De Agri Cultura

There are times when it would be better to seek a living by trade, were it not so hazardous, and likewise to lend money at interest, were it as honourable. Our forefathers held this view and laid it down in their laws, that a thief should be condemned to pay double, but a moneylender fourfold. From this one may judge how much worse a citizen they reckoned the moneylender than the thief. And when they praised a good man, they praised him in these words: a good farmer and a good husbandman; and to be praised in that way was held to be the highest praise of all. The merchant I consider to be energetic and bent on making his fortune, but, as I said above, his calling is perilous and exposed to disaster; whereas from the farmers come the bravest men and the most active soldiers, and theirs is the most respected, the most stable, and the least resented of all gains, and those who are engaged in that pursuit are the least disposed to evil thoughts. Now, to come back to my subject, what I have said will serve as a preface to my work.

1. When you are thinking of buying a farm, keep this in mind: do not buy hastily, do not spare your own pains in inspecting it, and do not think it enough to go round it once. However often you go, a good farm will please you the more each time. Take note how the neighbours keep up their places: in a good district they ought to be well kept up. Enter the farm and look about you, so that you will know how to get out again. See that it has a good climate and is not subject to storms; that the soil is good and strong in its own right. If you can, let it lie at the foot of a mountain, facing south, in a healthy situation, with a good supply of labourers and a good water supply, and a thriving town nearby, or else the sea, or a navigable river, or a good and busy road. Let it be among those farms that do not often change owners, where those who have sold their holdings are sorry they sold. See that it is well built. Do not rashly despise the experience of others. It is better to buy from an owner who is a good farmer and a good builder. When you come to the farmhouse, look whether there are many oil presses and storage jars; where there are not, you may be sure the yield matches them. There should not be much equipment, but the site should be good. See that the farm calls for as little equipment as possible and is not extravagant. Remember that a farm is like a man: however profitable it may be, if it is extravagant not much is left over. If you ask me what is the best kind of farm, I will say this: a hundred iugera of land of every kind, in the best situation. Of these the vineyard comes first, if it yields wine of good quality and in quantity; second, a watered garden; third, an osier bed; fourth, an olive grove; fifth, a meadow; sixth, a grain field; seventh, a wood for cutting timber; eighth, an orchard of trained vines; ninth, a forest of mast-bearing trees.

2. When the master of the household arrives at the farmhouse, after he has paid his respects to the household god, let him go round the farm the same day if he can; if not the same day, then the next. When he has learned how the land has been tilled, and what work has been done and what left undone, on the day after that let him summon his overseer and ask what work has been finished and what remains, whether the work has been completed in good time, whether what is left can still be finished, and what has been the yield of wine, grain, and everything else. When he has learned this, he should reckon up the labour and the days. If the work does not show, the overseer will say that he has done his best, but that the slaves have been sick, the weather bad, the slaves have run off, or that he has had to do public work. When he has given these and many other excuses, bring the overseer back to the account of work and labour. When the weather has been rainy, recall what work could have been done in the wet: the jars could have been washed and pitched, the farmhouse cleaned, grain shifted, dung carried out, a dung pit made, seed cleaned, ropes mended and new ones made; the slaves could have patched their own rough cloaks and hoods. On feast days the old ditches could have been cleared, the public road kept up, brambles cut back, the garden dug, the meadow cleaned, faggots tied, thorns rooted out, spelt ground, and general tidying done. When the slaves were ill, so large a ration ought not to have been given. When these matters have been gone over with a calm mind, see that whatever work remains is carried out. Reckon up the accounts of money and of grain and of what has been laid in as fodder; the accounts of wine and oil: what has been sold, what collected, what is left over, and what there is for sale. See that whatever security ought to be taken is taken, and that the rest of the stock is accounted for. If anything is wanting for the year, see that it is provided; let what is surplus be sold; let whatever is to be let out be let out; let him give orders for the work he wishes done and the work he wishes contracted, and leave these orders in writing. Let him look over the stock. Let him hold an auction: let him sell the oil if the price is right, the surplus wine and grain; let him sell the old oxen, the blemished cattle, the blemished sheep, wool, hides, the old cart, the old tools, the old slave, the sickly slave, and whatever else is surplus. The master of a household should be a seller, not a buyer.

3. In his early manhood the master of a household should devote himself to planting his land. As for building, he should think long before he builds; but as for planting, he should not merely think, but act. When he reaches the age of thirty-six, then he may build, provided he has his land planted. So build that the house does not have to look for the farm, nor the farm for the house. It is to the master's advantage to have a well-built farmhouse, an oil cellar and a wine cellar and many jars, so that he may be glad to wait for high prices: it will profit his estate, his honour, and his reputation. He should have good presses, so that the work can be well done. When the olives have been gathered, let the oil be made at once, lest it spoil. Remember that great storms come every year and are apt to bring down the olives. If you gather them quickly and your vessels are ready, no harm will come of the storm, and the oil will be greener and better. If the olives lie too long on the ground or on the floor, they will rot and the oil will be rancid. From any olives you may make greener and better oil if you do it in good time. To one hundred and twenty iugera of olive grove there should be two presses, if the grove is good and well stocked and well tended. There should be good crushing-mills, separate ones of unequal size, so that if the stones wear down you can change them; separate leather ropes; six levers; twelve fasteners; separate leather mainstays. Greek hoists are worked with two ropes of esparto: with eight pulleys above and six below you will raise faster; if you choose to fit them with wheels, the raising will be slower, but with less labour.

4. Have good stalls and good barred Faliscan mangers; the bars should be set a foot apart. If you do this, the oxen will not throw their fodder out. Build the town house according to your means. If you build well on a good farm, set it well, and live comfortably in the country, you will come oftener and more gladly: the farm will be better, less will go wrong, and you will get a greater yield. The forehead is before the back of the head: be a good neighbour, and do not let your household do wrong. If the neighbourhood is glad to see you, you will sell your produce more easily, let out your work more easily, and hire labourers more easily; and if you build, they will help you with their labour, their teams, and their materials; and if any need should arise, may it be a healthy one, they will defend you kindly.

5. These will be the duties of the overseer. Let him keep good discipline. Let the feast days be observed. Let him keep his hands off what belongs to others and guard his own carefully. Let him settle quarrels in the household; if anyone has done wrong, let him punish him in proportion to the offence and in good measure. Let the household not suffer want, cold, or hunger; let him keep it well employed, and so the more easily keep it from mischief and from meddling with others' property. If the overseer sets his face against wrongdoing, it will not be done. If he allows it, let the master not let it go unpunished. Let him show gratitude for good service, so that others may be glad to do right. Let the overseer not be a gadabout; let him always be sober; let him go nowhere out to dine. Let him keep the household busy, and see that the master's orders are carried out. Let him not think himself wiser than the master. Let him count the master's friends as his own. Let him obey the man he is told to obey. Let him perform no religious rite except at the crossroads festival, at the crossroads or at the hearth. Let him give credit to no one without the master's orders; what the master has lent, let him collect. Let him lend to no one seed grain, food, spelt, wine, or oil. Let him have two or three households from which he may borrow what he needs and to which he may lend, but no more. Let him reckon accounts with the master often. Let him not keep the same hired man, day-labourer, or caretaker longer than a day. Let him buy nothing without the master's knowledge, nor conceal anything from the master. Let him keep no hanger-on. Let him not consult any soothsayer, augur, fortune-teller, or astrologer. Let him not stint the seed corn, for that brings bad luck. Let him take care to know how to do all the farm work, and let him do it often, but not to the point of exhaustion; if he does this, he will know what is in the minds of the household, and they will do their work with greater contentment. If he does this, he will have less wish to gad about, his health will be the better, and he will sleep more soundly. Let him be the first to rise and the last to go to bed. Before that, let him see that the farmhouse is shut up, that everyone is asleep in his own place, and that the animals have their fodder.

See that the oxen are cared for with the greatest diligence, and humour the ploughmen somewhat, so that they may tend the oxen more willingly. See that you have good ploughs and ploughshares. Take care not to plough rotten ground, nor to drive a cart or stock over it; if you do not take care, wherever you drive, you will lose three years' yield. Bedding should be carefully laid for the cattle and oxen, and their hooves looked to. Guard against scab in the cattle and beasts of burden; it commonly comes from hunger and from rain falling on them. See that all the work is finished in good season, for farming is such that if you do one thing late, you will do everything late. If straw runs short, gather oak leaves and lay them down as bedding for the sheep and oxen. Take care to have a large dung pit. Keep the dung carefully; when you carry it out, clean it and break it up; haul it out in autumn. In autumn dig trenches round the olives and add dung. Cut leaves of poplar, elm, and oak in season; store them not too dry, as fodder for the sheep. Likewise the aftermath hay and the cuttings from the meadow; store them dry. After the autumn rain sow turnip, forage crops, and lupine.

6. As to where on your land you should plant, observe these rules. Where the soil is rich and fertile, without trees, that field should be a grain field. The same field, if it is misty, should be sown chiefly with turnip, radish, millet, and panic grass. In rich, warm soil plant the olive for preserving, the large radius, the Sallentine, the orcis, the posea, the Sergian, the Colminian, the white-wax olive, whichever of these they say is best in that district; plant that above all. Plant this kind of olive twenty-five or thirty feet apart. For planting an olive grove no land is good unless it faces the west wind and is exposed to the sun. Where the land is colder and leaner, the Licinian olive should be planted. If you plant it in rich or warm soil, the yield will be poor, the tree will exhaust itself in bearing, and a troublesome red moss will form. Round the borders and along the paths plant elms and some poplars, so that you may have leaves for the sheep and oxen, and timber ready if you should need it. Wherever in those parts there is a bank or a moist place, plant poplar cuttings and a reed bed. Plant the reed bed thus: turn the soil with the double mattock; there set the reed eyes three feet apart from one another. There plant wild asparagus, from which the asparagus comes, for it goes well with the reed bed, because it is dug and burned over and has shade in season. Plant Greek willow round the reed bed, so that you may have something with which to tie up the vine.

As to the land in which a vineyard should be planted, observe this. Where the place is said to be best for wine and is exposed to the sun, plant the lesser and the twin Aminnian, the lesser eugeneum, and the lesser helvolum. Where the soil is rich or rather misty, there plant the greater Aminnian, the Murgentine, the Apician, and the Lucanian. The other vines, especially the mixed kinds, suit any soil.

7. A farm near town is best suited to have an orchard of trained vines: wood and twigs can be sold, and there will be a supply for the master's use too. On the same farm each appropriate thing should be planted: the vine, the lesser and the greater Aminnian and the Apician; the grapes are stored in jars among the grape-skins; the same grapes keep well in boiled-down must, in fresh must, and in second wine. The kinds you hang up, the larger hard-skinned Aminnian grapes, or those kept at the blacksmith's, keep well in place of dried grapes. Plant or graft fruit trees: sparrow-apples, Scantian and Quirinian quinces, and other kinds for preserving, the early-ripening apples and pomegranates (for these you should apply hog's urine or dung at the root, to make food for the apples), the volaema pear, the Anician seedling pear (these will be good for preserving in boiled-down must), the Tarentine, the early gourd-pear, and as many other kinds as you can. Plant or graft olives, the orcis and posia kinds; these are best preserved either green in brine or crushed with mastic, or, in the case of the orcis, when they are black and dry, rubbed with salt for five days; then shake off the salt and put them in the sun for two days, or store them without salt in boiled-down must. Sorb apples may be preserved in boiled-down must or dried.

8. You should dry them. Do the same with pears. Plant the marisca fig in chalky, open ground; plant the African, the Herculanean, the Saguntine, the winter fig, and the black Tellanian with the long stalk in richer or manured ground. If you have a watered meadow, and it is not dry, sow it with grass so that hay may not run short. Near town have a garden of every kind, and every kind of plant for garlands, the Megarian bulb, the conjugula myrtle and the white and the black, the Delphic and the Cyprian and the wild laurel, smooth nuts, hazelnuts, Praenestine nuts, and Greek nuts; see that all these are planted. The farm near town, and that of the man who has only the one farm, he should so prepare and so plant as to make it as productive as possible.

9. Willow beds should be planted in wet, moist, shady places, near streams; and see to it that there is either use for them on the farm or that you can sell the produce. If you have water, make watered meadows by all means; if you have no water, make as much dry meadow as you can. This is the kind of farm it pays to keep wherever you have one.

