Columella: On Agriculture, Vol. I (Loeb)

versified treatise on gardening.1 He is praised in the sixteenth century in an epigram of Theodore Beza;2 and in the next century Milton, in his short treatise On Education, would have the students of his ideal school devote their thoughts, “after evening repast till bed-time,” first to the Scriptures and next to “the authors of agriculture, Cato, Varro, and Columella, for the matter is easy; and if the language is difficult, so much the better.” “Here,” he adds, “will be an occasion of inciting and enabling them hereafter to improve the tillage of their country, to recover bad soil,” etc.

MANUSCRIPTS AND EDITIONS

The manuscripts of Columella fall into two groups. Oldest and best are:

Cod. Sangermanensis Petropolitanus 207, now Cl. L. F. v. N. 1 (= S), fol. 138, 9th cent., in the State Library at Leningrad. Written apparently at Corbie, and taken with a large collection of Corbie manuscripts to the Abbey of St. Germain des Prés in Paris during the first half of the seventeenth century. Removed, with many other valuable manuscripts, during the French Revolution by the Russian envoy Dubrowsky to the Imperial Library in Petrograd.

Cod. Ambrosianus L 85 sup. (= A), fol. 252, 9th–10th

1 Cf. V. Lundström, “ Walahfrid Strabus och Columella,” Eranos XXX. 124–127; M. Manitius in Philologus XLVIII. 566.
2
Orphea mirata est Rhodope sua fata canentem,
Si modo Vergilii carmina pondus habent.
Tu vero, Iuni, silvestris rura canendo
Post te ipsas urbes in tua rura trahis.
O superi, quales habuit tunc Roma Quirites,
Quuum tam iucundum cerneret agricolam.

Rhodope marvelled at Orpheus singing his own fate, if indeed Virgil's poems carry weight. But you, Junius Columella's family name, by singing of rural woodlands, drag even cities after you into your fields. O gods, what citizens Rome had then, when it could behold such a pleasant farmer.