reason it is certainly taken at funeral offerings.

119| Varro says that for these reasons the flamen does not eat it, and because on its flower mournful letters are found. In the same there is a peculiar religious observance, for it is the custom to bring back the bean from among the crops for the sake of the auspices, which is therefore called referiva. And they think it lucrative to use it at auctions. Alone of crops, certainly, it is filled up even when eaten out, as the moon waxes. In sea water or other salt water it is not cooked through.

120| The first of the pulses is sown before the setting of the Vergiliae, so as to go ahead of winter. Virgil orders it to be sown in spring, in the manner of Italy round the Po, but the greater part prefer bean crops of early sowing to a three-month yield. For its pods and stalks are most welcome fodder for cattle. It desires waters most of all in flower, but when it has finished flowering it needs little. The soil in which it is sown it enriches like dung. Therefore around Macedonia and Thessaly, when it has begun to flower, they turn over the fields.

121| It grows also of its own accord in very many places, as in the islands of the northern ocean, which for this reason our people call the Bean Islands, likewise in Mauretania wild everywhere, but very hard and such that it cannot be cooked through. It grows too in Egypt, with a thorny stalk, for which reason crocodiles, fearing for their eyes, shrink away.

122| The length of the stem at its greatest is four cubits, the thickness a finger's. If the joints were wanting, it would be like a soft reed; the head is like a poppy, rose-coloured, with beans in it not above thirty each; the leaves ample, the fruit itself bitter, also in smell, but the root very pleasing in the food of the inhabitants, raw and cooked in every way, like the roots of reeds. It grows also in Syria and Cilicia and at the lake of Torone in Chalcidice.

123| Of pulses, lentil is sown in autumn or spring, and in Greece the pea. The lentil loves a thin soil rather than a rich one, and a sky at all events dry. Egypt has two kinds of it, one rounder and blacker, the other of its own shape, whence the name lenticulae has been transferred to varied use. I find in authors that an evenness of temper results in those who eat it. The pea ought to be sown in sunny places, being most intolerant of cold. Therefore in Italy and under a harsher sky it is sown only in spring-time, in easy, loose earth.

124| It is the nature of the chickpea to be produced with saltiness, therefore it burns the soil and ought to be sown only when soaked the day before. There are several differences, in size, colour, shape, taste. For there is one like a ram's head, whence it is so called, white and black; there is also the dove-coloured, which others call Venerium, white, round, smooth, less than the ram's, which religion employs in vigils. There is also the cicercula, of a small chickpea, uneven, angular, like a pea, but the sweetest is that which is most like ervum, and the black and red are firmer than the white.

125| The pods are round in the chickpea, in the other pulses long and in the shape of the seed, broad; in the pea cylindrical. Those of the passioli are eaten with the grains themselves. It is permitted to sow them in whatever land you will from the Ides of October to the Kalends of November. Pulses, when they begin to ripen, must be snatched up, since they quickly spring out and lie hidden when they have fallen, as the lupin too. Although it would be fitting first to speak of turnips—our people have touched on them in passing, the Greeks a little more carefully, and themselves nevertheless among garden plants—if due order were observed,

126| to be spoken of straight after grain or at least the bean, since there is no other use more excellent than from them. For before all things they are produced for all animals, and, not least, they feed the kinds of farmyard birds as well, and more if they are boiled down in water.

127| Four-footed beasts delight also in their leaf, and for man the pleasure of the rapicia in their seasons is not less than that of cymae, and of the yellowish ones too, killed in the granaries, even greater than of the green. They themselves last, kept in their own earth and afterwards dried, almost to another crop, and prevent hunger from being felt. After vine and harvest this is the third yield of the Transpadanes.

128| It does not choose its ground fussily, almost where nothing else can be sown. They are nourished by mists and hoarfrosts and cold besides, to a wonderful size; I have seen some exceeding 40 pounds. In our food they are recommended in several ways, and last for other uses when subdued by the sharpness of mustard, painted even with colours besides their own, with six others, the purple too.

129| Nor is anything else in food fitting to be tinted. The Greeks have made two chief kinds of them, male and female, and these arise from the same seed by the manner of sowing: for with denser sowing they become male, likewise in difficult ground. The seed is better the finer it is.

130| There are three forms of all. For they either spread out in breadth or are rounded into a ball. A third form they have called wild, with the root running out lengthwise, like the radish, and with an angular and rough leaf, an acrid juice, which taken about harvest clears the eyes and cures dimness of sight mixed with women's milk. They are thought to become sweeter and larger by cold. In warmth they run out into leaves. The palm goes to those born in the Nursine territory—the valuation at a single sesterce a pound and in scarcity two—, next to those born on Algidus, and for napi to those of Amiternum.

131| Of these the nature is nearly the same: they delight alike in cold. They are sown also before the Kalends of March, at 4 sextarii to the iugerum. The more careful order the napus to be sown at the fifth furrow, turnips at the fourth, both manured, and turnips become richer if the seed is ploughed in with chaff. They wish the sower to sow naked, praying for himself and his neighbours that he sows.

132| The proper sowing for both kinds is between the festival days of two divinities, Neptune and Vulcan, and they say, by subtle observation, that if they are sown, within the aforesaid space of time, on the day of the moon bearing the same number as the day of the moon on which the first snow fell in the preceding winter, they come up wonderfully. They are sown also in spring in warm and damp places.

133| Next in use comes the lupin, since it is common to man and to the kind of four-footed animals that have hoofs. The remedy for it, that it may not escape the reapers by springing out, is that it be gathered after rain. Nor is the nature of any of the things that are sown more wonderful with regard to perception [….] and of the earth. First of all, every day it turns round with the sun and shows the hours to farmers even in cloud. It flowers, besides, three times. It loves the earth and does not wish to be covered with earth.

134| And this alone is sown without ploughing. It seeks most of all sandy and dry and even gravelly ground. It does not wish to be cultivated at all. It so loves the soil that, though thrown on shrubby ground among leaves and brambles, it still reaches the earth with its root. We have said that fields and vineyards grow fat with this sowing; and so far does it need no dung that it stands in the place of the best, and nothing else is had so wholly without outlay, since it is not even necessary to bring it to the field for sowing:

135| it is sown straight from the threshing floor, and does not even require to be scattered, falling of its own accord. It is sown first of all and taken up last, both about the month of September, because, if it has not gone before winter, it is liable to the cold. Besides, it lies with impunity, even if abandoned, unless rains follow at once and bury it, safe from all animals through its bitterness, though most people cover it with a light furrow. Of denser earths it loves red ochre most. To nourish it, it ought to be turned in after the third flowering, in gravel after the second. It hates only chalky and muddy soil, and in these does not come up.

136| Soaked in hot water it is also food for man. For single modii satisfy an ox and keep it strong, since even laid on the bellies of children it is a remedy. It is best stored in smoke, since in damp little worms castrate its navel to barrenness. If it has been grazed down in leaf, the ground must be ploughed in at once.

137| Fields are fattened also by vetch, which is itself not laborious to farmers. Sown with one furrow, it is not hoed, not manured, and nothing else done but harrowing. It has three times of sowing: about the setting of Arcturus, so that it may feed in the month of December. Then it is best sown for seed. For it bears equally when grazed down. The second sowing is in the month of January, the last in March, and then it is most useful for foliage.

138| Of all that are sown it loves dryness most. It does not scorn even shady places. From its seed, if gathered ripe, the chaff is preferred to the rest. It snatches the sap from vines, and they languish if it is sown in an arbustum.

139| Nor is the care of ervum laborious. It is weeded more than vetch, and itself holds the power of a drug, inasmuch as it is on record in the deified Augustus's own letters that he was cured. For single yokes of oxen five modii sown suffice. They say that when it is sown in March it is harmful to oxen, and likewise in autumn it brings a head cold, but is harmless when sown in early spring.

140| And silicia, that is, Greek hay, is sown by scarification, in a furrow not deeper than four fingers, and the more badly it is handled, the better it comes up. It is rare to say that there is anything to which neglect does good. That, however, which is called secale and farrago needs only harrowing.

141| Secale the Taurini beneath the Alps call asia, a very poor thing and only to keep off hunger, fruitful, but with a slender stalk, gloomy with blackness, remarkable for weight. Far is mixed with it to soften its bitterness, and yet even so it is most disagreeable to the stomach. It grows in any soil whatever with a hundredfold grain, and is itself in place of manure.

142| Farrago is sown very thick from the refuse of far, with vetch sometimes mixed in. The same in Africa is made from barley. All these are fodder, and the degenerate one among pulses which is called cracca is so pleasing to pigeons that they deny that those fed on it become runaways from that place.

143| Among the ancients there was a kind of fodder, which Cato calls ocinum, with which they stopped the bowels of oxen. This was cut green from a crop of fodder before it bore seed. Sura Mamilius interprets it otherwise and relates that 10 modii of bean, 2 of vetch, and as much of ervilia were wont to be mixed and sown in autumn to the iugerum, better still with Greek oats, whose seed does not fall, mixed in. This was called ocinum and was used to be sown for the sake of oxen. Varro says it was named from the speed of coming up, from the Greek, which they say okeos.

144| Medica is foreign even to Greece, as brought by the Medes during the Persian wars which Darius waged, but is to be spoken of among the very first, so great is its endowment, since from a single sowing it lasts more than thirty years. It is like trefoil in stalk and leaves, and jointed. Whatever rises on the stalk, the leaves draw together. Amphilochus composed a single volume on it and cytisus.

145| The ground in which it is to be sown is cleared of stones and cleaned and worked in autumn, soon ploughed and harrowed and covered with a hurdle a second and a third time, five days being left between and dung added. It requires, however, a soil dry and juicy or irrigated. Thus prepared, it is sown in the month of May, being otherwise liable to frosts.

146| It is necessary for everything to be occupied by the density of the seed and for herbs that spring up between to be shut out—3 modii to the iugerum secure this—and care must be taken that the sun does not scorch it, and the ground ought to be covered at once. If the soil is damp or grassy, it is overcome and falls away into meadow. Therefore at once, at a height of a twelfth of a foot, it must be freed of all herbs, by hand rather than with the hoe. It is cut when beginning to flower and as often as it has flowered again. This happens six times a year, at the least four. It must be prevented from ripening into seed, because as fodder it is more useful until the third year. In spring it ought to be hoed and freed of other herbs, up to the third year to be scraped to the ground with mattocks. In this way the remaining herbs perish without harm to it itself, owing to how far down its roots lie. If the herbs have prevailed, the one remedy is in the plough, turning it over often, until all other roots perish. It ought not to be given to the point of satiety, lest it be necessary to deplete the blood. And green it is more useful. It dries up in twigs and finally wastes away into useless dust. Of cytisus, to which too the first place among fodders is given, we have spoken abundantly among the shrubs. And now the nature of all crops must be completed, in the course of which diseases also are to be spoken of. First of all the fault of grain is oats, and barley degenerates into it, so that it is itself like a grain, since the peoples of Germany sow it and live on no other porridge. This fault occurs chiefly from the moisture of the soil and the sky. The next cause is weakness of the seed, if it was kept longer in the earth before it burst forth. The same reasoning applies if it was decayed when it was sown. It is recognized, however, at the very first breaking out, from which it appears that the cause is in the root. There is another fault too, neighbouring on oats, when the grain, begun to some size but not yet ripe, before it has gained firmness of body, vanishes in the ear, empty and void through a harmful blast, by a kind of abortion. Winds, however, harm grain and barley at three times: in flower, or straight after they have finished flowering, or when they are beginning to ripen. For then they empty the grains, and in the earlier cases prevent their being born. The sun too, frequent from a cloud, does harm. Little worms also are born in the root, when a sudden heat has shut in the moisture after the sowing has been followed by rains. They are produced also in the grain, when the ear grows hot from the rains by heat. There is also the small beetle called cantharis, which gnaws grain. All these animals fail when the food fails. Oil, pitch, fat are hostile to seeds, and care must be taken that they are not sown after being touched by them. Rain on the herb is useful from the time of its bearing, but harms wheat and barley in flower, and is harmless to pulses except the chickpea. Grains in ripening are hurt by rain, and barley more. There is also a white herb, like panic, that takes possession of fields, deadly even to cattle. For darnel and caltrops and thistles and burrs I would not number any more than brambles among the diseases of crops rather than among the plagues of the earth itself. A heavenly evil of crops and vines, no less harmful than any, is rust. This is most frequent in a dewy tract and in valleys that have no breeze; on the other hand windy and high places are free from it. Among the faults of crops there is also luxuriance, when, overloaded with fertility, they fall over. The common fault of all that is sown is uricae, even of the chickpea, when rain, washing away its saltiness, makes it sweeter.

