This is an expanded version of a paper given at the Triennial Meeting of the Classical Association in Oxford, July 1995.

1. Nisard, D., Poètes latins de la décadence (Paris 1834)Google Scholar, ii. 167: ‘II fut poète comme on est exécuteur testimentaire.’

2. Dallinges, L., ‘Science et poésie chez Columelle’, Études de lettres 7 (1964), 137–54Google Scholar; de Saint-Denis, E., Columelle: de l’agriculture, livre X (de l’horticulture) (Paris 1969), 23–25Google Scholar (‘Pour une réhabilitation de Columelle poète’), and ‘Réhabilitons Columelle poète’, GIF 21 (1969), 121–36Google Scholar; Conte, G.B., Latin Literature: A History (Baltimore 1994), 389fGoogle Scholar. (‘Columella writes in a smooth, limpid prose, and his verses, too, are finely constructed’). Commentaries: Ash, H.B., L. Iuni Moderati Columellae rei rusticae liber decimus: de cultu hortorum (Philadelphia 1930)Google Scholar; de Saint-Denis, op. cit.; Boldrer, F., L. Iuni Moderati Columellae rei rusticae liber decimus (carmen de cultu hortorum) (Pisa 1996)Google Scholar; see also Forster, E.S. and Heffner, E.H., Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella: On Agriculture and Trees, Vol. III (Res rustica X–XII, de arboribus) (London & Cambridge MA 1955)Google Scholar. On Columella 10: Toohey, P., Epic Lessons: An Introduction to Ancient Didactic Poetry (London 1996), 176–79Google Scholar (‘Gardening with God: Columella’); I am also grateful to John Henderson for showing me his unpublished paper, ‘The Roman Gardening Book: Columella’s Living Hedge’. For Columella and Virgil: Schroeter, W., De Columella Vergilii imitatore (Diss. Jena 1882)Google Scholar; Cossarini, A., ‘Aspetti di Virgilio in Columella’, Prometheus 3 (1977), 225–40Google Scholar; Koster, S., ‘Vergils unbestellter Garten oder Columellas Berufung’, in Ille ego qui: Dichter zwischen Wort und Macht (Erlangen 1988), 83–96Google Scholar; Coppolino, N., Columella’s hortus numerosus: Vergilian Influence on Book 10 of the De Re Rustica (Diss. Fordham Univ. NY 1994)Google Scholar. For other influences: Weinold, H., Die dichterischen Quellen des L. lunius Moderatus Columella in seinem Werk De re rustica (Vergil, Appendix Vergiliana, Ennius, Lucrez, Horaz) (Diss. Munich 1959)Google Scholar; Baldwin, B., ‘Columella’s Sources and How He Used Them’, Latomus 22 (1963), 785–91Google Scholar; Maggiulli, G., ‘II lessico non-vergiliano del X libro di Columella’, Orpheus 1 (1980), 126–51Google Scholar. See also Marshall, L.B., L’horticulture antique et lepoeme de Columelle (Paris-London 1918)Google Scholar, and the bibliographical survey of Martin, R., ‘État présent des études sur Columelle’, ANRW 32.2 (1985), 1959–79Google Scholar.

3. 11.1.2 uersificationis nostrae gustum.

4. See Boldrer (n.2 above), ad loc, and Coppolino (n.2 above), 56, on the possible meanings of numerosus; Columella uses numeri of verses at 7.3.1 and 10 praef. 3 (poeticis numeris). Boldrer observes that this is the first non-Virgilian word used in the poem. For hortus as a metaphor for abundance: Grimal, P., Les jardins romains (Paris 1943), 57Google Scholar.

5. Possible models include the section on gardening in Nicander’s fragmentary Georgica (ed. Gow, A.S. and Scholfield, A.F. [Cambridge 1953]Google Scholar), and a lost poem by the Hellenistic poet Philitas: see Thomas, R.F., ‘The Old Man Revisited: Memory, Reference, and Genre in Virg. Geo. 4.116–48’, in Reading Virgil and his Texts: Studies in Intertextuality (Ann Arbor 1999), 173–205Google Scholar (= MD 29 [1992], 35–70), for this very ingenious extrapolation from similarities between Virgil’s old man’s garden and the one presided over by the fictional character Philetas in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe (2.3). On literary gardens in general see Kenney, E.J., Ploughman’s Lunch: Moretum, a Poem Ascribed to Virgil (Bristol 1984), xxxiv–xxxviiGoogle Scholar.

