Ancient Latin Writers on Agriculture, Vol. II: Columella

...rustic works, prevailed with the firmest bodies and easily sustained the military service of war when the situation demanded it, having been hardened by the labors of peace, and they always preferred the rustic commoners to the urban ones. For just as those who lingered in villas within enclosed spaces were considered lazier than those who worked the earth out in the open, so those who dawdled idly under the shadow of the city within the walls seemed more sluggish than those who cultivated the fields or managed the works of the farmers. It is clear that the meetings of the market days were established for this reason, so that urban matters were conducted only on the ninth days the Roman market cycle, nundinae, while rustic matters were managed on the remaining days. For in those times, as we have already said, the leaders of the state lived in the fields; and when public counsel was needed, they were summoned from their villas to the Senate. From this, those who called them were named "Travelers" Viatores. And while that custom was preserved through the most persistent zeal for cultivating fields, those ancient Sabine Quirites and the great-grandfathers of the Romans, although they stored their fruits while between sword and fire and amid the devastation of enemy incursions, nonetheless stored them more abundantly than we do, to whom, with a long peace permitting, it has been allowed to extend rem rusticam agricultural practice. And so, in this Latium and Saturnian land, where the gods had taught their offspring the cultivation of fields, we now lease them at auction so that grain may be imported to us from overseas provinces, lest we suffer from hunger: and we store vintages from the Cycladic islands and the regions of Baetica and Gaul. And no wonder, when the vulgar opinion is publicly conceived and already confirmed that agricultural work is a sordid task, and one that...