The Roman writer on agriculture Columella, who died around AD 70, gives a detailed description of the manufacture of hay (Latin: *faenum*) in his *de re rustica* 2.18, which reads as follows in the Loeb translation:

> "It is best, moreover, that hay be cut before it begins to wither, as
> a greater quantity of it is harvested and it affords a more agreeable
> food for cattle. But a middle course should be followed in the curing,
> that it be gathered neither when very dry nor, on the other hand,
> while still green — in the one case because it is no better than straw
> if it has lost all its sap, and in the other because, if it has kept
> too much of it, it rots in the loft and often, when it becomes heated,
> it breeds fire and starts a blaze. Sometimes, too, when we have cut
> our hay a rain surprises us; and if the hay is soaked through it is
> useless to move it while wet, but better to let the upper side of it
> dry out in the sun. 2 Only then shall we turn it, and, when it is dry
> on both sides, we shall bring it together in windrows and then bind it
> up in bundles. And above all we shall lose no time in putting it under
> cover; or, if it is not convenient for the hay to be carried to the
> farmstead or tied into bundles, it will be well at any rate that all
> of it that had been dried out to the proper extent be built up into
> cocks and that these be topped off with very sharp peaks. 3 For by
> this method hay is very conveniently protected from rains; and even if
> there is no rain, it is still not amiss to build the aforesaid cocks,
> so that any moisture remaining in the hay may sweat and dry out in the
> piles. For this reason wise husbandmen, even in the case of hay
> brought under cover, do not store it away until they have allowed it
> to heat and cool for a few days in a loose pile. But now after the
> haymaking comes attention to the grain harvest; and that we may
> properly gather it, we must first put in readiness the implements with
> which the crops are harvested."

So much for the claim that "in the classical world of Greece and Rome and in all earlier times, there was no hay".