6. On this passage see esp. Burck, E., ‘Der korykische Greis in Vergils Georgica (IV. 116–48)’, in Navicula Chiloniensis: Studio Philologa Felici Jacoby Professori Chiloniensi Emerito Octogenario Oblata (Leiden 1956), 156–72Google Scholar; Richter, W., Vergil: Georgica (Munich 1957), 346–50Google Scholar; La Penna, A., ‘Senex Corycius’, in Atti del convegno virgiliano sul bimillenario delle Georgiche (Naples 1977), 37–66Google Scholar.; Davis, P.J., ‘Vergil’s Georgics and the Pastoral Ideal’, Ramus 8 (1979), 22–33, at 30–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clay, J.S., ‘The Old Man in the Garden: Georgic 4.116–148’, Arethusa 14 (1981), 57–65Google Scholar; Perkell, C.G., ‘On the Corycian Gardener of Vergil’s Fourth Georgic’, TAPA 111 (1981), 167–77Google Scholar; Ross, D., Virgil’s Elements: Physics and Poetry in the Georgics (Princeton 1987), 200–06CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas (n.5 above). Thomas 173 n.l (= 35 n.l) and Leigh, M., ‘Servius on Vergil’s senex Corycius’, MD 33 (1994), 181–95Google Scholar, at 181 n.l, provide a fuller bibliography.

7. Plin. NH 19.56.177: auctor est Sabinus Tiro in libro Cepuricon, quern Maecenati dicauit (‘my authority is Sabinus Tiro in his book Gardening, which he dedicated to Maecenas’). Pliny cites four other authors of works on gardening in the index to Book 19: Caesennius, Castricius, Firmus, and Potitus.

8. NH 19.19.59 (et contingat aliqua gratia operae curaeque nostrae Vergilio quoque confesso quam sit difficile uerborum honorem tarn paruis perhibere, ‘and I hope my careful work will be appreciated somewhat, even though Virgil too admitted how difficult it is to write in a dignified way about such minor subjects’); NH 14.1.7 (uidemus Vergilium praecellentissimum uatem…hortorum dotes fitgisse et in his quas rettulit flores modo rerum decerpsisse, ‘we see that the outstanding poet Virgil shunned the rich endowment of gardens, and that in the areas he did deal with he plucked only the choicest flowers’).

9. Grimal (n.4 above), 44; Ernout-Meillet s.v. hortus.

10. Juvenal seems to have had a particularly soft spot for gardens: Epicurum/…exigui laetum plantaribus horti (‘Epicurus, who took delight in the plants he grew in his tiny garden’, Sat. 13.122f.); quantum, Epicure, tibi paruis suffecit in hortis (‘as much as you, Epicurus, found sufficient in your little garden’, Sat. 14.319); Curius paruo quae legerat hortolipse focis breuibus ponebat holuscula (‘Curius himself put the vegetables he picked from his little garden on his tiny hearth’, Sat. 11.78f.); hortulus hic puteusque breuis nec reste mouenduslin tenuis plantas facili diffunditur haustu./uiue bidentis amans et culti uilicus hortilunde epulum possis centum dare Pythagoreis.lest aliquid, quocumque loco, quocumque recessu,/unius sese dominum fecisse lacertae (‘here you will have a cabbage-patch, and a well, no need for a rope, shallow enough to allow easy watering for tender plants. Live, and love your hoe, and be proprietor of a well-kept garden, from which you could give a feast to a hundred Pythagoreans. It’s something, wherever you are, however tucked away, to have made yourself master of a single lizard’, Sat. 3.226–31).

11. Plin. NH 19.19.50.

12. Plin. NH 19.19.59: iam in fenestris suis plebs urbana imagine hortorum cotidiana oculis rura praebebant (‘then the urban population used to give their eyes a daily taste of the countryside with imitation gardens’).