10. How an olive farm of two hundred and forty iugera should be equipped. An overseer, an overseer's wife, five labourers, three ox-drivers, one ass-driver, one swineherd, one shepherd: thirteen persons in all; three yoke of oxen; three pack-asses harnessed to carry dung; one ass for the mill; one hundred sheep; five fully equipped sets of oil vessels; a copper kettle holding thirty quadrantals and its cover; three iron hooks; three water jugs; two funnels; a copper kettle holding five quadrantals and its cover; three hooks; one small basin; two oil amphorae; one fifty-measure urn; three ladles; one water bucket; one washbasin; one pot; one trulla; one little scuttle; one chamber pot; one watering-can; one ladle; one candlestick; one pint measure; three larger carts; six ploughs with shares; three yokes fitted with thongs; six sets of trappings for the oxen; one harrow; four dung hampers; three dung baskets; three pack-saddles; three pack-cloths for the asses; iron tools — eight forks; eight hoes; four spades; five shovels; two four-pronged rakes; eight hay-scythes; five straw-scythes; five pruning-hooks; three axes; three wedges; one mill for spelt; two pairs of shears; one fire-rake; two braziers; a hundred oil jars; twelve vats; ten jars for storing grape-skins; ten for lees; ten for wine; twenty for grain; one lupine vat; ten storage casks; one washing trough; one tub; two water troughs; separate covers for the jars and casks; one ass-mill and one hand-mill and one Spanish mill; three mill fittings; one table; two bronze platters; two tables; three large benches; one bench for the bedroom; three stools; four chairs; two armchairs; one bed for the bedroom; four beds with cords stretched across, and three other beds; one wooden mortar; one fulling-machine; one loom for weaving togas; two mortars; one mortar for beans, one for spelt; one for seed; one to sift kernels; one peck measure; one half-peck; eight mattresses; eight coverlets; sixteen pillows; ten cloths; three napkins; six patchwork cloaks for the boys.

11. How a vineyard of a hundred iugera should be equipped. An overseer, an overseer's wife, ten labourers, one ox-driver, one ass-driver, one willow-worker, one swineherd: sixteen persons in all; two oxen; two cart-asses; one mill-ass; three fully fitted press-sets; jars to hold five vintages, eight hundred cullei; twenty jars for grape-skins; twenty for grain; covers and lids for the jars, each its own; six esparto buckets; four esparto amphorae; two funnels; three wicker strainers; three strainers for skimming off the flower; ten must jugs; two carts; two ploughs; one cart-yoke; one wine-yoke; one ass-yoke; one bronze platter; one mill-fitting; a copper kettle holding one culleus and its cover; three iron hooks; a cooking-kettle holding one culleus; two water jugs; one watering-can; one washbasin; one pot; one ladle; one water bucket; one little scuttle; one ladle; one candlestick; one chamber pot; four beds; one bench; two tables; one platter; one clothes chest; one store cupboard; six long benches; one water wheel; one peck measure shod with iron; one half-peck; one washing trough; one tub; one lupine vat; ten storage casks; trappings for the oxen; trappings and three pack-cloths for the asses; three pack-saddles; three lees-baskets; three ass-mills; one hand-mill; iron tools — five rush-sickles; six woodland sickles; three pruning-hooks; five axes; four wedges; two ploughshares; ten forks; six spades; four shovels; two four-pronged rakes; four dung hampers; one dung basket; forty vine-knives; ten bush-knives; two braziers; two pairs of shears; one fire-rake; twenty Amerian baskets; forty seed-baskets or troughs; forty wooden shovels; two scoops; four mattresses; four coverlets; six pillows; six coverings; three cloths; six patchwork cloaks for the boys.

12. What is needed for the pressing-room. For five sets of vessels: five tempered press-beams and three spare; five windlasses and one spare; five leather ropes; five draw-ropes; five mainstays; ten pulleys; five head-stalls; five plank-rests on which the press-beams may lie; three storage casks; forty levers; forty wooden fasteners to bind the press-uprights if they spring apart, and six wedges; five crushing-mills; ten small tubs; ten troughs; ten wooden shovels; five iron shovels.

13. What is needed for use in the pressing-room. One jug; a copper kettle holding five quadrantals; three iron hooks; one bronze platter; mills; one sieve; one strainer; one axe; one bench; one wine-jar; one key for the press; one bed, made up, where two free watchmen may sleep (a third, a slave, to sleep together with the pressmen); new press-baskets, old ones; one running-rope; one cushion; lamps; one hide; two grills; one meat-rack; one ladder.

What is needed for the oil cellar. Oil jars; covers; fourteen oil vats; two larger and two smaller conchs; three bronze ladles; two oil amphorae; one water jug; one fifty-measure urn; one pint measure for oil; one small basin; two funnels; two sponges; two earthen jugs; two urn-measures; two wooden ladles; two keys with locks for the cellars; one balance; one uncertified hundred-pound weight, and the other weights.

14. If you let out the building of a new farmhouse from the ground up, the contractor should do the following. All the walls as directed, with lime and rubble; pillars of squared stone; all the necessary beams, sills, doorposts, lintels; supports and props; mangers for the oxen, winter and summer, Faliscan ones; a horse-stable; quarters for the household; three meat-racks; a round table; two copper kettles; ten pigsties; a hearth; a great doorway and a second one wherever the master wishes; windows; ten gratings for the larger windows, each two feet wide; six smaller windows; three benches; five chairs; two togas-looms; one small mortar where wheat may be pounded; one fulling-machine; door frames; two press-sets. For this work the master is to furnish the materials and supply what is needed, and provide one saw and one chalk-line (the contractor is only to fell, hew, and saw the timber and do the work), the stone, lime, sand, water, chaff, and earth from which mortar can be made. If the farmhouse is struck by lightning, this is to be a matter for negotiation. The price for this work, from a good master who supplies what is needed and pays the money in good faith, is two sesterces per roof-tile. The roof shall be reckoned thus: a whole tile shall count as one; one that is not whole, lacking a quarter, two for one; ridge-tiles shall count two for one; gutter-tiles, however many there are, shall count four for one.

For a farmhouse of stone and lime: the foundations are to rise one foot above ground; build the rest of the walls of brick, with such lintels and frames as are needed; for the rest let the rule be as for the lime-and-rubble house. The price is two sesterces per tile. The prices set above are for a healthy place and a good master; for the workmanship there will be an allowance to be agreed. For an unhealthy place, where the work cannot be done in summer, a good master should add a quarter to the price.

15. Walls of lime, rubble, and flint. The master is to supply everything for the work: five feet high, with a coping of one foot, one and a half feet thick, fourteen feet long, and the contract should specify that it be plastered. If he lets the contract for the farmhouse walls at a hundred feet — that is, ten feet each way, by the level, in courses of five feet — for one perch a foot and a half thick, ten sesterces. The master is to lay the foundations and supply for the work, for each running foot, one modius of lime and two modii of sand.

16. Those who give out the burning of lime on shares, give it out thus. The lime-burner finishes and burns it, takes the lime out of the kiln, and prepares the wood for the kiln. The master supplies the stone and the wood for the kiln, as much as is needed.

17. Oak timber, and likewise the vine-prop, is always ripe from the summer solstice to the winter solstice. Other timber that bears seed is ripe when the seed is mature. Timber that bears no seed is ripe when the bark peels. Because the cypress and the pine have green and ripe seed at once, you may gather their seed at any time of the year, and they too are ripe and seasonable at any time of the year. On the same trees there are two-year cones, from which the seed falls, and one-year cones; these last should be gathered as soon as they begin to gape. They first begin to ripen at seed-time, and afterwards remain ripe for more than eight months; this year's cones are green. The elm is ripe a second time when its leaves fall.

18. If you wish to build a pressing-room with four sets of vessels, so that they face each other, arrange the vessels in this manner. The press-posts two feet thick and nine feet high including the pivots; the slots three and a half feet long, cut out six inches deep, the first slot one and a half feet from the floor; between the posts and the walls two feet; between the two posts one foot; the posts set in a straight line up to the first standard, sixteen feet; the standards two feet thick, ten feet high including the pivots; the windlass, exclusive of the pivots, nine feet; the press-beam twenty-five feet long, including a tongue of two and a half feet; the floor for two sets of vessels, with two channels, thirty feet; the floor for the four crushing-mills, to right and left, twenty feet; the space for the levers between two standards, twenty-two feet; for the second set of vessels, on the opposite side, from the outermost standard to the wall behind the posts, twenty feet: total, for a pressing-room of four sets of vessels, sixty-six feet in breadth and fifty-two feet in length. Between the walls, where you are to set up the posts, lay good foundations five feet deep, and in them flint stones; let the whole bed be five feet long, two and a half feet wide, one and a half feet thick. There make a slot with two sockets, and set the posts on the socket in the stone. Between the two posts fill the remaining space with oak and pour in lead. Make the upper part of the posts six inches high, and set on it an oak capital, on which the standards may rest. Make foundations five feet deep, and in them set level a flint stone two and a half feet long, two and a half feet wide, one and a half feet thick; there set up the standards. Set up the other standard likewise. Over the posts and standards lay a level beam two feet wide, one foot thick, thirty-seven feet long; or use double beams if you have no solid ones. Beneath those beams, between the channels and the outer walls where the crushing-mills stand, lay a smaller beam twenty-three and a half feet long, a foot and a half thick, or put two in place of one. On these smaller beams lay the beams that stand above the posts and standards; on these timbers build up the walls and join them to the woodwork, so that it may have weight enough. When you make the basin, lay foundations five feet deep and six feet wide, and make the round basin and channel four and a half feet wide; for all the rest of the floor lay foundations two feet deep. First ram the foundations, then build them up in layers of half a foot each, with small rubble and lime mortar. Make the floors thus: when you have levelled, lay a first layer of gravel and lime mortar, beat it down with rammers, and make a second layer of the same; on this lay sifted lime two inches deep, and on that build the floor of dry potsherd; when it is built, ram and rub it smooth, so that it may be a good floor. Make the posts and standards of oak or pine. If you wish to make the beams shorter, finish off the channels outside the column; if you do so, the beams need be only twenty-two feet long. Make a press-board four feet wide, of Punic jointing, six inches thick; fit oak dovetails into it; when you have fastened them, secure them with pegs of cornel-wood. Into that board set three chains, and fasten the chains to the board with iron nails. Make the board of elm or hazel; if you have both, use them alternately.

19. For the wine vessels make the standards and posts two feet higher; above the slots of the posts, leaving a foot's space each way, make room for one fastener. Bore six holes half a foot apart each way in the windlass. Make the first hole half a foot from the pivot, and space the rest as evenly as possible. Make a peg-stop in the middle of the windlass. Whatever the midpoint is between the posts, level it to the centre where the peg-stop is to be fixed, so that the press-beam may rest truly in the middle. When you make the tongue, level it from the middle of the press-beam, so that it fits well between the posts; allow a thumb's breadth of play. The longest levers eighteen feet, the second sixteen feet, the third fifteen feet; the release-levers twelve feet, others ten, others eight.

20. How a crushing-mill should be put together. The iron pivot that stands in the central pillar should stand upright in the middle, true to the plumb-line; it should be well fixed round about with willow wedges, and lead poured in; take care that the pivot does not wobble. If it shifts, take it out, and do it again the same way, so that it does not move. Make the bearings in the wheels of oleaster wood from the orcis olive; cover them round with lead; take care they are not loose. Set them in the bar. Make the keys solid, a thumb-breadth wide; let them have a double lip, which you may fix with double nails so that they do not fall out.

21. Make the bar ten feet long, as thick as the bearings require, and let the middle part, which lies between the wheels, fit them. Pierce the middle, as wide as the iron pivot will be, so that you can insert the pivot. Into it set an iron pipe that fits both the pivot and the bar. Bore through the bar, right and left, four first-finger-breadths wide and three first-finger-breadths deep, and under the bar fasten an iron plate, as wide as the middle of the bar, pierced to fit the pivot. Where you have made the holes, right and left, bind them round with plates. Fold all four plates over onto the under part of the bar; on each side, beneath the plates, put little plates fixed to one another, so that the holes do not grow larger, into which the smaller bushings are set. Where the bar ends in the bearings, on each side make four iron tiles of your own to fasten there. Fasten the middle of the tiles with little nails. Above the tiles, on the outside, bore through the bar where the bolt is to pass that closes the wheel. Above the hole set an iron weight-plate six inches wide, pierced on both sides where the bolt passes. All this is done so that the bar may not be worn down on the stone. Make four rings to set round the wheel, so that the bar and the bolt may not be worn on the inside. Make the bar of elm or beech wood. Let the same smith make and fasten the ironwork that is needed: sixty pounds are needed. Buy four pounds of lead for the bar. For the workman who puts the bar together, sets in the bearings and runs in the lead, count eight days of a smith's labour: the same man should fit the crushing-mill. Total cost, seventy-two sesterces, besides the assistants.

