[Footnote 23:  Henry Home, Lord Kames, a Scots judge of the eighteenth century, whom Dr. Johnson considered a better farmer than judge and a better judge than scholar, but who had many of the characteristics of our priscus Cato, argues (following an English tradition which had previously been voiced by Walter of Henley and Sir Anthony Fitzherbert) in his ingenious Gentleman Farmer against the expense of ploughing with horses and urges a return to oxen.  He points out that horses involve a large original investment, are worn out in farm work, and after their prime steadily depreciate in value; while, on the other hand, the ox can be fattened for market when his usefulness as a draught animal is over, and then sell for more than his original cost; that he is less subject to infirmities than the horse; can be fed per tractive unit more economically and gives more valuable manure.  These are strong arguments where the cost of human labour is small and economical farm management does not require that the time of the ploughman shall be limited if the unit cost of ploughing is to be reasonable.  The ox is slow, but in slave times he might reasonably have been preferred to the horse.  Today Lord Kames, (or even old Hesiod, who urged that a ploughman of forty year and a yoke of eight year steers be employed because they turned a more deliberate and so a better furrow) would be considering the economical practicability of the gasolene motor as tractive power for a gang of “crooked” ploughs.]

[Footnote 24:  Cato adds a long list of implements and other necessary equipment.]

[Footnote 25:  The Roman overseer was usually a superior, and often a much indulged, slave.  Cf.  Horace’s letter (Epist. I, 14) to his overseer.]

[Footnote 26:  This was the traditional wisdom which was preached also in Virginia in slave times.  In his Arator (1817) Col.  John Taylor of Caroline says of agricultural slaves: 

“The best source for securing their happiness, their honesty and their usefulness is their food....  One great value of establishing a comfortable diet for slaves is its convenience as an instrument of reward and punishment, so powerful as almost to abolish the thefts which often diminish considerably the owner’s ability to provide for them.”]

[Footnote 27:  Reading “compitalibus in compito,” literally “the cross roads altar on festival days.”]

[Footnote 28:  It is evident that Cato’s housekeeper would have welcomed a visit from Mr. Roosevelt’s Rural Uplift Commission.  We may add to this Sir Anthony Fitzherbert’s description of the duties of a farmer’s wife in sixteenth century England: 

“It is a wyues occupation to wynowe all maner of cornes, to make malte, to wasshe and wrynge, to make heye, shere corne, and in tyme of nede to helpe her husbande to fyll the mucke-wayne or dounge-carte, dryue the ploughe, to loode hey, corne and suche other.  And to go or ride to the market, to sel butter, chese, mylke, egges, chekyns, capons, hennes, pygges, gese, and all maner of cornes.  And also to bye all maner of necessarye thynges belongynge to houssholde, and to make a trewe rekenynge and acompte to her husbande what she hath payed.”