I

Utility lies at the root of much prose: in Cato it is only implicit, though indubitable, but here is the note in Varro: ‘Quare quoniam emisti fundum quem bene colendo fructuosum cum facere velis, meque ut id mihi habeam curare roges, experiar: et non solum ut ipse, quoad vivam, quid fieri oporteat ut te moneam, sed etiam post mortem’ (R.R. i. 1), and the prefatory remarks to books ii and iii reveal essentially the same motive: fructus is the aim of estate management and Varro is setting out to serve that end by compiling good advice. That such advice will survive etiam post mortem is one of the practical benefits of committing it to writing, but there is no suggestion of a larger immortality though the dialogue form is of course very much the expression of ars. Here is the note again in another of the earlier extant prose works, the rhetorical treatise ad Herennium whose recipient realizes ‘non… in se parum fructus habet copia dicendi’ (cf. III. 1 ad hanc utilitatem progredi): here fructus recalls Varro's fructuosum, but the difference between the literal and the metaphorical fructus is significant to the student of social history. From a social as well as a literary standpoint too there is interest in the explicit rejection by the auctor ad Herennium of certain possible motives for writing: Profit and Reputation—‘non enim spe quaestus aut gloria commoti venimus ad scribendum quemadmodum ceteri’, and in particular Reputation derived from a bogus erudition. ‘Illa quae Graeci scriptores inanis adrogantiae causa sibi adsumpserunt reliquimus: nam illi, ne parum multa scisse viderentur, ea conquisiverunt quae nihil attinebant ut ars difficilior cognitu putaretur.’