SOURCE: Tore Janson, "Agricultural Handbooks," in Latin Prose Prefaces: Studies in Literary Conventions, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1964, pp. 83-94.

[In the excerpt that follows, Janson examines the rhetorical structure of Cato 's preface to the De agricultura. Its sentence structure, Janson argues, reveals a social and economic purpose at odds with the professed moral purpose of the work.]

The entire preface to Cato's book on agriculture is devoted to a comparison between different ways of earning a living, with on the one hand agriculture and on the other trade and banking.¹ The disposition of this brief preface requires some clarification.² In his first sentence Cato states that trade and banking could be (economically) preferable (to agriculture), were it not for their riskiness and dishonesty respectively. The plan of the rest of the preface is clearly to deal first with banking, then with trade and finally with agriculture. The second sentence obviously approves the custom of "our ancestors" of condemning a thief to double fine, afenerator to quadruple. After this discouraging dismissal of the banking world, the writer does not continue at once with the merchant but—since he has now mentioned the Romans of old—takes the opportunity of describing their attitude to agriculture in a passage that is worth quoting:

(Cato Agr. pref. 2) Et uirum bonum quom laudabant, ita laudabant, bonum agricolam bonumque colonum. Amplissime laudari existimabatur qui ita laudabatur.

Then follows a sentence on merchants, paying tribute to their energy but summing up their occupation with a repetition of what has already been said of its risks. Finally comes the writer's own assessment of agriculture:

(Agr. pref. 4) At ex agricolis et uiri fortissimi et milites strenuissimi gignuntur, maximeque pius quaestus stabilissimusque consequitur minimeque inuidiosus, minimeque male cogitantes sunt qui in eo studio occupati sunt.

The preface then concludes with a brief transitional phrase.

In this preface are interwoven two different types of argument in favour of agriculture, the ethical and the economic. In order to clarify Cato's manner of argument we must distinguish as far as possible between them.

The ethical argument aims to show that the farming life is morally better than any other. Two lines of thought are presented. The first comprises a reference to the view of the Romans of old. In a society as enormously bound by tradition as that of the Republic it was of the greatest importance to be able to quote the opinions of the men of old. Cato himself was also a traditionalist of the purest water. Emotionally, he knew of nothing more strongly attractive than what he felt to be a heritage from the early Romans.

The other moral argument is of a more practical nature. From the farming class come the bravest men and the best soldiers, and persons in this occupation are the most upright (minime male cogitantes).

These two arguments are naturally interrelated. In Cato's view, the reason why the Romans of old valued the life of the farmer so highly was above all its beneficient effect on the character (even if he does not expressly say this). Cato follows the ideology of the old Italian farming class. His ideal was the type probably represented by his own father,³ farmers who looked after their estates, took part in war and were active in political life.⁴

If we confront these views on the merits of the agricultural life with the reality that is reflected in the work that follows,⁵ the result is somewhat surprising. In fact, there is no place at all for a farmer on the sort of holding that is described. Cato rather describes a small estate, looked after by a uilicus, a steward. The owner himself is not assumed to live on the estate for more than brief periods.⁶ It is hard to conceive how this occasional visitor could be fostered by country life to be fortis or strenuus. Even more difficult, however, would it be to conceive Cato as meaning that it was the persons living on the farm, the uilicus and his subordinates, who were blessed with these outstanding qualities. Cato's entire view of life is patriarchal. There is no doubt but that he regarded people of his own social class as in all respects the most important, and that it was them he was addressing in his work. It is hardly reasonable to suppose that he would have consciously portrayed these people as morally inferior to their subordinates.

One is also struck by the type of farm Cato chooses to describe. Its most important products by far are wine and olives.⁷ In the very detailed descriptions of the staff and equipment needed for the olive grove and vineyard⁸ he departs from the idea of a farm of 100 iugera and a varied production as hinted in the first chapters, and assumes instead exclusive cultivations of olives on 240 iugera and wine on 100 iugera? These cultivations are conceived as equipped with presses of what—to judge from the exhaustiveness of the description—must have been a quite unusual size and kind. This is a far cry from the type of farm we can imagine¹⁰ as run by a bonus agricola bonusque colonus of the old Italian farmer class. What would he have done with such quantities of wine and oil? He could never have disposed of them either to his neighbours or in the market.¹¹

The reality portrayed in Cato's book thus chimes very badly with the moral argument presented in the preface. On the other hand it fits the economic arguments very well indeed. The picture of Cato and his environment that emerges when we study the introduction from this aspect is most interesting.