155| There is a herb which kills the chickpea and ervum by winding itself around them; it is called orobanche. In like manner aera kills wheat, festuca barley, which is called aegilops, and for the lentil the herb securiclata, which the Greeks from the likeness call pelecinum; and these kill by embrace. Around Philippi they name ateramum in rich soil the herb by which the bean is killed, teramum that by which it is killed in lean soil, when a certain wind has blown on it while wet.

156| The grain of aera is very small, in a prickly husk. When it is in bread it very quickly causes giddiness, and they say that in Asia and Greece bath attendants, when they wish to drive off a crowd, throw this seed on the coals. There grows also the phalangion in the ervum, a little creature of the spider kind, if the winter is watery. Slugs are born in vetch and sometimes from the earth, tiny snails, gnawing it in a wonderful way. And these are for the most part the diseases.

157| Their remedies, so far as they concern herbs, lie in the hoe and, when the seed is sown, in ash. Those that lie in the seed and round the root are guarded against by previous care. Seeds sprinkled with wine beforehand they think are less liable to sickness. Virgil orders the bean to be sprinkled with natron and amurca; so he promises that it also grows large.

158| Some, however, think that if it is steeped for three days before sowing in urine and water, it grows up especially well; that when hoed three times a modius of the broken yields a modius of the whole. The other seeds, if mixed with pounded cypress leaves, are not liable to worms, nor if they are sown at the dark of the moon. Many, for the remedies of millet, order a toad to be carried round the field at night, before it is hoed, and buried in the middle, shut up in an earthenware pot. So neither sparrow nor worms do harm, but it must be dug up before reaping; otherwise it becomes bitter. Nay, seeds touched with the shoulder of a mole are more fruitful.

159| Democritus orders all seeds to be sown after being treated with the juice of the herb called aizoum, growing on tiles, and by others aesum, in Latin sedum or digitillum. Commonly, however, if sweetness does harm and worms cling to the roots, the remedy is to sprinkle pure amurca without salt, then to hoe, and, if the crop has begun to go to the joint, to weed so that the herbs do not win.

160| The plague from millet and panic, the flocks of starlings or sparrows, I know is driven off by a herb, whose name is unknown, buried in the four corners of the crop, wonderful to say, so that no bird at all enters. Mice are driven off by the ash of a weasel or a cat, diluted and sprinkled on the seed, or by the water in which these animals have been boiled. But the rank smell of those animals lingers even in the bread. For this reason they think it more useful for the seeds to be touched with ox gall.

161| Rust, indeed, the greatest plague of crops, passes from the fields into the leaves of laurel branches fixed in the field. The luxuriance of crops is chastened by the tooth of cattle, in the herb only, and if grazed down, even rather often, they will feel no injury in the ear. Of those cut back even once it is quite certain that the grain becomes longer, and empty and void, and when sown does not come up. At Babylon, however, they cut twice and graze down a third time; otherwise there would be only leaves.

162| Even so the exceptional fertility of the soil yields harvests with fiftyfold increase, with the more careful even a hundredfold. Nor is the care difficult of watering with water as long as possible, so that the over-rich and dense fertility is diluted. The Euphrates and Tigris, however, do not bring down mud as the Nile does in Egypt, nor does the earth itself produce herbs. Yet the fertility is so great that in the following year the crop becomes renewable of its own accord, the seeds having been pressed in by the footprint. This great difference of soil warns us to describe the kinds of earth for crops.

163| This, then, is the opinion of Cato: in rich, fertile land to sow grain, but if it is misty the same land turnips, radishes, millet, panic. In cold, watery land to sow first, afterwards in warm land, in red ochre or dark or sandy soil, if it is not watery, lupin; in chalk and red ochre and a rather watery field adoreum; in dry land, not grassy nor shady, wheat;

164| in strong soil the bean; vetch, however, in the least watery and grassy; siligo and wheat in an open place, raised up, which is baked by the sun as long as possible; lentil in rudectum and red ochre which is not grassy; barley in fallow and in a field that can be made renewable; the three-month grain where you cannot make the sowing early and whose richness is renewable.

165| That opinion also is subtle: that the crops that need not much sap are to be sown in thinner earth, as cytisus and, the chickpea excepted, the pulses which are plucked from the earth, not cut below—whence they are called legumina, because they are gathered—, in rich earth those that are of greater nourishment, as the vegetable, wheat, siligo, flax. So thin soil will be given to barley—for its root asks less nourishment—, richer and denser earth to wheat.

166| In damper places adoreum far rather than wheat will be sown, in a temperate place both wheat and barley. Hills yield wheat more strongly, but less of it. Far, siligo can endure both chalky and marshy soil. Of crops there happened a portent once, so far as I have found, in the consulship of Publius Aelius and Gnaeus Cornelius, the year in which Hannibal was overcome. For in trees at that time grains were reported.

167| And since we have spoken abundantly of the kinds of crops and of earth, we shall now speak of the method of ploughing, first recalling the ease of Egypt. The Nile there, performing the part of a farmer, begins to overflow, as we have said, from the solstice and the new moon, at first slowly, then more violently, as long as the sun is in Leo. Soon it slackens, the sun having passed into Virgo, and subsides in Libra.

168| If it has not exceeded 12 cubits, famine is certain; nor less if it has risen above 16. For it recedes the more slowly the more abundantly it has risen, and keeps off the sowing. It was commonly believed that they used to sow from its receding, and soon drive pigs in, pressing the seeds down with their tracks in the wet ground, and I believe it was done so in ancient times,

169| now too with not much heavier labour; but it is certain that the seed is ploughed in, having first been thrown into the mud of the retreated river. This is done at the beginning of the month of November, afterwards a few weed—they call it botanismos—, the remaining part visits the fields only with the sickle a little before the Kalends of April. The harvest is finished in the month of May, the stalk never a cubit high, since sand lies beneath and the grain is held only in mud.

170| The grain of the region of the Thebaid is more excellent, since Egypt is marshy. A similar system, but greater fertility, belongs to Babylonian Seleucia, the Euphrates and Tigris flooding back, since the manner of irrigation there is regulated by hand. Syria also ploughs with a thin furrow, while in many parts of Italy eight oxen pant to each plough. In every part of cultivation, but in this most of all, that oracle holds: what each region can bear.

171| Of ploughshares there are several kinds: the culter, as it is called, is bent, cutting the very dense earth before it is broken up and marking out beforehand for the furrows to be the lines of the incisions that the ploughshare, leaning back, may bite in ploughing. Another kind is the common beaked lever. A third in easy soil, not extended along the whole share-beam, but with a small point on the beak.

172| Broader than this is the fourth kind and sharper, tapering to a point, with the same blade cutting the soil and with the edge of its sides cutting the roots of herbs. Not long ago it was invented in Raetia in Gaul to add two little wheels to such a one, a kind they call plaumorati. The point has the form of a spade.

173| They sow in this way only in land under cultivation, and generally new land. The breadth of the plowshare turns the sods. They throw in the seed at once and drag toothed hurdles over it. Crops sown this way need no hoeing; instead they plow with two or three teams of oxen in tandem. The settled reckoning is that one yoke of oxen can be counted on for forty iugera of easy soil in a year, thirty of difficult.

174| 1 In plowing, the oracle of Cato must be most carefully observed: "What is it to farm well? To plow well. What is second? To plow. What is third? To manure." "Do not plow with a crooked furrow." "Plow in season." In warmer places the fields should be broken up from midwinter, in colder ones from the spring equinox, and sooner in dry country than in damp, sooner in dense soil than in loose, sooner in rich than in lean.

175| Where summers are dry and heavy, and the soil chalky or thin, it is more useful to plow between the solstice and the autumn equinox; where the heat is mild, the rains frequent, and the ground rich and grassy, it is done in the midst of the hot weather. Deep, heavy soil it is good to turn even in winter; very thin and dry soil, a little before sowing.

176| 2 Even this has its own rules: "Do not touch muddy ground." "Plow with all your strength." "Break the ground before you plow it." This has the advantage that, with the sod turned over, the roots of the herbs are destroyed. Some insist that the breaking-up be done from the spring equinox in any case. Land plowed once in spring is called vervactum, from the evidence of the season; this is equally necessary in fallow land.

177| Fallow land is that which is sown in alternate years. Oxen about to plow must be yoked as tightly as possible, so that they plow with heads held high; in this way they bruise their necks least. If the plowing is among trees and vines, they should be muzzled with little baskets, so that they do not crop the tender shoots; a small hatchet should hang from the plow-handle, with which roots may be cut through, which is better than their being torn up by the plow and the oxen struggling; the furrow should be carried through to its end, and the team not be halted in the middle of the work for breath.

178| The proper measure is for one iugerum to be broken up in a day with a furrow three-quarters of a foot deep, and for one and a half iugera to be plowed a second time, if the soil is easy; if not, for half a iugerum to be broken up and one iugerum to be plowed again, since nature has laid down limits even for the labor of animals. Every field ought to be worked in straight furrows, and afterward in slanting ones as well. On hillsides the plowing is done only across the slope, with the share biting now toward the upper side and now toward the lower, and the labor for the man is so great that he takes the place of the oxen as well. Certainly mountain peoples plow with mattocks, without this animal.

179| A plowman who does not bend over the plow strays from the straight line; from this the charge of "prevarication" was carried over into the courts. It should be guarded against there above all, where it was invented. The share should be cleared from time to time with a goad tipped with a scraper. Raw ridges must not be left between two furrows, and clods must not jump up. Land is badly plowed if it has to be harrowed after the crops are sown. It will be rightly worked only when it cannot be told on which side the share went. It is the practice also, where the place requires it, to put in drains with a wider furrow, which carry the water off into the ditches.

180| 3 After plowing is repeated across the field, harrowing follows, where the work requires it, with a hurdle or a rake; and after the seed is sown this too is repeated, where custom allows, with a hurdle or a board attached to the plow, which they call "lirare" (making ridges), covering the seed; if the seed is not covered, what was first named is "deliratio" (going out of the furrow).

181| Virgil is thought to have meant that sowing should be done after the fourth furrow, when he said that the best crop is the one that has felt the sun twice and the cold twice. In denser soil, as is mostly the case in Italy, it is better to sow after the fifth furrow, and in Tuscany after the ninth. But beans and vetch can be sown without breaking up the ground first, with a saving of labor and no loss.