22. The crushing-mill should be fitted thus. The fitter should set it level from the rims. The wheel should be a little finger's breadth above the bottom of the mortar. The wheels must be kept from grinding the mortar at all. Between the wheel and the central pillar there should be a finger's space. If there is more, and the wheels are too far off, wind a rope tightly round the pillar, close-coiled, to fill out the excess space. If the wheels are too high and grind the mortar too far down, set wooden discs, pierced, on the pillar at the central pillar, and so adjust the height. In the same way adjust the breadth with wooden discs or iron rings, until it is rightly fitted.

A crushing-mill was bought at Suessa for four hundred sesterces, and fifty pounds of oil; the fitting, sixty sesterces; the haulage by oxen, six days' work, six men with the ox-drivers, seventy-two sesterces; the bar, fitted, seventy-two sesterces; for the oil, twenty-five sesterces: total, six hundred and twenty-nine sesterces. At Pompeii one was bought, fitted, for three hundred and eighty-four sesterces; the haulage, two hundred and eighty sesterces; it is better put together and fitted at home, so there is a cost of sixty sesterces: total, seven hundred and twenty-four sesterces. If you procure wheels for old crushing-mills, make them a foot and three inches thick in the middle, a foot high, with a hole half a foot square each way. When you have brought them home, fit them to the mill. These are bought at the Rufrius quarries for one hundred and eighty sesterces, and fitted for thirty. They are bought at the same price at Pompeii.

23. See that what is needed for the vintage is got ready. Let the vessels be washed, the baskets mended and pitched, and the necessary jars pitched while it is raining; let the hampers be got ready and mended, the spelt ground, the small fish bought, the fallen olives salted. Gather the mixed grapes, the early wine for the labourers to drink, when the time comes. Divide the must, dry and clean, equally into the jars each day. If need be, add to the must boiled-down wine made from must that has been cooked off the lye: add a fortieth part of boiled-down must, or a pound and a half of salt to the culleus. If you add marble dust, add a pound to the culleus; put it into an urn, mix it with must, and pour it into the jar. If you add resin, take three pounds of resin to a culleus of must; pound it well, put it in a little basket, and let it hang in the jar of must; shake it often, so that the resin dissolves. When you have added boiled-down must, or marble, or resin, stir often for twenty days and pound it daily. Divide the last pressing of must, the run-off, separately into each jar and add it in equal measure.

24. Greek wine should be made thus. Gather well-ripened Apician grapes. When you have gathered them, into a culleus of their must put two quadrantals of old sea water, or a modius of pure salt; hang the salt in a little basket and let it dissolve in the must. If you wish to make helvolum wine, put in half helvolum and half Apician wine, and add a thirtieth part of old boiled-down must. Whenever you treat wine with boiled-down must, add a thirtieth part of it.

25. When the wine has matured and is being gathered, see that some is kept first for the household and your own people, and take care that you gather it well-ripened and dry, so that the wine may not lose its name. Sift the fresh grape-skins daily on a frame strung with ropes, or have a sieve made for the purpose. Tread them down into pitched jars or a pitched wine vat. Order this sealed up well, to give to the oxen through the winter. From the same, if you wish, you may wash off a little at a time: it will make second wine for the household to drink.

26. When the vintage is done, order the press vessels, the baskets, the hampers, the ropes, the props, and the fasteners each to be stored in its own place. See that the wine-jars are wiped out twice a day, and have separate brushes made for the purpose, with which to wipe round the rims of the jars. When the wine has stood thirty days, if the jars have been well cleared of skins, seal them up. If you wish to draw off the wine from the lees, this will be the best time for it.

27. Sow your seed: clover, vetch, fenugreek, beans, bitter vetch, fodder for the oxen. Make a second and a third sowing of fodder; then sow the other crops. Dig trenches in the fallow for olives, elms, vines, and figs; sow them together with the seed. If the place is dry, sow the olives at seed-time, and then prune low those that were planted before while they are still tender, and dig trenches round the trees.

28. When you plant olives, elms, figs, fruit trees, vines, pines, and cypresses, take them up carefully with their roots and with as much of their own soil as possible, and bind it round so that you can carry them; order them carried in a trough or a basket. Take care not to dig them up or carry them when there is wind or rain, for that is most of all to be avoided. When you set them in the trench, put the top soil at the bottom; then cover the roots with earth, then tread it down well with the feet, then ram it as hard as you can with rammers and bars: this will be the chief thing in the business. Trees more than five inches thick should be cut back before planting; smear the tops with dung and tie them up with leaves.

29. Divide the dung thus. Cart half of it onto the grain field where you sow fodder; and if there are olives there, dig trenches round them at the same time and add dung; afterwards sow the fodder. Add a quarter of it round the trenched olives, when there is most need, and cover the dung with earth. Reserve the other quarter for the meadow, and cart it out, when there is most need, while the west wind is blowing, at the new moon.

30. Give the oxen elm, poplar, oak, and fig leaves, as long as you have them. Give the sheep green leaves as long as you have them. Where you are going to sow, pasture the sheep there, and give them leaves until the fodder is mature. Keep the dry fodder that you store for winter as carefully as you can, and bear in mind how long the winter is.

31. Let what is needed for gathering the olives be got ready. Let the withies be ripe, the willow gathered in season, so that there may be material from which to make baskets and to mend the old ones. For fasteners, see that dry holm-oak, elm, walnut, and fig wood is thrown into dung or water; from these, when need arises, make the fasteners. Make levers of holm-oak, holly, laurel, and elm, and see that they are ready. Make the press-beam preferably of black hornbeam. Elm, pine, walnut, and all other such timber, when you dig it up, take out at the waning of the moon, after midday, when the south wind is not blowing. It will be ready when its seed is ripe; take care not to drag or hew it when there is dew. Timber that bears no seed is ready when the bark peels. When the south wind blows, take care to handle no timber, nor wine either, unless from necessity.

32. Begin to prune your vines and trees in good season. Layer the vine-shoots into the furrows; and so far as you can, train the vine upwards. Prune the trees in this way, so that the branches you leave are spread apart and are cut off cleanly, and so that not too many are left close together. Let the vines be well knotted; throughout all the branches take care not to throw down the vine nor to bind it too tight. See that the trees are well wedded to the vines, and that vines enough are attached; and where need be, let them be let down from the tree so that they may be pressed into the ground, and two years later cut off the old wood.

33. Tend the vineyard in this way. Tie up a well-knotted vine straight, so that it is not crooked, and always train it upwards as far as you can. Leave the fruit-bearers and the watch-shoots properly. Make the vine as tall as you can, and tie it up properly, but do not bind it too tight. Tend it thus. At seed-time dig trenches round the heads of the vines. Dig round a pruned vineyard, begin to plough, and draw continuous furrows back and forth. Layer the tender vines as soon as possible, and harrow them in. Trim the old wood as little as possible; rather, if need be, let it down and cut it off two years later. The time to cut back a young vine will be when it is strong. If the vineyard is bare of vines, set in furrows and there plant a rooted cutting; clear the shade from the furrows and dig often. In an old vineyard sow clover if it is lean (but do not sow anything that bears grain), and round the heads add dung, chaff, grape-skins, or some of these, that it may thrive the better. When the vineyard begins to leaf, thin the leaves. Tie up the young vines often, so that the stems are not broken; and when one has reached the trellis, tie up its tender shoots lightly and direct them so that they grow rightly. When the grapes begin to turn colour, bind up the vines, thin the leaves, expose the grapes, and hoe round the heads.

Cut the willow-bed in season, peel it, and tie it tightly. Keep the bark; when there is need for it in the vineyard, throw some of it into water and tie with it. Keep the withies for making baskets.

34. I return to seed-time. Wherever the ground is coldest and wettest, sow there first; in the warmest places the sowing should be done last. Take care not to handle rotten ground. In reddish soil, dark loam, gravelly, sandy ground, and likewise ground that is not wet, lupine will do well. In chalk, marshy ground, red soil, and ground that is wet, sow chiefly bearded wheat. Where the ground is dry and free of weeds, open and clear of shade, sow wheat there.

35. Sow beans in strong ground not subject to disaster. Sow vetch and fenugreek in places as free as possible of weeds. Winter wheat and wheat should be sown in an open, high place where the sun lingers as long as possible. Sow lentils in gravelly, reddish ground that is free of weeds. Sow barley in ground that is new or that can be cropped year after year. Three-month wheat should be sown where you have not been able to do the sowing in season, and where the ground, being rich, can be cropped continuously. Sow turnip, and the rape from which turnip-tops come, and radish, in well-manured or rich ground.

36. What manures the field. Pigeon dung should be spread on the meadow, the garden, or the field. Goat, sheep, and cattle dung, and likewise all other dung, keep carefully. Spread or water the trees with oil-lees: round the larger heads add amphorae of it, round the smaller, urns mixed with half their measure of water, after first digging round them, but not deep.

37. What is harmful to the crop. To handle rotten ground. Chickpea, because it is pulled up and is salt, is for that reason harmful. Barley, fenugreek, and bitter vetch, all these and all things that are pulled up exhaust the field. Do not put kernels into the crop.

What crops manure the field: lupine, beans, vetch.

What you may make dung from: straw, lupine, chaff, bean-stalks, husks, holm-oak and oak leaves. From the crop pull up the danewort, the hemlock, and round the willow-beds the tall grass and the sedge; lay these down as bedding for the sheep and oxen, together with rotted leaves. Sift out part of the kernels and throw them into a tank; add water and mix well with a shovel; from this add the mud round the trenched olives, and add the burned kernels likewise. If the vine is lean, cut up its own prunings small and plough or dig them in on the spot.

In winter do these things by lamplight: hew dry the props and stakes that you set under cover the day before, make torches, carry out the dung. But do not touch timber except between moons, at the half-moon. Whatever you dig up or cut off from the ground will be taken out best on the seven days immediately after the full moon. Take care above all not to hew, cut, or touch any timber, if you can help it, unless it is dry, and not when it is frosty or dewy. See that you hoe and weed the grain twice, and strip off the wild oats. From the pruned vines and trees gather up the prunings and make faggots, and stack the vine-prunings and the fig wood for the furnace, and the small logs in a pile for the master.

38. Make a lime-kiln ten feet wide and twenty feet high, and bring the top in to three feet wide. If you burn with one stoke-hole, make a large pit inside, big enough to hold the ashes, so that they need not be drawn out. Build the kiln well; see that the firebox encloses the whole bottom of the kiln. If you burn with two stoke-holes, there will be no need of a pit; when the ashes have to be dug out, dig them out at one stoke-hole, while the fire is in the other. Take care never to let the fire die out, and see that it is not interrupted by night or at any time. Put into the kiln good stone, as white and as little mottled as you can. When you build the kiln, make the jaws drop steeply downward. When you have dug deep enough, then make room for the kiln, so that it is as deep as possible and as little exposed to wind. If you have too shallow a place to build it, raise the top with brick, or smear the top on the outside with rubble and mud. When you have lit the fire, if any flame comes out except through the top opening, smear it with mud. Take care that no wind reaches the stoke-hole, and there guard above all against the south wind. This will be the sign that the lime is burned: the topmost stones should be calcined; likewise the lowest stones will fall calcined, and the flame will come out with less smoke.

If you cannot sell wood and twigs, and have no stone from which to burn lime, then burn charcoal from the wood; and the twigs and prunings that are left over from your use, burn on the field. Where you have burned them, there sow poppy.

39. When the weather is bad and work cannot be done, carry the dung out to the dung pit. Clean out the ox-stall, the sheepfold, the yard, and the farmhouse well. Bind the jars with lead, or tie them with green-dry oak. If you mend or bind a jar well, put a salve in the cracks, and pitch it well, you can make any wine-jar of it. Make the salve for the jar thus: a pound of wax, a pound of resin, two ounces of sulphur. Put all this into a new pot, add powdered gypsum till it has the consistency of a plaster, and mend the jars with it. When you have mended them, to make the colour match, mix two parts of raw chalk with a third of lime; from this make little bricks, bake them in the kiln, grind them, and apply the powder.

When it rains, look about the farmhouse for what can be done. So that there be no idleness, do the tidying. Bear in mind that even if nothing is done, the expense will be no less.

40. In spring these things should be done: furrows and trenches made, the ground turned for seed-beds and vine-nurseries, the vines layered; in rich, moist places elms, figs, fruit trees, and olives should be planted. Figs, olives, apples, pears, and vines should be grafted at the new moon, after midday, when the south wind is not blowing. Graft olives, figs, pears, and apples thus. The branch you are to graft, cut off and slope a little, so that water runs off; when you cut it, take care not to tear the bark. Take a hard slip, sharpen it to a point, and split a Greek willow. Add clay or chalk, a little sand and cattle dung, and knead these well together, so that it becomes as sticky as possible. Take the split willow and tie it round the cut stock, so that the bark does not break. When you have done this, drive the sharpened slip between the bark and the wood two first-finger-breadths in. Then take the slip of the kind you wish to graft and sharpen the end of it to a slanting point, two first-finger-breadths long. Take out the dry slip you have driven in, and put in its place the slip you wish to graft. Set bark to bark, and drive it in as far as you sharpened it. Do the same with a second, a third, a fourth slip: put in as many kinds as you wish. Tie more Greek willow round, smear the stock with kneaded mud three fingers thick, and over it tie an ox-tongue (the plant), so that, if it rains, water may not soak into the bark. Tie that ox-tongue over the bark, so that it does not fall off; then wrap and tie straw round it, so that the frost may not harm it.

