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

393 In a soil of middling quality, the proper proportion of seed is five modii of wheat or winter-wheat to the jugerum, ten of spelt or of seed-wheat—that being the name which we have mentioned394 as being given to one kind of wheat—six of barley, one-fifth more of beans than of wheat, twelve of vetches, three of chick-pease, chicheling vetches, and pease, ten of lupines, three of lentils—(these last, however, it is said, must be sown with dry manure)—six of fitches, six of fenugreek, four of kidney-beans, twenty of hay grass,395 and four sextarii of millet and panic. Where the soil is rich, the proportion must be greater, where it is thin, less.396

There is another distinction, too, to be made; where the soil is dense, cretaceous, or moist, there should be six modii of wheat or winter-wheat to the jugerum, but where the land is loose, dry, and prolific, four will be enough. A meagre soil, too, if the crop is not very thinly sown, will produce a diminutive, empty ear. Rich lands give a number of stalks to each grain, and yield a thick crop from only a light sowing. The result, then, is, that from four to six modii must be sown, according to the nature of the soil; though there are some who make it a rule that five modii is the proper proportion for sowing, neither more nor less, whether it is a densely-planted locality, a declivity, or a thin, meagre soil. To this subject bears reference an oracular precept which never can be too carefully observed397—“Don’t rob the harvest.”398 Attius, in his Praxidicus,399 has added that the proper time for sowing is, when the moon is in Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra, and Aquarius. Zoroaster says it should be done when the sun has passed twelve degrees of Scorpio, and the moon is in Taurus.