13. Jashemski, W.F., The Gardens of Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Villas Destroyed by Vesuvius, Vol. 1 (New Rochelle NY 1979)Google Scholar. On Roman agricultural estates in general see Love, J., ‘The Character of the Roman Agricultural Estate’, Chiron 16 (1986), 99–146Google Scholar.

14. Grimal (n.4 above), 62f. For old men and the pleasures of gardening (as a branch of agriculture as a whole, along with crop-growing, vine-growing, hoeing, ditching and muck-spreading), see Cic. Sen. 15.54: nee uero segetibus solum et pratis et uineis et arbustis res rusticae laetae sunt, sed hortis etiam et pomariis, turn pecudum pastu, apium examinibus, florum omnium uarietate (‘agriculture is not only rich in crops, pasture, vineyards and trees; but also in gardens, orchards, the pasturing of herds, swarms of bees and every kind of flower’); cf. also 16.56. Another possible model for Virgil’s senex, the self-sufficient poet P. Valerius Cato, grows fruit and vegetables ‘to support his ripe old age’ (ad summam prope nutriant senectam, Furius Bibaculus ap. Suet. Gramm. II). Longus’ Philetas (Daphnis and Chloe 2.3) also explains that he devoted himself to gardening after he grew too old for pasturing.

15. Varro RR 1.16.3 on the fringe of market-gardens surrounding Rome; Plin. NH 19.110 on the leeks and cabbages of Alicia; Cic. Fam. 16.18.2 on his gardener at Tusculum. For gardening allowed on feast-days see e.g. Col. 2.21.4 (in horto quicquid holerum causa facias, omne licet, ‘you may do whatever you need to do for the vegetables in the garden’); Moretum 66–68 (si quando casula pluuiaeque tenebant/festaue lux, si forte labor cessabat aratri,/horti opus illud erat, ‘whenever rain or a feast-day kept him at home, or perhaps when his ploughing duties were over, that time he spent in his garden’).

16. Cf. Mor. 104: tot uariatur ab herbis (‘it [the cheese] was variegated with all those herbs’). See Gowers, E., The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Latin Literature (Oxford 1993), 47Google Scholar, on these lines; Kenney (n.5 above), 34–42 ad Mor. 60–85, the description of the peasant’s garden.

17. Thomas, R.F., Virgil: Georgics (2 vols., Cambridge 1988), ad 4.128fGoogle Scholar.

18. A common formula of praeteritio: see Thomas (n.17 above) ad loc.

19. Koster (n.2 above), 85.

20. Cf. the similar spirit of the claim at G. 4.83 (ingentis anitnos angusto in pectore uersant, ‘their tiny hearts contain a heroic spirit’).

21. Prob. ad V. G. 4.127; Serv. ad V. G. 4.127. See Marasco, G., ‘Corycius senex (Verg. Georg. 4.127)’, RFIC 118 (1990), 402–07Google Scholar, and Leigh (n.6 above) on the significance of ‘Corycian’ and its connections with various manifestations of the famous ‘Corycian cave’, known as a source of saffron, which is linked to bee-keeping at Col. 9.9.4 (Corycius item Siculusque bulbus croci deponitur, qui coloret inodoretque mella, ‘also, Corycian and Sicilian bulbs are planted, to give colour and scent to the honey’). The old man has also been linked to the bee-keeping Faliscan veterans of Varro RR 3.16.10. Hardie, P.R., Virgil (Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics 28, Oxford & New York 1998), 43Google Scholar, for one, thinks that the historical and poetic explanations need not be mutually exclusive.

22. Ross (n.6 above, 201) warns against glib interpretations: ‘…nor is any “answer” likely to have been outlined so elusively in such a brief space, and with so much darkness to follow in the book.’

23. See Thomas (n.5 above), 174 (= 37), on the recent trend ‘away from the biographical…to the realm of the poetic imagination’.

24. V. G. 2.475–82. Clay (n.6 above, 62) points out the curious contrast in the passage between sera, seram, seras and primus, primus, iam, iamque.

