Columella: On Agriculture, Vol. I (Loeb)

metrical composition,”1 deals with gardening, as a sort of supplement to Vergil’s fourth Georgic. It is evident from a statement in the preface to the whole work,2 as well as from the conclusion of Book IX3 and the Preface of Book X,4 that the tenth book was intended to complete the work; but at the still insistent urgings of Silvinus5 there was added an eleventh book containing a discussion of the duties of a farm overseer, a Calendarium Rusticum Rural Calendar, in which the times and seasons for various kinds of farm labour are fixed in connection with the risings and settings of the stars, and a long chapter on gardening to supplement the treatise in verse. The twelfth book, written for the overseer’s wife and defining her special duties, contains recipes for the manufacture of various kinds of wine and for the pickling and preserving of vegetables and fruits. That the twelve books were sent to Silvinus one by one as they were completed, and that they have been transmitted to us in the order written, is indicated by the fact that their opening or closing lines usually contain some reference to comments on the book just preceding or to the subject matter of the book that is to follow.

The De Arboribus On Trees, thought to have been addressed to Eprius Marcellus,6 deals with the cultivation and

1 XI. 1. 2; cf. IX. 16. 2; X. Praef. 1, 3.
2 I. Praef. 25–28.
3 IX. 16. 2.
4 X. Praef. 1.
5 XI. 1. 2.
6 This supposition has resulted from a colophon in the manuscripts, found after a long table of contents following Bk. XI (XII): Praeter hos duodecim libros singularis eius liber ad Eprium Marcellum original: "Besides these twelve books, his individual book to Eprius Marcellus.". Eprius Marcellus was appointed to a vacant praetorship in 49 A.D., which expired at the end of a few days or hours (Tac. Ann. XII. 4). He later became an informer under Nero.