Thanks to James Butrica and Rob Dyer for their helpful comments, though I still cannot work out whether compost, in its modern sense, was known to the Romans. James Butrica mentioned 'secale' in his posting. Though it may not, of course, be a correct interpretation of Classical Latin 'secale', the modern scientific name for rye is 'Secale cereale' coined by Linnaeus in 1753.
The Palladius and Pliny references sound rather as though a mixture of rye or spelt straw (rather than grains) was mixed with goose manure to produce compost. This would have been very similar to modern mushroom compost. For example, in PREPARATION OF COMPOST FOR THE PRODUCTION OF MUSHROOMS IN THE NETHERLANDS: http://www.actahort.org/books/172/172_27.htm the author says: "For synthetic compost preferably wheat or rye straw is used. Per tonne 600-900 kg of chicken manure, 75 kg of gypsum and about 5000 l of water are added, resulting in 3000 kg of compost. The straw is first mixed with 2/3 of the chicken manure, watered en gets heated for 7-10 days. The purpose of this pretreatment is to make a product similar to horse manure as it leaves the stables." Bread, incidentally, is still made from a mixture of rye and spelt flours, maybe in a modern imitation of the Romans. On the word 'laetamen' one Italian website says: "il letame, si, proprio il concime naturale con cui si ingrassa il terreno, sapete da dove deriva? Sempre dal latino ed ha un significato oserei dire poetico. Il laetamen e cio che rende i campi laeti cioe "lieti"! E un campo lieto e un campo rigoglioso e produttivo. Bello, vero?" So far as the opening lines of the Georgics are concerned, there is an interesting comparison of translations by Michael S. Cummings, Queen's University, Kingston here: http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu:8080/hyper-lists/bmcr-l/2002/0306.html In the light of Rob Dyer's comments, I don't think I shall ever feel quite the same about the name 'Letitia'. Patrick Roper ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