41. There is one grafting of the vine in spring, another when the vine is in flower, and the latter is best. The grafting of pears and apples is in spring, also for fifty days at the summer solstice, and at the vintage. The grafting of the olive and the fig is in spring. Graft the vine thus: cut off the vine you are to graft, and split it down the middle through the pith; into it drive the sharpened slips, and when you graft them, set pith to pith. There is a second grafting: if vine touches vine, sharpen the tender wood of each obliquely, and tie them together, pith to pith and bark to bark. There is a third grafting: bore through the vine you are to graft with an auger, and into it drive two vine-slips of the kind you wish, cut obliquely, up to the pith; see that you join pith to pith, and drive in the one on one side and the other on the other side, where you bored. Make these slips two feet long, sink them into the ground, bend them back to the head of the vine, fix the middles of the vine in the ground with ties, and cover them with earth. Smear all this with kneaded mud, tie and cover it in the same way as the olives.

42. Graft figs and olives by another method. From whatever kind of fig or olive you wish, cut out the bark with a knife, and from the fig of the kind you wish to have, cut another piece of bark with a bud; fit it onto the place from which you cut the bark on the other kind, and see that it matches. Make the bark three and a half fingers long and three fingers wide. Smear and cover it in the same way as the rest.

43. If the place is wet, the trenches should be trough-shaped, three feet wide at the top, four feet deep, one foot and a palm wide at the bottom. Floor them with stone; if there is no stone, floor them with green willow poles laid crosswise; if there are no poles, with bundles of brushwood tied together. Then make planting-holes three and a half feet deep and four feet wide, and arrange that water runs from the hole into the trench; so plant the olives. For vines make trenches and layer-holes not less than two and a half feet each way. If you wish the vineyard and the olives you have planted to grow quickly, you should dig the trenches once a month, and round the heads of the olives every month, until they are three years old. Tend the other trees in the same way.

44. Begin to prune the olive grove fifteen days before the spring equinox. From that day you will prune rightly for forty-five days. Prune in this manner. Where the place is rightly fertile, take out whatever is dry and whatever the wind has broken. Where the place is not fertile, cut and plough it more. Clear the knots well and make the stems smooth.

45. Cut the olive sets that you are to plant in trenches three feet long, and handle them carefully so that the bark does not suffer when you hew or saw them. Those you are to plant in the nursery make a foot long, and graft them thus. Let the place be worked with the double mattock, the soil well softened and well crumbled. When you put in the set, press it down with the foot. If it does not go down far enough, drive it in with a mallet or maul, and take care not to split the bark as you drive it. Do not first make a hole with a stake into which to sink the set. If you plant it so that the set stands upright, it will live better. Sets are at last mature when they are three years old, when the bark turns. If you plant them in trenches or furrows, set three sets together and spread them apart, so that they project not more than four fingers above ground; or plant cuttings with eyes.

46. Make the seed-bed in this way. Choose the best, most open, and most richly manured place you can, and one whose soil is as nearly as possible like that where you are to set the plants, and so that the plants need not be carried too far from the seed-bed. Turn that place with the double mattock, clear away the stones, fence it well round, and plant in rows. Sink the set a foot and a half each way and press it down with the foot; if you cannot press it down far enough, drive it in with a mallet or maul. See that the plants project a finger's breadth above ground, smear the top of the set with cattle dung, set a mark by the set, and hoe often, if you wish the plants to grow quickly. Plant the other slips in the same way.

47. Plant reed thus: set the eyes three feet apart. Make and plant a vine-nursery in the same way. When the vine is two years old, cut it back; when three years old, take it up. If stock is to graze where you wish to plant the vine, cut it back three times before you set it by the tree. When it has five old joints, then set it by the tree. Plant leek every year, and every year you will have something to take up.

48. Make a seed-bed for fruit trees in the same way as for olives. Plant each kind of set by itself. When you plant cypress seed, turn the soil with the double mattock. Plant in early spring. Make the beds five feet wide; add fine dung; hoe and break up the clods. Make the bed level, a little hollow. Then sow the seed thick, like flax, and over it sift earth through a sieve a finger's breadth deep. Level that earth with a board or with the feet, fix forks round about, stretch poles across, and lay on brushwood or fig-wood hurdles to keep off the cold and the sun. Make it so that a man can walk underneath. Weed often. As soon as the grass begins to grow, take it out; for if you pull up the hard grass, you will pull up the cypresses with it. Sow and cover pear and apple seed in the same way. Sow pine-nuts in the same way, but like garlic.

49. If you wish to transplant an old vine to another place, you may, provided it is no thicker than an arm. First prune it back, leaving no more than two buds. Dig it well from the roots, follow out all the roots, and take care not to wound them. Set it in the trench or furrow just as it stood, cover it, and tread it down well; set up the vine in the same way, tie and bend it as it was, and dig often round it.

50. Manure the meadows at the new moon in early spring. Those that are not watered, when the west wind begins to blow and you fence off the meadows, clean and dig out by the roots all the bad weeds. When you have pruned the vineyard, make a pile of the wood and twigs. Prune the figs between, and in the vineyard trim the figs high, so that the vine may not climb them. Make seed-beds and repair the old ones. Do these things before you begin to dig the vineyard. When the sacrificial meal has been offered and eaten, begin the spring ploughing. Plough first the places that are driest, and plough last those that are richest and wettest, but not so late that they harden first.

51. The layering of fruit trees and other trees. The shoots that spring from the tree at the ground, press into the earth and raise the tip, so that it may take root; then two years later dig it up and plant it. The fig, the olive, the pomegranate, the quince and all other fruit trees, the laurel, the myrtle, the Praenestine nut, the plane — all these should be layered from the parent stock.

52. and taken up and planted in the same way. Those you wish to layer more carefully should be layered in pots or in pierced baskets and carried down into the trench with them. To make trees take root, pierce a pot; pass through its bottom, or through a basket, the branch you wish to take root; fill the basket or pot with earth, tread it down well, and leave it on the tree. When it is two years old, cut the branch off below the basket. Cut the basket through from the bottom all the way; if it is a pot, break it. With that basket or pot, set it in the trench. Do the same with a vine; a year later cut it off and plant it with the basket. In this way you may layer any kind you wish.

53. Cut the hay when the time comes, and take care not to cut it too late. Cut it before the seed is ripe, and store the best hay apart, for the spring ploughing, before you give the clover for the oxen to eat.

54. Fodder for the oxen should be prepared and given thus. When you have finished sowing, mast should be got ready and gathered and thrown into water. From this give each ox half a modius a day; and if they are not at work, it will be better to pasture them, or give a modius of grape-skins that you have stored in a jar. Pasture them by day; at night give one ox twenty-five pounds of hay. If there is no hay, give holm-oak and ivy leaves. Store all wheat and barley straw, bean husks, vetch and lupine husks, and likewise the husks of other crops. When you store straw, store under cover what is weediest and sprinkle it with salt, and then give it in place of hay. When you begin to feed in spring, give a modius of mast or grape-skins, or a modius of soaked lupine and fifteen pounds of hay. When clover is in season, give it first. Pluck it with the hands and it will grow again; what you cut with the sickle will not grow again. Give clover till it dries off, and so manage it. After that give vetch, then panic grass; after the panic grass give elm leaves. If you have poplar leaves, mix them in, so that the elm may go further. When you have no elm, give oak and fig. Nothing is more profitable than to take good care of the oxen. Oxen should not be pastured except in winter, when they are not ploughing; for when they eat green fodder, they always expect it, and you must muzzle them so that they do not strain after the grass while ploughing.

55. Store wood for the master under cover; pile the olive logs and roots in a heap under the open sky, in cone-shaped stacks.

56. The food allowance of the household. Those who do the work: in winter four modii of wheat, in summer four and a half; for the overseer, the overseer's wife, the foreman, and the shepherd, three modii. For the chained slaves, in winter four pounds of bread; when they begin to dig the vineyard, five pounds, until the figs begin to ripen; then go back to four pounds.

57. Wine for the household. When the vintage is done, let them drink second wine for three months; in the fourth month a hemina a day, that is, two and a half congii a month; in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth months a sextarius a day, that is, five congii a month; in the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth months three heminae a day, that is, an amphora a month; and besides this, at the Saturnalia and the Compitalia, three and a half congii for each man: total wine per man through the year, seven quadrantals. For the chained slaves, add in proportion to the work they do; it is not too much for them to drink ten quadrantals of wine each in the year.

58. The relish for the household. Store as many of the fallen olives as you can. Afterwards store the ripe olives that will yield the least oil, and use them sparingly so that they last as long as possible. When the olives are eaten, give fish-brine and vinegar. Give each one a sextarius of oil a month. A modius of salt a year is enough for each.

59. Clothing for the household. A tunic of three and a half feet, and a cloak every other year. Whenever you give anyone a tunic or cloak, first take back the old one, to make patchwork of. Good wooden shoes should be given every other year.

60. The yearly fodder for the oxen, per yoke: one hundred and twenty modii of lupine, or two hundred and forty modii of mast; hay, four hundred and twenty pounds; clover; twenty modii of beans; thirty modii of vetch. Besides, see that you sow enough vetch for seed. When you sow fodder, make many sowings.

61. What is it to till a field well? To plough well. What is second? To plough. What is third? To manure. He who hoes his olive grove most often and deepest will plough out the finest roots; if he ploughs badly, the roots will run upward and grow thicker, and the strength of the olive will go into the roots. When you plough a grain field, plough well and in good season, and do not plough with a crooked furrow. For the rest of the cultivation, hoe much, take up the seedlings carefully, and in season carry as many roots as possible with their soil; when you have covered the roots well, tread them down well, so that water may not harm them. If anyone asks what is the time for planting the olive: in dry ground at seed-time, in rich ground in spring.

62. As many yoke of oxen, mules, or asses as you have, you should have just so many carts.

63. The press-rope should be stretched fifty-five feet; the leather cart-rope sixty feet; the binding-thongs twenty-six feet long; the cart yoke-straps eighteen feet; the cord fifteen feet; for the plough the yoke-straps sixteen feet, the cord eight feet.

64. When the olives are ripe, they should be gathered as soon as possible, and lie as short a time as possible on the ground and on the floor; on the ground and on the floor they rot. The gatherers want the fallen olives to be as many as possible, so that there is more to gather; the pressmen want them to lie long on the floor, so that they soften and are easier to work. Do not believe that oil can increase on the floor. The more quickly you press, the more it will profit you; from the same number of modii you will get both more oil and better. Olives that have lain long on the ground or on the floor yield less oil, and worse. Draw off the oil, if you can, twice a day; for the longer the oil stays in the lees and dregs, the worse it will be.

65. Make green oil thus. Take the olives off the ground as soon as possible. If they are dirty, wash them, and clean them of leaves and dirt. Press them the next day, or the day after they are gathered. When the olive is black, strip it. The more bitter the olive from which you make the oil, the better the oil will be. It is most to the master's profit that the oil be made from ripe olives. If there are frosts when you gather the olives, make the oil three or four days afterwards. If you wish, sprinkle these olives with salt. Keep the pressing-room and the cellar as warm as you can.

66. The duties of the watchman and the oil-drawer. Let him guard the cellar and the pressing-room carefully. Let him take care that as few as possible go into the pressing-room and the cellar. Let everything be done as cleanly and purely as possible. Let him not use a copper vessel, nor the kernels, for the oil; for if he does, the oil will have a bad taste. Set a leaden cauldron in the vat, into which the oil may flow. When the pressmen press with the levers, let the oil-drawer at once take up the oil with the shell, as carefully as he can, and not stop. Let him take care not to take up the lees. Put the oil first into one vat, then into another jar. From these vats always draw off the dregs and lees. When you have taken the oil from the cauldron, drain off the lees.

67. Again, the duties of the watchman. Let those who are in the pressing-room keep the vessels clean, and take care that the olives are well worked and well dried. Let them not cut wood in the pressing-room. Let them draw off the oil frequently. Let him give the pressmen for each pressing a sextarius of oil, and as much as is needed for the lamp. Let him throw out the dregs daily. Let him change the lees continually, until at last it reaches the vat that is in the cellar. Let him wipe the press-baskets with a sponge. Let him change the place of the oil daily, until it reaches the storage jar. In the pressing-room and the cellar let him take careful care that no oil is stolen.

