Columella

Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, (Gades, Baetica; 4 AD – Taranto; ca. 70 AD) called Columella, was an agronomic writer Hispanic of Ancient Rome.

Biography

Born in Gades, province of Baetica, he belonged to the Galeria tribe and spent some time in the Roman army and was a Laticlavian tribune in the Legio VI Ferrata in Syria in the year 35. He then moved to the Italian peninsula, where, stimulated by the family example of his uncle Marco Columela, dedicated to agriculture in Baetica, he put his agricultural knowledge into practice on his properties in Ardea, Carseoli and Alba.

From his written work we have received De re rustica (The Works of the Field), written around the year 42, and De arboribus (Book of Trees). The first of these works, which was partly translated into Spanish in 1781 by Brother Rafael Rodríguez Mohedano and his brother Brother Pedro Rodriguez Mohedano, is divided into twelve books and was inspired by previous agronomists such as Cato the Elder, Varrón and other Latin authors. Greeks and even Carthaginians, of whom he gives an extensive list; He expressly cites the geoponicists Julius Atticus and Julius Grecino, father of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, and he did not ignore Hesiod, Homer, Ovid, Lucretius, Horace, Virgil, Pliny and Celsus either. He deals with all the works of the field in the broadest sense. meaning of the word: from the practice of agriculture, livestock and beekeeping, to animal care, through the production of different products and preserves.

In De arboribus it deals with bush crops such as vines and trees such as olive trees or fruit trees, and even flowers such as violets or roses. Columella's work is considered the most extensive and documented repertoire on Roman agriculture.

Criticism, however, has considered that it could be the same work, which had two editions, a summarized one, from which the De arboribus was separated, and another much more expanded one, which is the which has come down to us in twelve books De re rustica, dedicated to Publio Silvino, a farmer who owned farms adjacent to one of Columella. He carries a preface in which he laments the lack of interest in such an important subject:

"Which is the kind of study to which one wants to apply, one chooses the most gifted preceptor... Only agriculture, next and consanguine with wisdom, is as lacking disciples as teachers." 

Because for him agriculture is the expression of a traditional, severe and austere morality, which represents the old Roman customs and virtues. The structure of the work is as follows:

• I) Situation and construction of the estate; occupations of the slaves.
• II) Field maintenance.
• III-IV) The vineyard.
• V) Fruit trees
• VI-IX) Full zootechnics treatise.
  • VI, major cattle.
  • VII, smaller cattle.
  • VIII, poultry.
  • IX, bees and apculture.
• X) Gardens.
• XI-XII) The farmer and farmer's occupations.

Ceding to a request from Silvine, and answering the letter to the verses of the Geórgicas of Virgilio in that he regrets not being able to take care of the gardening, Columela, with the intention of filling the lagoon, develops this argument in the book X in the form of hexameters blossoms, undoubtedly far from virgiliana perfection, but not short of heat and of merciful concision. I compute other works that have been lost: pamphlets against astrology, a treatise on the vineyards and trees dedicated to Eprio Marcelo and a book on the illustrations and sacrifices that he did not make entirely.

The professor of the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Luis Alfonso Gil Sánchez, believes that the Columela family was responsible for the introduction of the ‘Roman’ olmos on the Iberian peninsula.

In 1794, the botanists José Antonio Pavón y Jiménez and Hipólito Ruiz López gave the name Columellia in their honor to a Peruvian genus of asterids.

In 1824, Juan María Álvarez de Sotomayor Rubio published De re rustica in Spanish in its entirety and for the first time: The twelve books of agriculture that Lucio Junio Moderato Columela wrote in Latin (Madrid, Miguel de Burgos, 1824, 2 vols.). The first includes the first seven books, and the second the other five. There are three modern facsimile editions: Santander, Sociedad Nestlé - A.E.P.A, 1979; Extramuros Edition, S.L., 2009; Valladolid: Maxtor Editorial, 2013.

Transcendence

Despite its effectiveness, Columella's work left few traces in ancient times. In the IV century he was imitated by Rutilius Taurus Emiliano Palladio, author of an Opus agriculturee, whose chapter XIV, the last of the work, in imitation of the Cádiz agronomist, wrote it not in hexameters, but in elegiac couplets when dealing with grafts. With Celsus, Columella was also an important source for Pelagonio's veterinary treatise, also from the IX century, in 35 chapters. The De re rustica was known to the Arabs since the IX century and was fundamental for the work by Gabriel Alonso de Herrera already in the XVI century; The naturalists of the Renaissance era, and later Johann Matthias Gesner, better known as Gesnerus (1691-1761), were largely nourished by his sources. It was translated by Juan María Álvarez de Sotomayor Rubio.