INTRODUCTION

...this, publishing during that time one of his major theoretical works, the De Lingua Latina (likely in 45 B.C.), which was dedicated to Cicero, along with many smaller works such as the Hebdomades (32 B.C.), the Disciplinae, De Vita Sua On His Own Life, and De Vita Populi Romani On the Life of the Roman People. These were practical in aim, intended to popularize science or stimulate patriotism in the younger generation. His treatise on farming was of this latter type. It is a practical handbook written specifically for his wife, Fundania, who had recently purchased a farm, and generally for the benefit of future generations. He hoped to persuade his fellow countrymen to return to "the divine country" and to that life "which is not only the most ancient, but the best of all" (iii, 1, 4). While his goal may have aligned with other great writers of the early Augustan age, there is no evidence to support the common claim that Varro’s work was written at the command of Octavius. Nor does it seem likely that Octavius, in 36 B.C.—the year the Rerum Rusticarum was written (Euseb. Chron., Varro, R.R., i, 1, 1)—would have been focused on regenerating a country through the arts of peace that he had yet to win by force of arms.

The books on farming were composed when Varro was eighty, most likely...