68. When the vintage and the oil-making are done, raise the press-beams; hang the press-ropes, the mainstays, and the draw-ropes on the meat-rack or on the press; put back in its own place each of the discs, fasteners, levers, blocks, press-baskets, hampers, baskets, ladders, props, and whatever else has been used.

69. Treat new oil jars thus. Fill them with lees for seven days, and see that you keep filling up the lees daily. Then take out the lees and let them dry. When they are dry, soak gum in water the day before, and dilute it the next day. Then warm the jar, but less than if you wished to pitch it; it is enough that it be lukewarm; make it warm with a gentle fire. When it is moderately warm, put in the gum, and then smear it on. If you smear it rightly, four pounds of gum will be enough for a fifty-measure jar.

70. A medicine for the oxen. If you fear sickness, give to the healthy ones three grains of salt, three laurel leaves, three leek-fibres, three spikes of wild leek, three cloves of garlic, three grains of frankincense, three plants of savin, three rue leaves, three stalks of white vine, three white beans, three live coals, and three sextarii of wine. All these should be gathered, ground, and given in an elevated position. Let the one who gives it be fasting. Give of this draught to each ox for three days. So divide it that, when you have given to each three times, you use it all up; and see that both the ox itself and the one who gives it stand in an elevated position. Give it in a wooden vessel.

71. If an ox begins to sicken, give it at once one raw hen's egg; see that it swallows it whole. The next day grind a head of wild leek with a hemina of wine, and make it drink it. Grind it in an elevated position and give it in a wooden vessel, and let both the ox and the one who gives stand in an elevated position. Let the one who gives, fasting, give it to the fasting ox.

72. So that the oxen do not wear away their feet, before you drive them anywhere on the road, anoint the soles of their hooves with liquid pitch.

73. When the grapes begin to turn colour, give the oxen the medicine every year, so that they keep well. When you see a snake's skin, take it and store it, so that you need not look for it when there is need. Grind this skin, with spelt, salt, and thyme, all together with wine, and give it to all the oxen to drink. Through the summer take care that the oxen always drink good clear water: it matters for their health.

74. Make kneaded bread thus. Wash the hands and the mortar well. Put flour into the mortar, add water little by little, and knead it thoroughly. When you have kneaded it well, shape it and bake it under a crock.

75. Make a sacrificial cake thus. Crush two pounds of cheese thoroughly in a mortar. When you have crushed it well, put in a pound of wheat flour, or, if you wish it to be lighter, half a pound of fine flour, and mix it well with the cheese. Add one egg and mix it in well. From this make a loaf, lay leaves under it, and bake it slowly under a crock on a warm hearth.

76. Make a flat-cake thus. Two pounds of wheat flour for the base; for the sheets, four pounds of flour and two pounds of best groats. Soak the groats in water. When they are well softened, put them into a clean mortar and dry them well; then knead them with the hands. When they are well kneaded, add four pounds of flour little by little, and of both make the sheets. Lay them out in a basket to dry; when they are dry, lay them out neatly. As you make each sheet, when you have kneaded it, dab it with a cloth dipped in oil, wipe it round and grease it. When the sheets are ready, heat the hearth where you will bake, and the crock, well. Then sprinkle and knead in two pounds of flour, and from it make a thin base. Put fourteen pounds of sheep's cheese, not sour and quite fresh, into water; soak it there, changing the water three times. Take it out and dry it well, little by little, with the hands; when it is well dried, put it into a mortar. When you have dried all the cheese well, knead it together in a clean mortar with the hands and break it up as much as you can. Then take a clean flour-sieve and pass the cheese through the sieve into the mortar. Then add four and a half pounds of good honey; mix this well with the cheese. Then on a clean board, a foot wide, lay a band, place greased laurel leaves under it, and shape the cake. First lay single sheets over the whole base, then spread the mixture from the mortar over the sheets; add the sheets one by one, and smear each likewise, until you have used up all the cheese with honey. On top lay single sheets, then draw the base together and trim it; heat the hearth from the first in good time and adjust it; then set on the cake, cover it with a hot crock, and heap embers on top and round about. See that you bake it well and slowly. Open it, to look at it, two or three times. When it is baked, take it out and anoint it with honey. This will be a half-modius cake.

77. Make a spiral cake thus. As much as you wish, in proportion, make all the same as for the flat-cake, except shape it differently. Smear the base well with sheets and honey. Then handle it as you would a cord, and so lay it on the base, packing the single coils well and tightly. For all the rest, make and bake it as you would the flat-cake.

78. Make a tart thus. Make it in the band, with sheets and cheese, in the same way as the flat-cake, but without honey.

79. Make dumplings thus. Mix cheese and groats in the same way. From it make as many as you wish. Put fat into a hot copper pan; cook them one or two at a time, turning them often with two sticks; when cooked, take them out, anoint them with honey, sprinkle them with poppy, and so serve them.

80. Make a pour-cake in the same way as the dumplings, except have a cup pierced through and hollow. So pour into the hot fat. Make it handsome, like a spiral, and turn it with two sticks and present it. Likewise anoint it and brown it, but not too hot. Serve it with honey or honey-wine.

81. Make a pot-cake just like a flat-cake. Put into it all the same things as into a flat-cake. Mix it in a trough, put it into an earthen pot, lower this into a copper pan full of hot water, and so cook it over the fire. When it is cooked, break the pot, and so serve it.

82. Make a ball-cake just like a spiral cake, except shape it thus. From the sheets, cheese, and honey, make balls a fist high. Lay them close together on the base, arrange them in the same way as the spiral cake, and bake them likewise.

83. Make a vow for the oxen, that they may keep well, thus. To Mars and Silvanus, in the wood, by day, make a vow for each head of oxen. Three pounds of spelt, four and a half pounds of lard, four and a half pounds of meat, three sextarii of wine: these you may put into one vessel, and likewise put the wine into one vessel. A slave or a free man may perform this rite. When the rite is done, consume it at once on the spot. No woman is to be present at this rite or to see how it is done. This vow you may make every year, if you wish.

84. Make a custard thus. Mix half a pound of flour and two and a half pounds of cheese together, as for the sacrificial cake, with a pound of honey and one egg. Grease an earthen dish with oil. When you have mixed everything well, put it into the dish and cover the dish with a crock. See that you bake the middle, where it is deepest, well through. When it is baked, take out the dish, anoint it with honey, sprinkle it with poppy, set it under the crock a little while, and then take it out. So serve it with a little plate and a spoon.

85. Cook a Punic porridge thus. Put a pound of groats into water and let it soak well. Pour it into a clean trough; add three pounds of fresh cheese, half a pound of honey, and one egg, and mix all well together. So pour it into a new pot.

86. Make wheat-pudding thus. Put half a pound of clean wheat into a clean mortar, wash it well, rub off the husk well, and rinse it well. Then put it into a pot with clean water and cook it. When it is cooked, add milk little by little, until a thick cream is formed.

87. Make starch thus. Clean fine wheat well, then put it into a trough and add water to it twice a day. On the tenth day pour off the water, wring it out well, mix it well in a clean trough, and let it become like dregs. Put it into a new linen cloth and squeeze out the cream into a new pan or a mortar. Do all of it thus, and rub it through again. Set the pan in the sun to dry. When it is dry, put it into a new pot and cook it with milk.

88. Make white salt thus. Fill a clean amphora with its neck broken off with clean water and set it in the sun. Hang there a little basket of common salt and shake it and keep filling it up. Do this several times a day, every day, until the salt stops dissolving for two days. This will be the sign: drop in a dried fish or an egg; if it floats, the brine is ready, in which to preserve meat or cheese or salt fish. Set this brine in a basin or in pans in the sun. Keep it in the sun until it congeals; from this comes the flower of salt. When it grows cloudy, and at night, put it under cover; every day, when the sun is out, set it in the sun.

89. Stuff hens and geese thus. Shut up the tender hens that are first laying. Make pellets of barley meal or flour moistened with water, dip them in water, and put them in the mouth, adding a little more each day; judge by the throat what is enough. Cram twice a day, and at midday give them to drink, but let the water not stand by them more than one hour. Feed the goose in the same way, except give it to drink first, and twice a day, twice food.

90. Stuff a freshly caught ringdove thus. When it is caught, first give it cooked, toasted beans, blown from your mouth into its mouth, and likewise water. Do this for seven days. Then take clean ground beans and clean spelt, and let a third part of the beans come to the boil; then put in the spelt, do it cleanly, and cook it well. When you have taken it out, knead it well, grease your hand with oil, first a little, then knead it more, touch it with oil and knead it, until you can make pellets of it. Give it from water, and so adjust the feed.

91. Make a threshing-floor thus. Dig over the place where you will make it. Then sprinkle it well with oil-lees and let them soak in. Then break up the clods well. Then level it and beat it with rammers. Then sprinkle it again with oil-lees and let it dry. If you do this, neither ants will harm it nor weeds grow on it.

92. So that the weevil may not harm the grain, nor mice touch it. Make a mud of oil-lees, add a little chaff, let it soften well, and knead it well; with this thick mud smear the whole granary. Then sprinkle with oil-lees all that you have smeared. When it has dried, store the grain there cooled; the weevil will not harm it.

93. If an olive bears no fruit, dig a trench round it. Then lay straw round about. Then mix oil-lees with water in equal parts, and pour it round the olive. For a very large tree an urn of the mixture is enough; for smaller trees add in proportion. And if you do this same thing to fruitful trees, they too will be the better. Do not add straw to those.

94. That figs may hold their young fruit, do everything as for the olives, and besides, when spring comes on, bank earth well round them. If you do this, the unripe figs will not fall, the figs will not be scabby, and they will be far more fruitful.

95. That there be no caterpillar in the vineyard. Store oil-lees, make them quite pure, and put two congii into a copper vessel. Then cook over a gentle fire, stirring often with a little stick, until it is as thick as honey. Then take a third of a sextarius of bitumen and a fourth of a sextarius of sulphur. Grind each separately in a mortar. Then crumble them as finely as you can into the hot oil-lees, stir at the same time with the little stick, and cook again under the open sky; for if you cook it under cover, when the bitumen and sulphur are added, it will flare up. When it is as thick as birdlime, let it cool. Anoint the vine round the head and under the arms with this; no caterpillar will arise.

96. That the sheep may not become scabby. Store oil-lees, make them quite pure; mix together in equal parts the water in which lupine has been boiled and the dregs of good wine. Then, when you have sheared them, anoint them all over and let them sweat for two or three days. Then wash them in the sea; if you have no sea water, make salt water and wash them with it. If you do this, they will not become scabby, will have more and better wool, and the ticks will not trouble them. Use the same on all four-footed beasts if they are scabby.

97. With boiled-down oil-lees anoint the axle, the thongs, the shoes, and the leather: you will make all of them better.

98. That moths may not touch the clothing. Boil oil-lees down to half, and with it anoint the bottom of the chest, both inside and out, the feet, and the corners. When it has dried, store the clothing. If you do this, the moths will not harm it. And likewise if you anoint all wooden furniture with it, it will not rot; and when you have wiped it, it will become brighter. Likewise anoint all bronze, but first wipe it well; then, after you have anointed it, when you wish to use it, wipe it again. It will be brighter, and the verdigris will not trouble it.

99. If you wish dried figs to keep whole, store them in an earthen vessel. Anoint it with boiled-down oil-lees.

100. If you are going to put oil into a new jar, first rinse it with oil-lees just as they are, raw, and stir long, so that the jar soaks it in well. If you do this, the jar will not drink the oil, the oil will keep better, and the jar itself will be stronger.

101. If you wish to keep myrtle sprigs with their berries, and likewise any other kind you wish, and if you wish to keep fig twigs with their leaves, tie them together, make little bundles, and lower them into oil-lees; see that the oil-lees stand above them. But take those you mean to lower a little before they are ripe. Smear over well the vessel in which you store them.

102. If a serpent bites an ox or any other four-footed beast, take an acetabulum of the black cumin that the doctors call smyrnaean, grind it in a hemina of old wine, and pour it through the nostrils; and to the bite itself apply hog's dung. And do this same thing to a man, if need arise.

103. That the oxen may keep well and be in good condition, and that those which loathe their food may take it more eagerly, sprinkle the fodder you give them with oil-lees: at first a little, until they grow used to it, then more, and give it now and then to drink, mixed evenly with water. Do this every fourth or fifth day. So the oxen will be in better condition in body, and sickness will keep away.

104. Wine for the household to use through the winter. Put ten quadrantals of must into a jar; pour in two quadrantals of sharp vinegar, two of boiled-down must, and fifty of fresh water. Mix this with a stick three times a day for five days running. Add sixty-four sextarii of old sea water, put the cover on the jar, and seal it after ten days. This wine will last you until the summer solstice. Whatever is left over after the solstice will be the sharpest and finest vinegar.

