Lucius Junius Moderātus Columella

Columella, Lucius Junius Moderātus, Spaniard from Gades (Cadiz) in Spain who served as a tribune of the Roman army in Syria. In about AD 60–5 he composed a treatise on farming, De re rustica, in twelve books. It deals with the various aspects of a farmer's life and work, the choice of a farm, its cultivation, livestock, fishponds, bees, and gardens, while the last two books expound the duties of the bailiff and his wife. All the books are written in prose except for book 10, which in rather uninspired hexameters deals with gardens, a topic which Virgil, in the last book of the Georgics, had said he was leaving to others. Columella writes as a practical farmer who is distressed by the decline of Italian agriculture, remedy for which he sees in knowledge, hard work, and interest on the part of the landowner. He is a warm admirer of the Georgics. His prose is simple and dignified, without affectation. He also wrote a shorter manual on agriculture, of which one book on trees, De arboribus, is extant.