PREFACE.

Nearly three years have now elapsed since, by the advice and encouragement of friends, I resolved to prepare a new edition of the Geoponica original: "Γεωπονικῶν." This title refers to a famous 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia of agricultural lore, compiled from much older Greek and Roman sources., which was filled with many errors. I was fortified indeed by these principal reasons: that many monuments of both Greek and Latin authors, excerpted from the commentaries of the ancients on Rural Affairs original: "De Re Rustica." This was the formal Latin term for the study of agriculture and farming management., are preserved here, rescued from destruction; for the authors themselves and their more substantial volumes have long since perished through the decay of time. Nor is it perhaps of less weight—passing over the praises of Agriculture, which have already been heaped up by many more than enough—that this little book on Rural Affairs, written in the Greek language, is the only and unique one currently extant, as far as I know.

Great hopes have indeed long been raised in us regarding the agricultural writings of Florentinus, Heron, and others Ancient Greek agricultural writers whose original works are lost, though portions of their wisdom were saved within this collection. lying hidden in the libraries of Italy and the desks of learned men, perhaps never to be brought to light. It seemed right, therefore, to add this one little book from the Greeks as a companion—though later—to the Latin writers on Rural Affairs, who have appeared so many times in such neat form; it is to be numbered now among "Treasures" (as Alexander Brassicanus Joannes Alexander Brassicanus (c. 1500–1539), the scholar who produced the first printed edition of this text. says in his title) rather than just "Books."

And now the nature of a Preface seems to require that I review those things which were of use to me in preparing this edition. The first, and only, Greek edition of the Geoponica was published in Basel in the year of our Lord 1539, at the expense of Robert Winter and by the care of Joannes Alexander Brassicanus, from a manuscript codex now placed in the Imperial Library at Vienna, as Lambecius Peter Lambeck (1624–1680), a renowned librarian and historian who cataloged the Imperial Library in Vienna. [notes] in his Commentaries—