Figure 20:

                     Marcus Terentius Varro: De re rustica, ca. 30 BC

 

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Varro/de_Re_Rustica/home.html

 

Marcus Porcius Cato on Agriculture, Marcus Terentius Varro on Agriculture. With an English translation by William Davis Hooper, Revised by Harrison Boyd Ash. Latin & English (Latin Text by Henricus Keil, Leipzig: Teubner 1889; revised by Georg Goetz, Leipzig: Teubner 1929) London: Heinemann/ Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1934.

 

 

Liber I

 

18.3

Horum neuter satis dilucide modulos reliquit nobis, quod Cato si voluit, debuit sic, ut pro portione ad maiorem fundum et minorem adderemus et demeremus. Praeterea extra familiam debuit dicere vilicum et vilicam. Neque enim, si minus CCXL iugera oliveti colas, non possis minus uno vilico habere, nec, si bis tanto ampliorem fundum aut eo plus colas, ideo duo vilici aut tres habendi.

 

Neither of these writers has left us a very clearly expressed rule. For if Cato wished to do this, he should have stated it in such a way that we add or subtract from the number proportionately as the farm is larger or smaller. Further, he should have named the overseer and the housekeeper outside of the number of slaves; for if you cultivate less than 240 „iugera“ of olives you cannot get along with less than one overseer, nor if you cultivate twice as large a place or more will you have to keep two or three overseers.

 

Liber II

 

2.20

De sanitate sunt multa; sed ea, ut dixi, in libro scripta magister pecoris habet, et quae opus ad medendum, portat secum. Relinquitur de numero, quem faciunt alii maiorem, alii minorem. Nulli enim huius moduli naturales. Illut fere omnes in Epiro facimus, ne minus habeamus in centenas oves hirtas singulos homines, in pellitas binos.

 

"In the matter of health there are many rules; but, as I said, the head shepherd keeps these written down in a book, and carries with him the remedies he may need. The only remaining division is that of number, and some make this larger, others smaller; for there are no natural limits in this respect. Our almost universal practice in Epirus is not to have less than one shepherd to the hundred rough-fleeced sheep, and two to the hundred jacketed sheep."