Columella: On Agriculture, Vol. I (Loeb)

authorities of his time several others of whom we have definite knowledge, as Trebellius,¹ Graecinus,² Julius Atticus,³ Volusius,⁴ and Gallio.⁵ From these and other references ⁶ it is clear that Columella was living during the time of Lucius Annaeus Seneca (circa 4 B.C.–A.D. 65) and Pliny the Elder (23–79), by whom he is quoted, and that he was of about the same age as the former and several years older than the latter. We have reason to believe, from the conclusion of Book XII,⁷ that his work was completed when he was well advanced in years.⁸

¹ V. 1. 2. M. Trebellius, legatus governor or deputy of Vitellius (Tac. Ann. VI. 41. 1), was governor of Syria A.D. 36.
² I. 1. 14; IV. 3. 6. Julius Graecinus was put to death under Caligula (Tac. Agr. 4) in 39 or 40.
³ IV. 1. 1; IV. 8. 1. Nothing more is known of Julius Atticus than is found in Columella's scattered references to him as a contemporary of Celsus. Reitzenstein (De Scriptorum Rei Rusticae Libris Deperditis original: "On the Lost Books of Agricultural Writers", p. 27) concludes from this evidence that he was somewhat older than Celsus and that he wrote in the time of Tiberius.
⁴ I. 7. 3. The Lucius Volusius mentioned by Pliny (N.H. VII. 49), who died A.D. 56 at the age of ninety-three; cf. Tac. Ann. XIII. 30, XIV. 56.
⁵ IX. 16. 2. Gallio, brother of the younger Seneca, died A.D. 65.
⁶ Collected by Reitzenstein op. cit., pp. 52f. ⁷ XII. 59. 5.
⁸ Reitzenstein (op. cit., p. 31; cf. Becher, op. cit., p. 11) inclines to the view that the works of Columella appeared in the year 64, and certainly not before 61, basing his argument on the late date of Seneca's ownership of the Nomentan farm (III. 3. 3), which, as Pliny writes (N.H. XIV. 45, 49) in A.D. 77, was bought by Remmius Palaemon in these last twenty years and sold to Seneca within ten years. Häussner (Die handschriftliche Ueberlieferung des . . . Columella original: "The Manuscript Tradition of... Columella", p. 7), carrying the question further, places the date of Seneca's purchase in 62 or 63, the composition of Columella's third book between that date and the year of Seneca's death (65), and the publication of the whole work after 65.