mselves. The Roman writers on
agriculture of the later republic and the imperial period reckon on
an average five -modii- of wheat as sufficient to sow a -jugerum-, and
the produce as fivefold. The produce of a -heredium- accordingly
(even when, without taking into view the space occupied by
the dwelling-house and farm-yard, we regard it as entirely arable
land, and make no account of years of fallow) amounts to fifty, or
deducting the seed forty, modii. For an adult hard-working slave
Cato (c. 56) reckons fifty-one -modii-of wheat as the annual
consumption. These data enable any one to answer for himself the
question whether a Roman family could or could not subsist on the
produce of a -heredium-. The attempted proof to the contrary is
based on the ground that the slave of later times subsisted more
exclusively on corn than the free farmer of the earlier epoch, and
that the assumption of a fivefold return is one too low for this
earlier epoch; both assumptions are probably correct, but for both
there is a limit. Doubtless the subsidiary produce yielded by
the arable land itself and by the common pasture, such as figs,
vegetables, milk, flesh (especially as derived from the old and
zealously pursued rearing of swine), and the like, are specially
to be taken into account for the older period; but the older Roman
pastoral husbandry, though not unimportant, was withal of subordinate
importance, and the chief subsistence of the people was always
notoriously grain. We may, moreover, on account of the thoroughness
of the earlier cultivation obtain a very considerable increase,
especially of the gross produce--and beyond doubt the farmers of
this period drew a larger produce from their lands than the great
landholders of the later republic and the empire obtained (iii.
Latium); but moderation must be exercised in forming such estimates,
because we have to deal with a question of averages and with a mode
of husbandry conducted neither methodically nor with large capital.
The assumption of a tenfold instead of a fivefold return will be
the utmost limit, and yet it is far from sufficing. In no case
can the enormous deficit, which is left even according to those
estimates between the produce of the -heredium- and the requirements
of the household, be covered by mere superiority of cultivation.
In fact the counter-proof can only be regarded as successful, when
it shall have produced a methodical calculation based on rural