[Footnote 19:  Columella (I,4) makes the acute observation that the country house should also be agreeable to the owner’s wife if he wishes to get the full measure of enjoyment out of it.  Mago, the Carthaginian, advised to, “if you buy a farm, sell your house in town, lest you be tempted to prefer the cultivation of the urban gods to those of the country.”]

[Footnote 20:  According to German scholarship the accepted text of Cato’s version of this immemorial epigram is a model of the brevity which is the test of wit, “Frons occipitio prior est.”  Pliny probably quoting from memory, expands it to “Frons domini plus prodest quam occipitium.”  Palladius (I, 6) gives another version:  “Praesentia domini provectus est agri.”  It is found in some form in almost every book on agriculture since Cato, until we reach the literature in which science has taken the place of wisdom—­in the Byzantine Geoponica, the Italian Crescenzi, the Dutch Heresbach, the French Maison Rustique, and the English Gervase Markkam.  Poor Richard’s Almanack gives it twice, as “the foot of a master is the best manure” and “the eye of a master will do more work than both his hands.”  It is perennial in its appeal.  The present editor saw it recently in the German comic paper Fliegende Blaetter.  But the jest is much older than Cato.  It appears in Aeschylus, Persae, 171 and Xenophon employs it in Oeconomicus (XII, 20): 

“The reply attributed to the barbarian,” added Ischomachus, “appears to me to be exceedingly to the purpose, for when the King of Persia having met with a fine horse and wishing to have it fattened as soon as possible, asked one of those who were considered knowing about horses what would fatten a horse soonest, it is said that he answered ‘the master’s eye.’”]

[Footnote 21:  The English word “orchard” scarcely translates arbustum, but every one who has been in Italy will recall the endless procession of small fields of maize and rye and alfalfa through which serried ranks of mulberry or feathery elm trees, linked with the charming drop and garland of the vines, seem to dance toward one in the brilliant sunlight, like so many Greek maidens on a frieze.  These are arbusta.]

[Footnote 22:  Cato was a strong advocate of the cabbage; he called it the best of the vegetables and urged that it be planted in every garden for health and happiness.  Horace records (Odes.  III, 21, 11) that old Cato’s virtue was frequently warmed with wine, and Cato himself explains (CLVI) how this could be accomplished without loss of dignity, for, he says, if, after you have dined well, you will eat five cabbage leaves they will make you feel as if you had had nothing to drink, so that you can drink as much more as you wish—­“bibesque quantum voles!”

This was an ancient Egyptian precaution which the Greeks had learned.  Cf.  Athenaeus, I, 62.]