How Boris’s pal ploughed
QUESTION What type of plough would the Ancient Roman Cincinnatus have used on his farm?
CINCINNATUS and his plough featured in Boris Johnson’s farewell speech as Prime Minister.
in 458 BC, former consul Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was ploughing his fields when he was unexpectedly appointed dictator of Rome at a time of crisis.
a consular army had been surrounded by the aequi tribe on Mount algidus. Cincinnatus is said to have defeated the enemy in a single day. after he brought Rome through this emergency, he resigned and returned to his farm.
the ancient Romans and Greeks used the aratrum, a simple, wooden, wheelless scratch plough. this worked well enough for the light soils of the Mediterranean and could be pushed by a farmer or pulled by oxen.
it was made of a strong, hook-shaped piece of timber, usually an elm branch. the key elements were the buris or plough tail, a curved hind piece with a yoke hole for oxen; the temo or plough beam, which projected horizontally forward; and the coulter, a blade that cut the furrow.
the ploughshare was made of a vomer of hardened wood that was later shod with bronze or iron, and the dentalia, which spread the earth. the coulter made the initial cut while the vomer and dentalia worked together like the prow of a ship to cut a widened furrow.
Elaine Mortimer, Epsom, Surrey.
QUESTION Why are the longest snooker cue rests called half butt and full butt?
the butt ends of billiards or snooker cues and rests have to be weighted in order to balance. Butt-weighted cues were developed in the mid-19th century. the additional weight was obtained by
planing the sides of the butt flat and then gluing additional pieces of heavier timber, such as ebony, to the end of the cue. this was called the english splice.
the art of machine-splicing butts was developed in France and so was known as the French splice. today, cues have a brass insert to weight the butt.
the long or full butt and half butt are rests used to reach a ball that is beyond the distance of an ordinary cue. the full butt requires a particularly heavy piece of wood or insert to balance the weight of the longer end. a 19th-century billiards manual described it as ‘a cumbrous thing, and a disagreeable necessity’.
Jason Smith, Gloucester.
QUESTION Has a pop star had a hit abroad by re-recording a song in a foreign language?
FURTHER to earlier answers about the Beatles, Petula Clark and elton John, Mary hopkin’s 1968 number One those Were the Days was re-recorded in French (Le temps Des Fleurs), German (an Jenem tag), italian (Quelli erano Giorni)
and spanish (Que tiempo tan Feliz). it was a huge hit around the world, with eight million sales.
Brian James, Bournemouth, Dorset. n IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence.