[208] Midway in the group of the three comes the order not to sow the vineyard for bearing two kinds of fruit. The first reason for this is to keep things of a different kind from being mixed and confused. For sown crops have no relation to trees nor trees to sown crops and therefore nature has not appointed the same date to both for producing their annual fruits, but has assigned spring to the one for reaping the corn harvest and the end of summer to the other for gathering the fruits.
[209] Thus we find that the sown plants after their flowering wither at the same time as the trees sprout after withering. For the sown plants flower in the winter when the trees shed their leaves while on the contrary in the spring when all the sown plants are withering the trees of both types the cultivated and the wild are sprouting, and practically it is at the same time that the crops reach their fullness and the fruits begin to grow.
[210] These two so greatly differing in their natures, their flowerings and their seasons for gendering their own particular products he rightly put asunder and set at a distance from each other, thus reducing disorder to order. For order is akin to seemliness and disorder to unseemliness.
[211] The second reason was to prevent each of the two species from hurting and being hurt in return by abstracting the nourishment from each other. For if this nourishment is divided up, as it is in times of famine and dearth, all the plants will necessarily lose all their strength and either become sterilized and completely unproductive or else bear nothing but poor fruit as a consequence of the debility caused by their lack of nourishment.
[212] The third reason was that good soil should not suffer from the pressure of two very heavy burdens, one the close unbroken density of the plants which are sown and grow on the same spot, the other the task of bearing a double crop of fruit. A single yearly tribute from a single piece of ground is enough for the owner to receive, as the same from a city is enough for a king. To attempt to levy more than one toll shows excessive avarice, and that is a vice which upsets the laws of nature.
[213] And therefore the law would say to those who are minded to gratify their covetousness by laying down seed in their vineyard “do not show yourselves inferior to kings who have subdued cities and countries by arms and military expeditions. They with an eye to the future and at the same time wishing to spare their subjects deem it best to levy one yearly tribute in order to avoid reducing them in a short space of time to the utmost depths of poverty.
[214] But you if you exact from the same plot in the spring its contributions of wheat and barley and in the summer the same from the fruit trees will wring the life out of it by the double taxation. For it will naturally become exhausted like an athlete who is not allowed a breathing space and a chance of rallying his forces to begin another contest.
[215] But you appear to forget too easily the injunctions which I gave for the common weal. If only you had remembered my instruction as to the seventh year, in which I laid it down that the holy land should be left at liberty in consideration of its six-years labours, which it underwent in bearing fruit at the annual season prescribed by the laws of nature, and not be worn out by any of the husbandman’s operations, you would not, recklessly and triumphantly giving full play to your covetous feelings, have planned strange forms of tillage by laying down seed in land fitted for the culture of trees and particularly the vine, just to gain every year two separate revenues both unjustly earned and thus increase your property with the levy which the lawless passion of avarice has led you to exact.
[216] For he who can bring himself to let his own farms go free in the seventh year and draw no income from them in order to give the land fresh life after its labours is not the man to overload and oppress them with a double burden.
[217] And therefore of necessity I pronounced on such acquisitions that both the autumn harvest and the fruit of the sown crops were unholy and impure, because the life-creating spirit-force in the rich soil is so to speak throttled and strangled, and because the owner vents his wild wastefulness on the gifts of God in an outburst of unjust desires which he does not confine within moderate bounds.”
[218] Should not our passionate affection go out to such enactments as these which by implication restrain and shackle the mad covetous desires which beset mankind? For he who as a commoner has learned to shun unjust gains in the treatment of his plants will, if he becomes a king with greater matters in his charge, follow his acquired habit when he comes to deal with men and also women. He will not exact a double tribute nor wring the life out of his subjects with his imposts. For long familiar habit has the power to soften harsh temperaments and in a sense to tutor and mould them to better forms, and the better forms are those which justice imprints on the soul.