United States or Kiribati ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Only two of any importance are extant; one of these, the Chorographia of Pomponius Mela, a geographical manual based on the best authorities and embellished with descriptions of places, peoples, and customs, is valuable as the earliest and one of the most complete systems of ancient geography which we possess; but in literary merit it falls far short of the other, the elaborate work on agriculture by Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella.

Reincarnation was a very cardinal point in his teaching; perhaps the name of Neo-Pythagoreanism, given to his doctrine, is enough to indicate in what manner it illuminated the inner realms and laws which Stoicism, intent only on brave conduct and the captaincy of one's own soul, was unconcerned to inquire into. Another first century Neo-Pythagorean Teacher was Moderatus of Gades in Spain.

On their side, later on, certain eclectic Greeks already cited, Moderatus, Nicomachus, Nemesius, extended goodwill so far as to take into account, if not Jesus, at least Moses, and to admit Israelitish thought into the history of philosophy and of human wisdom.

Paul, and loved to imagine that they were each a partial revelation of the great divine thought, and they endeavoured to reconcile these divergent revelations by proceeding on broad lines and general considerations. Among them were Moderatus, Nicomachus, Nemesius, etc. The most illustrious, without being the most profound though his literary talent has always kept him prominent was Plutarch.

But in place of the rush and fine flow of the Grecian Age, what painful strivings we find in the Augustan! When too, Teachers labor to illumine the vastnesses within; Apollonius; Moderatus; shall we add, the Nazarene?

And then, what with the tenseness of the gloom and the severity of suffering in the reigns of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian; and the inflow of new and cleaner blood from the provinces at all times but especially under Vespasian; and above all, the Theosophic impulse whose outward visible sign is the mission of Apollonius and Moderatus: we find her ready to emerge into light in 96, when Nerva came to the throne, instead of having to wait the five more years for the end of the half-cycle; although we may well suppose it took that time at least for Nerva and Trajan to clear things up and settle them.

And in another place he says, "Plotinus, as it seems, has explained the Pythagoric and Platonic principles more clearly than those that were prior to him; for neither are the writings of Numenius, Cronius, Moderatus, and Thrasyllus, to be compared with those of Plotinus on this subject."

Thus in Homer, Sylla the Carthaginian, upon my return to Rome after a long absence, gave me a welcoming supper, as the Romans call it, and invited some few other friends, and among the rest, one Lucius an Etrurian, the scholar of Moderatus the Pythagorean.

L. JUNIUS MODERATUS COLUMELLA was born at Gades, probably near the beginning of our era. His grandfather was a man of substance in that part of the province, and a most successful farmer; it was from him that he imbibed that love of agricultural pursuits which led him to write his learned and elegant treatise.