On Agriculture, Volume III

Columella (Lucius Iunius Moderatus) of Gades (Cadiz) lived in the reigns of the first emperors to about 70 CE. He moved early in life to Italy where he owned farms and lived near Rome. It is probable that he did military service in Syria and Cilicia and that he died at Tarentum.

Columella's On Agriculture (De Re Rustica) is the most comprehensive, systematic and detailed of Roman agricultural works. Book I covers choice of farming site, water supply, buildings, and staff. Book II discusses ploughing, fertilising, and care of crops. Books III, IV, and V focus on the cultivation, grafting, and pruning of fruit trees, vines, and olives. Book VI covers the acquisition, breeding, and rearing of oxen, horses, and mules, as well as veterinary medicine. Book VII deals with sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs. Book VIII explores poultry and fish ponds. Book IX is about bee-keeping. Book X (in hexameter poetry) is devoted to gardening. Book XI details the duties of the overseer of a farm, provides a calendar for farm work, and includes more on gardening. Finally, Book XII addresses the duties of the overseer's wife, as well as the manufacture of wines, pickling, and preserving.

There is also a separate treatise, Trees (De Arboribus), which covers vines, olives, and various trees, perhaps part of an otherwise lost work written before On Agriculture.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Columella is in three volumes.