Gaius Furius Chresimus

Instead, he suggests that Piso could have found about Chresimus from oral tradition among his family, because the Postumii Albini and the Calpurnii Pisones were closely linked politically throughout the second century BC.

[6] Due to his Greek origin, Chresimus may also have been the victim of his neighbours' xenophobia, who denounced him to Albinus, the curule aedile – equivalent of a prosecutor – who decided to charge him before the Centuriate Assembly.

nequeo mihi temperare quominus unum exemplum antiquitatis adferam ex quo intellegi possit apud populum etiam de culturis agendi morem fuisse, qualiterque defendi soliti sint illi viri.

C. Furius Chresimus e servitute liberatus, cum in parvo admodum agello largiores multo fructus perciperet quam ex amplissimis vicinitas, in invidia erat magna, ceu fruges alienas perliceret veneficiis.

quamobrem ab Spurio Albino curuli aedile die dicta metuens damnationem, cum in suffragium tribus oporteret ire, instrumentum rusticum omne in forum attulit et adduxit familiam suam validam atque, ut ait Piso, bene curatam ac vestitam, ferramenta egregie facta, graves ligones, vomeres ponderosos, boves saturos.

profecto opera inpensa cultura constat et ideo maiores fertilissimum in agro oculum domini esse dixerunt I cannot refrain from adducing one instance from old times which will show that it was customary to bring before the Commons even questions of agriculture, and will exhibit the kind of plea that men of those days used to rely on to defend their conduct.

Gaius Furius Chresimus, a liberated slave, was extremely unpopular because he got much larger returns from a rather small farm than the neighbourhood obtained from very large estates, and he was supposed to be using magic spells to entice away other people’s crops.

He was consequently indicted by the curule aedile Spurius Albinus; and as he was afraid he would be found guilty, when the time came for the tribes to vote their verdict, he brought all his agricultural implements into court and produced his farm servants, sturdy people and also according to Piso’s description well looked after and well clad, his iron tools of excellent make, heavy mattocks, ponderous ploughshares, and well-fed oxen.

[27] According to Robert Rosenblum, the scene and Furius Chresimus's apologia echo Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 1762 Emile, or On Education, in which agriculture was described as of all endeavours "the most honest, the most useful, and by consequence the most noble".

[24] The painting of the same subject by the Genevan painter Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours, an admirer and acquaintance of Rousseau, was commissioned in 1792 after his return there from Rome, by a landowner who felt he had been unjustly accused of corruption.