, Book I. AGRICULTURE OF THE ROMANS. 13 3 47. Publius Virgilius Maro, called the prince of the Latin poets, was born at a village : near Mantua in Lombardy about 70 B. C., and died B.C. 19, aged 51. He culti- f vated his own estate till he was 30 years old, and spent the rest of his life chiefly at 3 the court of Augustus. His works are the Bucolics, Georgics, and inetd. The : Georgics is to be considered as a poetical compendium of agriculture, taken from the of Greek and Roman writers then extant, but especially from Varro. Ss) 48. Luc. Jun. Moderatus Columella was a native of Gades, now Cadiz, in Spain, = but passed most of his time in Italy. The time of his birth and death are not known, but he is supposed to have lived under Claudius in the first century. His work De am Re Rustica, lib. xii. is a complete treatise on rural affairs; including field operations, he timber-trees, and gardens. lie 49. C. Plinius Secundus, surnamed the elder, was born at Verona in Lombardy, and suffocated at the destruction of Pompeii in his 56th year, A.D. 79. He was of a noble family; distinguished himself in the field and in the fleet; was governor of Spain; was a great naturalist, and an extensive writer. Of the works which he composed none are extant but bis Natural History in thirty-seven books; a work full of the erudition of the time, accompanied with m uch erroneous, useless, and frivolous matter. It treats of the stars, the heavens, wind, rain, hail, minerals, trees, flowers, and plants; an account of all living animals, birds, fishes, and beasts; a geographical description of every place fik on the globe; a history of every art and science, commerce, and navigation, with their rise, progress, and several improvements. His work may be considered as a compen- dium of all preceding writers on these subjects, with considerable additions from his ace personal experience and observation. ve, 50. Rutilius Taurus Emilianus Palladius is by some supposed to have lived under gst Antoninus Pius, in the second, and by others in the fourth century. His work De Re the Rustica is a poem in fourteen books, and is little more than a compendium of those which ny preceded it on the same subject.‘The editor of the article Agriculture, in the Encyclo- test pédie Méthodique, says it is too dull to be read as a poem, and too concise to be useful as Ing a didactic work. heir 51. These works have been rendered accessible to all by translations; and a judicious rs and instructive treatise composed from them by Adam Dickson, a Scotch clergyman, was ilti- published in 1788, under the title of The Husbandry of the Ancients.‘To this last vare work we are indebted for the greater part of what we have to submit on Roman Vat. agriculture. heir 52. The Roman authors, as Rozier has observed(Dict. de? Agr. art. Hist.), do not enable us to trace the rise and progress of agriculture, either in Italy or in any other country we under their dominion.| What they contain is a picture of their rural economy in its e of most perfect state: delivered in precepts, generally founded on experience, though some- times on superstition; never, however, on theory or hypothesis. For, as the Rev. Adam Dickson states,‘ instead of schemes produced by a lively imagination, which we receive but too frequently from authors of genius unacquainted with the practice of agriculture, we have good reason to believe that they deliver in their writings, a genuine account of ge, the most approved practices; practices, too, the goodness of which they had themselves ore, experienced.””(Husb. of the Anc. Pp. 16.) He adds, that if in the knowledge of the ers theory of agriculture, the Roman cultivators are inferior to our modern improvers; yet be in attention to circumstances and exactness of execution, and in economical manage- ‘an ment, they are greatly superior.

Secr. II. Of the Proprietorship, Occupancy,@ nd General Management of Landed Property

among the Romans.

inst 53. The Roman nation originated from a company of robbers and runaway slaves, who

hed placed themselves under their leader Romulus. This chief having conquered a small and part of Italy divided the land among his followers, and by what is called the Agrarian ome Law, allowed 2 jugera or 1} acre to every citizen. After the expulsion of the kings in the the 6th century B. C., 7 yoke, or 32 acres were allotted. The custom of distributing the the conquered lands, by giving 7 jugera to every citizen, continued to be observed in latter Sel times; but when each soldier had received his share, the remainder was sold in lots of )

various sizes, even to 50 jugera; and no person was prevented from acquiring as large ned a landed estate as he could, till a law passed by Stolo, the second plebeian consul, B. C. 377, that no one should possess more than 500 jugera. This law appears to have remained

a in force during the greater period of the Roman power. Whatever might be the size of 5 the estate, it was held by the proprietor as an absolute right, without acknowledgment 4 to any superior power; and passed to his successors, agreeably to testament, if he made a one; or if not, by common law to his nearest relations.

ed 54. In the first ages of the commonwealth, the lands were occupied and cultivated by a the vroprietors themselves; and as this state of things continued for four or five centuries,

it'was probably the chief cause of the agricultural eminence of the Romans, When a

ct nasole t