25. Clay (n.6 above, 65 n.26) notes the double potential of uersum. The old man’s apparent ability to plant out mature trees is regarded by some as fantastical (Ross [n.6 above], 201–06); but see Thomas (n.17 above), ad loc. The instant shade provided by the plane tree (significantly a sterile tree?) at G. 4.146 (iamque ministrantem platanum potantibus umbras, ‘planes already serving shade to drinking-parties’) contrasts with the slow growth of trees from fallen seeds at G. 2.58 (tarda uenit seris factura nepotibus umbram, ‘it rises slowly and will create shade for later generations’). Planting for posterity: cf. Cic. Sen. 7.24.

26. E.g. Hor. Ep. 1.7.45 (uacuum Tibur…aut imbelle Tarentum, ‘leisurely Tibur and peaceful Tarentum’); cf. 1.16.11. Thomas (n.5 above, 195–97 = 59f.) prefers to link Tarentum with a pre-Theocritean location of Arcadia in S. Italy.

27. At Hor. Odes 2.6.9 Parcae iniquae recalls Virgil’s spatiis…iniquis. See Nisbet, R.G.M. and Hubbard, M. (eds.), A Commentary on Horace Odes Book II (Oxford 1978), 94–96Google Scholar, for other literary references to Tarentum. Thomas, R.F., Lands and Peoples in Roman Poetry: The Ethnographical Tradition (Cambridge 1982), 59Google Scholar, cites this passage, but more to emphasise how Tarentum is ‘virtually a paradigm for the exclusive world of the poet.’ From Cic. Sen.: Q. Fabius Maxi-mus Cunctator as the aged conqueror of Tarentum (4.10–11, 12.39), Archytas of Tarentum (12.39), Cicero’s Tarentine host Nearchus (12.41). (Virgil’s old man is the opposite of a cunctator: aestatem increpitans seram Zephyrosque morantis, ‘cursing summer and its zephyrs for being late in coming’, G. 4.138.) Fruit metaphors used of old age: Cic. Sen. 2.5, 3.9, 10.33, 17.62,19.70–71. Pacuvius and Accius: Gell. NA 13.2.

28. Three of the plants chosen for the praeteritio at 4.120–24, endive, celery and myrtle, are described as flourishing on river-banks (potis gauderent intiba riuis, 120; uirides apio ripae, 121; amantis litora myrtis, 124), which suggests a parallel with the coming-to-land or closure anticipated by the poet (similarly, the frame created by potis [‘watery’,120] and potantibus [‘drinkers’, 146] forms a kind of irrigation channel around the ‘garden’). Yet words such as ornaret (‘make beautiful’), gauderent (‘rejoice’) and amantis (‘adoring’) suggest yearning for decorative or fertile subject-matter outside the sphere of duty. The image of the gourd, swelling into a paunch (cresceret in uentrem cucumis, 122), contrasts with Virgil’s contraction of his sails (uela traham, 117), a contrast elaborated by the poet of the Moretum: et grauis in latum dimissa cucurbita uentrem./uerum hie non domini (quis non contractior illo?), ‘…and the heavy gourd growing into a generous paunch. But none of this was for the master (for who was tighter than he?)’, 78f.; cf. Col. 10.380 (praegnas…cucurbita, ‘pregnant gourd’); Prop. 4.2.43 (tumidoque cucurbita uentre, ‘the gourd with its swelling paunch’).

29. The sphragis of G. 4 (Tityre, te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi, ‘I sang of you, Tityrus, under the canopy of a spreading beech tree’, 4.565), a reminiscence of Virgil’s bucolic youth, doubles as an image of rest from poetic labour. For shade as pleasant for old men, cf. Cic. Sen. 16.57; for poets: Hon Ep. 2.2.78.