182| 4 We shall not omit one further method of plowing, devised in Italy north of the Po through the injury of wars. When the Salassi were laying waste the fields lying below the Alps, they tried the panic and millet that were already growing tall. When the nature of the crop refused it, they plowed them under. But those harvests, multiplied, taught what they now call artrare, that is, aratrare, I believe, as it was then called. This is done even as the stalk is beginning, when it has already put out two or three leaves.

183| Nor shall we withhold a recent example, found in the territory of the Treveri in the third year before this one. For when the crops had been caught by an extremely hard winter, they sowed the fields again even in the month of March and had very rich harvests. Now the remaining cultivation will be set out crop by crop.

184| Winter wheat, spelt, wheat, seed-wheat and barley are to be harrowed, hoed and weeded on the days that will be specified. A single day's labor for each kind is enough per iugerum. Hoeing loosens the sullenness of soil hardened by winter's frost in the spring season and lets in the new sun. Whoever hoes should take care not to dig under the roots of the grain. It is better to hoe wheat, seed-wheat, barley and beans twice.

185| Weeding, when the crop has come up to the joint, by pulling out the useless plants, sets the roots of the crops free and separates the crop from the turf. Of the pulses, chickpea needs the same as spelt. Beans do not like to be weeded. Since lupine overcomes weeds, it is only harrowed. Millet and panic are harrowed and hoed, but not repeated, and not weeded. Silicia and phasioli are only harrowed.

186| There are kinds of ground whose fertility forces the crop to be combed while still in the blade (hurdles of this kind are toothed with iron spikes), and these same crops are none the less grazed down as well. What has been grazed down must be roused up again with the hoe. But in Bactria, Africa and Cyrene the indulgence of the climate has made all this unnecessary, and from the sowing they return to the fields only for the harvests, since drought holds the weeds in check, nourishing the crops with the night dew alone.

187| Virgil advises that fields lie idle in alternate years. If the extent of the farm allows it, this is without doubt most useful. But if circumstances forbid, spelt should be sown where lupine or vetch or beans have been taken off, and crops that make the soil richer. And above all this should be noted, that some crops are sown for the sake of others, in passing, if they have come up poorly, as we said in the previous volume, so that the same things are not said too often; for the nature of each soil matters a great deal.

188| There is a community in Africa in the middle of the sands, on the way to the Syrtes and Leptis Magna, called Tacape, with a soil irrigated beyond all marvel in its fertility. For about three miles in every direction a spring flows abundantly, copious indeed, but it is shared out among the inhabitants at fixed intervals of hours. There an olive is set beneath a very large palm, under the olive a fig, under the fig a pomegranate, under that a vine; beneath the vine grain is sown, then a pulse, then a vegetable, all in the same year, and all are nourished by another's shade.

189| Four cubits of that soil square, measured not with the fingers stretched out but with the hand closed into a fist, are sold for 4 denarii. Above all, the vine bears twice, so that the vintage is gathered twice a year. And unless its fertility were drained by manifold bearing, each single fruit would perish of its own luxuriance. As it is, something is reaped throughout the whole year, and it is agreed that men cannot keep pace with its fertility. There is also great difference in the waters for irrigated land.

190| There is in the province of Narbonensis a famous spring named Orga. Herbs grow in it so much sought after by cattle that they plunge their whole heads under to look for them. But it is certain that those growing in the water are nourished only by rains. Let each man therefore know his own land and water.

191| If the ground is what we have called tender, then after barley is taken off, millet can be sown, and when that is stored, turnips, and when these are taken off, barley again or wheat, as in Campania; and such ground is plowed enough by being hoed. Another order is that where there has been adoreum, the field should rest for the four winter months and take a spring bean. Before a winter bean it should not lie idle. Ground that is too rich can be alternated in this way, that after the grain is taken off a pulse is sown in the third. Thinner ground should lie idle also for a third year. Some forbid sowing grain except in ground that has rested the year before.

192| The greatest part of this topic is held by the doctrine of manuring, of which we spoke also in the previous volume. This much is unknown to no one, that nothing ought to be sown unless the ground has been manured, although this too has its own rules. Millet, panic, turnips and navew are not to be sown except in manured ground. In unmanured ground sow grain rather than barley. Likewise in fallow fields, although they want beans sown in these, wherever it is, the same crop is to be sown in soil manured as freshly as possible.

193| Anyone about to sow something in autumn should heap up dung on the field in the month of September, in any case after rain. If he is going to sow in spring, he should spread the dung out through the winter. The proper amount is 18 cartloads to the iugerum; take care not to scatter it before you plow. But if this manuring has been omitted and the seed is already thrown, there is a following remedy: before you hoe, scatter the dung from the poultry-yards, like seed, before the dust comes.

194| So that we may fix limits to this care also, the proper rule is that each month one cartload of dung should come back for each smaller animal, and ten for the larger. Unless this happens, it is plain that the farmer has bedded his stock badly. There are those who think that the best manuring is done in the open air, with the penning of the flocks enclosed by nets. A field that is not manured is cold; if it is manured too much, it is scorched, and it is better to do this often than beyond measure. The hotter the soil, the less the reason for adding dung.

195| The best seed is a year old, that of two years is worse, that of three the worst, and beyond that it is barren; for the generation of all things has its fixed limit. What has settled to the bottom of the threshing-floor is to be kept for seed; for that is the best, since it is the heaviest, and in no other way is the choice more usefully made. The ear that has seeds set at intervals will be thrown out. The best grain is that which is red and, broken by the teeth, keeps the same color; the worse is that which has more white inside.

196| It is certain that some lands take more seed and others less, and from this comes the first and religious omen for farmers: when the land takes it more greedily, it is believed to be hungry and to have eaten the seed. The rule is that sowing be done sooner in damp places, so that the seed does not rot in the rain; later in dry places, so that rains may follow and the seed not lie long, fail to conceive, and vanish; and likewise that when the sowing is hurried the seed be scattered thickly, because it conceives slowly, and when it is late, thinly, because it would be choked by too great thickness.

197| To scatter evenly is also a matter of a certain art. The hand ought to move in unison with the pace, and always with the right foot. It also happens, by some hidden reason, in the case of certain men, that their lot is fortunate and fruitful. Seed is not to be carried from cold places to hot ones, nor from early-bearing ground to late, nor anything in the contrary direction, as certain men have prescribed with a false diligence.

198| The proper quantity to sow to the iugerum in temperate soil is: of wheat or winter wheat, 5 modii; of spelt or seed-wheat (the kind of grain we call by that name), 10; of barley, 6; of beans, a fifth more than of wheat; of vetch, 7; of chickpeas, chickling and pease, 3; of lupine, 10; of lentils, 3 (these they want sown with dry dung); of ervum, 6; of silicia, 6; of phasioli, 4; of fodder, 20; of millet and panic, 4 sextarii; in rich soil more, in thin less.

199| There is another distinction as well: in dense, chalky or marshy ground, 6 modii of wheat or winter wheat; in loose ground that is dry and fertile, 4. For lean soil, unless it has a thin stand of stalk, makes the ear small and empty; rich fields send up from a single seed a numerous growth of shoots and put forth a dense crop from thinly sown seed.

200| So between four and six modii, they prescribe sowing a fifth less or more according to the nature of the soil; likewise in ground planted with trees or sloping, as in lean ground. To this belongs that oracle which is to be most carefully kept: "Do not defraud the crop." Attius added to these, in his Praxidica, that sowing should be done with the moon in Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra or Aquarius; Zoroaster, when the sun has passed twelve parts of Scorpio, with the moon in Taurus.

201| There follows here the question, put off until now and requiring the greatest care, of the time for sowing crops, which is in large part bound up with the reckoning of the stars; for which reason we shall set out first the opinions of all that bear on it. Hesiod, who first of men gave instruction about farming, handed down one time for sowing, from the setting of the Pleiades. For he was writing in Boeotia in Hellas, where we have said that sowing is done at that time.

202| It is agreed among the most careful that, as in the begetting of winged creatures and four-footed beasts, so the earth too has certain urges toward conception. The Greeks define this as when it is warm and moist. Virgil orders wheat and spelt to be sown from the setting of the Pleiades, barley between the autumn equinox and midwinter, and vetch and phasioli and lentil at the setting of Bootes. From this it follows that the risings and settings of these stars and of others must be set out day by day.

203| There are those who order sowing even before the setting of the Pleiades, but only in dry ground and in warm provinces; for the seed is kept safe, they say, since moisture would spoil it, and from the next rain it bursts forth in one day; others, immediately from the setting of the Pleiades, since rains follow about the seventh day; some, in cold places from the autumn equinox, in warm ones later, so that the crops do not run to luxuriance before winter.

204| But all agree that sowing should not be done around midwinter, and the great proof is that winter seeds, when sown before midwinter, burst forth on the seventh day, but if after midwinter, scarcely on the fortieth. There are those who hurry on, and so declare that hasty sowing often deceives, late sowing always. On the contrary, others hold that one should sow even in spring rather than in a bad autumn and, where it is necessary, between the west wind and the spring equinox.

205| Some, leaving aside the subtlety of the heavens, define by calendar dates: in spring, flax and oats and poppy, and, as the peoples north of the Po still observe, up to the Quinquatrus, beans; winter wheat in the month of November; spelt from the close of September to the Ides of October, others after that day, to the Kalends of November. So these men have no care for nature, and those others too much, and thus their subtlety is blind, since the business is carried on among country people, lacking in letters, let alone in the stars.

206| And it must be confessed that these matters depend chiefly on the sky, since Virgil orders that the winds be learned beforehand above all, and the habits of the stars, and observed no otherwise than by those who sail. It is a steep and immense hope that the divinity of the heavens can be mingled with rustic ignorance, but it must now be attempted for the great advantage to life. First, however, the difficulty of the stars, which even the skilled have felt, must be set before our contemplation, so that the mind may then depart from the heavens the more cheerfully and recognize as accomplished facts what cannot be known beforehand as future.

207| First of all, the reckoning of the days themselves, of the years and of the sun's motion, is almost inexplicable, since the intercalary year adds to 365 the quarters of day and night. The result is that no certain times of the stars can be handed down. There is added the admitted obscurity of things, as the signs of storms sometimes run ahead, and not by a few days (which the Greeks call procheimazein), and sometimes come after (which they call epicheimazein), and for the most part the effect of the sky descends to the earth now sooner, now later: commonly, when fair weather has returned, we hear that the star is finished.

208| Besides, although all this depends on fixed stars fastened to the sky, there intervene the movements of the planets, of hailstorms and of rains, themselves of no slight effect, as we have taught, and they disturb the order of the hope conceived. And lest we think this befalls only us, it deceives the other animals too, which are more sagacious in this matter, since their life depends on it; and out-of-season or over-hasty cold kills the summer birds, and heat the winter ones.

209| Therefore Virgil prescribes that the reckoning of the wandering stars also be learned thoroughly, warning that the passage of the cold star of Saturn must be watched. There are those who regard butterflies as the most certain indication of spring, given the weakness of the creature. But in the very year when we were composing these notes, it was observed that their emergence was killed off by cold returning three times, and that the migrant birds who on the sixth day before the Kalends of February brought hope of spring were soon battered by a most savage winter.

210| It is a doubtful matter, first of all, that the rule should be sought from the sky, and then that it must be sought by evidence. Above all there is the difference of the convexity of the heavens and of the globe of the earth, the same star showing itself to different peoples at different times, so that the cause of it does not hold on the same days everywhere. The authorities have added to the difficulty by making their observations in different places, and then even in the same places handing down different results. There have been three schools: the Chaldean, the Egyptian and the Greek.

