Just re-read Cato’s “De Agri Cultura” in a broad new light. This is the oldest survivng text of Latin prose, but it still can hardly be called “literature” in its proper sense.
The book is more like a chaotic collection of recipes and recommendations for close friends and neighbours, but it is still the most important source of our knowledge about agriculture in Ancient Rome.
This is what we basically know from college.
What “changes the optics” is the following comment: Cato was conservative, even ultra-conservative, but.
The book opens with a very harsh criticism of traders and usurers: “Est interdum praestare mercaturis rem quaerere, nisi tam periculosum sit, et item foenerari, si tam honestum”. Which he did himself, buying and selling lakes, mortgaging houses, pawning ships.
He stood for “goode aulde traditions”, but the text is a guidebook for the new capitalist paradigm, where slavery is used intensively.
The text is archaic only in the part dealing with farming rituals: it was apparently copied from an older manuscript that did not survive.
English title: Cato “On Agriculture” or “On Farming”
Original title (Latin): Cato “De agri cultural”
First published in the Levinarium Telegram Channel (now closed and deleted)