Columella

Columella

Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (Gades, Hispania Baetica, AD 4 – ca. AD 70) is the most important writer on agriculture of the Roman empire. Little is known of his life. He was probably born in Gades (modern Cadiz), possibly of Roman parents. After a career in the army (he was tribune in Syria in 35), he took up farming. His De Re Rustica in twelve volumes has been completely preserved and forms an important source on Roman agriculture, together with the works of Cato the Elder and Varro, both of which he occasionally cites. A smaller book on trees, De Arboribus, is usually attributed to him.

Columella used many sources no longer extant, to which he is one of the few references; these include Aulus Cornelius Celsus, the Carthaginian writer Mago, Tremellius Scrofa, and many Greek sources. His uncle Marcus Columella, "a clever man and an exceptional farmer" (VII.2.30), had conducted experiments in sheep breeding, crossing colourful wild rams, introduced from Africa for gladiatorial games, with domestic sheep, and may have influenced his nephew's interests. Columella owned farms in Italy; he refers specifically to estates at Ardea, Carseoli, and Alba, and speaks repeatedly of his own practical experience in agriculture.

Previously known only in fragments, the complete works of Columella were among those discovered in monastery libraries in Switzerland and France by Poggio Bracciolini and his assistant Bartolomeo di Montepulciano during the Council of Constance, between 1414 and 1418.

In 1794 the Spanish botanists Jose Antonio Pavón y Jimenez and Hipólito Ruiz López named a genus of Peruvian asterid Columellia in his honour.