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Cod. Lib. I, tit. Augustine's plagiarism from them; yet the De Civitate Dei, which is largely devoted to refuting Varro's pagan theology, is a perennial monument to his fame. St. Varro's treatise on farm management is the best practical book on the subject which has come down to us from antiquity. It has not the spontaneous originality of Cato, nor the detail and suave elegance of Columella.
I will identify myself with that which will not die with Columella and will not die with Hosmer." At Hosmer's house the two young men lived in a single room, and did their own cooking and house-keeping. Mrs. Hosmer furnished them with milk, and they ate crackers, cheese, and fruit largely. They were Grahamites, and used no meat. They read much, and had with them a large number of books.
How potent its effects were formerly held may be gathered from the very many allusions to its mystic properties in the literature of bygone years. Columella, in his well-known lines, says: "Whose roots show half a man, whose juice With madness strikes." Shakespeare speaks of it as an opiate, and on the Continent it was much used for amulets.
At the instance, he says, of friends, Columella attempts to fill up the gap by a fifth Georgic on horticulture.
We have a more precise estimate of the expense and produce only in the case of the vine yard, for which Columella gives the following calculation of the cost per -jugerum-: Price of the ground 1000 sesterces.
And as to the Ladin, although its derivation be more manifest, yet we are equally at a loss from what period or branch of the Latin tongue to trace its real origin; for I have found, after many tedious experiments, that even the vocabulary, in which the resemblance is most evident, differs equally from the classical purity of Tully, Caesar, and Sallust, as it does from the primitive Latin of the twelve tables, of Ennius, and the columna rostralis of Duillius, which has generally been thought the parent of the Gallic Romance; as also from the trivial language of Varro, Vegetius, and Columella.
The chief value of the work of Columella, however, lies in its clear showing-forth of the relative importance given to different crops, under Roman culture, and to the raising of cattle, poultry, fish, etc.; as compared with crops. Knowing this, we know very much that will help us toward an estimate of the domestic life of the Romans.
In W.E. Channing's book about Thoreau as the "Poet-Naturalist," there is a passage from his journal in which Thoreau speaks of Hosmer as the last of the farmers worthy of mention. "Human life may be transitory and full of trouble," he says, "but the perennial mind whose survey extends from that spring to this from Columella to Hosmer is superior to change.
The study of the Roman treatises on farm management is profitable to the modern farmer however practical and scientific he may be. Columella well says that in reading the ancient writers we may find in them more to approve than to disapprove, however much our new science may lead us to differ from them in practice.
Altogether this must be placed at the head of the Roman treatises on husbandry as being at once the work of a man of practical experience, which Cato was, and Columella was not, and of elegant and varied learning, to which Columella might, but Cato could not, pretend.
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