INTRODUCTION ¹

LIFE AND WORKS OF COLUMELLA

Our knowledge of the personal history of Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, and of the dates of his writings, has been derived almost entirely by conjecture from those incidental references which he makes, at various places in his works, to himself and his contemporaries.² From these sources we learn that he was a native of Gades (Cadiz),³ a Roman municipium a town with its own local government of the province of Baetica in southern Spain; and although the date of his birth is unknown, it is obvious that he was born near the beginning of the first century of our era.

Columella defines his period loosely by his mention of Marcus Varro (circa 116-27 B.C.) as a contemporary of his grandfather.⁴ His time is more clearly indicated in a reference to Seneca ⁵ as living in his day; so, too, he speaks of Cornelius Celsus ⁶ (flourished 1st cent. A.D.) as a contemporary. He also quotes as

¹ Taken in part from H. B. Ash, L. Iuni Moderati Columellae Rei Rusticae Liber Decimus: De Cultu Hortorum original: "The Tenth Book of Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella's On Agriculture: On the Cultivation of Gardens", Philadelphia, 1930.
² Biographers have added but little to the facts first deduced by Filippo Beroaldo (1453-1505), In Libros XIII Columellae Annotationes original: "Annotations on the Thirteen Books of Columella", and printed in several of the early editions. Cf. Barbaret, De Columellae Vita et Scriptis original: "On the Life and Writings of Columella" (Nancy, 1887), p. 9.
³ VIII. 16. 9; X. 185. ⁴ I. Praef. 15. ⁵ III. 3. 3.
⁶ I. 1. 14; III. 1. 8; III. 2. 31; III. 17. 4; IV. 1. 1. Celsus is thought by Cichorius (Röm. Stud., 1922, pp. 411-417) to have written his agricultural treatise A.D. 25-26.