Running a home and a farm

Lesson plan

3 class periods of about 45 minutes.

1. Day 1 · 45 min

   Ischomachus's house

   1. Open A young wife learns to run the house and read the History tab. Xenophon wrote it as a dialogue: Socrates reports what Ischomachus told him. The household servants are enslaved, and the wife was married before she was fifteen.
   2. Read 7.21 to 7.23 and 7.36 and 7.37 aloud, with students taking the parts. Students answer the comprehension question: which tasks belong to the wife and which to Ischomachus.
   3. Read 9.2 and 9.4. Students draw the source's floor plan, label each room with what belongs there, and mark which way the house faces.
   4. Beside each room, students note who would have worked or slept there, with a question mark for anything the text does not say.

2. Day 2 · 45 min

   Cato's farm

   1. Open How to run a farm and read the History tab. Cato wrote for a landowner who lived in Rome; the work was done by enslaved people under an overseer.
   2. Read 1.1, 1.3 and 1.6 aloud. Students list what Cato says a good farm needs.
   3. Read 2.2 and 2.3. Students list every job in 2.3 and sort it into rainy-day jobs and holiday jobs.
   4. Read 2.7, 5.1, 5.2, 5.4 and 5.5. Students write the overseer's daily checklist in Cato's order.
   5. Discuss the connection question on A young wife learns to run the house: the wife looks after sick servants (7.37), while Cato cuts sick slaves' rations (2.3) and lists them for sale (2.7). Students say whose point of view is missing from both.

3. Day 3 · 45 min

   Roman kitchens

   1. Open Roman recipes and read the History tab: the book carries Apicius's name, but he did not write it, and many of its ingredients were costly.
   2. Each student takes one recipe, such as the peas (5.3.1) or the milk patina (7.13.7), and rewrites it as a recipe card, with a question mark wherever an amount, a time or a heat is missing.
   3. Read Cato's savillum (84) in How to run a farm beside the sponge eggs (7.13.8). Students compare how much each writer tells the cook.
   4. 20 minutes: Students answer the big question with evidence from at least two sources: what the writers thought a well-run home or farm needed, who did the work, and whose voices the texts leave out.

Read these sources

In this order. Each opens in Hearth Library with the original beside plain English, and a History tab on who made it and how far to trust it.

1. 1

   A young wife learns to run the house

   Xenophon, 370–350 BCE. Moderate.

   The reported speech (“he said,” “I said”) can make it hard to tell who is speaking; reading the parts aloud helps.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   household

   *oikos*, the house together with what belongs to it and the people who live and work in it

   sensible

   here, *sōphronein*: of sound mind, self-controlled, and modest

   household servants

   the enslaved men and women who worked in the house

   women’s quarters

   here, the part of Ischomachus’s house kept for the women, shut off from the men’s quarters by a bolted door

   pulses

   the dried seeds of plants such as beans, peas, and lentils, eaten as food

   chorus

   a group of people who sang and danced together in a performance

   1. Comprehension Which tasks does Ischomachus say belong to his wife, and which belong to him?
   2. Analysis Ischomachus uses a beehive, a chorus, and a Phoenician ship as comparisons. What does each one help him argue?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Everything the wife says reaches us through Ischomachus, telling Socrates, in a book written by Xenophon. How far can her answers tell us what a young Athenian wife thought? What would we need to know to check them?
   4. Connection In this text the wife must see that any household servant who falls ill is looked after, and she hopes they will be grateful. In How to run a farm, Cato says sick slaves should not get full rations and lists an old slave and a sick slave among the things to sell. Compare the two. What reasons does each writer give, or leave unstated, and whose point of view is missing from both?

   Activity Using 9.2 and 9.4, students draw a floor plan of Ischomachus’s house and label each space with what he says belongs there, such as the inner room, the dry and cool rooms, the living rooms, and the women’s quarters behind a bolted door, and they mark which way the house faces. Beside each room they note who would have worked or slept there, and they mark with a question mark anything the text does not tell them.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

2. 2

   Roman recipes

   Apicius, 300–500. Accessible.

