De agri cultura

De agri cultura, also known as On Farming or On Agriculture, is a treatise on Roman agriculture by Cato the Elder. It is the oldest surviving work of Latin prose. Cato was revered by many later authors for his practical attitudes, his natural stoicism and his tight, lucid prose. He is much quoted by Pliny the Elder, for example, in his Naturalis Historia.

Style

The work of Cato is often characterized as a "farmer's notebook" written in a "random fashion"; it is hard to think of it as literature. The book seems to be no more than a manual of husbandry intended for friends and neighbours. Its direct style, however, was noted by other ancient authors like Aulus Gellius as "forceful and vigorous", in a context of extreme simplicity. Perhaps the main achievement of De agri cultura is its depiction of rural life during the Roman Republic.

Defence of farming

Cato's introduction compares farming with other common activities of that time, specifically commerce and usury. He criticizes both: the former on the basis of the dangers and uncertainty which it bears; the second because according to the Twelve Tables, the usurer is judged a worse criminal than a thief. Cato makes a strong contrast with farming, which he praises as the source of good citizens and soldiers, of both wealth and high moral values.
De agri cultura contains much information on the creation and caring of vineyards, including information on the slaves who helped maintain them. After numerous landowners in Rome read Cato's prose during this time, Rome began to produce wine on a large scale. Many of the new vineyards were sixty acres, and because of their large size, even more slaves were necessary to keep the production of wine running smoothly.

Farm recipes

One section consists of recipes for farm products. These include:

An imitation of Coan wine ;
The first recorded recipe for vinum Graecum, imitating the style of strongly flavoured Greek wine that used to be imported to Roman Italy.
Savillum, libum and placenta cake, pastries similar to cheesecake
Erneum
Spira and spaerita
Globi and encytum
Punic porridge
Wheat pap
Starch
Bleaching salt
Kneading bread
Force-feeding hens, geese, and squab
Making a food offering to Mars for the health of cattle

Food writer Mark Kurlansky describes the placenta cake recipe as incomprehensible and resulting in an inedible dish if followed literally.

Rituals

There is a short section of religious rituals such as the Suovetaurilia to be performed by farmers. The language of these is clearly traditional, somewhat more archaic than that of the remainder of the text, and has been studied by Calvert Watkins.

Manuscripts

All of the manuscripts of Cato's treatise also include a copy of Varro's essay of the same name. J.G. Schneider and Heinrich Keil showed that the existing manuscripts directly or indirectly descend from a long-lost manuscript called the Marcianus, which was once in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice and described by Petrus Victorinus as liber antiquissimus et fidelissimus. The oldest existing manuscript is the Codex Parisinus 6842, written in Italy at some point before the end of the 12th century. The editio princeps was printed at Venice in 1472; Angelo Politian's collation of the Marcianus against his copy of this first printing is considered an important witness for the text.