211| To these our dictator Caesar added a fourth school, bringing the years one by one into line with the sun's course, with Sosigenes, a man skilled in that science, called in; and that very reckoning was afterward corrected when an error was discovered, in such a way that for twelve years in succession there was no intercalation, because the year, which had previously run ahead, had begun to lag behind the stars.

212| Sosigenes himself, in three treatises (though more careful than the rest, he did not cease to be in doubt, correcting himself), and the authorities whom we have set at the head of this volume, have handed down these matters, and rarely does any one man's opinion agree with another's. This is less remarkable in the rest, whom different regions excuse.

213| Of those who have disagreed in the same region we shall give one discord by way of example: the morning setting of the Pleiades Hesiod (for an astrology also survives under his name) says occurs when the autumn equinox is completed; Thales, on the 25th day from the equinox; Anaximander, on the 31st; Euctemon, on the XLIIIII; Eudoxus, on the 48th.

214| We follow the observation of Caesar above all; this will be the reckoning for Italy. But we shall also give the opinions of others, since we are interpreters not of one land but of the whole of nature, setting down not the authorities (for that is wordy) but the regions. Let readers only remember, for the sake of brevity, that when Attica is named, the Cyclades islands are understood with it;

215| with Macedonia, Magnesia and Thrace; with Egypt, Phoenicia, Cyprus and Cilicia; with Boeotia, Locris, Phocis and the neighboring districts always; with the Hellespont, the Chersonese and the mainland as far as Mount Athos; with Ionia, Asia and the islands of Asia; with the Peloponnese, Achaea and the lands lying toward the west.

216| The Chaldeans will point to Assyria and Babylonia. That Africa, the Spains and the Gauls are passed over in silence will be no wonder; for no one in those lands has made observations to hand down the risings of the stars. Yet they can be discerned, by no difficult method, in those lands also, by the arrangement of the circles which we made in the sixth volume, by which the kinship of the sky is understood not only for peoples but for single cities also.

217| Therefore, taking from those lands that we have named the convexity of the circle that applies to the lands anyone may be inquiring about, the risings of the stars will be the same along all circles with equal shadows. This too must be pointed out, that the storms themselves have their turning points in periods of four years, and return by the reckoning of the sun with no great difference, and in eight-year periods are increased, when the hundredth moon revolves.

218| All the reckoning, however, has been observed in three ways: by the rising of the stars, by their setting, and by the turning points of the seasons themselves. Risings and settings are understood in two ways. For either the stars are hidden by the sun's approach and cease to be seen, or they show themselves again at its departure, so that custom would better have called this an emerging rather than a rising, and the other a hiding rather than a setting.

219| In the other way, on whatever day they begin to appear or cease to appear at sunrise or sunset, they are called morning or evening stars, according as one or the other of these happens at dawn or at twilight. They need intervals of three-quarters of an hour, at the least, before sunrise or after sunset, in order to be seen. Besides, some rise and set twice, and all this discussion concerns those stars which we have said are fixed to the sky.

220| The turning points of the seasons rest on the fourfold division of the year by the increase of the light. This increases from midwinter and is made equal with the nights at the spring equinox, after 90 days 3 hours; then it exceeds the nights up to the solstice, over 94 days 12 hours; [….] up to the autumn equinox, and then, the day being equalized, the night advances from that point to midwinter, in 88 days 3 hours (the hours in every increase here being equinoctial hours,

221| not those of any day one chooses, being what is meant), and all these differences fall in the eighth parts of the signs: midwinter in Capricorn about the seventh day before the Kalends of January, the spring equinox in Aries, the solstice in Cancer, and the other equinox in Libra; and these very days seldom lack some indications of storms.

222| Again, these turning points are still divided by single articulations of the seasons, all of them through the middle of the intervals of days: for between the solstice and the autumn equinox the setting of the Lyre begins autumn on the 46th day; from that equinox to midwinter the morning setting of the Pleiades begins winter on the 44th day; between midwinter and the equinox, on the 45th day, the blowing of the west wind begins the spring season; from the spring equinox, on the 48th day, the morning rising of the Pleiades begins summer.

223| We shall begin with the sowings of grain, that is, with the morning setting of the Pleiades. Nor should the method then be cut to pieces by mention of small stars and the difficulty of the matter increased, since the violent star of Orion withdraws on the same days over a long stretch.

224| Many fix times beforehand for sowings, and sow their crops from the 11th day of the autumn equinox, nine days on end from the rising of the Crown, with an almost sure promise of rains; Xenophon, not before a god has given the sign. This our Cicero interpreted as meaning rain, though the true rule is not to sow before the leaves have begun to fall.

225| Some think that this happens at this same setting of the Pleiades, on the third day ahead of the Ides of November, as we have said, and this star is watched even by the sellers of clothing, and it is very easily noted in the sky. So from its setting those whose concern is lying in wait, avaricious dealers, make their prophecies about winter. Thus if the setting is cloudy, it announces a rainy winter, and they at once raise the price of cloaks; if clear, a harsh one, and they inflame the price of the rest of the clothing as well.

226| But let that farmer, untaught in the heavens, have this sign among his own brambles, looking at his own ground: when he sees the leaves falling. By this let the temperature of the year be judged, later in one place, sooner in another. For it is perceived according as the nature of the sky and of the place affects it, and in this method it excels in that the same sign is shared by the entire world and yet belongs peculiarly to each place.

227| Let him wonder at this who does not remember that on midwinter day itself pennyroyal flowers in the meat-safes. So little did nature wish anything to be hidden. And so she has given this as a sign for sowing too. This is the true interpretation, bringing the evidences of nature with it, since it advises that the earth be approached in this way, and promises a kind of substitute for dung, and announces that the earth and the sown crops are being covered by it against the cold, and warns us to hurry.

228| Varro prescribed that this observation be kept at least for the sowing of beans. Others say that the sowing should be done at full moon, but lentil from the twenty-fifth day of the moon to the thirtieth, and vetch also on the same days of the moon; that in this way, at last, it will be free of slugs. Some order it to be sown thus for fodder, but for seed in spring. There is also another rule, more manifest, by a more marvelous providence of nature, in which we shall set down the opinion of Cicero in his own words: "Now the lentisk, ever green and ever heavy with its load, is wont to grow great with a threefold bearing; pouring out its fruits three times, it shows the three times for plowing."

229| Of these, this one sign will be the same also for sowing flax and poppy. Cato hands down about poppy as follows: "The twigs and prunings that you have left over beyond your use, burn in the crop field. Where you have burned them, there sow poppy." The wild poppy is in wonderful use, boiled down with honey, for remedies of the throat, and the sleep-bringing power is in the cultivated one as well. And so far on the winter sowing.

230| But so that a kind of summary of all cultivation may be run through together, it will be fitting at the same time to manure the trees, likewise to heap earth around the vines (a day's work per iugerum is enough), and, where the nature of the place permits, to prune the tree-supported vines and the vines, to prepare the ground for the nurseries by digging two spades deep, to open the channels, to drive the water from the field, and to wash and put away the winepress.

231| From the Kalends of November do not set eggs under hens until midwinter is completed. Up to that day put under them thirteen throughout the whole summer, in winter fewer, yet never below nine. Democritus thinks the winter will be such as the day of midwinter was and the three days around it; likewise the summer by the solstice. Around midwinter, in most years, the fourteen days of the halcyons' breeding soften the sky with a calm of the winds. But in these and in all other cases the stars should be understood from the outcome of the signs, and the promises of storms must not be awaited for days fixed in advance.

232| Do not tend the vine at midwinter. Hyginus advises that wines then be racked off the lees or even poured out into other vessels from the seventh day after midwinter is completed, at least if the seventh day of the moon coincides; that cherries be sown around midwinter. It is fitting then to scatter acorn for the oxen, [….] modii for each yoke. A larger amount endangers health, and at whatever time it is given, if it has not been given for 30 days continuously, they say that in the spring the oxen regret it with the scab. We have given this as the time for cutting timber.

233| Let the remaining work be done chiefly in the night watches, when the nights are so much longer: weaving baskets, hurdles and wicker pannier; cutting torches; preparing, by day, 30 vine-props and 60 stakes; and in the evening work by lamplight 5 props and 10 stakes, and the same number before dawn.

234| From midwinter to the west wind, the signs notable to Caesar are: on the third day before the Kalends of January, the setting of the Dog in the morning, on which day the Eagle is reported to set at dusk in Attica and the neighboring regions. On the day before the Nones of January, according to Caesar, the Dolphin rises at dawn, and the Lyre on the following day, on which day the Arrow sets in the evening in Egypt.

235| Likewise, on the sixth day before the January Ides, with the evening setting of this same Dolphin, days of continuous winter weather follow in Italy, as also when the sun is perceived to pass into Aquarius, which occurs about the sixteenth day before the Kalends of February. On the eighth day before the Kalends, the star in the breast of the Lion, called the royal star by Tubero, sets in the morning, and on the eve of the Nones of February, the Lyre in the evening.

236| In the last days of this time, wherever the nature of the climate permits, the ground for rose beds and the planting of a vineyard ought to be turned by digging two spades deep (70 days' work per iugerum is enough), ditches cleaned or new ones made, before dawn iron tools sharpened, handles fitted, cracked jars mended, the coverings of the sheep put in order, and their wool cleaned by scraping.

237| 1 From the west wind to the spring equinox, Caesar indicates: on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of March, three days of varying weather; and on the eighth day, the sight of the swallow, and on the next day the evening rising of Arcturus; likewise on the third day before the Nones of March (Caesar observed that this occurs at the rising of Cancer, the greater part of the authorities at the emerging of the Vindemitor), on the eighth day before the Ides the rising of the northern fish, and on the next day of Orion. In Attica the appearance of the kites is observed. Caesar also marked the Ides of March as deadly for himself, by the setting of Scorpio, and on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of April the kite is shown in Italy, and on the twelfth day before the Kalends the Horse sets in the morning.

238| 2 This interval of time is the most vigorous for farmers and the most laborious, and in it they are especially deceived. For they are not called to their tasks on the day when the west wind ought to blow, but on which it has begun. This must be watched with sharp attention; in that month the day has a sign by an observation least deceptive or doubtful, if one pays heed.

239| From what quarter this wind blows, and from what direction it comes, we said in the second volume, and shall say a little more laboriously shortly. Meanwhile, from the day, whatever it be, on which it has begun to blow (not necessarily the sixth day before the February Ides, but either before, when it is early spring, or afterward, when winter lingers beyond that day), countless cares should occupy the country people, and the first tasks be carried through, those that cannot be put off.

240| Three-month crops are to be sown, vines pruned in the manner we have described, olives tended, fruit trees planted and grafted, vineyards trenched, nurseries laid out, other things renewed, reeds, willows and broom planted and cut, and elms, poplars and plane trees certainly planted, as has been said.

241| Then too it is fitting to clean the crops, and to hoe the winter grains, and most of all spelt. A fixed rule in this: when it has begun to have four rootlets; beans not before they have three leaves, and even then to clean with a light hoe rather than dig, and in any case not to touch them while in flower during the first 15 days. Barley is not to be hoed unless it is dry. Have your pruning finished by the equinox. For a iugerum of vineyard 4 days' work suffice for pruning; for tying up in the tree-supported vines, a day's work is 15 trees.

242| At this same time there is the care of gardens and rose beds, which will be treated separately in the next volumes, and at the same time of the ornamental gardeners. Then trenches are best made. Land is broken up for the future, with Virgil as chief authority, so that the sun may bake the clods. More useful is the opinion which orders only temperate ground to be plowed in mid-spring, since in rich ground weeds at once occupy the furrows, and in thin ground the heats that follow dry it out and carry off all the juice from the seeds to come. It is certain that such ground is better plowed in autumn.

