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The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 4 (of 6) cover

The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 4 (of 6)

Chapter 4: CHAP. 2. (2.)—WHEN THE FIRST WREATHS OF CORN WERE USED AT ROME.
By the Elder Pliny
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The text compiles practical and encyclopedic guidance on crop cultivation and plant uses, beginning with cereals and farm management — types of grain, sowing and harvesting schedules, ploughing, seed selection, storage, and maladies — plus weather and stellar prognostics for agricultural timing. It proceeds to flax and garden plants, detailing varieties, planting and processing methods, garden layout, and pest and disease remedies. The final section assembles medicinal preparations and numerous remedies derived from vegetables and herbs, listing applications and recipes for treating ailments using garden-grown plants.

CHAP. 2. (2.)—WHEN THE FIRST WREATHS OF CORN WERE USED AT ROME.

Romulus was the first who established the Arval6 priesthood at Rome. This order consisted of the eleven sons of Acca Larentia, his nurse,7 together with Romulus himself, who assumed the appellation of the twelfth of the brotherhood. Upon this priesthood he bestowed, as being the most august distinction that he could confer upon it, a wreath of ears of corn, tied together with a white fillet; and this, in fact, was the first chaplet that was ever used at Rome. This dignity is only ended with life itself, and whether in exile or in captivity, it always attends its owner. In those early days, two jugera of land were considered enough for a citizen of Rome, and to none was a larger portion than this allotted. And yet, at the present day, men who but lately were the slaves of the Emperor Nero have been hardly content with pleasure-gardens that occupied the same space as this; while they must have fishponds, forsooth, of still greater extent, and in some instances I might add, perhaps, kitchens even as well.

Numa first established the custom of offering corn to the gods, and of propitiating them with the salted8 cake; he was the first, too, as we learn from Hemina, to parch spelt, from the fact that, when in this state, it is more wholesome as an aliment.9 This method, however, he could only establish one way: by making an enactment, to the effect that spelt is not in a pure state for offering, except when parched. He it was, too, who instituted the Fornacalia,10 festivals appropriated for the parching of corn, and others,11 observed with equal solemnity, for the erection and preservation of the “termini,” or boundaries of the fields: for these termini, in those days, they particularly regarded as gods; while to other divinities they gave the names of Seia,12 from “sero,” “to sow,” and of Segesta, from the “segetes,” or “crops of standing corn,” the statues of which goddesses we still see erected in the Circus. A third divinity it is forbidden by the rules of our religion to name even13 beneath a roof. In former days, too, they would not so much as taste the corn when newly cut, nor yet wine when just made, before the priests had made a libation of the first-fruits.