POINTS TO BE OBSERVED IN BUYING LAND

Latine · Mayhoff 1906

Apud Romanos multo serior vitium cultura esse coepit, primoque, ut necesse erat, arva tantum coluere, quorum a nobis nunc ratio tractabitur, non volgari modo, verum, ut adhuc fecimus, et vetustis et postea inventis omni cura perquisitis causaque rerum et ratione simul eruta. dicemus et sidera siderumque ipsorum terrestria signa dabimus indubitata, quandoquidem qui adhuc diligentius ea tractavere, quibusvis potius quam agricolis scripsisse possunt videri. ac primum omnium oraculis maiore ex parte agemus, quae non in alio vitae genere plura certiorave sunt. cur enim non videantur oracula, a certissimo deo maximeque veridico, usu, profecta?

English · Bostock & Riley 1855–57

Among the Romans the cultivation of the vine was introduced at a comparatively recent period, and at first, as indeed they were obliged to do, they paid their sole attention to the culture of the fields. The various methods of cultivating the land will now be our subject; and they shall be treated of by us in no ordinary or superficial manner, but in the same spirit in which we have hitherto written; enquiry shall be made with every care first into the usages of ancient days, and then into the discoveries of more recent times, our attention being devoted alike to the primary causes of these operations, and the reasons upon which they are respectively based. We shall make mention, too, of the various constellations, and of the several indications which, beyond all doubt, they afford to the earth; and the more so, from the fact that those writers who have hitherto treated of them with any degree of exactness, seem to have written their works for the use of any class of men but the agriculturist.

First of all, then, I shall proceed in a great measure according to the dicta of the oracles of agriculture; for there is no branch of practical life in which we find them more numerous or more unerring. And why should we not view in the light of oracles those precepts which have been tested by the infallibility of time and the truthfulness of experience?