Columella

Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella was born around 4 AD in Gades (Cadiz), in southern Spain. He served in the Roman army and later settled on estates in Italy, where he wrote De Re Rustica, a comprehensive treatise on agriculture in twelve books.

The work covers everything a Roman landowner needed to know: soil types, crop rotation, viticulture, olive cultivation, livestock management, poultry keeping, fish farming, bee-keeping, and garden design. Book 10, on horticulture, is written in hexameter verse as a deliberate homage to Virgil's Georgics. The prose books are models of clear, practical instruction.

Columella is the most systematic and detailed of the Roman agricultural writers, and his work remains a primary source for understanding Roman farming practices.