243| 3 Cato defines the spring work thus: trenches to be made, nurseries [….] to be propagated, in rich and damp places elms, figs, fruit trees and olives to be planted, meadows manured while the moon is thirsty; those that are not to be irrigated, to be protected from the blowing of the west wind and cleaned, bad weeds to be torn up by the roots, figs to be pruned between, nurseries to be made and old ones mended: this before you begin to dig the vineyard. And the same author: "When the pear is in flower, begin to plow lean and sandy ground. Afterward, as each is heaviest and wettest, so plow it last."

244| This plowing, therefore, will have these marks: first the fruit of the lentisk appearing, and the pear in flower. There will be a third in the planting of the bulbs of the squill, likewise in that of the narcissus for garlands, for these too flower three times, and by the first flower show the first plowing, by the middle one the second, by the third the last, since some things offer signs to others among themselves.

245| And not least is the precaution that ivy not be touched while the beans are in flower; for that is a harmful and deadly time for it. Some things have their own signs too, as the fig. When a few leaves sprout at the top, like a little cup, then figs are best planted.

246| 1 The spring equinox seems to be completed on the seventh day before the Kalends of April. From it to the morning rising of the Pleiades, the days indicate, in Caesar's account: the Kalends of April; on the third day before the Nones of April the Pleiades are hidden in the evening in Attica, and the same on the next day in Boeotia, and on the Nones in the account of Caesar and the Chaldeans; in Egypt Orion and his sword begin to be hidden.

247| On the sixth day before the Ides rain is indicated for Caesar by the setting of Libra. On the fourteenth day before the Kalends of May the Little Sows set in the evening in Egypt, a violent star, stormy by land and sea. On the sixteenth in Attica, on the fifteenth for Caesar, it signifies four days in a row, and in Assyria on the twelfth day before the Kalends; this is commonly called the Parilian star, since the eleventh day before the Kalends of May, the birthday of the city of Rome, on which fair weather usually returns, gave clearness to the observation, the Greeks calling [those stars] hyades from the evidence of rain, which our people, from the likeness of the Greek name, thinking it was given on account of swine, called through ignorance suculae.

248| The day is marked by Caesar also on the eighth day before the Kalends. On the seventh, in Egypt, the Kids rise; on the sixth, in Boeotia and Attica, the Dog is hidden in the evening, and the Lyre rises at dawn. On the fifth day before the Kalends in Assyria all Orion is hidden, and on the fourth the Dog. On the sixth day before the May Nones, for Caesar, the Little Sows rise in the morning, and on the seventh before the Ides the rainy Goat, while in Egypt on the same day the Dog is hidden in the evening. So at about the sixth day before the May Ides, the rising of the Pleiades, the stars run their course.

249| 2 In this interval of time, in the first 15 days, farmers must snatch up the tasks that they did not manage to finish before the equinox, provided they know that from this was born the foul reproach on those who prune vines, by imitation of the song of the seasonal bird which they call the cuckoo. For it is held a disgrace and a deserved reproach for the pruning hook to be caught in the vine by that bird, and for this reason the wit of saucy jests, even in early spring, is applauded, though by the omen they seem detestable. So even the smallest things in the country are drawn along by natural evidences.

250| At the end of this time comes the sowing of panic and millet. These are properly sown when the barley is ripening. And even in the same field there is a sign common to the ripening of the one and the sowing of the others: the glow-worms shining in the evening over the fields (this is what country people call the starry flights, the Greeks lampyrides), in the incredible kindness of nature.

251| 1 Already she had made the Pleiades notable in the heavens, a crowd of stars; yet not content with these she made other stars on earth, as though crying out: "Why do you gaze at the sky, farmer? Why do you seek the stars, countryman? Already the nights press upon you, weary, with shorter sleep. See, I scatter among your own grasses special stars of yours, and I show them to you as you part from your work in the evening, and, so that you cannot pass them by, I stir you with a marvel.

252| "Do you see how a gleam like fire is covered by the closing of the wings, and has its light with it even at night? I have given you herbs as indicators of the hours, and so that not even the sun may call your eyes away from the earth, the heliotrope and the lupine turn around with it. Why do you look still higher and search the very sky?

253| See, you have the Pleiades before your feet." These come forth on uncertain days and last, but it is certain that they are the offspring of this star. Accordingly, whoever sows summer crops before them will cheat himself. In this interval the bee, coming forth, shows that the bean is in flower, and the flowering bean calls it forth. Another indication that the cold is ended will be given: when you see the mulberry begin to bud, do not fear injury from cold afterward.

254| 2 So the tasks are these: to set cuttings of olives and to scrape around the olive trees themselves, to irrigate meadows in the first days of the equinox, when the grass has grown into stalk, to shut off the waters; to strip the shoots from the vine (and this has its own rule: when the shoots have filled [….] fingers in length; one day's work strips a iugerum), to hoe the crops a second time. Hoeing is done in 20 days. Hoeing from the equinox is thought to harm both vineyard and crop. And this same time is the time for washing sheep.

255| 3 From the rising of the Pleiades, the signs for Caesar are: on the next day, the morning setting of Arcturus; on the third day before the May Ides, the rising of the Lyre; on the twelfth day before the Kalends of June, the Goat setting in the evening, and the Dog in Attica. On the eleventh day before the Kalends, the sword of Orion begins to set for Caesar; on the fourth day before the June Nones, for Caesar and Assyria the Eagle rises in the evening; on the seventh day before the Ides, Arcturus sets in the morning in Italy; on the fourth, the Dolphin rises in the evening.

256| On the seventeenth day before the Kalends of July the sword of Orion rises, which in Egypt is four days later. On the eleventh day before the Kalends, the sword of this same Orion begins to set for Caesar. On the eighth day before the Kalends of July, the longest day of the whole year and the shortest night make the solstice.

257| 4 In this interval of time the vineyards have their shoots stripped; care is taken that an old vineyard be dug once, a young one twice; sheep are shorn; lupine is turned under for manure; the ground is broken up; vetch is cut for fodder; beans are reaped, then threshed.

258| Meadows are mown about the Kalends of June; the care of them, the easiest for farmers and of the least expense, requires that something be said of it. They should be left in rich ground, either damp or irrigated, and watered by rainwater or the public supply. It is most useful, if the herbs are bad, to plow, then to harrow with hurdles, to hoe, to scatter the flower that has fallen from hay-lofts and mangers, before they are harrowed, and not to irrigate in the first year, nor to pasture before the second hay-cuttings, lest the plants be plucked up and blunted by trampling.

259| Meadows grow old and ought to be restored, with beans sown in them, or turnips or millet, then grain in the following year, and in the third year to be left unplowed again; besides, as often as they have been cut, to be gone over with the sickle (siciliri), that is, to cut what the haymakers have passed by. For it is especially useless for plants to come up that will seed themselves. The best plant in a meadow is trefoil, next grass, the worst is nummulus, which bears even a dreadful pod. Equisaetum, named from its likeness to a horse's bristle, is also hateful.

260| The time for mowing is when the ear has begun to lose its flower and grow strong. It must be cut before it dries out. Cato: "Do not cut hay late: before the seed is ripe." Some irrigate the day before. Where meadows are not irrigated, it is better to mow on dewy nights. Certain parts of Italy mow after the harvest.

261| 5 This too was a matter of greater expense among our predecessors, who knew only Cretan and overseas whetstones, which raise the edge of the scythe only with oil; so the haymaker went about with a horn tied to his leg for the oil. Italy has furnished water-whetstones, which take the place of the file in commanding iron, but the water-whetstones at once grow green. Of the scythes themselves there are two kinds: the Italian, shorter and manageable even among brambles; the great estates of the Gauls, with larger [….] savings, since they cut the grasses in the middle and pass over the shorter. The Italian haymaker cuts with his right hand alone.

262| The proper measure is for one iugerum to be mown in a day by one man's work, and 1,200 bundles of four pounds each to be tied. The cut grass ought to be turned to the sun, and not stacked unless it is dry. If this is not carefully observed, it is certain that the stacks breathe out a kind of vapor in the morning, and soon are kindled by the sun and burst into flame.

263| Again, the mown ground ought to be irrigated, so that the autumn hay, which they call cordum, may be cut. At Interamna in Umbria they are mown four times a year, even without irrigation; irrigated ones, in most places, three times, and afterward in the pasturage itself there is no less profit than from the hay. The care of herds, and the breeding of draft animals, will give each man his own plan, with the richest profit chiefly from chariot teams.

264| 1 We have said that the solstice is completed in the eighth part of Cancer, and on the eighth day before the Kalends of July. This is the great hinge of the year, a great matter of the world. In this, up to now from midwinter, the days grow [they have grown for six months], and the sun itself, climbing toward the north and striving up the steep, begins from that goal to turn and descend toward the south, about to increase the nights for another six months and to take away the measure of the day.

265| From this point, then, begins the time for snatching up and bringing in one fruit after another, and for preparing oneself against savage and wild winter, and it was fitting that nature should mark this turning with unmistakable signs. For this reason she placed them in the very hands of the farmers, and ordered the leaves to be turned on the day itself and to be a sign that the star is completed, and not those of wild trees and remote ones, so that one would have to go into trackless woodland and mountains seeking signs, nor again those of town-dwelling trees, which are cultivated only by the ornamental gardener, although these too are to be seen at the farmhouse.

266| The leaves turn of the olive planted before your feet, they turn of the linden, sought for a thousand uses, they turn of the white poplar, which is even wedded to vines. Still this is too little. "You have the elm," she says, "dowered with the vine: and of this one I will turn the leaves. You strip its leaves for fodder or you prune them: look, and you hold the star. They look toward the sky from a different side than that from which they looked the day before.

267| With the willow you bind everything, lowest of trees, yourself taller by a whole head: of this too I will turn the leaves. Why do you complain that you are a rustic? It is not by my doing that you do not understand the sky and know the heavenly things. I will give a sign to your ears also: at any rate hear the moaning of the wood-pigeon. Take care not to suppose that the solstice has passed unless you have seen the wood-pigeon sitting on her eggs."

268| 2 From the solstice to the Lyre's setting, on the sixth day before the Kalends of July, Orion rises for Caesar, and his belt on the fourth day before the Nones in Assyria, while in Egypt Procyon rises in the morning, a scorching star, which among the Romans has no name, unless we choose to understand by it the little dog-star, that is the lesser dog, as it is pictured among the stars, bearing greatly on the heat, as we shall teach a little later. On the fourth day before the Nones,

269| for the Chaldeans the Crown sets in the morning, and in Attica all of Orion rises on that day. On the eve of the Ides of July, for the Egyptians Orion ceases to rise; on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of August Procyon rises in Assyria; then after three days, almost everywhere, a huge star acknowledged by all, which we call the rising of the Dog, when the sun has entered the first part of Leo.

270| This occurs on the twenty-third day after the solstice. The seas and the lands feel it, and many wild creatures too, as we have said in their places. Nor is there less reverence for it than for the stars assigned to gods, and it inflames the sun and holds a great cause of the heat. On the thirteenth day before the Kalends, in Egypt, the Eagle sets in the morning and the forerunning blasts of the etesian winds begin, which Caesar thought was felt in Italy on the tenth day before the Kalends.