30. Kennedy, D., ‘Shades of Meaning: Virgil, Ecl. 10.75–77’, LCM 8 (1983), 124Google Scholar, on Ecl. 10.75–77; Theodorakopoulos, E., ‘Closure: the Book of Virgil’, in C. Martindale (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (Cambridge 1997), 155–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 162–64, on umbra as a closural device at the end of the Eclogues and the Aeneid. Thomas (n.27 above, 13–15) points out that the garden description in Hor. Ep. 1.16 is another attempt at fulfilling Virgil, ending with umbra (10) and a reference to Tarentum (11). See Lipking, L., The Life of the Poet: Beginning and Ending Poetic Careers (Chicago & London 1981), 77Google Scholar, and Theodorakopoulos op. cit., 155–64, on the structure of Virgil’s poetic career.

31. Thomas (n.5 above, 181–88 = 44–51) identifies memini and memoranda as self-conscious indicators of poetic memory, part of his convincing argument that Virgil’s old man is a reworking of an earlier treatment of an old gardener by Philitas (see n.5 above). Thomas does not here dwell on the specific connection between memory and old age, but at least one of his Virgilian parallels for poetic remembering comes from an old speaker with an imperfect memory, the uetus colonus Moeris, in dialogue with the puer Lycidas in Ecl. 9: si ualeam meminisse (‘if I had strength to remember’, 9.38); omnia fert aetas, animum quoque; saepe ego longos/cantando puerum memini me condere soles:/nunc oblita mihi tot carmina (‘time takes everything away, including one’s mind; I recall that often as a boy I would put the sun to bed with singing: now all those songs are forgotten’, 9.51–53; cf. ueteres…fagos, ‘aged beeches’, 9.9). Cf. for double reminiscence via old men, Aen. 7.205–07: atque equidem memini (fama est obscurior annis)/Auruncos ita ferre senes, his ortus ut agris/Dardanus (‘and I remember, as best I can, for time has made the story fade, that old men of Aurunca say that in this land Dardanus was born’). For the recollection of a young man through the mists of time, see Aen. 10.792f.: si quafidem tanto est operi latum uetustas./non equidem nee te, iuuenis memorande, silebo (‘if long years give credence to great feats, I for my part will not be silent about it, or about you, young man worth remembering’); cf. Aen. 1.203 (forsan et haec olim meminisse iuuabit, ‘it may be that you will wish to remember these things too one day’). The Georgics passage shares with each of these parallels words or phrases which suggest the cloudy potential of remembering, if circumstances only permitted: with equidem (‘personally speaking’), which frames Virgil’s gardening digression at G. 4.116 and 147, cf. Aen. 7.205 (quoted above), 10.793 (also 1.619 atque equidem…memini, ‘and I myself remember’); with G. 4.122f. nec…tacuissem (‘I would not be silent about’) cf. Aen. 10.793 nec te…silebo (‘I will not be silent about’); with G. 4.118 forsitan (‘maybe’) cf. Aen. 1.203 forsan.

32. NH 19.19.50: in XII tabulis legum nostrarum nusquam nominatur uilla, semper in significatione ea hortus, in horto uero heredium (‘in our Twelve Tables, the word hortus is always used instead of uilla, and heredium is always used to mean hortus’).

33. Col. 10 praef. 3: Georgici carminis omissas partes, quas tamen et ipse Vergilius significauerat posteris se memorandas relinquere (‘the sections that were left out of the Georgics, which Virgil himself made clear he was leaving to later writers to record’).

34. Putnam, M.C.J., Virgil’s Poem of the Earth (Princeton 1979), 251Google Scholar: the passage is ‘an imaginative garden in itself’.

35. Ash, H.B., Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella On Agriculture, Vol. 1: Res Rustica I–IV (Cambridge MA 1941), xvGoogle Scholar, quotes CIL 9.235 = Dessau 2923 L. IVNIO L. F. GAL. [the tribus Galena, to which Gades, C.’s native town, belonged, and which supplied troops for the legio VI ferrata] MODERATO COLVMELLAE TRIB. MIL. LEG. VI FERRATAE (found at Tarentum). For evidence that he at least visited Syria and Cilicia, see 2.10.18 (sed hoc idem semen Ciliciae Syriaeque regionibus ipse uidi, ‘but I myself have seen this seed in parts of Cilicia and Syria’— here, one presumes, an actual rather than a poetic reminiscence). At 1 praef. 26 Columella mentions Tarentine sheep and Cilician goats in close succession.

