How to be a farmer like you mean it

Part XXI of the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series

[Based on How to Be a Farmer: An Ancient Guide to Life on the Land, by various authors, translated by Mark D. Usher. Full book series here.]

I have been covering the Princeton University Press brilliant ongoing series, Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers, edited by Rob Tempio, for a while now. This is entry number 21, and I’m almost caught up with what they put out so far. (Of course, Rob taunted me recently by announcing four more titles for next year, to which I replied: yay!)

I have to admit, though, that this entry initially took me aback. Farming?? I get that Mark Usher, the translator, has been living with his wife on a farm in Vermont for the past twenty years. But I’m with Socrates: when he was asked why he never ventured outside of Athens, in the beautiful countryside, he replied that it was because all the interesting things, meaning human affairs, were happening within the city walls.

Nevertheless, I quickly warmed up to the book, and in the end I thoroughly enjoyed being exposed to the writings of Lucretius, Virgil, Hesiod, Pliny the Elder, Horace, and a number of others. I’m still firmly rooted in New York City and will not move to Vermont any time soon. But thanks to Usher’s selections, I do have a renewed appreciation for the wisdom and poetry of ancient writers inspired by life in the countryside.

Who knows, perhaps we denizens of the 21st century, mostly living in cities planetwide (at the tune of 4 billion people, currently), should consider returning to, or at least appreciating anew, an existence closer to nature?

Usher suggests that “we must rediscover old ways of contemplating and being” and that in order to appreciate the book one doesn’t actually have to be a farmer, as “farming is a state of mind, and it is well worth the trouble to cultivate it.” Let’s see what he’s talking about.

The following are some highlights from How to Be a Farmer, with accompanying brief commentaries:

“So, all this time there’s not been just one goddess Strife engendered on Earth, there are two! One [farming] you’d praise, upon seeing her work. But the other [war] is deserving of blame. Their hearts are completely opposed. For one foments evil war and conflicts and she’s savage. There’s not a person alive that loves her. Of necessity, by the Immortals’ decrees, do people give that grievous Strife her due. But the other Strife dark Night birthed first, and the Son of Cronos, seated on high, dwelling in ether, lodged her in the roots of Earth. She’s far better for people. For she rouses even the useless person to work in spite of themselves. … This Strife is good for people.” (Hesiod, Works & Days, 1-46)

Hesiod (circa 750-650 BCE) was a contemporary of Homer and, together with Homer, is credited as a major source of Ancient Greek mythology and religion. Here he sets himself in sharp contrast with Homer. While the latter is famous for his glorification of the first kind of strife, that is, war, Hesiod says that it is the other strife, the one inherent in a life devoted to cultivating the land, that is truly good for human beings.

The comparison is less odd than it may appear at first because Ancient Greek warriors were also, usually, farmers. That is why military campaigns were suspended during both the sowing and harvest seasons. The  connection between war and agriculture is also obvious when we consider how the Spartans inflicted damage to Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War: by destroying the ripening fields throughout Attica.

Nowadays we say “make love not war.” Perhaps it should be “sow your fields instead of killing fellow human beings”?

“It must be admitted, then, that nothing can arise from nothing, since everything requires seed. … Nature breaks everything down into its own constituent parts and does not render matter into nothing. … Nature permits no observable destruction of anything. … Not a single thing returns to nothing; all things, rather, return by separation into the elemental bodies of matter. … Whatever you see does not wholly pass away, since Nature re-creates one thing from another and does not allow anything to be born except that fostered by the death of something else.” (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, 1.146-264)

The Roman poet Lucretius (99-55 BCE) wrote the superb Epicurean poem known as De Rerum Natura, On the Nature of Things. This passage is about cosmic recycling, and could be reasonably interpreted as anticipating the law of conservation of matter (and energy) that is a discovery of modern physics.

Usher, the translator, takes it also to be an indirect ode to the sort of recycling that is inherent in agricultural practices, like composting. This may be a bit of a stretch, and yet the excerpt from Lucretius does feel like a good fit within the overall flow of the book. Of course, there is actually nothing natural about human farming, even of the pre-industrial kind being exalted about here. Naturally speaking, human beings evolved as hunter-gatherers, not farmers. And indeed, arguably a lot of the bad kind of strife Hesiod refers to above is actually the result of the allegedly good second kind of strife that he so eloquently praises. It’s only once humans began farming that they started growing their population and organizing their societies according to the sort of division of labor that made a warrior class possible in the first place.

