For Love of Roman Country

The Men Who Think of Rome XIX

Miles the Husbandman

O happy he who can fathom the cause of things,
who’s thrown all fear and dogged Fated
beneath his feet, and the roaring of ravenous Acheron.
And blessed is he conversant with the rustic gods,
Pan and stooped Silvanus and the Nymphs’ sisterhood.
—Virgil, Georgics

Ah, it’s nearly spring, and then the soil
will be warm. And then the ox’s yoke.
But the temper of the land will not be Rome’s.
How I will miss the vines wedded to the elms,
the springs that bubbled in her secret groves
I found when I was young. All her mild zones.
My lot is here in Corinth, among
the red rock and limestone cliffs of the sea.
Trading wheat that delights in winter dust,
I shall instead raise the knotted olive tree.
Resettled, like my brothers-in-arms,
by the happy issuing of Caesar’s decree.
But I’ll offer up my saffron fumes
all the same, for love of Roman country.
She has been nothing if not good to me,
has nourished from the bosom of her fields
and never, so long as by work and prayer
I set to increase the bounty of her yields,
failed to reward my labors or my care.
In toil and blood I repaid my share.
Fought alongside Pompey, same as my father.
And both of us bore our scars with pride
for honor and love of Roman country.

Never Rome betrayed me, but her men.
Rich men, who ate well by my bread,
who took our lands when father died
and I was still away at war, and nothing
could be done, fighting for the glory
and love of Rome in distant Jerusalem.
It was rich old men who took my home
and would not give it back until I had
secured a miser’s loan, and then—
what a mess! They were no husbandmen.
They did not turn the crops, nor do the work
that might have dirtied their hands to lave
the parched acres with dung, or scatter ash
on the exhausted earth. They wanted it
not for love but for what it was worth.
And the miser, a rich old man himself,
took the land again when I defaulted,
for naught come harvest time had grown,
and I was banished, homeless, penniless.

And it was Caesar gave the grain dole
to poor beggars like myself scraping by
in Subura and those wretched streets.
Twas Caesar gave it to the proper lot
for there were many receiving it then
who needed it not. Rich men and their families.
But to all that Caesar put a stop.
Aye, and set the calendar straight,
the priests, old and crooked and rich, having
knocked it so off balance, adding days
as it suited their heedless aims, till one year
Lupercal fell in the heat of summer rains.
So speak no ill of Caesar here, comrade.
I’ve no qualms with that man, for he
who fights my enemies is my friend.
Let the cruel and corrupt alike
get what’s coming to them. And they
who from an armchair would chide
my ignorance, and call me provincial,
know not that weeds must oft be razed,
and the worthless damp driven out,
for the spelt next season to be saved.
Let that whole impious generation
be broken down, like scurf with a mattock.
He who disciplines his earth commands
his tilth, and spares his crops from havoc.

How sad I am to see my country fallen
from grace and grandeur and glory.
But I’ll offer up my saffron fumes
all the same from the shores of Corinth,
and sing the farmer’s hymns, and pray.
Oh how I’ll miss the soil in spring!
Soft, when from the snowy peaks
the runoff flows, and mouldering clod
crumbles. I would trim the stalks and
lazy thistle, and the golden spelt sow.
Take me there again, when poppies
are dancing across the hills of Tuscany,
and in the vales of Campagna wagons
trundle with the farmer’s arsenal,
threshers and sledges and the heavy hoe.
Take me there, for it’s there I long to go.

William Stanley Haseltine – Morning Light, Roman Campagna, 1871

The Lex Julia Agraria was a law passed during Caesar’s consulship in 59 BC that resettled much of the urban poor and veterans of Pompey’s campaigns in the east. The move was intended not only to relieve overpopulation in the City, but also make use of uncultivated land in the Italian provinces. It also guaranteed the loyalty of the populares, not least because it was objected to by much of the Senate, including Cato. Suspicious of Caesar’s intentions, Cassius Dio says,

They suspected—and this was indeed his purpose—that it would enable him to gain the loyalty of the plebs, and thereby prestige and power over all men. Hence, even if no one voiced any objections, they still withheld their assent. Most of them were satisfied with that posture; they kept assuring him that they would pass a decree but did nothing, and the proposal became subject to petty delays and procrastination.¹

So Caesar took the matter directly to the people,² simultaneously winning their assent and discrediting those who opposed him, who could argue against the decree by no other means than that it bolstered Caesar’s reputation.

During his Gallic campaigns he would also settle discharged soldiers in colonies, rewarding them for their service while also securing his reputation abroad. Such are the circumstances of the preceding dramatic monologue.

I’m also reminded of a passage from Owen Barfield’s History in English Words, which characterizes the agricultural and militaristic roots of early Roman culture.

Although the Romans of classical times used the Latin as the English words are used now, yet if we trace them a little further back, we learn that ‘delirare’ had at one time no other meaning than to ‘go out of the furrow’, when ploughing; ‘preavaricari’ was to ‘plough in crooked lines’; ‘tribulare’ to trash with a ‘tribulum’, and so forth. In interval, on the other hand (from ‘intervallum’, the space between two palisades), excel, premium, salary, and many other words we have examples of metaphors taken from the military life. The English-sounding word, spoil, comes to us from a Latin term which once had no other meaning than to ‘strip a conquered foe of his arms’. By entering with our imagination into the biography of such a word, we catch glimpses of civilization in primitive Rome. Agriculture and war, we feel, were the primary businesses of life, and it was to these that the Roman mind instinctively flew when it was casting about for some means of expressing a new abstract idea—of realizing the unknown in terms of the known. Not often could the warlike city afford to beat her swords into ploughshares, but she was constantly melting both implements into ideas.

Thank you for reading

Some other poems in the series so far:

“They Consult the Sibylline Books” - On Nero playing while Rome burned

“Caesar Pater Patriae” - On Caesar the Patriarch

“Brutus the Senator” - A dramatic monologue by Brutus to Cicero

“The Cult of Caesar” - On the divine status of Julius Caesar

“The Ritual Sacrifice of Caesar” - On Caesar’s assassination

“Caesar Ultor” - Caesar takes bloody revenge for his murder

“Caesar Triumphator” - As a god, ruminating on the order he’s created

“Capo the Aquari” - On getting by in the Empire

“The Sibyl Hands Superbus the Books” - The voice of the Sibyl casts a warning

“SPQR” - on the bodies of the State

“Civitas” - On the sentiments of the optimates and the populares

“Vixerunt” - On the fate of the Catiline conspirators

“The Coming of Caesar” - Heroic, galloping dactyls on the omens foreboding Caesar

“Populus” - On Caesar’s political victory over Cato

“Res Publica” - On the decay of the State

“Veni Vidi Vici” - On Caesar’s 10+ years of military ascension

1. Roman History. 38.2. trans Robin Waterfield

2. Dio says he did this for the rest of his consulship, fed up with the politics of the Senate. His informal alliance with Pompey and Crassus, as well as the favor he garnered among the equites, gave him leverage to do so.