7. I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform

8. Perhaps the latest, although probably not the last, attempt to prove that a Latin farmer's family might have subsisted on two jugera of land, finds its chief support in the argument that Varro (de R. R. i. 44, i) reckons the seed requisite for the jugerum at five modii of wheat but ten modii of spelt, and estimates the produce as corresponding to this, whence it is inferred that the cultivation of spelt yielded a produce, if not double, at least considerably higher than that of wheat.  But the converse is more correct, and the nominally higher quantity sown and reaped is simply to be explained by the fact that the Romans garnered and sowed the wheat already shelled, but the spelt still in the husk (Pliny, H. N.  xviii. 7, 61), which in this case was not separated from the fruit by threshing. For the same reason spelt is at the present day sown twice as thickly as wheat, and gives a produce twice as great by measure, but less after deduction of the husks.  According to Wurtemberg estimates furnished to me by G. Hanssen, the average produce of the Wurtemberg morgen is reckoned in the case of wheat (with a sowing of 1/4 to 1/2 scheffel) at 3 scheffel of the medium weight of 275 Ibs. (= 825 Ibs.); in the case of spelt (with a sowing of 1/2 to 1 1/2 scheffel) at least 7 scheffel of the medium weight of 150 lbs. (= 1050 Ibs.), which are reduced by shelling to about 4 scheffel. Thus spelt compared with wheat yields in the gross more than double, with equally good soil perhaps triple the crop, but - by specific weight - before the shelling not much above, after shelling (as "kernel") less than, the half. It was not by mistake, as has been asserted, but because it was fitting in computations of this sort to start from estimates of a like nature handed down to us, that the calculation instituted above was based on wheat; it may stand, because, when transferred to spelt, it does not essentially differ and the produce rather falls than rises. Spelt is less nice as to soil and climate, and exposed to fewer risks than wheat; but the latter yields on the whole, especially when we take into account the not inconsiderable expenses of shelling, a higher net produce (on an average of fifty years in the district of Frankenthal in Rhenish Bavaria the malter of wheat stands at 11 gulden 3 krz., the malter of spelt at 4 gulden 30 krz.), and, as in South Germany, where the soil admits, the growing of wheat is preferred and generally with the progress of cultivation comes to supersede that of spelt, so the analogous transition of Italian agriculture from the culture of spelt to that of wheat was undeniably a progress.

9. I. II. Agriculture

10.Oleumand oliva are derived from elaion, elaia, and amurca (oil-less) from amorgei.

11. But there is no proper authority for the statement that the fig-tree which stood in front of the temple of Saturn was cut down in the year 260 (Plin. H. N. xv. 18, 77); the date CCLX. is wanting in all good manuscripts, and has been interpolated, probably with reference to Liv. ii. 21.

12. I. XI. Property

13. I. VI. Class of Metoeci Subsisting by the Side of the Community

14. I. XI. Guardianship

15. I. XII. Oldest Table of Roman Festivals

16. The comparative legal value of sheep and oxen, as is well known, is proved by the fact that, when the cattle-fines were converted into money-fines, the sheep was rated at ten, and the ox at a hundred asses (Festus, v. peculatus, p. 237, comp. pp. 34, 144; Gell. xi. i; Plutarch, Poplicola, ii). By a similar adjustment the Icelandic law makes twelve rams equivalent to a cow; only in this as in other instances the Germanic law has substituted the duodecimal for the older decimal system.

It is well known that the term denoting cattle was transferred to denote money both among the Latins (pecunia) and among the Germans (English fee).

17. I. XIV. Decimal System

18. There has lately been found at Praeneste a silver mixing-jug, with a Phoenician and a hieroglyphic inscription (Mon. dell Inst. x. plate 32), which directly proves that such Egyptian wares as come to light in Italy have found their way thither through the medium of the Phoenicians.

19. comp. I. XIII. Culture of the Olive

20.Velum is certainly of Latin origin; so is malus, especially as that term denotes not merely the mast, but the tree in general: antenna likewise may come from ana (anhelare, antestari), and tendere = supertensa. Of Greek origin, on the other hand, are gubenare, to steer (kubernan); ancora, anchor (agkura); prora, ship's bow (prora); aplustre, ship's stern (aphlaston); anquina, the rope fastening the yards (agkoina); nausea, sea-sickness (nausia). The four chief winds of the ancients - aquilo, the "eagle-wind," the north-easterly Tramontana; voltumus (of uncertain derivation, perhaps the "vulture-wind"), the south-easterly; auster the "scorching" southwest wind, the Sirocco; favonius, the "favourable" north-west wind blowing from the Tyrrhene Sea - have indigenous names bearing no reference to navigation; but all the other Latin names for winds are Greek (such as eurus, notus), or translations from the Greek (e.g. solanus = apelioteis, Africus = lips).

21. This meant in the first instance the tokens used in the service of the camp, the xuleiphia kata phulakein brachea teleos echonta charakteira (Polyb. vi. 35, 7); the four vigiliae of the night-service gave name to the tokens generally. The fourfold division of the night for the service of watching is Greek as well as Roman; the military science of the Greeks may well have exercised an influence - possibly through Pyrrhus (Liv. xxxv. 14) - in the organization of the measures for security in the Roman camp. The employment of the non-Doric form speaks for the comparatively late date at which theword was taken over.

22. I. XI. Character of the Roman Law

23. I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

24. I. X. Etruscan Commerce

25. I. XI. Clients and Foreigners, I. XIII. Commerce, in Latium Passive, in Etruria Active

26. I. X. Greek Cities Near Vesuvius

27. If we leave out of view Sarranus, Afer, and other local designations (I. X. Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the Hellenes), the Latin language appears not to possess a single word immediately derived in early times from the Phoenician. The very few words from Phoenician roots which occur in it, such as arrabo or arra and perhaps also murra, nardus, and the like, are plainly borrowed proximately from the Greek, which has a considerable number of such words of Oriental extraction as indications of its primitive intercourse with the Aramaeans.  That elephas and ebur should have come from the same Phoenician original with or without the addition of the article, and thus have been each formed independently, is a linguistic impossibility, as the Phoenician article is in reality ha, and is not so employed; besides the Oriental primitive word has not as yet been found. The same holds true of the enigmatical word thesaurus; whether it may have been originally Greek or borrowed by the Greeks from the Phoenician or Persian, it is at any rate, as a Latin word, derived from the Greek, as the very retaining of its aspiration proves (xii. Foreign Worships).