8.  Cato does not expressly say this as to the vintage, but Varro does so (I.  II.  Relation of the Latins to the Umbro-Samnites), and it is implied in the nature of the case.  It would have been economically an error to fix the number of the slaves on a property by the standard of the labours of harvest; and least of all, had such been the case, would the grapes have been sold on the tree, which yet was frequently done (Cato, 147).

9.  Columella (ii. 12, 9) reckons to the year on an average 45 rainy days and holidays; with which accords the statement of Tertullian (De Idolol. 14), that the number of the heathen festival days did not come up to the fifty days of the Christian festal season from Easter to Whitsunday.  To these fell to be added the time of rest in the middle of winter after the completion of the autumnal bowing, which Columella estimates at thirty days.  Within this time, doubtless, the moveable “festival of seed-sowing” (-feriae sementivae-; comp. i. 210 and Ovid.  Fast, i. 661) uniformly occurred.  This month of rest must not be confounded with the holidays for holding courts in the season of the harvest (Plin.  Ep. viii. 21, 2, et al.) and vintage.

10.  III.  I. The Carthaginian Dominion in Africa

11.  The medium price of grain in the capital may be assumed at least for the seventh and eighth centuries of Rome at one -denarius- for the Roman -modius-, or 2 shillings 8 pence per bushel of wheat, for which there is now paid (according to the average of the prices in the provinces of Brandenburg and Pomerania from 1816 to 1841) about 3 shillings 5 pence.  Whether this not very considerable difference between the Roman and the modern prices depends on a rise in the value of corn or on a fall in the value of silver, can hardly be decided.

It is very doubtful, perhaps, whether in the Rome of this and of later times the prices of corn really fluctuated more than is the case in modern times.  If we compare prices like those quoted above, of 4 pence and 5 pence for the bushel and a half, with those of the worst times of war-dearth and famine—­such as in the second Punic war when the same quantity rose to 9 shillings 7 pence (1 -medimnus- = 15 —­ drachmae—­; Polyb. ix. 44), in the civil war to 19 shillings 2 pence (1 -modius- = 5 -denarii-; Cic.  Verr. iii. 92, 214), in the great dearth under Augustus, even to 21 shillings 3 pence (5 -modii- =27 1/2 -denarii-; Euseb.  Chron. p.  Chr. 7, Scal.)—­the difference is indeed immense; but such extreme cases are but little instructive, and might in either direction be found recurring under the like conditions at the present day.

12.  II.  VIII.  Farming of Estates