Columella: On Agriculture, Vol. I (Loeb)

propagation of the vine, the olive, and various trees; and, while its subject matter is treated more fully in the Res Rustica, the work is still of considerable interest and value in that it throws some light on the larger and later work, especially on the corrupt manuscript text of the fifth book.

The works of Columella, though comparatively neglected since the eighteenth century, have held an important place in their special field. The author is cited by his contemporary Pliny among authorities for his work on natural history.1 The veterinarian Pelagonius, who wrote before the time of Vegetius (fourth century), often quotes verbatim precepts from Columella’s sixth book;2 so often Eumelus, a Greek writer on the veterinary art.3 Vegetius praises his facultas dicendi original: "power of speaking/eloquence".4 He is much quoted in the fourth-century De Re Rustica of Palladius,5 who seems also to have been inspired by Columella’s metrical De Cultu Hortorum On the Cultivation of Gardens to write his last book, De Insitione On Grafting, in verse. Cassiodorus6 of the sixth century mentions him as one of the outstanding writers on agriculture, as also does Isidore7 in the seventh century. The Hortulus Little Garden of Walafrid Strabo (circa 809–849), in 443 hexameters, may owe something to Columella’s

1 E.g., Pliny, N.H. VIII. 153; XV. 17–19, 66; XVII. 51–52, 137, 162; XVIII. 70, 303; XIX. 68.
2 Ihm lists seventeen parallel passages in the index of his Teubner edition of Pelagonius, Artis Veterinariae quae exstant, p. 241.
3 Ihm, op. cit., p. 7.
4 Vegetius, Ars Veterinaria, Praef. 2.
5 Becher (op. cit., p. 55) finds twenty-five such citations.
6 Div. Lect. 28; see page xii, note 2, above.
7 Orig. XVII. 1. 1, Columella, insignis orator, qui totum corpus disciplinae eiusdem complexus est original: "Columella, a distinguished orator, who embraced the whole body of that same discipline.".