271| The Eagle sets in Attica in the morning; on the third day before the Kalends the royal star in the breast of the Lion emerges in the morning for Caesar. On the eighth day before the Ides of August Arcturus sets midway; on the third day before the Ides, the Lyre begins autumn by its setting, as he noted, but the true reckoning finds this occurs on the sixth day before the same Ides.

272| 3 In this interval of time the main business of the vines is transacted, the grapes being under the decisive sway of that star which we have called the little dog, whence they are said to be "carbuncled," as if scorched by a kind of coal of blight. Hailstorms, tempests, and whatever has ever brought dearness to the grain-supply are not to be compared with this evil. Those are evils of single fields, but the carbuncle is of regions far and wide, with a remedy not difficult, if men did not prefer to slander the nature of things rather than benefit themselves. They report that Democritus,

273| who first understood and showed the partnership of the sky with the earth, when the wealthiest of the citizens scorned this concern of his, having foreseen a coming dearness of oil from the rising of the Pleiades, by the method we have described (and we shall presently show it more plainly), bought up at that time, for a great cheapness because of the hope of the olive, all the oil in the whole district, to the astonishment of those who knew that poverty and the quiet of learning were above all dear to his heart,

274| and, when the cause became apparent and a huge flow of riches ran in, he restored the price to the anxious and greedy repentance of the owners, content to have proved that wealth would be easy for him whenever he wished. Later Sextius, among Romans a follower of wisdom, did the same at Athens by the same method. So great is the opportunity afforded by letters. These I shall blend with the business of the countryside, as lucidly and clearly as I can.

275| Very many have said that dew scorched by a hot sun is the cause of rust in crops and of the carbuncle in vines, which I judge partly false, and that all blight comes from cold alone, with the sun doing no harm. This will become plain to those who give heed. For first of all it is found that this happens only at night and before the heat of the sun, and it depends wholly on the reckoning of the moon, since such injury does not occur except at the moon's conjunction or at full moon, that is, when it prevails. For in both conditions it is full, as we have said more than once, but at the conjunction it is sending back to the sky all the light it has received from the sun. The difference between the two conditions is great, but plain.

276| For at the conjunction in summer it is hottest, in winter icy. On the other hand, at full moon in summer it makes the nights cold, in winter mild. The cause is evident, but different from that given by Fabianus and the Greek authorities.

277| For in summer, at the conjunction, it must run with the sun in the circle nearest to us, glowing with its fire received at close quarters, and be absent at the same conjunction in winter, since the sun also withdraws; likewise at the summer full moon it would be far away, opposite the sun, while in winter it approaches us through the summer circle. Therefore, being dewy of itself, whenever it is cold, it freezes the frosts falling at that time to an unlimited extent.

278| 1 Before all, however, we ought to remember that there are two kinds of injury from the sky: one which we call storms, in which hail, tempests and the like are understood, which, when they have happened, are called acts of greater force. These proceed from rough stars, as we have said more than once, such as Arcturus, Orion and the Kids.

279| Others are those which occur when the sky is silent and the nights clear, with no one aware of them until they are done. These are general, and greatly different from the former, some calling them rust, some blight, some carbuncle, and all of them barrenness. Of these we shall now speak, which no one before us has set forth, and first we shall give the causes.

280| 2 There are two besides the lunar one, and they depend on few places in the sky. For the Pleiades pertain especially to the fruits, since at their rising summer begins and at their setting winter, embracing within themselves, in a space of six months, the harvests, the vintages and the ripening of all things. There is, besides, in the sky what is called the milky circle,

281| easy to see as well [by the flowing down of this, as if from some udder, all that is sown turns to milk], and watched by the observation of two stars: the Eagle in the northern part and in the southern the Dog-star, which we mentioned in its place. The circle itself is carried through Sagittarius and the Twins, cutting the equinoctial circle twice at the center of the sun, the Eagle holding their junctions on one side and the Dog on the other.

282| Therefore the effects of both reach all the fruit-bearing lands, since only in these places do the centers of the sun and of the earth coincide. So if on the days of these stars the air, pure and mild, has transmitted that generative, milky juice to the earth, the crops grow up luxuriantly; if the moon, by the method that has been described, has sprinkled dewy cold, bitterness mixed in kills the offspring, as with milk.

283| The extent of this injury on earth is fixed by the attendance of both causes on any particular convexity, and so it is not felt equally over the whole world, any more than the day is. We have noted that the Eagle comes up in Italy on the thirteenth day counting back from the Kalends of January, and the order of nature does not allow anything in the crops to be of certain hope before that day. But if the conjunction falls then, all the winter and early crops must be damaged.

284| 3 The life of the ancients was rude and without letters. Yet it will be evident that observation among them was no less ingenious than the method is now. For they feared three times for their crops, on account of which they instituted holidays and feast days: the Robigalia, the Floralia, the Vinalia.

285| The Robigalia Numa established in the 11th year of his reign; they are now held on the seventh day before the Kalends of May, since about then rust attacks the crops. Varro fixed this time for when the sun holds the 10th part of Taurus, as the reckoning stood then. But the true cause is that, nineteen days after the spring equinox, within that four-day period, according to the varying observation of peoples, on the fourth day before the Kalends of May the Dog sets, a star violent in itself and one which the little dog-star must precede in setting.

286| And so the same people instituted the Floralia on the fourth day before the same Kalends, in the 516th year of the city, from the oracles of the Sibyl, so that all things might flower well. Varro fixes this day for when the sun holds the 14th part of Taurus. Therefore, if a full moon falls within this four-day period, the crops and all that will flower must be damaged.

287| The earlier Vinalia, which come before these days on the ninth day before the Kalends of May, instituted for the tasting of wines, have nothing to do with the fruits, nor have those we have described so far with vines and olives, since their conception begins with the rising of the Pleiades on day I before the Ides of May, as we have taught. This four-day period is another matter, in which I would not wish the vines and olives to be fouled by dew (for the cold star of Arcturus, setting on the next day, burns things up), and still less a full moon to fall.

288| 4 The fourth day before the Nones of June brings the second rising of the Eagle, in the evening, a decisive day for olives and vines in flower, if a full moon falls on it. For my part I would reckon the solstice also, on the eighth day before the Kalends of July, as being in a similar case, and the rising of the Dog 23 days after the solstice, but with a conjunction falling, since the harm comes from heat and the grapes are hardened early into a callus. Again, a full moon does harm on the fourth day ahead of the Nones of July, when the Dog-star rises in Egypt, or at any rate on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of August, when it rises in Italy, and likewise on the twelfth day before the Kalends of August, when the Eagle sets, up to the tenth day before

289| the same Kalends. Apart from these causes are the second Vinalia, which are held on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of September. Varro fixes them by the Lyre beginning to set in the morning, because he wants this to be the beginning of autumn, and this feast day to have been instituted for the soothing of storms. Now it is held that the Lyre sets on the sixth day before the August Ides.

290| 5 Within these limits lies the barrenness that comes from the sky, nor would I deny that they may be altered by the nature of cold places and of hot ones. But it is enough that the method has been shown by us; the rest will be settled by each man's observation. That one or the other, either full moon or conjunction, will be the cause, will not be in doubt.

291| And in this it occurs to marvel at the kindness of nature: first, that this injury cannot happen in every year because of the fixed courses of the stars, nor except on a few nights of the year, and that it is easily known when it will be, and that, so that it should not be feared through all the months, nature has divided it by the law of these same stars: in summer the conjunctions, except for two days, are safe, in winter the full moons, and it is to be feared only on summer nights, the shortest, while on the days the same does not hold;

292| besides, that it is so easy to understand: the ant, the smallest animal, rests at the conjunction and works at full moon even by night; the bird called parra does not appear on the very day when Sirius rises, nor until it sets, while on the contrary the chlorion comes forth on the very day of the solstice; neither state of the moon is harmful, not even on nights unless they are clear and every breath of air is still, since dews fall neither in cloud nor in wind, and even so not without remedy.

293| Burn brushwood or heaps of chaff and uprooted weeds and shrubs through the vineyards and fields, when you fear it: this smoke will cure; smoke from chaff also helps against fogs, where fogs do harm. Some order three live crabs to be burned among the trees, so that the carbuncle may not harm them;

294| others, the flesh of the silurus gently burned with the wind behind it, so that the smoke is spread through the whole vineyard. Varro is the authority that storms do less harm if, as the Lyre sets (the start of autumn), a painted grape is consecrated among the vines. Archibius wrote to Antiochus the king of Syria that, should a rubeta frog be buried under a new earthen pot in the middle of a crop, the storms are not harmful.

295| The country tasks of this interval: to plow again, to dig around the trees or, where a hot region requires it, to heap earth up around them (young shoots are not to be dug except in luxuriant soil), to clean the nurseries with the hoe, to bring in the barley harvest, to prepare the threshing floor for the harvest, tempered, in Cato's opinion, with amurca, with chalk more elaborately in Virgil. For the most part they only level it and smear it with rather thin cow dung. This seems enough as a remedy for dust.

296| The method of the harvest itself varies. On the great estates of the Gauls huge frames with teeth set in their edge are pushed through the crop on two wheels, with a beast yoked behind in the opposite direction; so the ears torn off fall into the frame. In some places the stalks are cut in the middle with a sickle, and the ear is stripped between two forked sticks. In others they are cut at the root, in others pulled up with the root, and those who do this reckon that they are plowing the field as they go, since they draw out its sap.

297| The difference is this: where they roof their houses with straw, they keep it as long as possible; where there is a lack of hay, they look for chaff from the straw. Of panic they do not make thatch from the stalk; the stalk of millet they generally burn; barley straw, most welcome to oxen, they keep. Panic and millet the Gauls pick one at a time with a hand comb.

298| The harvest itself is threshed out in some places with a threshing-sledge on the floor, in others by the tread of mares, in others beaten with poles. The later wheat is reaped, the more abundantly it is found; the sooner, the handsomer and sturdier. The most fitting rule: before the grain hardens, and when it has already taken on its color; and the oracle: rather to make the harvest two days early than two days late. For winter wheat and wheat the method is the same on the floor and in the granary. Spelt, because it is shaken out with difficulty, suits being stored with its own chaff, and is freed only of the straw and the awns. Many peoples use chaff in place of hay.

299| That chaff is better which is finer and smaller and closer to dust; therefore the best is from millet, next from barley, the worst from wheat, except for draft animals that are laboring. In stony places they break the stalk, when it has dried, with a stick, to use as bedding for the animals. If chaff has run short, the stalk too is crushed. The method is this:

300| cut early, sprinkled with strong brine, then dried, it is rolled up in bundles, and so given to oxen in place of hay. There are those who set fire in the field to the stubble also, to the great praise of Virgil. The chief reason of it is to burn up the seed of weeds. Different customs are produced by the size of the harvests and the dearness of laborers.

301| Connected with this is the method of keeping grain. Some order granaries to be built with great labor with brick walls three feet thick, and moreover to be filled from above, and to admit no draft nor have any windows; others, open only to the summer sunrise or to the north, and built without lime, because it is a great enemy of grain; for what is prescribed about amurca we have already indicated.

302| Elsewhere, on the contrary, they hang wooden granaries on columns and prefer them to be aired on all sides, even from below. Others think that the grain is thinned out by a hanging floor altogether, and, if it lies under tiles, heats up. Many forbid winnowing too; for the weevil, they say, does not go down below four fingers, and no further is the danger.

303| Columella also foretells that the west wind blows on finished grain, which I wonder at, since it is otherwise very dry. There are those who order a rubeta frog, hung from a longer foot, to be carried in over the threshold of the granary. To me the timeliness of storing will seem to matter most. For if the grain is gathered not sufficiently dried and sturdy, or stored warm, faults must grow in it.

