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HOW TO BE A FARMER:
An Ancient Guide to Life on the Land
Selected, translated and introduced by M.D.Usher
ISBN 978-0-691-21174-9
Did you know there were no bakers in Rome until 171 BCE? Or that the
first coins were stamped with sheep and oxen? Or that pecuniary
is derived from pecus meaning livestock? Or that
Cicero’s name owes its origin to cier, meaning chick-pea?
This little book which presents the Latin or Greek alongside the
English is full of fascinating details, but that’s incidental; its
core is a selection of texts by Hesiod, Plato, Lucretius, Varro,
Vergil, Horace, Pliny the Elder, Columella, Musonius Rufus, Cato and
an extract from Daphnis and Chloe. Throughout, the benefits of rural
life are exemplified. It has to be born in mind, as M.D.Usher points
out in his introduction, that slavery was taken for granted in the
ancient world; a difficult matter to set aside, rather like ignoring
the fact of employment in our own time while venerating life in the
countryside. However, keeping that in mind, there is much wisdom and
interest here.
“A bad neighbour is as much a pain as a good one is a blessing,”
writes Hesiod (342-69). Some things change hardly at all. Yet Hesiod
isn’t concerned merely with avoiding boundary disputes. “Don’t seek
ill-gotten gain,” he says, “ill-gotten gain is on a par with ruin.”
This emphasis on prosperity gained through principled effort runs
throughout the collection. Being wealthy is not what matters
(perhaps Donald Trump would benefit from this book), but working
honestly and being generous if you succeed: “Giving is good.
Snatching is bad.” The ancients believed a sense of shame was
essential, something we would do well to recall. To snatch, to take
more than you deserve is shameful and hardens the heart. In the same
way, idleness and lack of providence are sources of misery: “The man
who puts off work grapples with constant ruin”. Work, however, is
not employment. The ideal proposed here is that of to each person a
“competence”. The ideal of work is that of the person in control of
what they do and produce. In this version, work is not drudgery or
humiliation but the means by which people assert their independence
and dignity.
Plato, who expressed some unpleasant ideas about dictators and who
famously expelled poets from his republic, has Socrates debating the
bucolic utopia. He’s an
early advocate of the division of labour: it makes better use of
people’s time and adds to the efficiency of communal life. People
live in cities because we are by nature social and the skills of ten
people are sure to exceed those of one; but a city needs justice.
The bucolic utopia is a combination of the rural and the urban where
collective effort provides more and better than the individual can.
Lucretius, Usher points out, anticipated the Law of Conservation of
Energy in his view that nothing comes from nothing, nor is ever
permanently lost. Modern physics tells a different story, but all
the same, Lucretius reminds us that, while we’re here, we need to
take account of how the eco-system works; “why couldn’t nature
produce people so large as to cross the sea on foot…” The world is
as it is, everything has its place and its role. As we face a
climate crisis which may uproot millions, we would do well to think
like Lucretius.
“Oh, farmers. How lucky they are…” writes Vergil in the extract from
his poem The Georgics. The rural life may not be luxurious,
but farmers benefit from the delights of the countryside and the
healthy life of hard work in the open air. The self-sufficiency of
the farmer obviates envy of the rich but also, pity for the poor. A
somewhat curious notion, but perhaps what Vergil is suggesting is
that the contentment of the farming life alleviates the distress of
witnessing the struggles of the poor. The farmer has “never laid
eyes on the mad Forum, its iron laws, or the public archives.” He is
apart from the court, ambition, the pursuit of luxury, politicians’
machinations. It’s a somewhat oversimplified view, but as Usher
points out, contradicted in other parts of the poem. Agriculture is
about ten thousand years old, prior to that we were all
hunter-gatherers. During that ten-thousand-year period we have
generated civilisations founded on cities. Jericho is usually
thought of as the oldest city. Cities permit a literate, symbolic,
scientific culture, but Vergil reminds us they are sited in the
countryside. Our dependence on the land and those who work it is
absolute and the fantastical predictions of laboratory-made food
notwithstanding, probably will be as long as we exist.
Horace begins the extract Usher titles Simple Tastes by
asserting: “I loathe the uninitiated mob and keep it at bay.” This
is difficult to take in our democratic age and a reminder, along
with the caveat about slavery, that the ancients embraced a much
more limited definition of democracy. The chief definer of our
democracy was born to poor farmers. By all accounts he disliked the
hard labour of the farm, preferring to read and write. Nevertheless,
perhaps his rural roots granted him
some of the straightforward simplicity which permitted him
clarity and principle of “government of the people, by the people,
for the people”, a formula more respected in the breach than the
observance. “The person who wants what is enough is not made anxious
by the roiling sea or by the fierce rush of Arcturus setting..”
Modern economists would quibble over what is meant by enough, but
common sense, a faculty much in evidence among the writers here,
tells us. “Why take riches in exchange for my valley in Sabina when
they only increase one’s hassles?” asks Horace, a question almost
embarrassing in the face of the ostentatious display of exorbitant
wealth taken for granted in our culture.
Usher has made a judicious selection and his translations are fluent
and elegant. He’s a remarkable man; not only a professor of Classics
but also a farmer along with his wife, husbanding a hundred and
twenty-five acres in Vermont. Like the writing in the book, he
offers a wise example along with the positive face of today’s
troubled and divided America.
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