Moretum

Moretum

Now night had passed through twice five of the winter hours, and the winged sentinel had foretold the day with his song, when Simylus, the rustic tiller of a scanty field, fearing the grim fasts of the coming daylight, gradually lifts his limbs, let down upon the cheap pallet, and with anxious hand explores the idle darkness, and tracks the hearth, which at last he felt, to his hurt. A tiny smoke remained from a burnt-out brand, and the ash hid the embers' light beneath its covering. To these he brings the lamp lowered with bent brow, and draws out with a needle the dry tinder-flax, and rouses the languishing fire with frequent breaths. At last, the gleam caught, but scarcely, he draws back, and with his hand set against it guards the light from the draught,

and unbars the door, struck open with a key he sees by. Poured on the earth was a poor heap of grain: from this he takes for himself as much as the measure allowed, which runs out to twice eight pounds in weight. Thence he goes and stands at the mill, and upon a little board, which, fixed to the wall, was kept for these uses, he sets his trusty light. Then he frees his two arms from his garment, and girt with the covering of a shaggy goat, he sweeps with its tail the flints and the lap of the millstones. Then he calls his hands to the work, sharing it on either side: the left to service, the right is bent to the labour. This turns the wheel constantly in circles and drives the orb, the pounded corn runs down from the swift blow of the flints. At times the left takes the place of its wearied sister and alternates their turns. Now he sings rustic songs and with his country voice consoles his labour, at times he calls Scybale. She was his one keeper, African by race, her whole figure bearing witness to her homeland, her hair twisted, swelling at the lip and dark in colour,

broad in the chest, with drooping breasts, more compressed in the belly, slender in the legs, lavish with spreading foot. He calls her, and bids her lay on the hearth the wood that is to burn, and to warm the cold liquids with the flame. After the turning work had filled its just measure of an end, he transfers thence with his hand the poured flours into the sieves and shakes it, and the refuse remains on the top. The pure flour sinks down and is strained through the holes, the cleansed Ceres. Then straightway upon a smooth board he sets it, pours warm water over it, draws together now the mingled leaves and flours: he turns the hardened mass with his hand, and the moisture gathered, at times he sprinkles grains of salt, and now, kneaded,

he lifts the work, and spreads it into a circle with his palms, and marks it with squares impressed at even distance. He bears it thence to the hearth (Scybale had cleaned the fitting place before), covers it with tiles, heaps the fire above. And while Vulcan and Vesta perform their parts, Simylus meanwhile is not idle in the empty hour, but seeks himself another aid, lest Ceres alone be unwelcome to the palate; he gathers foods to join with it. For him no meat-racks hanging beside the hearth, no backs of swine hardened with salt and chines, lay ready, but a cheese, pierced through the middle of its round with broom-cord, and an old bundle of bound dill hung there. Therefore the provident hero contrives himself another aid. There was a garden joined to the cottage, which a few withes and reed, renewed with light cane, fenced— scanty in space, but fertile with varied herbs. Nothing was lacking there that the poor man's use requires; at times the rich man sought more from the poor. Nor was that work a cost, but a small matter of care:

if ever the cottage or the rains kept him idle, or a festal day, if by chance the labour of the plough rested, that was the garden's work. He knew to set out the various plants, and to commit the seeds to the hidden earth, and to send the neighbouring streams aptly round about. Here the pot-herb, here the beets spreading wide their arms and the fertile sorrel and the mallows and the elecampane were green, here the skirret, and the leeks owing their name to the head,

and the lettuce, the welcome rest of noble feasts, . . . and the radish grows to its points, and the gourd, heavy, let down into a broad belly. But this was the produce not of the master (for who was more pinched than he?) but of the people, and on the ninth days

he bore the bundle on his shoulder for sale into the city: thence he returned home, light in neck, heavy in coin, scarcely ever attended by the wares of the city market. The reddening onion and the bed of cut leeks tames hunger, and the cresses which draw the face with their sharp bite, and the endive and the rocket that recalls lingering Venus. Then too, meditating some such thing, he had entered the garden. And first, the earth lightly dug up with his fingers, he draws out four heads of garlic with their thick fibres; then he plucks the foliage of the slender parsley and the stiff rue and the coriander quivering on its slender thread. When he had gathered these, he sat down at the cheerful fire and with clear voice demands the mortar from his maid. Then he strips each of the heads of its knotty body

and robs them of their outer skins, and scattering them, scorned, here and there, flings them to the ground and casts them away. The bulb, kept by its grass, he wets with water and lets down into the stone's hollow round. Over these he sprinkles grains of salt, and the cheese, hardened by the salt eaten in, is added; he scatters the said herbs over, and with his left hand props his garment beneath his bristly groin. His right hand first softens the fragrant garlic with the pestle, then equally grinds all, the juice mingled. The hand goes round in a circle: little by little each thing loses its own powers, the colour out of many is one, neither wholly green, because the milky pieces resist, nor gleaming from milk, because it is varied by so many herbs. Often the sharp vapour darts at the man's open nostrils, and he condemns his own meal with wrinkled face, often with the back of his hand he wipes his weeping eyes, and, raging, hurls reproaches at the undeserving smoke. The work went forward: no longer jolting, as before, but heavier the pestle went into its sluggish circles. Therefore he drips in drops of Pallas' olive and pours over a little strength of vinegar, and again mingles the work and handles the mixture once more.

Then at last with two fingers he goes round the whole mortar and draws the parted bits into one ball, that the appearance and name of the finished moretum may hold. Meanwhile Scybale too, busy, draws out the bread: which he takes in glad hands, and his fear of hunger now driven off, and Simylus untroubled for that day, binds his legs with matching greaves, and covered with a leather cap, drives the strapped bullocks beneath the parent yoke, and drives them onto the crops and sets the plough into the earth.