304| The causes of lasting are several: either in the skin of the grain itself, when it is quite abundant, as in millet, or in the fatness of the juice, which suffices in place of moisture, as in sesame, or in bitterness, as in lupine and chickling. In wheat chiefly living creatures are bred, since by its density it warms up and is clothed in thick bran. In barley the husk is thinner, and in pulse it is slight; therefore they do not breed them. The bean is covered with thicker coats; on that account it ferments.

305| Some sprinkle the wheat itself with amurca for the sake of lasting, a quadrantal to a thousand modii; others with Chalcidian or Carian chalk, or even with wormwood. There is also an earth of Olynthus and of Cerinthus in Euboea which does not allow it to be spoiled.

306| And grain stored in the ear is hardly ever damaged, yet it is most usefully preserved in pits, which they call siri, as in Cappadocia and Thrace and Spain and Africa, and above all care is taken that they be made in dry ground, and then that they be lined with chaff; besides, grain is stored in this way with its own ear. If no air penetrates, it is certain that nothing harmful is bred.

307| Varro is the authority that wheat stored so lasts 50 years, millet 100, and that beans and pulses smeared with ashes in oil-jars are preserved for a long time. The same writer says that beans lasted from the age of King Pyrrhus, in a certain cave at Ambracia, until the pirate war of Pompey the Great, about cCXX years.

308| Only in the chickpea are no little creatures bred in the granaries. There are those who, with jars lined and smeared with ashes, containing vinegar, heap the piles of pulses above them, believing that harmful things are not then bred; others smear them with gypsum in pickling-jars; others sprinkle lentil with vinegar flavored with laserpicium and, when dried, anoint it with oil. But the shortest observance is, whatever you wish to be free of faults, to gather it at the conjunction of the moon. Therefore it matters greatly whether one prefers to store or to sell. For with the waxing moon grain grows large.

309| There follows, from the division of the seasons, autumn, from the Lyre's setting to the equinox and then to the setting of the Pleiades and the onset of winter. In these intervals the indications are: on the day before the Ides of August the Horse rising in the evening in Attica, the Dolphin setting for Egypt and Caesar. On the eleventh day before the Kalends of September, for Caesar and Assyria, the star called the Vindemitor begins to rise in the morning, promising the ripeness of the vintage. Its evidence will be the grapes changed in color. In Assyria on the fifth day before the Kalends the Arrow sets and the etesian winds cease.

310| The Vindemitor rises in Egypt on the Nones, Arcturus in the morning in Attica, and the Arrow sets in the morning. On the fifth day before the Ides of September the Goat rises in the evening for Caesar, and Arcturus midway on the day before the Ides, with a most violent indication by land and sea for five days.

311| The reasoning of this is handed down thus: if rains have occurred while the Dolphin sets, none will come through Arcturus. As the sign of this star's rising, let the departure of the swallows be observed; for those caught perish. On the sixteenth day before the Kalends of October in Egypt the Spike, which the Virgin holds, rises in the morning and the etesians cease. The same is indicated for Caesar on the fourteenth day before the Kalends, in Assyria on the twelfth, and on the eleventh day before the Kalends for Caesar the junction of the Fishes setting, and the star of the equinox itself on the eighth day before the Kalends of October.

312| Then they agree, which is rare — Philip, Callippus, Dositheus, Parmeniscus, Conon, Criton, Democritus, Eudoxus — that on the fourth day before the Kalends of October the Goat rises in the morning, and on the third day before, the Kids. On the sixth day ahead of the Nones of October, in Attica, the Crown rises in the morning; in Asia and for Caesar, on the fifth, the Charioteer sets in the morning. On the fourth the Crown begins to rise for Caesar, and on the next day the Kids set in the evening.

313| On the eighth day before the Ides of October the bright star in the Crown rises for Caesar, and on the sixth day before the Ides the Pleiades in the evening, on the Ides the whole Crown. On the seventeenth day before the Kalends of November the Little Sows rise in the evening. On the day before the Kalends Arcturus sets for Caesar and the Little Sows rise with the sun. On the fourth day before the Nones Arcturus sets in the evening. On the fifth day before the Ides of November the sword of Orion begins to set. Then on the third day before the Ides the Pleiades set.

314| In these intervals of time the country work is: to sow turnips and navews on the days we have specified. The country folk think that turnips sown after the departure of the stork are badly sown; we say, by all means after the Vulcanalia, and the early ones with panic; and from the setting of the Lyre, vetch, phasioli and fodder. They order this to be sown while the moon is silent. And this is the time for preparing leaf-fodder. One leaf-gatherer is held to fill four leaf-baskets in a day. If it is prepared with the moon waning, it does not rot. Dry leaf should not be gathered.

315| The ancients never considered the vintage ripe before the equinox; now I see it snatched up everywhere. Therefore its times also should be marked by signs and evidences. The rules are these: "Do not gather hot grapes," that is, after excessive drought and unless a rain has intervened. "Do not gather dewy grapes," that is, if there has been night dew, nor before it has been dispersed by the sun.

316| Begin to gather the grapes when the vine-leaf has begun to bend down toward the shoot, or when, a berry being removed, the gap is seen not to be filled up by the crowding, and the berries no longer grow. It matters a great deal, if it so happens, to gather during the waxing moon.

317| One pressing should fill 20 culei. This is the proper foot. For as many culei, and vats, one press suffices for 20 iugera. Some press with a single beam, more usefully with two, however great the size of the single beams. Length matters in them, not thickness. Roomy ones press better. The ancients drew them down with ropes and leather straps and with levers. Within 100 years the Greek-style press was devised, with the ridges of the post traveling through a screw; by some, a star fixed to the beam; by others, chests of stones lifted along with the beam, which is the most approved. Within these last 22 years it has been devised, with small presses and a smaller pressing-house, with a shorter post set upright in the middle, to put drums on the grape-skins from above to bear down with their whole weight, and to build a heap on top of the presses.

318| This is also the time for gathering fruit, noting what has fallen from ripeness, not from storm; this also for pressing out the lees, this also for boiling down defrutum, with the moon silent, by night, or, if by day, at full moon, on other days either before the rising of the moon or after its setting, and not from a young vine or a marsh one, nor except from ripe grapes. If the vessel is touched by wood, they think it becomes scorched and smoky.

319| The proper time of the vintage is 44 days from the equinox to the setting of the Pleiades. From that day a cold oracle meets those who set no value on pitching the jars. But I have seen vintagers even at the Kalends of January, for want of vessels, and must stored in fish tanks, or the earlier wines poured out so that the doubtful ones could be received.

320| This does not happen so often from excessive yield as from sluggishness or the greed of those who lie in wait for dearness. A citizen's, a fair householder's measure is to use each year's supply as it is. This is equally also the most profitable. The rest about wines has been said abundantly; likewise, once the vintage is done, the olive must be snatched and what belongs to oil and what ought to be done from the setting of the Pleiades.

321| To these things that are necessary will be added something about the moon and winds and forecasts, so that the whole reckoning by the stars may be complete. For Virgil thought that certain things should even be arranged according to the days of the moon, following the display of Democritus; as for us, the usefulness of rules, which moves us in the whole work, moves us in this part too. All things that are cut, plucked or shorn are done with less harm when the moon is waning than when it is waxing.

322| Do not touch dung except in the waning moon, and manure especially in the interlunar and half-moon periods; castrate boars, bullocks, rams and kids in the waning moon. Set eggs under hens at the new moon. Make trenches at night at full moon. Cover the roots of trees at full moon. In damp places sow at the conjunction and for four days around the conjunction. They also order grain and pulses to be winnowed and stored about the last moon; nurseries to be made when the moon is above the earth; must to be trodden when the moon is under the earth; likewise timber to be cut, and the other things we have mentioned in their places.

323| Nor is the observation easier, as already stated by us in the second volume, than that which even country people can understand: whenever it is seen from the setting of the sun and shines in the earlier hours of the night, it will be waxing and will be judged by the eyes to be half; when, however, at sunset it rises from the opposite side, so that both are seen together, then it will be full moon. Whenever it rises from the sunrise and takes away light from the earlier hours of the night and extends it into the day hours, it will be waning, and again half; at the meeting, which they call the conjunction, when it has ceased to appear.

324| It will be above the earth, as long as the sun is, at the conjunction and on the first day, the whole day; on the second, for a dextans and a sicilicus of one hour of the night, and then the third, and so on up to the fifteenth, with the same portions of hours multiplied. On the fifteenth it will be above the earth the whole night, and the same below the earth the whole day.

325| On the sixteenth it will spend below the earth until a dextans and a sicilicus of the first hour of the night, and will add the same portions of hours each day up to the conjunction, and as much as it has taken from the first parts of the night, which it spends below the earth, so much it will add at the end of the day above the earth. In alternate months it will fill out 30 days, in the others it will take off one each. This will be the method of the moon; that of the winds is a little more painstaking.

326| Having observed the sunrise on any day you please, for those standing at the sixth hour of the day in such a way that they have that sunrise at the left shoulder, the south will be opposite the middle of the face and from the crown of the head, the north. The boundary that runs through the field in this way will be called the cardo. It is then better to turn around, so that each person sees his own shadow;

327| otherwise it will be behind the man. So, the sides exchanged, so that the sunrise of that day is at the right shoulder and the sunset at the left, then it will be the sixth hour when the least shadow falls opposite the middle of the man. Through the middle of its length let a furrow be drawn with a hoe, or a line with a knife, say 20 feet long, and the middle of the measure, that is at the tenth foot, be circled with a small circle, which is called the navel.

328| The part which lies toward the head of the shadow will belong to the north wind. Toward it, pruner, let the cuts of trees not look, nor the tree-supported vines or vineyards, except in Africa, Cyrene and Egypt. When it blows from there do not plow, nor the other things which we shall prescribe. The part of the line which lies toward the feet of the shadow, facing south, will give the south wind, which we have said is called notus by the Greeks.

329| When the blast comes from there, farmer, do not handle timber or wine. It is damp or hot for Italy, but for Africa it brings fires along with clear weather. Toward it let the vine-shoots of Italy look, but not the cuts of the trees or vines. Let olives fear it during the four days of the Pleiades, and let the grafter beware of it with cuttings, and the budder with buds.

330| It is fitting to give advance warning about the hour itself of that quarter. Do not cut leaf-fodder at midday, tree-man. When you perceive midday at hand, shepherd, [in summer], with the shadow drawing in on itself, drive the flocks from the sun into the shade. When you pasture in summer, let them face west before noon, east after noon; otherwise it is harmful, as it is in winter and spring to lead them out into dewy ground: [nor should you pasture them facing the north, as was said above] they are shut up thus and become blear-eyed from the blast, and die of quick flux of the belly. If you wish females to conceive, take care that they are covered facing this wind.

331| We have said that the navel is to be marked in the middle of the line. Through this middle let another run across. This will run from the equinoctial sunrise to the equinoctial sunset, and the boundary that cuts the field this way will be called the decumanus. Then two other lines are drawn crosswise, on the slant, so that they descend from the right and left of the north to the right and left of the south.

332| Let all run through the same navel, let all be equal to one another, and the intervals of all equal. This reckoning is to be undertaken once in each field or, if one wishes to use it more often, made of wood, with equal rods driven into a small drum, but marked off with a compass. By the method by which I teach that the wits even of the unskilled must be met,

333| midday is chosen to be fixed, since it is always the same, while the sun rises daily at a different point of the sky than the day before, lest anyone suppose the line is to be taken from the sunrise. Thus, once that part of the sky is determined, whatever is the end of the line nearest the north on the side of the sunrise will have the solstitial sunrise, that is, of the longest day, and the north-east wind, called boreas by the Greeks.

