Classical Attitudes to Waste
For
the ancient Greeks and Romans, human and animal manure held an elevated status.
As early as c. 800 BC Xenophon was extolling the virtues of animal waste in his
Oeconomicus:
“Manure is the best thing in the world for agriculture, and everyone can
see how naturally it is produced…matter in every shape, nay earth itself, in
stagnant water turns to fine manure” (Chantraine 1948, 108-9, cited in Jones
2012, 6).
By the first century Virgil wrote in his Georgics that:
Yet shall thy land from
these at pleasure rear,
Abundant harvests each
alternate year,
If rich manure fresh life
and nurture yield,
And ashes renovate
th’exhausted field
Thus lands in grateful
interchange repose,
And weath unseen beneath
the fallow grows.
From this poem is made clear the need to manure fields and leave them to
lie fallow for a year so that the soil may recover. Pliny’s Natural Historia is another of
many Roman texts that brought together advice on manure and manuring provided
by earlier authorities.