COLUMELLA, Lucius Junius Moderatus, the author of the most complete classical treatise on agricultural affairs, was born at Gades (Cadiz), and belongs to the 1 st century a.d., being contemporary with Seneca. He possessed an estate called Ceretanum, perhaps near the Pyrenees, perhaps in Sardinia, and he also travelled extensively, but he principally resided at Rome. His extant works treat with great fulness, and in a diffuse but not inelegant style which well represents the silver age, of the cultivation of all kinds of corn and garden vegetables, trees, flowers, the vine, the olive, and other fruits, and of the rearing of all the domestic animals. They consist of the 12 books of the De Re Rustica, that which treats of gardening being in dactylic hexameters, and of a book De Arboribus, which is the only part we possess of a work treating of the same subjects as De Re Rustica, but earlier and less elaborate. The editio princeps was published by Jenson at Venice in 1472, in the Rei Rusticae Scriptores Varii. A good edition is contained in the Rei Rusticae Scriptores Veteres Latini of Gesner (Leipsic, 1735, again edited and collated with a newly discovered MS. by Ernesti, 1773); and the best is that given in the Scrip>tores Rei Rusticae by Schneidet (Leipsic, 1794). There are translations in English (1745), French (1551), Italian (1554-57-59and 1808), and German (1769).