Cato is concerned to show that from agriculture there comes maxime pius quaestus stabilissimusque, as compared with trade and banking. He ought therefore, in all reason, to be writing for people who had some possibility of choosing between these different forms of livelihood. To carry out the dangerous trading activities that Cato envisaged it would be necessary to live in a port. Both merchants and moneylenders must obviously have abundant access to cash. The circle for whom Cato was writing and to which he himself belonged¹² was thus in a situation as unlike as possible that of the resident farmer. They were capitalists in a Rome that had already started to develop into a commercial metropolis of Hellenistic type, with a good flow of capital and markets for large volumes of desirable products. The majority of these men were without doubt landowners by inheritance, if not by purchase, but their interest in land was not that of the farmer, only that of the owner.

The two lines of argument interwoven in Cato's preface thus have no real connexion in fact. Cato's moral arguments presuppose conditions that no longer existed—at least not in the type of agriculture with which Cato was concerned. This is not to say that they were meaningless. They are presented in the preface to assure to agriculture the high renown accorded by the traditional Roman standards. The ancestors—the old Roman farmers—are mobilized as revered ghosts to give prestige to an economic investment. The economic arguments, on the other hand, are aimed to recommend a realistic and so far as we can judge advantageous form of financial investment.¹³ Such arguments should have aroused the interest of the persons at whom they were directed.¹⁴

Notes

¹ As Klingner (Cato Censorius [1934] p. 254) has pointed out, Cato most certainly took the actual idea of writing a preface with this type of content from the Greeks.

² Leeman analyses this preface in Orationis Ratio [1963] pp. 22 f. He there points out a fact of great importance, namely that the division of the arguments for agriculture into one line concerning its freedom from periculum and another concerning its honestas has its background in rhetorical theory. For in the genus deliberatiuum the arguments for the usefulness of something are divided thus: Vtilitas in duas partes in ciuili consultatione diuiditur: tutam, honestam (Rhet. Her. 3.2.3). This has no direct bearing on Cato's factual reasons for the composition of the preface, which is what I treat here, but is extremely interesting as a proof of rhetorical influence in an author where one would least expect it.

³ See Klingner, Cato Censorius pp. 243 f.

⁴ Cf. Frank [Rome and Italy of the Republic, 1933] p. 162.

⁵ Frank gives a survey of the conditions of agricultural economics implied by Cato's work (pp. 160-172) with a wealth of quotations but unfortunately few comments.

⁶ See Chap. 2.1. In Chap. 4 the owner is urged to build himself a good uilla urbana on his estate, to entice him there more often.

⁷ See in particular Chap. 1.7, though Cato reverts to the cultivation of these two products throughout the entire book.

⁸ Chaps. 10 and 11 respectively.

⁹ It is beyond my competence to judge how far this and many other inconsistencies in the construction of the book can be explained by the hypothesis put forward by Hörle. This scholar maintains that the book preserved is a compilation of a number of smaller works, originally entirely independent of each other, with short sections inserted in between.

¹⁰ Chaps. 12-13, 18-22.

¹¹ Frank pp. 171 f.: "Cato's book shows the beginnings of specialized farming with slave gangs on a relatively large scale."

¹² A wealth of literature is available on Cato's personality, social position and political convictions. Consideration has been paid in the present study above all to Klingner and Kienast [Cato der Zensor, 1953] who represent largely opposing views. The former sees Cato above all as a farmer's son from the land of the Sabines, a champion of the farming population of Italy and the sworn enemy of the senatorial aristocracy. The latter regards him as an upstart who had quickly allied himself to the ruling class and become the central figure in the majority side of the senatorial aristocracy, in opposition only to the few leading families, the Scipios and others. The plentiful but often contradictory sources permit both interpretations (and perhaps others). The picture gained from the book on agriculture fits Kienast's view rather than Klingner's. Naturally, however, it is impossible to assume without further argument a direct connexion between Cato's political activities—which is what Kienast is primarily discussing—and his private financial position and transactions. Politically it is perfectly possible for a capitalist in Rome to have represented the Italian farming population. It is clear enough, on the other hand, that it is the economist and capitalist who is speaking in the work under discussion here.

¹³ See the calculations on the profitability of the olive plantation put forward by Frank, p. 171.

¹⁴ It should be noted how Cato has selected the forms of livelihood to be contrasted with agriculture. Moneylending and its shamefulness provide an effective foil to agricultural pietas in the moral argument. The dangers of being a merchant are set off against the security of the farm in the economic argument. Plutarch postulates in fact that Cato devoted himself to both trade and usury. His source is probably a pamphlet aimed against Cato (see Kienast p. 24) and this information should therefore perhaps be viewed with greater scepticism than is shown by Klingner (p. 256) and Kienast (pp. 35 f.).