105. On a farm far from the sea, make Greek wine thus. Pour twenty quadrantals of must into a copper or leaden vessel and put fire under it. When the wine boils, draw off the fire. When this wine has cooled, pour it into a forty-measure jar. Separately, in another vessel, pour one quadrantal of fresh water and one of salt; let it become brine. When the brine is made, pour it into the same jar. Pound in a mortar enough rush and sweet-flag, one sextarius, and pour it into the same jar, so that it may be fragrant. After thirty days seal the jar. In spring rack it off into amphorae. Let it stand set in the sun for two years. Then bring it under cover. This wine will be no worse than Coan.

106. The making of sea water. Take one quadrantal of sea water from the deep, where fresh water does not come. Roast a pound and a half of salt, put it in, and stir with a stick until a cooked hen's egg floats; then stop stirring. Pour into it two congii of old wine, either Aminnian or mixed white, and mix well. Then pour it into a pitched vessel and seal it. If you wish to make more sea water, do all this in proportion.

107. With what to smear the rims of the jars, so that they may be fragrant and that no fault may pass into the wine. Pour six congii of the best boiled-down must into a copper or leaden vessel, and pound as finely as you can, together with the must, a hemina of dried, crushed iris and five pounds of well-scented Campanian melilot; sift it through a sieve and cook it together with the boiled-down must over a brushwood and gentle flame. Stir it; see that you do not scorch it. Cook until you boil away half. When it has cooled, pour it into a pitched, well-scented vessel, seal it, and use it on the rims of the jars.

108. If you wish to test whether wine will keep or not, put half an acetabulum of coarse barley meal into a new little cup, and pour into it a sextarius of the wine you wish to test; set it on coals and make it boil twice or three times. Then strain it and throw away the barley meal; set the wine in the open air. The next morning taste it. If it has the taste of what is in the jar, know that it will keep; if it is sourish, it will not keep.

109. If you wish to make rough wine mild and pleasant, do thus. Make four pounds of meal from bitter vetch, and moisten it with four cyathi of wine and boiled-down must. Then make little bricks. Let them soak in night and day. Then mix them in the jar with that wine, and seal it after sixty days. This wine will be mild and pleasant, of good colour and well scented.

110. To take a bad smell from wine. Heat a thick, clean potsherd from a roof-tile well in the fire. When it is hot, pitch it, tie a little cord to it, and lower the sherd gently to the bottom of the jar; leave the jar sealed for two days. If the bad smell is taken away, that is best; if not, do it more often, until you have taken away the bad smell.

111. If you wish to know whether water has been added to wine or not, make a little vessel of ivy wood. Lower into it the wine you think has water in it. If it has water, the wine will run out and the water will stay; for an ivy-wood vessel does not hold wine.

112. If you wish to make Coan wine, take sea water from the deep when the sea is calm, when there is no wind, seventy days before the vintage, where no fresh water reaches. When you have drawn it from the sea, pour it into a jar; do not fill it, but let it be five quadrantals short of full. Put on a cover, leaving a vent to breathe. When thirty days have passed, pour it cleanly and gently into another jar, leaving at the bottom what has settled. After twenty days pour it likewise into another jar, and so leave it until the vintage. From the vines whose grapes you wish to make into Coan wine, leave the grapes on the vine, let them ripen well, and when it has rained and dried, then gather them and set them in the sun for two or three days under the open sky, if there is no rain. If there is rain, lay them out under cover on hurdles, and clean away any spoiled berries. Then take the sea water mentioned above; pour ten quadrantals of sea water into a fifty-measure jar. Then pluck the berries from the mixed grapes off the stem into the same jar, until you have filled it. Press the berries with the hand, so that they drink up the sea water. When you have filled the jar, cover it with a lid, leaving a vent to breathe. When three days have passed, take it out of the jar, tread it in the press, and store the wine in jars that are washed, clean, and dry.

113. That it may be well scented, do thus. Take a pitched potsherd, put a gentle ember on it, fumigate it with melilot, sweet-flag, and the palm that the perfumers have, set it in the jar and cover it, so that the scent does not escape, before you put in the wine. Do this the day before you wish to pour in the wine. Pour the wine from the vat into the jars as soon as possible, leave them covered for fifteen days before you seal them, leaving a vent to breathe; then seal them. After forty days rack it into amphorae, and add to each amphora one sextarius of boiled-down must. Do not fill the amphorae too full — up to the bottom of the handles — and set the amphorae in the sun where there is no grass, and cover the amphorae so that water does not get in; and do not leave them in the sun more than four years. After four years arrange them in a wedge-shaped pile and pack them tight.

114. If you wish to prepare wine that makes the bowels good, after the vintage, when the vines are trenched, trench and mark as many vines as you think enough for the purpose. Cut round and clear their roots. Pound black hellebore roots in a mortar, and lay these roots round the vine, and put round the roots of the vine old dung, old ashes, and two parts of earth. Throw earth over the top. Gather this wine separately. If you wish to keep it to old age for moving the bowels, keep it, but do not mix it with the other wine. Take a cyathus of this wine, mix it with water, and drink it before dinner. It will move the bowels without danger.

115. Throw a handful of black hellebore into an amphora of new must. When it has fermented enough, throw the handful out of the wine. Keep this wine for moving the bowels.

To prepare wine for moving the bowels. When the vines are trenched, mark them with red ochre, so that you do not mix it with the other wine. Lay three little bundles of black hellebore round the roots and throw earth over the top. At the vintage keep separately what you gather from these vines, and put a cyathus into the rest of the drink. It will move the bowels, and the next day purge them thoroughly, without danger.

116. How lentils should be kept. Dissolve laserwort in vinegar, mix the lentils with the laserwort vinegar, and set them in the sun. Then rub the lentils with oil and let them dry. So they will keep whole and well.

117. How white olives should be preserved. Before they turn black, let them be crushed and thrown into water. Change the water often. Then, when they are well soaked, press them out, throw them into vinegar, and add oil, with half a pound of salt to a modius of olives. Store fennel and lentisk separately in vinegar. If you wish to mix them in, use them soon. Pack them into a small jar. When you wish to use them, take them out with dry hands.

118. The white olive that you wish to use after the vintage, preserve thus. Add as much must as vinegar. Preserve the rest in the same way as is written above.

119. Make a relish of white, black, and mottled olives thus. Take the kernels out of the white, black, and mottled olives. Preserve them thus. Chop the olives themselves, add oil, vinegar, coriander, cumin, fennel, rue, and mint. Store them in a small jar, with the oil above. So use them.

120. If you wish to keep must the whole year, put the must into an amphora, pitch the stopper, and lower it into a pool. Take it out after thirty days. It will be must the whole year.

121. Make must-cakes thus. Sprinkle one modius of wheat flour with must. Add anise, cumin, two pounds of fat, a pound of cheese, and scrapings from a laurel twig, and when you have shaped them, put laurel leaves under them when you bake them.

122. To prepare wine for when urine passes too hard. Pound roe-deer plant or juniper in a mortar, put in a pound, and boil it down in two congii of old wine in a copper or leaden vessel. When it has cooled, put it into a flagon. Take a cyathus of this in the morning, fasting: it will help.

123. Make wine for sciatica thus. Cut up small a piece of juniper wood half a foot thick. Boil it with a congius of old wine. When it has cooled, pour it into a flagon, and afterwards use it, a cyathus in the morning, fasting: it will help.

124. Dogs should be shut up by day, so that they may be keener and more watchful by night.

125. Make myrtle wine thus. Dry black myrtle berries in the shade. When they are now dried like raisins, keep them until the vintage. Pound half a modius of myrtle into an urn of must, and seal it. When the must has stopped fermenting, take out the myrtle. This is good for an upset stomach, for pain in the side, and for the bowels.

126. For gripes, and if the bowels are loose, and if tapeworms and round worms are troublesome. Take thirty sour pomegranates, crush them, put them into a jar with three congii of dark, dry wine. Seal the vessel. After thirty days open it and use it; drink a hemina fasting.

127. To cure indigestion and strangury. When the pomegranate is in flower, gather it; pour three minae into an amphora, add one quadrantal of old wine and a mina of clean, crushed fennel root. Seal the amphora, and after thirty days open it and use it. When you wish to digest your food and pass urine, drink of this as much as you wish, without danger. The same wine purges tapeworms and round worms thoroughly, if you prepare it thus. Have the patient dine after fasting. The next day grind one drachma of frankincense, one drachma of cooked honey, and a sextarius of wine flavoured with marjoram. Give it to him fasting, and to a child according to its age three obols and a hemina of wine. Let him mount upon a stone roller and leap ten times and walk about.

128. To plaster a dwelling. Take earth as chalky or as reddish as possible, pour oil-lees onto it, and put in chaff. Let it soften for four days. When it has softened well, cut it up with a shovel. When you have cut it, plaster with it. So neither will the spray harm it, nor will mice make holes, nor will grass grow, nor will the plaster crack.

129. Make the floor where grain is threshed thus. Let the earth be dug over fine, sprinkled well with oil-lees, and let it soak up as much as possible. Break up the earth, and level it with a roller or a rammer. When it is levelled, ants will not trouble it, and when it rains, there will be no mud.

130. Sprinkle olive logs and other wood well with raw oil-lees and set them in the sun, that they may soak it up well. So they will not be smoky, and will burn well.

131. When the pear is in flower, make the sacrificial meal for the oxen. Then begin the spring ploughing. Plough first the places that are gravelly and sandy. Then, as each is heaviest and wettest, plough it last.

132. The sacrificial meal should be made in this manner. To Jupiter of the Feast offer a cup of wine, as much as you wish. Let that day be a holiday for the oxen and the ox-drivers and those who make the meal. When you are to make the offering, you shall speak thus: "Jupiter of the Feast, since it is fitting that a cup of wine be offered to thee for the feast in my house and household, for that reason be thou honoured by this offering of this feast." Wash your hands between, then take the wine: "Jupiter of the Feast, be thou honoured by the offering of this feast, be thou honoured by the wine set before thee." Give to Vesta, if you wish. The feast for Jupiter is a roast and an urn of wine. Offer it to Jupiter in purity, with due reverence. After the meal is made, sow millet, panic, garlic, and lentils.

133. The layering of fruit trees and other trees. The shoots that are born from the trees at the ground, press into the earth and raise up, so that they may take root. Then, when the time comes, dig them up and plant them rightly. The fig, the olive, the pomegranate, the sparrow-apple, the quince and all other fruit trees, the Cyprian and the Delphic laurel, the plum, the conjugula myrtle and the white and the black myrtle, the hazelnut, the Praenestine nut, and the plane — all these kinds should be layered from the parent stocks and taken up in this way. Those you wish to plant more carefully should be planted in pots. To make the trees take root, take a pierced pot or a little basket, pass a small branch through it, fill the basket with earth, tread it down, and leave it on the tree. When it is two years old, cut the tender branch off below and plant it with the basket. In that way you may make any kind of tree you wish take root well. Likewise layer the vine in a little basket, cover it well with earth, cut it off a year later, and plant it with the basket.

134. Before you reap, the preliminary sacrifice of a sow should be made in this manner. To Ceres, before you store these crops — spelt, wheat, barley, beans, rape seed — sacrifice a preliminary sow, a female pig. With frankincense and wine make an invocation beforehand to Janus, Jupiter, and Juno, before you sacrifice the female pig. Offer the heaped cake to Janus thus: "Father Janus, in offering thee this heaped cake I make good prayers, that thou mayest be willing and gracious to me and to my children, my house and my household." Offer the sacred cake to Jupiter and honour him thus: "Jupiter, in offering thee this sacred cake I make good prayers, that thou mayest be willing and gracious to me and to my children, my house and my household, being honoured by this cake." Then give wine to Janus thus: "Father Janus, as in offering the heaped cake I have well prayed good prayers, for the same reason be thou honoured by the wine offered." Then to Jupiter thus: "Jupiter, be thou honoured by that cake, be thou honoured by the wine offered." Then sacrifice the preliminary sow. When the entrails have been cut out, offer the heaped cake to Janus and honour him as you offered before. Offer the sacred cake to Jupiter and honour him as you did before. Likewise give wine to Janus and give wine to Jupiter, just as before for the offering of the heaped cake and the libation of the sacred cake. Then give entrails and wine to Ceres.

135. At Rome, tunics, togas, cloaks, patchwork garments, and wooden shoes; at Cales and Minturnae, hoods, iron tools, sickles, spades, mattocks, axes, harness, purple-edged work, and small chains; at Venafrum, spades; at Suessa and among the Lucanians, carts; threshing-sledges at Alba and Rome; jars and vats; tiles from Venafrum. Roman ploughs will be good for strong soil, Campanian for dark soil; Roman yokes will be best; the detachable ploughshare will be best. Crushing-mills at Pompeii and at the Rufrius quarry-wall near Nola; keys and locks at Rome; buckets, oil-urns, water jugs, wine-urns, and other bronze vessels at Capua and Nola; Campanian baskets are useful. Draw-ropes and all esparto-work at Capua; Roman baskets at Suessa and Casinum, though the best are at Rome.