   Short recipes in plain steps; the footnotes explain the Roman measures and ingredients.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   fish sauce

   *liquamen*, a salty sauce made from fish; Pliny the Elder describes the similar *garum* as made from fish innards steeped in salt

   *patina*

   a shallow pan, and also the dish cooked in it, often set with eggs

   must

   the juice of freshly pressed grapes, before it ferments into wine

   raisin wine

   *passum*, a sweet wine made from grapes dried in the sun until they had lost about half their weight

   mortar

   a heavy bowl in which food is crushed or ground

   *sextarius*

   a Roman measure of liquid, a little over half a liter; a *hemina* was half of one

   1. Comprehension How is rose wine made with real roses, and how long does it take before the wine is strained?
   2. Analysis List the tools, containers, and cooking methods these recipes name. What kind of kitchen do they suggest, and what does the cook need to know how to do?
   3. Analysis (reliability) The book carries Apicius’s name, but he did not write it. Its 1922 editors judged that it was shortened in the 300s or 400s from an older collection; it survives in copies made in the 800s. What problems does this raise if we want to use one recipe as evidence of how Romans cooked at a particular time?
   4. Connection Cato’s How to run a farm, written in the second century BCE, also gives recipes, among them a cheese cake (libum) and cheese balls fried and spread with honey. Compare one of Cato’s recipes with the fried bread with honey or the sponge eggs here. How much does each writer tell the cook about amounts, tools, and cooking, and what might that suggest about the readers each book was meant for?

   Activity Each student takes one recipe, such as the peas or the milk patina, and rewrites it as a recipe card with a list of ingredients and numbered steps. Wherever the text leaves out an amount, a time, or a heat, the student writes a question mark. The class compares cards and counts which kinds of information are missing most often.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

3. 3

   How to run a farm

   Cato, 170–149 BCE. Moderate.

   Short commands, but the Roman measures and farm terms need the footnotes.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   overseer

   *vilicus*, the man who ran the farm for an owner who lived away; he was usually enslaved himself

   interest

   money a borrower pays a lender for the use of a loan

   *iugerum*

   a Roman measure of land, a little less than two-thirds of an acre

   Lar

   a guardian god of the household, kept at the hearth and greeted with prayer and offerings

   pitch

   a sticky, dark substance made from tree resin or tar, used to seal jars so they hold liquid

   spelt

   an old kind of wheat

   augur

   a person who read the will of the gods in the flight of birds

   1. Comprehension What excuses does Cato expect the overseer to give when not enough work has been done?
   2. Analysis Cato tells the overseer to keep the slaves from cold and hunger, to keep them busy, and to reward good service (5.2, 5.5). What reasons does he give, and what do they show about how he saw the slaves?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Cato wrote this late in life, for a landowner who lives in Rome and visits his farm. What can his advice tell us about Roman farms, and what can it not? Whose account of the same farm would help us check him?
   4. Connection In A young wife learns to run the house, Ischomachus’s wife keeps and shares out what her husband brings in, and looks after the household servants. Here the overseer runs the farm while the master is away. Compare the two jobs. What is each person trusted with, and what does each writer think makes them good at it?

   Activity Students list every job in 2.3 and sort it into rainy-day jobs and holiday jobs. Then, using chapter 5 (5.3 is cut and not shown), they write the overseer’s daily checklist in Cato’s order. The class discusses what the two lists show about the working days of the enslaved people who did the jobs, and what the text does not say about them.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

To finish

Come back to the question: What did ancient writers think a well-run home or farm needed, and who did the work? Ask students to answer it with evidence from at least two of the sources, and to say which source they trust most and why.

Standards

Students compare Cato and Xenophon on who did the work, ask what Apicius's recipes leave out, and note that the enslaved and the wife reach us only through the master of the house.

Go further

Other units

Learning and good conduct

Encyclopedia

Garum, Roman fish sauce · Slavery in ancient Greece and Rome

Play

Word for Word

Collection

Every source in Kitchen, Farm and Fable