Agricultural Life in Central Italy as Revealed by the De Agri Cultura of Cato
Abstract
The De Agri Cultura of M. Porcius Cato is the product of the practical experience of a man whose remarkable public career did not lessen his interest in farming in which his younger days had been spent. Cato was born at Tusculum in 234 B.C. As a youth of seventeen he began military service in the Second Punic War but at the end of the war returned to the farm which his father had left him in the Sabine territory. Near him lived M'. Curius Dentatus, the conqueror of the Greek king Pyrrhus. The frugality of Curius and the skillful management of his farm made such an impression on Cato that he strove to put into practice, on his own farm, the principles he saw applied with such success by Curius. Here was the beginning of that frugality and complete understanding of the husbandry of the time which we find in the De Agri 'Cultura.
Subject Area
History|Agriculture|European Studies
Recommended Citation
maher, Frances L, "Agricultural Life in Central Italy as Revealed by the De Agri Cultura of Cato" (1935). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI28960395.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI28960395
