Ancient Latin Agricultural Writers, Vol. I

...that they are, there is no need to repeat here, since we have placed them under the name of Columella in the index of authors. From the fact that he indicates he visited Syria and Cilicia at 2, 10, 18, perhaps someone might not unreasonably conclude that he was there with a command, certainly with authority. This conjecture will be the less improbable if someone wishes to learn from the same index of authors about his uncle Marcus: who also teaches how often Palladius and Vegetius praise Columella. More certainly, one can conclude his age from the fact that he commemorates the vineyards of the living and flourishing Seneca at 3, 3, 3; and he names Cornelius Celsus, a man of his own time, at 1, 1, 14; he himself is cited everywhere by Pliny the Elder, who indeed does not seem to have been too fair to him, of which matter we offer both testimonies and indications at 2, 2, 19; 2, 9, 8; 2, 15, 4; 2, 16, 4; 2, 21, 5; 5, 6, 20; and 10, 407. Whether Palladius attacks him at 1, 6, 3, and likewise in the preface of his own work, we argue about those things; a wrong, to be sure, in the preface, if this is what he intended. For Columella is indeed so eloquent, not to obscure a simple argument, which he loves to teach, by talking—which one might more easily object against Palladius—but to flood everything with the clearest light, and to deserve not only that saying of Vegetius, "Columella had an abundance of oratorical faculty," but also that Epigram of Theodore Beza, which is worthy of being read not only in the Fabrician library, but here as well:

Rhodope marveled at Orpheus singing his own fate,

If indeed the poems of Virgil have weight.

But you, Junius, by singing of the wild countryside,

Draw after you even the cities themselves into your fields.