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Of the most famous and systematic of the Roman writers on husbandry, we know nothing but what we gather from a few scattered remarks on his writings. COLUMELLA (Lucius Junius Moderatus) was a native of Gades (Cadiz), flourished in the middle of the 1st century, devoted himself to the scientific study of comparative husbandry, and to the practical work of a breeder, horticulturist, and rural economist. He possessed considerable estates, where he experimented on the crossing of stock, and the culture of crops and fruits; he travelled over Spain, Gaul, Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, and Northern Africa; and ultimately settled in Rome, where he wrote his great work on Agriculture (de Re Rustica). He is the Arthur Young of antiquity.
The subjects treated are--(1) the situation, plan of a farm, and the internal economy of a rural establishment; (2) the tillage of the soil, ploughing, manures, sowing, seeds, grain, and grasses; (3) the culture of fruit trees, especially the vine and the olive; (4) the breeding of horses, mules, and stock, with an essay on the veterinary art; (5) of asses, sheep, goats, swine, and dogs; (6) poultry and fish; (7) bee-keeping; (8) on gardening, a book written in evident imitation of Virgil (Geo. iv. 148), and composed accordingly in the same dactylic verse. This book, though wanting in poetry, shows a beautiful sense of the delights of the garden. (9) The duties of the bailiff, with a farmer's calendar of seasons and astronomical indications. These appear to be copied from books adapted to the latitude of Athens and Alexandria, rather than drawn from personal observation and practical knowledge; and the work concludes with (10) recipes for making wine, pickles, and preserves. A further book on Trees deals in detail with plantations of forests and fruit trees. The whole is written with much elegance, in a pure style, with an ardent love of country pursuits, and with a noble zeal to turn his countrymen from luxury and frivolous idleness to rural industry and the cultivation of their estates. It is a prose Georgic.
Varro and Columella represent the worthy aspirations of the higher order of ancient Roman chiefs, to organize a rural industry on a sound economic and scientific basis. It is characteristic of the practical nature of the Roman mind, that science amongst them took a concrete and industrial form. The attempt failed, as, in a corrupt, military society based on systematic slavery, it was certain to fail; and it was premature in the absence of any real physical, chemical, or botanical science. But the spontaneous and rudimentary efforts of the contemporaries of Julius and Augustus, idealized by Virgil, are most interesting, and their failure is pathetic. Scientific agriculture died out in Europe, to be succeeded for 18 centuries by barbarous and empirical habits; and it is only for the last few centuries that the scientific guidance of the basis of all human industry has at length been seriously achieved.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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