Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/832

Rh B14 COLUMELLA. fulness of a philosopher to use fables in his teach- ing, a notion which Cicero opposes. {De Repub. vi. 7, ed. Orelli, ap. Macrob. in Somn. Scip. i. 2.) Some fragments of another work of Colotes, against the Lysis of Plato, have been recently discovered at Herculaneura, [P. S.] COLO'TES (KoAoJttjs). 1. A sculptor from the island of Paros, who assisted Phidias in exe- cuting the colossus of Zeus at Olympia, and left several beautiful works, principally in gold and ivory, in Elis, where he seems to have lived in banishment. He appears to belong to 01. 84, &c. (b. c. 444), and is praised for his statues of philo- sophers. (Strab. viii. p. 337 ; Plin, H. N. xxxiv. 19, XXXV. 34 ; Paus. v. 20. § 1 ; Eustath. ad 11. ii. 603 ; Bockh, Corp. Jnscr. n. 24.) 2. A painter, a contemporary of Timanthes, b. c. 396, mentioned by Quintilian (ii. 13). [L. U.] COLUMELLA, L. JU'NIUS MODERA'TUS, is known to us as the most voluminous and impor- tant of all the Roman writers upon rural affairs. The only particulars which can be ascertained with regard to his personal history are derived exclu- sively from incidental notices scattered up and down in his writings. We thus learn, that he was a native of Cadiz (x. 105) ; and since he fre- quently quotes Virgil, names Cornelius Celsus (i. 1. § 14, iii. 17. § 4, &c.), and Seneca (iii. 3. § 3), as his contemporaries, and is himself repeatedly referred to by the elder Pliny, it is certain that he must have flourished during the early part of the iirst century of the Christian era. At some period of his life, he visited Syria and Cilicia (ii. 10. § 18); Rome appears to have been his ordinary residence (Praef. 20) ; he possessed a property which he calls Ccretanum (iii. 3. § 3, comp. iii. 9. § 6), but whether situated in Etruria, in Spain, or in Sardinia, we cannot tell ; and from an inscrip- tion found at Tarentura it h.as been conjectured that he died and was buried in that city. His great work is a systematic treatise upon agriculture in the most extended acceptation of the term, de- dicated to .in unknown Silvinus, and divided into twelve books. The first contains general instnic- tions for the choice of a farm, the position of the buildings, the distribution of the various duties among the master and his labourers, and the gene- ral arrangement of a rural establishment ; the se- cond is devoted to agriculture proper, the breaking up and preparation of the ground, and an account of the different kinds of grain, pulse, and artificial grasses, with the tillage appropriate for each ; the third, fourth, and fifth are occupied with the cultiva- tion of fruit trees, especially the vine and the olive; the sixth contains directions for choosing, breeding, and rearing oxen, horses, and mules, together with an essay on the veterinary art ; the seventh dis- cusses the same topics with reference to asses, sheep, goats, swine, and dogs ; the eighth embraces precepts for the management of poultry and fish- ponds ; the ninth is on bees ; the tenth, composed in dactylic hexameters, treats of gardening, form- ing a sort of supplement to the Georgics (comp. Virg. Georg. iv.) ; in the eleventh are detailed the duties of a villicus, followed by a Calendarium Rusticum, in which the times and seasons for the different kinds of work are marked down in con- nexion with the risings and settings of the stars, and various astronomical and atmospherical phae- noraena ; and the twelfth winds up the whole with R series of receipts for manufacturing different COLUMELLA. kinds of wine, and for pickling and presen'ing vegetables and fruits. In addition to the above, we have one book " De Arboribus," which is of considerable value, since it contains extracts from ancient authorities now lost, and throws much light on the fifth book of the larger work, which appears under a very corrupt form in many of the MSS. Cassiodonis {Divin. Led. 28) mentions sixteen books of Colu- mella, from which some critics have imagined, that the tract " De Arboribus " was one of four writ- ten at an early period, presenting the outline or first sketch of the complete production. The MSS. from which Columella was first printed inserted the " De Arboribus" as the third book of the whole work, and hence in the older editions that which is now the third book is marked as the fourth, and so on for all the rest in succession. The Latinity of Columella is in no way inferior to that of his contemporaries, and belongs to the best period of the Silver Age. His style is easy and copious to exuberance, while the fondness which he displays for multiplying and varying his mode of expression is out of taste when we consi- der the nature of his theme, and not compatible with the close precision which we have a right to expect in a work professedly didactic. Although we miss the racy quaintness of Cato and the varied knowledge and highly cultivated mind of Varro, we find here a far greater amount of information than they convoj'", and could we persuade ourselves that the whole v/as derived from personal observa- tion and experience, we might feel satisfied that our knowledge ol" the rural economy of that epoch was tolerably complete. But the extreme care- lessness with which the Calendar has been com- piled from foreign sources may induce the suspi- cion, that other matters also may have been taken upon trust ; for no man that had actually studied the appearance of the heavens with the eye of a practical fanner could ever have set down in an almanac intended for the use of Italian husband- men observations copied from parapegmata calcu- lated for the latitudes of Athens and Alexandria. With the exception of Cassiodorus, Servius, and Isidorus, scarcely any of the ancient grammarians notice Columella, whose works lay long concealed and were unknown even in the tenth century. The Editio Princeps was printed at Venice by Nic, Jenson, 1472, foL, in a collection of " Rei Rusticae Scriptores" containing Cato, Terentius Varro, Columella, and Palladius Rutilius, The first edition in which the " Liber de Arboribus " was separated from the rest was that superintended by Jucundus of Verona and published by Aldus, Venice, 1514, 4 to. The most valuable editions are those contained in the " Scriptores Rei Rus- ticae veteres Latini," edited by Gesner, 2 vols. 4to. Lips. 1735, reprinted, with the collation of an important Paris MS., by Ernesti, Lips. 1773; and in the Scriptores Rei Rusticae of J. G. Schnei- der, 4 vols. 8vo., Lips. 1794. This last must be considered in every respect the most complete, and in the preface will be found a very full account of the different MSS. and of the gradual progress and improvement of the text. The tenth book, under the title " J. Moderati Columellae Hortuli Commentarium,'" appeared in a separate form at Rome, about 1472, from the press of Adam Rot, and was frequently reprinted in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.