If anyone is to make a press-rope, Lucius Tunnius at Casinum, and Gaius Mennius, son of Lucius, at Venafrum. For it eight good native hides should be used, fresh, well dressed, with as little salt as possible. They should first be dressed and greased with grease, then dried. The rope should be begun seventy-two feet long. It should have strands, with two thongs to each strand, two fingers wide. When it is twisted, it will be forty-nine feet long. Three feet will be lost in the splicing; forty-six will remain. When it is stretched, five feet will be added; it will be fifty-one feet long. A press-rope, stretched, should be fifty-five feet long for the largest vessels, fifty-one for smaller ones. The leather cart-rope, full length, sixty feet; the half-rope, forty-five feet; the binding-thongs for the cart, thirty-six feet; for the plough, twenty-six feet; the leading-thongs, twenty-seven and a half feet; the cart yoke-straps, nineteen feet; the cord, fifteen feet; the plough yoke-straps, twelve feet; the cord, eight feet.

Crushing-mills, of the largest size four and a half feet wide, the wheels three and a half feet high; the wheels of medium size, when taken from the quarry, a foot and a palm thick, between the central pillar and the rim two feet and two fingers, the rims a finger thick. The second-grade mill four feet and a palm wide, between the central pillar and the rim one foot and one finger, the rims five fingers thick, the wheels three feet and five fingers high, one foot and three fingers thick. Make the hole in the wheels half a foot square each way. The third-grade mill four feet wide, between the central pillar and the rim one foot, the rim five fingers, the wheels three feet and three fingers high, one foot and two fingers thick. When the crushing-mill has been brought to where you will set it up, fit and adjust it there.

136. On what terms a tenancy should be let on shares. On a farm at Casinum and Venafrum, in a good place, let him divide an eighth basket; in a fairly good place, a seventh; in a third-rate place, a sixth. If he divides the grain by the modius, a fifth. At Venafrum, in the best land, let him divide a ninth basket. If they grind in common, the tenant shall take to the mill the portion that is the tenant's share. Of barley let him divide a fifth by the modius, of beans a fifth by the modius.

137. The tending of a vineyard on shares. Let him tend well the farm, the orchard, and the grain field. On shares the hay and fodder enough for the oxen that are there; everything else in common, undivided.

138. It is permitted to yoke oxen on feast days. These things may be done: let them haul wood, bean-stalks, and grain that is not to be given out. For mules, horses, and asses there are no holidays, unless they belong to the household.

139. To thin out a sacred grove in the Roman manner, do thus. Make a sin-offering with a pig, and frame the words thus: "Whether thou be god or goddess, to whom this grove is sacred, as it is right to make to thee an offering of a pig as a sin-offering for the thinning of this sacred grove, and for these reasons, whether I or one at my bidding do it, that it may be rightly done, for that reason, in sacrificing this pig as a sin-offering, I make good prayers, that thou mayest be willing and gracious to me, my house and household, and my children: for these reasons be thou honoured by the sacrifice of this pig as a sin-offering.

140. If you wish to dig, make a second sin-offering in the same way, and add these words: "for the sake of doing the work." While the work goes on, do it daily, piece by piece. If you have left off, or a public or family holiday has come between, make another sin-offering.

141. The field should be purified thus. Order the suovetaurilia to be led round, with these words: "That with the favour of the gods all may turn out well, I charge thee, Manius, to see that this suovetaurilia purify my farm, my land, and my ground, in whatever part thou judgest they should be led round or carried round." Make an invocation with wine beforehand to Janus and Jupiter, and speak thus: "Father Mars, I pray and beseech thee to be willing and gracious to me, my house and our household; for which reason I have ordered the suovetaurilia to be led round my field, my land, and my farm, that thou mayest keep off, ward away, and turn aside diseases seen and unseen, barrenness and waste, calamities and storms; and that thou mayest let the crops, the grain, the vineyards, and the shrubs grow great and turn out well; that thou mayest keep safe the shepherds and the flocks, and give good health and strength to me, my house and our household: for these reasons, for the purifying of my farm, my land, and my field, and for the making of this purification, as I have said, be thou honoured by the sacrifice of these suckling suovetaurilia: Father Mars, for the same reason be thou honoured by these suckling suovetaurilia." Likewise with a knife see that the heaped cake and the sacred cake are at hand, and from these make the offering. When you sacrifice the pig, the lamb, and the calf, you should say thus: "and for that reason be thou honoured by the sacrifice of the suovetaurilia." It is forbidden to name Mars, or the lamb and the calf. If the offering is not wholly favourable for all, frame the words thus: "Father Mars, if anything in those suckling suovetaurilia has not satisfied thee, I make atonement with these suovetaurilia." If there is doubt about one or two, frame the words thus: "Father Mars, since that pig has not satisfied thee, I make atonement with this pig.

142. The duties of the overseer are these. Whatever the master has directed — all that should be done on the farm, whatever should be bought and got ready, and how the food and clothing of the household should be given out — I admonish him to see to and to do, and to be obedient to the master's word. Furthermore, how he should treat the overseer's wife, and how she should be commanded, so that on the master's arrival what is needed may be got ready and carefully tended.

143. See that the overseer's wife does the duties that are hers. If the master has given her to you as a wife, be content with her. See that she fears you. Let her not be too extravagant. Let her have as little to do as possible with the neighbour women and other women, and let her not receive them into the house or her quarters. Let her go nowhere out to dine, and not be a gadabout. Let her perform no religious rite, nor have one performed on her behalf, without the orders of the master or mistress. Let her know that the master performs the rites for the whole household. Let her be clean; let her keep the farmhouse swept and tidy; let her keep the hearth clean and swept all round each day before she goes to bed. On the Kalends, Ides, and Nones, and when a feast day comes, let her put a garland on the hearth, and on those same days let her make supplication to the household god according to her means. Let her see that food is cooked for you and the household. Let her keep many hens and have eggs. Let her have dried pears, sorb apples, figs, raisins, sorb apples in boiled-down must, pears and grapes in jars, sparrow-apples, grapes preserved in grape-skins and buried in jars in the ground, and fresh Praenestine nuts buried in a jar in the ground. Let her keep Scantian apples in jars, and the other fruits that are usually preserved, and the wild fruits — all these she should carefully keep stored every year. Let her know how to make good flour and fine spelt.

144. The gathering of olives should be let out in this manner. Let all the olives be gathered rightly, at the discretion of the master, or of whomever he has made watchman, or to whom the olives have been sold. Let no one strip or beat the olives without the orders of the master or the watchman. If anyone acts against this, no one shall pay for what he has gathered that day, nor shall it be owed. All who gather the olives shall swear to the master or the watchman that they have not stolen olives, nor has anyone by their fraud, from the estate of Lucius Manlius during this harvest. Whoever of them does not so swear, no one shall pay him for all he has gathered, nor shall it be owed. Let security be given for the right gathering of the olives, at the discretion of Lucius Manlius. Let the ladders be returned just as they were given, except those broken by age. If they are not returned, a fair deduction shall be made. If through the contractor's doing any loss has been caused to the master, let him make it good; this shall be deducted at the discretion of an honest man. Let him furnish as many gatherers and strippers as are needed. If he does not furnish them, the hire shall be deducted at the contract rate: so much less shall be owed. Let him not carry wood and olives off the farm. Whoever gathers the olives, if he carries them off, two sesterces shall be deducted for each carrying-off, and it shall not be owed. Let him measure all the olives clean by the oil-measure. Let him furnish fifty steady men, and two thirds of them strippers. Let no one combine to drive up the price for which the gathering and pressing are let, except whom he has named at the time as a partner. If anyone acts against this, if the master or watchman wishes, let all the partners swear. If they do not so swear, no one shall pay for that gathering and pressing, nor shall it be owed to the one who has not sworn. Allowances: for two hundred sesterces, five sesterces of salted olives, nine pounds of pure oil, and for the whole harvest five quadrantals of vinegar are added. For the salted olives they have not received, while they gather the olives, five sesterces shall be given for each modius.

145. The pressing of the olives should be let on this term. Let it be done rightly, at the discretion of the master or the watchman who has charge of the business. If six sets of vessels are needed, let it be done. Let him furnish such men as please the watchman or whoever has bought the olives. Let him make the crushing-mills ready. If labourers have been hired or the pressing let out, let payment be made for it, or it shall be deducted. Let him not touch the oil to use or to steal, except what the watchman or the master gives. If he has taken any, forty sesterces shall be deducted for each taking, and it shall not be owed. All the pressmen who have made the oil shall swear, either to the master or to the watchman, that from the estate of Lucius Manlius neither they nor any other by their fraud have stolen oil or olives. Whoever of them does not so swear, his whole share shall be deducted, and it shall not be owed. Let him have no partner except whom the master or the watchman has ordered. If through the contractor's doing any loss has been caused to the master, it shall be deducted at the discretion of an honest man. If green oil is wanted, let it be made. There shall be added oil and salt enough for his own use, two victoriati for vessels.

146. Olives on the tree should be sold on this term. The hanging olives on the farm at Venafrum shall be sold. Whoever buys the olives shall pay, beyond the price for which he bought, a hundredth part of the whole sum, and for the crier's fee fifty sesterces ready money, and oil: of the romanic, five hundred pounds, of the green, two hundred pounds; of the fallen olives, fifty pounds; of the stripped, ten pounds, to be measured by the oil-measure; of the unguent, ten pounds. By the master's weights and measures he shall give two cotulae of the first oil. The dates for payment, counting from the Kalends of November: in the tenth month for the gathering and pressing of the olives that have been let; and if the buyer has sub-let it, he shall pay on the Ides. He shall promise that these payments will be rightly made and done, and that surety will be given to the master or to whomever he orders, and shall give surety at the master's discretion. Until it is paid, or surety so given, whatever has been brought onto the farm shall be held as pledge; let him carry none of it off the farm; if he carries anything off, it shall belong to the master. The press-vessels, ropes, ladders, crushing-mills, and whatever else has been given him, let him return safe and sound, except what is broken by age. If he does not return them, let him pay a fair price. If the buyer does not pay the gatherers and pressmen who have done the work there, the one to whom payment is due, if the master wishes, let the master pay. Let the buyer owe it to the master, and give surety for it, and for this matter, as written above, let his goods likewise be held as pledge.

147. Hanging grapes should be sold on this term. Let him leave the unwashed grape-skins and the lees. Room for the wine shall be given until the first of October. If he has not removed it before then, the master shall do what he wishes with the wine. The rest of the terms as for the hanging olives.

148. Wine in the jars should be sold in this manner. For each culleus forty-one urns shall be given. That which is neither sour nor mouldy shall be given. Within the next three days let him taste it, at the discretion of an honest man. If he does not do so, the wine shall count as tasted. For however many days there has been delay through the master, so that he could not taste the wine, just so many days shall be allowed to the buyer. Let him receive the wine before the first of January. If he does not receive it before then, the master shall measure out the wine; whatever he has measured out, let him pay for it accordingly. If the buyer requires it, the master shall swear that he has dealt truly. Room for the wine shall be given until the first of October. If he has not removed it before then, the master shall do what he wishes with the wine. The rest of the terms as for the hanging olives.

149. The terms on which winter pasture should be sold. Let him state the bounds within which you sell. Let the grazing begin from the Kalends of September. Let him quit the dry meadow when the pear begins to flower; the watered meadow, when the upper and lower neighbour allow, let him then quit, or set a fixed day for both. The rest of the pasture let him quit on the Kalends of March. For two trained oxen and one gelding, when the buyer grazes, the master reserves grazing for himself. For greens, asparagus, wood, water, the path, and the cart-track, the master reserves the use. If the buyer, or the herdsmen, or the buyer's stock cause the master any loss, let him make it good at the discretion of an honest man. If the master, or the household, or the stock cause the buyer any loss, it shall be made good at the discretion of an honest man. Until he has paid the money, or given surety, or assigned a debtor, the stock and the household that are there shall be held as pledge. If there is any dispute about these matters, let the trial be held at Rome.

150. The yield of the sheep should be sold on this term. For each sheep a pound and a half of cheese, half of it dried; on feast days half the milk that he has milked, and besides one urn of milk: on these terms, that a lamb which has lived a day and a night counts in the yield; and on the Kalends of June let the buyer quit the yield; if there is an intercalary month, on the Kalends of May. Let him promise no more than thirty lambs. Ewes that have not borne shall count two for one in the yield. Let him sell the wool and the lambs, and let the collector remit it ten months hence. Let him pasture one late-born pig to every ten sheep. Let the contractor furnish a shepherd for two months. Until he has satisfied the master or paid him, let it be held as pledge.