“Ah, farmers! How lucky they are—too lucky! If only they knew how good they have it: Far from the cacophony of swords, the most righteous Earth, of her own accord, produces a ready source of life from the ground. … May I cherish rivers and woodlands—even if I achieve no fame. … Whoever has the ability to understand Nature’s laws and has trampled underfoot all Fear and implacable Fate, along with the river-roar of insatiable Death, is blessed. … One man plunders a city and its houses’ shrines so that he can drink from a jewel-encrusted cup and sleep on Tyrian purple; another hoards treasure and gloats over the gold he’s dug up. Another gawks, thunderstruck, at the speaker’s podium. For yet another, mouth agape, the applause of statesmen and commoners alike redoubles through the theater-seats and carries him away. They rejoice, soaked in their brothers’ blood. … Whereas the farmer has been furrowing the ground with his curved plow—the source of a year’s work and whereby he sustains the nation and his small grandchildren.” (Virgil, Georgics, 2.458-540)

Virgil (70-19 BCE) was arguably the greatest Roman poet, most famous for the Aeneids, the mythical story of how the Romans were linked by descent to the Trojans—a connection that indirectly exalted Virgil’s patron, the first Roman emperor, Octavian Augustus.

The Georgics are a bit more bucolic than that, as the title itself states (from the Greek word γεωργικά, geōrgiká, i.e. ‘agricultural things’). While Virgil’s description of the farmer may be a bit too idealized, it is, again, the contrast between life in the country and in the city that is being highlighted. City dwellers are described as greedy, bloodthirsty, or simply shallow. The farmer, meanwhile, is intent in simple and hard work that ultimately feeds not just himself and his family, but the rest of us as well.

There is indeed something to admire in the sort of life Virgil extolls, and there is something equally contemptible about the stereotypical city dweller’s obsession with material possessions and social reputation. Indeed, one of the essays included in the collection is by the Stoic Musonius Rufus, who argues that farming is actually the best sort of life for a philosopher. (I still respectfully decline, strengthened in my resolve by the observation that Musonius himself lived in Rome, as a member of the upper middle class order of the Eques.)

“Since Phrygian marble work does not relieve a suffering soul, nor does the wearing of clothes brighter that Sidon’s purple, nor the fruit of the Falernian vine, nor perfume from Persia, why should I build a lofty atrium in the new style, with doors to inspire envy? Why take riches in exchange for my valley in Sabina when they only increase one’s hassles?” (Horace, Odes, 3.1)

Horace, yet another important Roman poet (65-8 BCE), is also contrasting a life spent pursuing luxury with the simpler, more virtuous, and comparatively hassle-free life of the farmer. In this Ode, he singles out for criticism those rich men who built themselves giant mansions that polluted the landscape all over the southern Italian coast. Just as people still do today.

Incidentally, Horace, in another work included in the collection (Satires 2.6), also retells the story of the country and the city mouse, a famous moral tale from antiquity which still resonates today. The original version goes back to Aesop (620-564 BCE), and even Marcus Aurelius refers to it: “Think of the country mouse and of the town mouse, and of the alarm and trepidation of the town mouse.” (11.22)

Aesops Fables (1912), illustrated by Arthur Rackham, image from Wikimedia.

“The ancients thought that to observe moderation in the size of a farm was of first importance inasmuch as they determined that it was more satisfactory to sow less land and plow it better. … Large estates have ruined Italy, and are now ruining the provinces, too.” (Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 18.7)

Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) famously wrote the encyclopedic Natural History, and just as famously died when he approached, on a rescue mission, the volcano Mount Vesuvius during the eruption of the year 79 CE–the one that destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

In this passage he is criticizing the development of large-scale agriculture, whereby a few landlords get to control most of the land while exploiting countless workers. Once more, it is striking to realize, while reading these ancient sources dating back two millennia, that we have not invented much. A lot of the problems that plague modern society were, in one form or another, already present then. And for the same underlying reasons: human greed and stupidity.

[Next in this series: How to Innovate, by Aristotle. Previous installments: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX.]