36. nee tamen canis natura dedit cunctarum rerum prudentiam (12.59.5). Ash (n.35 above), xiv: ‘We have reason to believe, from the conclusion of Book XII, that his work was completed when he was well advanced in years.’

37. Cf. 1.4.4 (uerissimo uati uelut oraculo, ‘to the truest of poets, as if to an oracle’); 7.3.9 (auctoritate diuini carminis, ‘by the authority of divine poetry’); 10.434 (siderei uatis Maronis, ‘of the heavenly poet Maro’). See Cossarini (n.2 above), 228, for further references to Virgil.

38. summum enim columen adfectantes satis honeste uel in secundo fastigio conspiciemur. an Latiae Musae non solos adytis suis Accium et Vergilium recepere, sed eorum et proximis et procul a secundis sacras concessere sedes? (1 praef. 29–30).

39. Goodyear, F.R.D., ‘Technical Writers: Columella’, in E.J. Kenney and W.V. Clausen (eds.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature II: Latin Literature (Cambridge 1982), 699Google Scholar (perhaps following Columella’s characterisation of his own uncle at 2.1S.4 as doctissimum et diligentissimum agricolam, ‘a most scholarly and painstaking farmer’). Cf. Weinold (n.2 above), 17: ‘[Columella] ist sicher Roms grösster Landwirt, aber kein Dichter.’

40. For Silvinus as a vine-grower and Italian neighbour of Columella see 3.3.3, 3.9.6.

41. Even stipulanti here recalls its agricultural origins, from stipula, ‘stubble’.

42. Koster (n.2 above, 90) compares V. G. 4.6 (in tenui labor, at tenuis non gloria, ‘my labours are small-scale, but the glory is not’); cf. 4.3 (admiranda tibi leuium spectacula rerum, ‘you should marvel at the sight of this tiny world’).

43. ut poeticis numeris explerem Georgici carminis omissas partis, quas tamen et ipse Vergilius significauerat posteris se memorandas relinquere (10 praef. 3); uerumtamen non sine spe prosperi successus (10 praef. 4).

44. Koster (n.2 above, 91–93) reads the second line of the poem, atque ea quae quondam spatiis exclusus iniquis (‘and everything that once, shut out by space and time’s constraints’), followed by a summary of the four books of the Georgics, as an allusion not just to G. 4.147, but to the traditional alternative opening to the Aeneid, ille ego qui quondam (‘I am the man who once’): with this Columella is staking a claim to be the ego in ille ego qui spatiis exclusus iniquis (‘I am the man who, shut out by space and time’s constraints…’); he also replaces aliis (‘for others’) in Virgil’s aliis post me memoranda relinquo (‘I leave to others after me to recollect’) with nobis (‘for us’) in line 5.

45. The last line of the garden poem proper, 10.432 (exundent pingui spumantia dolia musto, ‘our jars may froth and overflow with strong new wine’) looks like a reminiscence not just of V. G. 2.6 (spumat plenis uindemia labris, ‘the vintage froths with full lips’), as suggested by de Saint-Denis, Columelle X (n.2 above), ad loc, but also of the old man’s honey-pressing at G. 4.140 (primus abundare et spumantia cogere pressis, ‘he was first to overflow and force the spurting [liquid] from squeezed [honey-combs]’).

46. Cf. 2.2.28 (praefractas stirpes summasque radices quibus ager arbusto consitus implicatur, ‘broken stumps and surface roots with which a field is entangled when it is planted with trees’); 6.2.2 (of being entangled with undergrowth). On the history of using weaving metaphors for literary texts, cf. Scheid, J. and Svenbro, J., The Craft of Zeus: Myths of Weaving and Fabric, tr. C. Volk (Cambridge MA 1996), 109–56Google Scholar.

47. Cf. 9.16.2: quae reliqua nobis rusticarum rerum pars subest, de cultu hortorum, Publi Silvine, deinceps ita, ut et tibi et Gallioni nostro complacuerat, in carmen conferemus (‘the section of agriculture that remains to be treated, that is, gardening, we will now present in verse, as you, Publius Silvinus, and our friend Gallio requested’).

