The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome
History
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome
Literature -- Collections
When the matters have been settled to the master's satisfaction, he
should take measures to see that what has not been done be at once
accomplished. He should then proceed to consider the account of the
farm, and a consideration of the amount of grain which has been
prepared for fodder. He should have returns made of wine and
olive-oil, and learn how much has been consumed, how much sold, how
much is left over and may be put on sale. If there is a deficit any
year, he should order it to be made up from the outside, and whatever
is above the needs of the farm sold. If there is anything to let out
on contract, he should order this to be done, and concerning the work
which he wishes to be thus accomplished he should give his order in
writing. As regards the cattle he should order them to be sold by
auction, and in the same way should sell the oil, if the price of oil
has risen; likewise the superfluous wine and corn of the estate. He
should also order to be sold worn-out bulls, blemished cattle,
blemished sheep, wool, hides, any plow that is old, old tools, old
slaves, slaves who are diseased, or anything else which is useless,
for the owner of a farm must be a seller and not a purchaser.
The owner of a farm and of slaves must begin to study in early manhood
the cultivation and sowing of the land. He should, however, think a
long time before building his villa, but not about farming his
property, which he should set about at once. Let him wait until his
thirty-sixth year and then build, provided his whole property is under
cultivation. So build that neither the villa be disproportionately
small in comparison with the farm nor the farm in comparison with the
villa. It behooves a slave-owner to have a well-built country house,
containing a wine-cellar, a place for storing olive-oil, and casks in
such numbers that he may look forward with delight to a time of
scarcity and high prices, and this will add not only to his wealth,
but to his influence and reputation. He must have wine-presses of the
first order, that his wine may be well made. When the olives have been
picked, let oil be at once made or it will turn out rancid. Recollect
that every year the olives are shaken from the trees in great number
by violent storms. If you gather them up quickly and have vessels
ready to receive them, the storm will have done them no harm and the
oil will be all the greener and better. If the olives be on the ground
or even on the barn floor too long, the oil made from them will be
fetid. Olive-oil will be always good and sweet if it be promptly made.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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