Columella Res Rustica 10: A study and commentary

Columella, an agricultural writer of Spanish birth, lived and wrote during the Neronian period in the mid-first century C.E. His sole surviving complete work is Res Rustica, a compendium of instructions on agricultural lore and practice in twelve books. The work was written in prose with the exception of Book 10, which covers gardening. Columella wrote Book 10 in hexameter verse partly in homage to Vergil's Georgics and partly as a way of completing or finishing the Georgics by adding a book about gardening; this was a subject which Vergil had briefly touched on but chose not to cover more fully, saying that he would leave it to posterity (G. 4. 147-148). The work has not received a complete commentary in English since that of Harrison Boyd Ash (1930). The present study rectifies this omission and further explores the relationship between Res Rustica 10 and the Georgics, the trope of the poet as gardener, and the identification of the plants mentioned, while also incorporating more recent scholarship in these areas. It also includes historical, mythological, and grammatical aids to the reader, who is presumed to be familiar with the Georgics..