On Agriculture, Volume II - Books 5–9

Columella (Lucius Iunius Moderatus) of Gades (Cadiz) lived in the reigns of the first emperors to about AD 70. He moved early in life to Italy where he owned farms and lived near Rome. It is probable that he did military service in Syria and Cilicia and that he died at Tarentum. Columella's "On Agriculture" ("De Re Rustica") is the most comprehensive, systematic and detailed of Roman agricultural works. Book I covers choice of farming site; water supply; buildings; staff. II: Ploughing; fertilising; care of crops. III, IV, V: Cultivation, grafting and pruning of fruit trees, vines, and olives. VI: Acquisition, breeding, and rearing of oxen, horses, and mules; veterinary medicine. VII: Sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs. VIII: Poultry; fish ponds. IX: Bee-keeping. X (in hexameter poetry): Gardening. XI: Duties of the overseer of a farm; calendar for farm work; more on gardening. XII: Duties of the overseer's wife; manufacture of wines; pickling; preserving. There is also a separate treatise, "Trees" ("De Arboribus"), on vines and olives and various trees, perhaps part of an otherwise lost work written before "On Agriculture." The Loeb Classical Library edition of Columella is in three volumes.

About the author

Edward Seymour Forster (1879–1950) was Lecturer in Classics at the University of Sheffield.Edward Hoch Heffner (1886–1963) was Professor of Classics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Summary

Columella included Cato and Varro among many sources for On Agriculture, but his personal experience was paramount. Written in prose except for the hexameters on horticulture of Book 10, the work is richly informative about country life.

Product details

• Authors: Columella
• Assisted by: E. S. Forster (Translation), E.S. Forster (Translation), E.H. Heffner (Translation), Edward H. Heffner (Translation)
• Publisher: University Presses
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.01.1954
• EAN: 9780674994485
• ISBN: 978-0-674-99448-5
• Weight: 327 g
• Illustrations: 2 tables, 9 line illustrations
• Series: Loeb Classical Library; Loeb Classical Library; Loeb Classical Library *CONTINS TO [e-mail]
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Essays, feuilletons, literary criticism, interviews; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Essays, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays, Literary essays