agricultural writers
agricultural writersAgricultural manuals, written by practising landowners, flourished at Rome from Cato the Elder (c.160 BC) to Palladius (c.mid-5th cent. ad), enjoying higher status than other technical literature. Greece had produced notable works (Varro knew more than 50, De re rustica 1. 1. 8–11), but written mostly from a philosophical or scientific viewpoint; and an influential (non-extant) Punic work by Mago had been translated into both Greek and Latin (Varro ibid.; Columella, De re rustica 1. 1. 13). Agriculture, as gradually defined and systematized (earlier Greek, Punic, and Roman writers had wandered off the topic: Varro, De re rustica 1. 2. 13), embraced, in Varro's work (c.37 BC), arable cultivation, livestock, arboriculture, market gardens, luxury foods, slave management, and villa construction. A century later, Columella doubted whether one man could know...
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