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Colummela, is known to us as the most voluminous and important of all the Roman writers upon
rural affairs. The only particulars which can be ascertained with regard to his
personal history are derived exclusively from incidental notices scattered up
and down in his writings. We thus learn, that he was a native of Cadiz (x. 185);
and since he frequently quotes Virgil, names Cornelius Celsus (i. 1.14, iii. 17.4,
&c.), and Seneca (iii. 3.3), as his contemporaries, and is himself repeatedly
referred to by the elder Pliny, it is certain that he must have flourished during
the early part of the first century of the Christian era. At some period of his
life, he visited Syria and Cilicia (ii. 10.18); Rome appears to have been his
ordinary residence (Praef. 20); he possessed a property which he calls Ceretanum
(iii. 3.3, comp. iii. 9.6), but whether situated in Etruria, in Spain, or in Sardinia,
we cannot tell; and from an inscription found at Tarentum it has been conjectured
that he died and was buried in that city. His great work is a systematic treatise
upon agriculture in the most extended acceptation of the term, dedicated to an
unknown Silvinus, and divided into twelve books. The first contains general instructions
for the choice of a farm, the position of the buildings, the distribution of the
various duties among the master and his labourers, and the general arrangement
of a rural establishment; the second is devoted to agriculture proper, the breaking
up and preparation of the ground, and an account of the different kinds of grain,
pulse, and artificial grasses, with the tillage appropriate for each; the third,
fourth, and fifth are occupied with the cultivation of fruit trees, especially
the vine and the olive; the sixth contains directions for choosing, breeding,
and rearing oxen, horses, and mules, together with an essay on the veterinary
art; the seventh discusses the same topics with reference to asses, sheep, goats,
swine, and dogs; the eighth embraces precepts for the management of poultry and
fishponds; the ninth is on bees; the tenth, composed in dactylic hexameters, treats
of gardening, forming a sort of supplement to the Georgics (comp. Virg. Georg.
iv.); in the eleventh are detailed the duties of a villicus, followed by a Calendarium
Rusticum, in which the times and seasons for the different kinds of work are marked
down in connexion with the risings and settings of the stars, and various astronomical
and atmospherical phaenomena; and the twelfth winds up the whole with a series
of receipts for manufacturing different kinds of wine, and for pickling and preserving
vegetables and fruits.
In addition to the above, we have one book "De Arboribus", which is
of considerable value, since it contains extracts from ancient authorities now
lost, and throws much light on the fifth book of the larger work, which appears
under a very corrupt form in many of the MSS. Cassiodorus (Divin. Lect. 28) mentions
sixteen books of Columella, from which some critics have imagined, that the tract
"De Arboribus" was one of four written at an early period, presenting the outline
or first sketch of the complete production. The MSS. from which Columella was
first printed inserted the "De Arboribus" as the third book of the whole work,
and hence in the older editions that which is now the third book is marked as
the fourth, and so on for all the rest in succession.
The Latinity of Columella is in no way inferior to that of his contemporaries,
and belongs to the best period of the Silver Age. His style is easy and copious
to exuberance, while the fondness which he displays for multiplying and varying
his mode of expression is out of taste when we consider the nature of his theme,
and not compatible with the close precision which we have a right to expect in
a work professedly didactic. Although we miss the racy quaintness of Cato and
the varied knowledge and highly cultivated mind of Varro, we find here a far greater
amount of information than they convey, and could we persuade ourselves that the
whole was derived from personal observation and experience, we might feel satisfied
that our knowledge of the rural economy of that epoch was tolerably complete.
But the extreme carelessness with which the Calendar has been compiled from foreign
sources may induce the suspicion, that other matters also may have been taken
upon trust; for no man that had actually studied the appearance of the heavens
with the eye of a practical farmer could ever have set down in an almanac intended
for the use of Italian husbandmen observations copied from parapegmata calculated
for the latitudes of Athens and Alexandria.
With the exception of Cassiodorus, Servius, and Isidorus, scarcely
any of the ancient grammarians notice Columella, whose works lay long concealed
and were unknown even in the tenth century. The Editio Princeps was printed at
Venice by Nic. Jenson, 1472, in a collection of "Rei Rusticae Scriptores" containing
Cato, Terentius Varro, Columella, and Palladius Rutilius. The first edition in
which the "Liber de Arboribus" was separated from the rest was that superintended
by Jucundus of Verona and published by Aldus, Venice, 1514. The most valuable
editions are those contained in the "Scriptores Rei Rusticae veteres Latini,"
edited by Gesner, Lips. 1735, reprinted, with the collation of an important Paris
MS., by Ernesti, Lips. 1773; and in the Scriptores Rei Rusticae of J. G. Schneider,
Lips. 1794. This last must be considered in every respect the most complete, and
in the preface will be found a very full account of the different MSS. and of
the gradual progress and improvement of the text.
The tenth book, under the title " J. Moderati Columellae Hortuli Commentarium",
appeared in a separate form at Rome, about 1472, from the press of Adam Rot, and
was frequently reprinted in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Translations exist in English, Lond. 1745; in French by Cotereau,
Paris 1551; in Italian by P. Lauro, Venez. 1554, 1557, and 1559, by Bened. del
Bene, Verona 1808; and in German, among many others, by M. C. Curtius, Hamburg
1769.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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