COLUMELLA, LUCIUS IUNIUS MODERATUS, of Gades, writer on agriculture, contemporary of Seneca the philos opher, flourished about the middle of the ist century A.D. His extant works treat 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 cattle, birds, fishes and bees. They consist of the twelve books of the De re rustica (the tenth, which treats of gardening, being in dactylic hexameters in imi tation of Virgil), and of a book De arboribus, the second book of an earlier and less elaborate work on the same subject.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The best complete edition is by J. G. Schneider Bibliography.-The best complete edition is by J. G. Schneider (z 794) • Of a new edition by K. J. Lundstrom, the tenth book appeared in 1902 and De arboribus in 1897. The tenth book was edited in 1g2o by J. P. Postgate in the Corp. Poet. Lat. There are English translations by R. Bradley (1725), and anonymous (1745) ; and treatises, De Columellae vita et scriptis, by V. Barberet (1887), and G. R. Becher (1897), a compact dissertation with notes and references to authorities. See also W. E. Heitland, Agricola (Cambridge, 1921) .
