g those which were
on top at the bottom. Cover them in the same way with salt and press
them down.

After the twelfth day remove the hams finally, brush off the salt and
hang them for two days in the wind. On the third day wipe them off
clean with a sponge and rub them with (olive) oil. Then hang them in
smoke for two days, and on the third day rub them with a mixture of
(olive) oil and vinegar.

Then hang them in the meat house, and neither bats nor worms will
touch them.[41]

VARRO'S RERUM RUSTICARUM

LIBRI TRES

BOOK I

THE HUSBANDRY OF AGRICULTURE

_Introduction: the literary tradition of country life_

I

Had I leisure, Fundania, this book would be more worthy of you, but I
write as best I may, conscious always of the necessity of haste: for,
if, as the saying is, all life is but a bubble, the more fragile is
that of an old man, and my eightieth year admonishes me to pack my
fardel and prepare for the long journey.

You have bought a farm and wish to increase its fertility by good
cultivation, and you ask me what I would do with it were it mine. Not
only while I am still alive will I try to advise you in this, but I
will make my counsel available to you after I am dead. For as it befel
the Sibyl to have been of service to mankind not alone while she
lived, but even to the uttermost generations of men after her demise
(for we are wont after so many years still to have solemn recourse to
her books for guidance in interpretation of strange portents), so
may not I, while I still live, bequeath my counsel to my nearest and
dearest.[42] I will then write three books for you, to which you may
have recourse for guidance in all things which must be done in the
management of a farm.

And since, as men say, the gods aid those who propitiate them, I will
begin my book by invoking divine approval, not like Homer and Ennius,
from the Muses, nor indeed from the twelve great gods of the city
whose golden images stand in the forum, six male and as many female,
but from a solemn council of those twelve divinities who are the
tutelaries of husbandmen.

* * * * *

First: I call upon Father Jupiter and Mother Earth, who fecundate all
the processes of agriculture in the air and in the soil, and hence are
called the great parents.

_Second_: I invoke the Sun and the Moon by whom the seasons for sowing
and reaping are measured.

_Third_: I invoke Ceres and Bacchus b