334| Plant trees and vines facing this. But do not plow when it blows, do not sow grain, do not cast seed. It chills the breath and freezes the roots of the trees that you are about to plant. Be forewarned: some things benefit the sturdy, others the tender.

335| (I have not forgotten that in this quarter the Greeks place a wind, which they call caecias. But Aristotle himself, a man of immense subtlety, who made this very assignment, explains from the convexity of the world how the aquilo blows contrary to the Africus.) Yet do not fear it, farmer, throughout the year for the tasks mentioned above. It is softened by a star in the middle of summer and changes its name, being called the etesian; so when you perceive it cold, beware of it for all the tasks for which the aquilo was named in the warnings: it is so much the more pernicious than the north wind.

336| Toward it let the tree-supported vines and vineyards of Asia, Greece, Spain, coastal Italy, Campania and Apulia look. If you wish males to be conceived, pasture them facing it, so that they cover in this way. Opposite the aquilo, from the winter sunset, the Africus will blow, which the Greeks call libs. When the flock has turned itself toward it for mating, know that the females have conceived.

337| 2 The third line counting from the north, the one we drew across the breadth of the shadow and called the decumanus, will have the equinoctial sunrise and the subsolanus wind, called apheliotes by the Greeks. Toward it let farmhouses and vineyards in healthy places look. It is itself gently rainy; drier is the favonius, opposite to it, from the equinoctial sunset, named zephyrus by the Greeks. Cato ordered olive groves to face this. It begins the spring and opens the lands, healthy with a slight chill; it will give the right of pruning vines and tending crops, of planting trees, grafting fruit trees and handling olives, and by its blast will exercise nurture.

338| The fourth line from the north, nearest the south on the side of the sunrise, will have the winter sunrise and the wind volturnus, called eurus by the Greeks, itself rather drier and warmer. Toward it the beehives and vineyards of Italy and the Gauls ought to look. Opposite the volturnus will blow the corus, from the solstitial sunset and the setting on the north side, called argestes by the Greeks, itself among the coldest, like all that blow from the north quarter.

339| This also brings hail, and is to be avoided no less than the north wind. If the volturnus begins to blow from a clear part of the sky, it will not last into the night, but the subsolanus stretches over most of the night. Whatever wind it may be, if it is felt to be fiery, it will remain for several days. The earth drying suddenly foretells the aquilo; moistening with hidden dew, the south.

340| Now that the doctrine of the winds has been set out, so that the same things are not said too often, it is fitting to pass to the remaining forecasts of storms, since I see that this too pleased Virgil greatly, inasmuch as he reports that battles of the winds, ruinous to the unskilled, often clash in the very harvest.

341| They report that the same Democritus, when his brother Damasus was reaping in the greatest heat, begged him to spare the rest of the crop and to snatch the cut part under cover, and that a few hours later, with savage rain, the prophecy was proved. Nay, more, they order that reed be sown only when rain is imminent, and crops when rain is about to follow. For which reason we shall touch on these also briefly, having searched most for what pertains, and shall first take the forecasts from the sun.

342| A clear sunrise that is not fiery announces a fair day, a pale one hail in winter. If it also set clear the day before [and rises], the surer the confidence in fair weather. A hollow-looking sunrise foretells rains; the same, winds, when clouds redden before its rising; and if black ones come among the red, rains as well; when the rays of the setting or rising sun are seen to come together, rains.

343| If clouds redden about the setting, they promise fair weather also for the coming day. If at its rising they are scattered, part toward the south, part toward the north, though there is clear weather about it, they will nevertheless signify rain and winds; if at rising or setting the rays are seen contracted, rain. If it rains at its setting, or the rays draw cloud into themselves, they will signify rough weather for the next day.

344| When at its rising the rays stand out dim, though no clouds surround it, they will portend rain. If clouds gather in a mass before sunrise, they will announce a harsh winter; if they are driven back from the rising and pass to the setting, fair weather. If clouds shut in the sun, the less light they leave, the more troubled the storm will be; if there is even a double ring, so much the more terrible.

345| And if this happens at rising or setting, so that the clouds redden, the greatest storm will be shown. If they do not surround it but lie upon it, from whatever wind they come, they will portend that one; if from the south, rain also. If the rising sun is girdled with a ring, from whatever part it breaks itself, a wind is to be expected. If it flows away wholly and equally, it will give fair weather.

346| If at its rising it extends its rays far through the clouds and the middle is empty, it will signify rain; if rays show themselves before the rising, water and wind; if about the setting there is a bright circle, a mild storm in the night; if fog, a more violent one; if with the sun glowing, wind; if the circle is black, from whatever region it breaks itself, a great wind.

347| Next in order come, by right, the forecasts of the moon. The fourth day of it Egypt observes most. If it rises bright and shines with a clear brilliance, it is believed to portend fair weather; if reddish, winds; if black, rains, up to the fifteenth day. Its horns, if blunted, always signify rain; if upright and menacing, winds, but the fourth day most of all. If the upper horn is sharpened and stiff, it forecasts the north wind; the lower, the south; if both are upright, a windy night. If a reddish ring girdles the moon on the fourth day, it will give warning of both winds and rains.

348| In Varro it stands thus: "If on the fourth day the moon is upright, it will forecast a great storm at sea, unless it has a ring around it and that one clear, since in that case it shows there will be no storm before the full moon. If at full moon it is clear through the middle, it will signify fair days; if reddish, winds; if darkening, rains."

349| If fog or a ring of clouds encloses it, winds, from where it breaks; if twin rings gird it, a greater storm, and more so if there are three, or black, broken and torn apart. If the new moon rises with its upper horn blackened, it will give rains as it wanes; if with the lower, before the full moon; if that blackness is in the middle, rain at full moon. If the full moon has a ring around it, from the side where this shines most, it will show the wind; if at its rising the horns are thicker, a rough storm. If it has not appeared before the fourth day, with the west wind blowing, the whole month will be wintry. If on the sixteenth day it appears rather fiery, it will forecast rough storms.

350| There are also 8 junctures of the moon itself, whenever it falls on the angles of the sun, most observers watching its forecasts only between these, that is, the 3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th, 17th, 23rd, 27th, and the conjunction.

351| In the third place the observation of the stars ought to be made. These seem sometimes to dart about, and winds at once follow, in whose quarter they have thus forecast. When the whole sky is evenly bright at the junctures of the seasons that we have set out, it will promise a clear and cold autumn. If spring and summer have gone by with a measure of coolness, they will make the autumn clear, dense and less windy. A clear autumn makes a windy winter.

352| When the brilliance of the stars is suddenly dimmed, and that neither by cloud nor fog, rain or heavy storms are announced. If several stars are seen to fly about, whither they are carried, growing white, they will announce winds from those quarters [or]. If they twinkle, steady ones; if this happens in several quarters, shifting winds and from every side. If a ring has enclosed any of the wandering stars, rain.

353| In the sign of Cancer there are two small stars called the Asses, with a small cloud between them occupying a slight space, which they call the Manger. When this ceases to appear in a clear sky, a fierce winter follows. But if fog has taken away one of them, the northern, the south wind rages; if the southern, the aquilo. When there are double rainbows they announce rains; after rains, fair weather, not so surely; a circle of cloud around some stars, rain.

354| When in summer it has thundered more violently than it has flashed, it announces winds from that quarter; on the other hand, if it has thundered less, rain. When there are flashes of lightning and thunder in a clear sky, there will be winter, and most savage when the lightning comes from all four of the sky's quarters; when from the aquilo only, it will portend water for the next day; when from the north, that wind. If lightning flashes from the south, the corus or the favonius, on a cloudless night, it will show wind and rain from the same regions. Thunder in the morning signifies wind, at midday rain.

355| When clouds are carried up in a clear sky, from whatever quarter that happens, winds are to be expected. If they gather in a mass in the same place and are scattered as the sun approaches, and this happens from the aquilo, they will portend winds; if from the south, rains. If at sunset they seek the sky on both sides of it, they will signify a storm. Black ones threaten more violently from the east water in the night, from the west on the next day.

356| If many clouds are scattered from the east like fleeces of wool, they forecast water within three days. When clouds settle on the tops of mountains, there will be winter. If the summits become clear, it will clear up. When a heavy cloud turns white, which they call a white storm, hail will threaten. In a sky however clear, a little cloud however small will give a stormy blast.

357| Mists descending from mountains, or falling from the sky, or settling in the valleys, will promise fair weather. Next to these, earthly fires give indications. For they are felt as pale and murmuring messengers of storms, and also of rains, if mushrooms form on lamps, or if the flame flies about in twisting fashion.

358| Lights announce wind when they dash out flames from themselves or are scarcely kindled; likewise when sparks are heaped together in a bronze pot hanging, or when coal clings to those lifting pots, or when a covered fire throws off ash from itself or sends out a spark, or when ashes cake together on the hearth and when the coal glows brightly through.

359| There are also indications from waters: if the sea runs quietly in a harbor or murmurs within itself, it forecasts wind; if this is in winter, rain too; if the shores and banks resound in calm weather, a rough storm, likewise sounds of the sea itself in calm, or scattered foam, or bubbling waters. Sea lungs in the open sea portend a winter of several days. Often also it swells in silence, and swollen higher than usual it already admits that winds are within it.

360| Some people also take as warnings the roaring of mountains and the bellowing of forests, leaves dancing when there is no breeze that can be felt, the down of the poplar or of thistles flying about, and feathers floating on water; and even, in level country, the peculiar crash that runs ahead of a coming storm. A murmuring in the sky, certainly, is a sign about which there is no doubt.

361| Animals too give forewarnings. Dolphins frolicking in a calm sea foretell wind from the quarter they come from, and likewise when they splash water about; and the same creatures foretell calm when the sea is rough. A lolligo flying out of the water, shellfish clinging fast, sea urchins fixing themselves down or ballasting themselves with sand, are signs of a storm. So too are frogs croaking more than usual, and coots with their clamour in the morning;

362| likewise divers and ducks cleaning their feathers with their beaks foretell wind, as do the other water birds when they flock together, cranes hurrying inland, and divers and gulls when they abandon the sea or the pools. Cranes flying high up in silence foretell fair weather, as does an owl hooting in rain (but in fair weather its hooting means a storm); and ravens making a sort of barking hiccup and shaking themselves foretell a fine day if they keep it up, but if they swallow their cry back in fits and starts, windy rain.

363| Jackdaws coming home late from feeding foretell wintry weather; so do white birds when they gather in flocks, and land birds when they cry out facing the water and drench themselves, but above all the crow; so does the swallow flying so close to the water that it often strikes it with its wing, and the birds that live in trees when they keep flying off to their nests; and geese with a continual cackling at the wrong time, and a heron standing gloomy in the middle of the sands.

364| Nor is it any wonder that water birds, or birds in general, feel the presages of the air. Flocks leaping about and frisking in unseemly play give the same signs; so do oxen sniffing the sky and licking themselves against the lie of their hair, filthy pigs tearing apart bundles of hay that are not meant for them, bees working sluggishly or, against their usual industry, staying hidden, ants running about together or carrying out their eggs, and likewise earthworms breaking out of the ground.

365| It is also well established that trefoil bristles and raises its leaves when a storm is coming. And even at our meals and on our tables, when the dishes in which food is served leave a sweat on the trays they stand on, they foretell terrible storms.

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