151. How cypress seed should be gathered, sown, and propagated, and how a cypress grove should be planted, Minius Percennius of Nola showed thus. Tarentine cypress seed should be gathered in spring; the wood, when the barley turns yellow. When you have gathered it, set it in the sun and clean the seed. Store it dry, so that it lies out dry. Sow it in spring, in a place where the soil is most tender, of the kind they call dark loam, where there is water near. First manure that place well with goat or sheep dung, then turn it with the double mattock, mix the earth well with the dung, clear it of weeds and grass, and break up the earth well. Make beds four feet wide; make them slightly hollow, so that they can hold water; between them make furrows, by which you can clear the weeds from the beds. When the beds are made, sow the seed thick, as flax is usually sown. Sift earth over it through a sieve, a half-finger deep. Level it well with a board or with the hands or feet. Whenever it does not rain, so that the earth is thirsty, water the beds gently. If you have no means of irrigating, carry water and apply it gently. As often as need be, see that you add water. If weeds spring up, see that you clear them. Clear them while the weeds are as tender as possible, and as often as need be. Through the summer it should be done as has been said; and when the seed is sown, it should be covered with straw; when it begins to sprout, the straw should be taken off.

152. Concerning brooms of twigs, Quintus and Lucius Manlius showed thus. Within the thirty days in which you gather the wine, several times make brooms of dry elm twigs tied to a little stick, and with them rub the inner sides of the jars well all over, so that the lees do not cling to the sides.

153. Make wine of the lees thus. Have for this purpose two Campanian oil-baskets. Fill them with lees, put them under the press, and press them out.

154. How to measure out wine for the buyers without trouble. Make for this purpose a culleus-sized tub. Let it have four handles at the top, so that it can be carried. Pierce it at the bottom, and fit a pipe there that can be stopped tight; and pierce it at the top, up to where it will hold a culleus. Keep it set on a stand among the jars, so that the wine can run from the jar into the culleus. Fill it, then stop it.

155. Through the winter the water should be drained off the land. On the hillside keep the drainage-ditches clean. In early autumn, when there is dust, then is the greatest danger from water. When it begins to rain, the household should go out with iron tools and hoes, open the channels, lead the water out onto the roads, and see that it flows. In the farmhouse, when it rains, go round and see if it leaks anywhere, and mark the spot with charcoal, so that when the rain has stopped the tile may be changed. In the standing crops, in the grain, or in the field, or in the ditches, wherever water stands or anything blocks the water, it should be let out, the way opened, and the obstacle removed.

156. On the cabbage and its power to digest. Cabbage surpasses all vegetables. Eat it either cooked or raw. If you eat it raw, dip it in vinegar. It digests wonderfully, makes the bowels good, and the urine is wholesome for everything. If you wish to drink much at a banquet and to dine with pleasure, before dinner eat as much raw cabbage as you wish, with vinegar; and likewise, when you have dined, eat about five leaves: it will make you as if you had eaten nothing, and you will drink as much as you wish.

If you wish to purge the upper bowels, take four pounds of the lightest cabbage. From it make three equal handfuls and tie them up. Then set a pot with water on the fire. When it begins to boil, lower one handful for a moment, and the boiling will stop. Then, when it begins to boil again, lower it for a moment, while you count to five, and take it out. Do the same with the second handful, and likewise the third. Then put them together, crush them, take them out again into a linen cloth, and squeeze out the juice, about a hemina, into a little earthen cup. Into it put a grain of salt the size of a bitter vetch, and as much roasted cumin as gives a scent. Then set the cup in the open air at night. Whoever is to drink it, let him bathe in warm water, drink honey-water, and go to bed without dining. Then in the morning let him drink the juice and walk about for four hours, and attend to any business he has. When the urge comes and nausea takes hold of him, let him lie down and purge himself. He will throw off so much bile and phlegm that he will himself wonder where so much came from. Afterwards, when his bowels move downward, let him drink a hemina or a little more. If they move too much, take two conchs of fine flour, rub it into water, drink a little, and it will check it. But for those who are troubled with gripes, the cabbage should be soaked in water. When it is soaked, throw it into hot water and cook it until it is thoroughly soft, then pour off the water. Then add salt, a little cumin, and barley meal, and oil. Then bring it to the boil, pour it into a dish, and let it cool. Into it crumble whatever food he wishes, and then let him eat. But if he can eat the cabbage by itself, let him eat it. And if he is free of fever, give him dark, harsh wine, watered, to drink, as little as possible; if he has a fever, give water. Do this every morning. Do not give much, lest he grow sick of it, so that he may afterwards eat it gladly. Give it in the same way to man, woman, and child. Now concerning those who pass urine with difficulty and have it dribbling. Take cabbage, throw it into boiling water, cook it a little, so that it is half-raw. Then pour off the water, but not all. Add to it good oil and salt and a little cumin, and bring it to the boil a moment. Then let him sup the cold broth and eat the cabbage itself, so that it may digest as soon as possible. Do this daily.

157. On the Pythagorean cabbage, what good and what wholesomeness is in it. First you should know what kinds of cabbage there are and of what nature. It tempers everything for health and is ever changing with the heat, being at once dry and moist, sweet and bitter and sharp. But the seven good qualities that are spoken of in the mixture, the cabbage has all of them by nature. Now, that you may know their nature: the first is that called smooth; it is large, broad-leaved, with a great stalk; it has a strong nature and great power. The second is the curly, called parsley-cabbage; this is of good nature and appearance, and is stronger for healing than the one written above. There is also a third, called mild, with small stalks, tender, and the sharpest of all of these, of thin juice and most powerful. And know first that of all cabbages none is of such a kind for medicine. Apply it crushed to all wounds and swellings. It will cleanse all these sores and heal them without pain. It ripens swellings, brings them to a head, and will cleanse foul wounds and cancers and make them sound, which no other medicine can do. But before you apply it, wash with much warm water; then apply it crushed twice a day; it will take away all the foulness. The black cancer stinks and gives off foul matter; the white is purulent, but is fistulous and suppurates beneath, under the flesh. On wounds of this kind grind the cabbage, and it will make them sound: it is best for a wound of this sort. And if anything is dislocated, foment it twice a day with warm water, apply crushed cabbage, and it will heal quickly: apply it twice a day, and it will take away the pains. And if anything is bruised, it will break out; apply crushed cabbage and it will make it sound. And if a sore or a cancer arises in the breasts, apply crushed cabbage, and it will make it sound. And if the sore cannot bear its sharpness, mix in barley meal and so apply it. It will heal all sores of this kind, which no other medicine can do, nor cleanse. And for a boy or a girl, if there is a sore of this kind, add barley meal. And if you wish to eat it chopped, washed, dried, and sprinkled with salt and vinegar, nothing is more wholesome. That you may eat it the more gladly, sprinkle it with honey-vinegar; washed, dried, and sprinkled with chopped rue and coriander and salt, you will eat it a little more gladly. It will do you good, will let no evil settle in the body, and will make the bowels good. If there was any evil within before, it will heal it all, will draw all from the head and the eyes, and make them sound. This should be eaten in the morning, fasting. And if there is black bile, if the spleen is swollen, if the heart aches, the liver, the lungs, or the midriff, in a word it will heal all those things that ache within. Into it scrape some silphium; it is good. For when all the veins are puffed up with food, they cannot draw breath through the whole body, and from that some sickness arises. When the bowels do not move because of too much food, if you use cabbage in proportion, as I advise you, none of those sicknesses will come upon you. But for the disease of the joints nothing cleanses so well as raw cabbage, if you eat it chopped, with rue and chopped dry coriander and scraped silphium, and the cabbage sprinkled with vinegar, honey-vinegar, and salt. If you use this, you will be able to make trial of all your joints. There is no cost, and even if there were cost, you would still try it for the sake of health. This should be eaten in the morning, fasting. If anyone is sleepless or wasting, you may make him sound by this same treatment. But give to the fasting man roast cabbage, anointed and warm, with a little salt. The more he eats, the more quickly he will be made sound of that disease. For those troubled with gripes, do thus. Soak the cabbage well, then throw it into a pot and boil it well. When it is well cooked, pour off the water. Add good oil and a little salt and cumin and barley meal. Then bring it well to the boil. When it has boiled, put it into a dish. Give it him to eat, without bread if he can; if not, give him plain bread to soak in it. And if he has no fever, give him dark wine to drink: he will quickly be made sound. And if it should ever happen that someone is weak, this remedy can make him sound: let him eat cabbage as written above, and moreover keep the urine of one who has been eating cabbage, warm it, and set the man down in it; you will quickly make him sound by this treatment: this has been tried. Likewise, if you wash little children in this urine, they will never be weak. And those whose eyes are not clear, anoint them with this urine, and they will see better. If the head or the neck aches, wash it with this urine warm, and the aches will cease. And if a woman foments her parts with this urine, they will never grow inflamed; and she should foment thus: when you have heated it in a pan, set a pierced stool over it. Let the woman sit upon it, cover her, and put garments about her.

158. The bowels should be purged in this manner, if you wish to purge yourself well. Take a pot, add to it six sextarii of water and add a ham-hock. If you have no hock, add a piece of ham of half a pound, as little fat as possible. When it begins to be cooked, add two cabbage stalks, two beet stalks with their roots, a sprout of fern, not much mercury-plant, two pounds of mussels, a chub and one scorpion-fish, six snails, and a handful of lentils. Boil all this down to three sextarii of broth. Add no oil. From this take a sextarius warm, add a cyathus of Coan wine, drink it, rest a while, then again in the same way, then a third time: you will purge yourself well. And if you wish besides to drink Coan wine mixed, you may drink it. Of all these so many things, any one of them that is written, whichever you wish, can purge the bowels. But for this reason there are so many, that you may purge well, and it is pleasant.

159. A remedy for chafing. When you set out on a journey, keep a sprig of Pontic wormwood under your ring.

160. If anything is dislocated, it will be made sound by this charm. Take a green reed four or five feet long, split it down the middle, and let two men hold it at the hips. Begin to chant: "motas uaeta daries dardares astataries dissunapiter," until the ends come together. Brandish iron over it. When they have come together and one has touched the other, take it in the hand and cut it right and left; tie it to the dislocation or the fracture, and it will be made sound. And nonetheless chant daily, and over a dislocation in this way also: "huat haut haut istasis tarsis ardannabou dannaustra.

161. How asparagus is sown. The ground should be well worked, ground that holds moisture, or rich ground. When it is worked, make beds, so that you can hoe and weed right and left without treading on them. When you lay out the beds, leave an interval of half a foot between them on all sides. Then sow it; along a line, with a stake, drop two or three seeds, and with the same stake fill the hole with earth. Then sprinkle dung well over the beds. Sow just after the spring equinox. When it has come up, clear the weeds often, and take care not to pull up the asparagus along with the weeds. The year you sow it, cover the sown bed with straw through the winter, so that it is not nipped by frost. Then in early spring uncover it, hoe and weed it. After the third year from sowing, burn it over in early spring. After that do not hoe before the asparagus has come up, lest in hoeing you injure the roots. In the third or fourth year pull the asparagus from the root; for if you break it off, the stalks will form and die away inside. You may keep pulling it until you see it going to seed. The seed ripens in autumn. So, when you have taken the seed, burn it over, and when the asparagus begins to come up, hoe and manure it. After eight or nine years, when it is now old, divide it, and in the place where you mean to set it, work the ground well and manure it. Then make little trenches into which to sink the asparagus roots. Let there be an interval of not less than a foot between the asparagus roots. Pull it up; dig round it so that you can pull it up easily; take care that it is not broken. See that you bring in as much sheep dung as you can; that is best for the purpose; other dung breeds weeds.

162. The salting of hams and of the Puteolan brisket. Hams should be salted thus, in a jar or a storage-cask. When you have bought the hams, cut off their hocks. For each take half a modius of ground Roman salt. At the bottom of the jar or cask spread salt, then set down a ham, with the skin facing downward; cover it all with salt. Then set another on top, and cover it the same way; take care that flesh does not touch flesh. So cover them all. When you have now arranged them all, cover them over with salt, so that no flesh shows; make it even. When they have been five days in the salt, take them all out with their salt. Make the topmost ones lowest, cover and arrange them in the same way. After twelve days in all, take out the hams, wipe off all the salt, and hang them in the wind for two days. On the third day wipe them well with a sponge, anoint them with oil, and hang them in the smoke for two days. On the third day take them down, anoint them with oil and vinegar mixed, and hang them on the meat-rack. Neither moth nor worm will touch them.