48. Plin. NH 19.19.49 similarly alludes to Virgil in his own treatment of gardening: hortorum curam et suapte natura memorandum (‘horticulture, a subject worth recording for its own sake’). Palladius in the poem de Insitione (‘On Grafting’) that is tacked on to his prose Opus Agriculturae also commemorates Virgil’s words in his own sphragis: haec sat erit tenuem uersu memorare poetamlquem iuuat effossi terga mouere soli./carmina tu duros interformata bidentes/aspera sed miti rusticitate leges (‘This is enough for a modest poet, whom it pleased to turn the ridges of the upploughed soil, to record in verse. You will read a poem shaped among rough hoes, harsh but with a gentle rusticity’, 167–70).

49. 1.6.24; 11.3.8.

50. Homage to Virgil’s Priapus statue at G. 4.110 (custos furum…cum fake saligna, ‘a guardian against thieves…with his wicker scythe’).

51. Koster (n.2 above), 90: ‘Wenn die Griechen das nicht können, wie ihr Sprichwort lehrt, und auch Vergil es nicht konnte—Columella kann es.’

52. At 11.3.5–6 Columella gives instructions for enclosing a garden with a thorn hedge grown with the aid of ropes smeared with seeds (funes…explicantur, ‘ropes…are uncoiled’, 6).

53. The Virgilian phrase is also quoted at 2.2.4 and 5.4.2. Cf. 241 (tortos imitatur acanthos, ‘imitates the twisted acanthus’, of the artichoke), which, together with 238 (deflexa, ‘twisting’), nods towards a plant in Virgil’s old man’s garden (flexi uimen acanthi, ‘the twisting stalk of the acanthus’, G. 4.123).

54. Cf. V. G. 3.11 (deducam, ‘I shall bring down’), Eel. 6.5 (deductum dicere carmen, ‘sing a fine-spun song’), Hor. Ep. 2.1.22 (tenui deducta poemata filo, ‘poems spun from fine thread’).

55. All these fine distinctions are homage to Virgil: Aen. 3.685 (leti discrimine paruo, ‘a hair’s breadth from death’); 9.143 (leti discrimina parua); 10.511 (tenui discrimine leti). Columella is emphatic in his praise of discrimination in planting vines at 3.20.4–21.11.

56. For Virgil’s epic aspirations in the Georgics, see e.g. Farrell, J., Vergil’s Georgics and the Traditions of Ancient Epic (Oxford 1991), 61–64Google Scholar; Toohey (n.2 above), 5–7.

57. Dallinges (n.2 above), 152; de Saint-Denis, Columelle X (n.2 above), 20: ‘Columelle est un visuel, un espagnol qui aime les couleurs vives et se plait à les marier, a les opposer.’ For Columella’s chromatic innovations, see André, J.Étude sur les termes de couleur dans la langue latine (Paris 1949), 257Google Scholar.

58. Other firsts of this type in Columella’s prose include: carbunculosus (3.1.7, 3.11.9), scaturiginosus (5.8.6), pampinosus (5.5.14), fungosus (4.29.6), tineosus (9.14.70). See Maggiulli (n.2 above), 129 and 143, for a list of non-Virgilian words used by Columella.

59. de Saint-Denis, Columelle X (n.2 above), 20: ‘son poème est inégal, parce qu’ il y a, dans certaines parties, surcharge et densité.’

60. Beard, M., ‘Imaginary horti: or Up the Garden Path’, in M. Cima and E. la Rocca (eds.), Horti romani: atti del convegno internazionale, Roma, 4–6 maggio 1995 (Rome 1998), 23–32Google Scholar, at 24, however, warns of the blurred distinction in the Roman imagination between high and low gardens, ‘an inescapably shifting series of oppositions and overlaps between horti as lavish residences-cum-pleasure parks, and horti as common or garden “gardens”, cabbage patches.’ I hope that this paper will illustrate the truth of her observation in the context of one literary work. On ambitious Roman gardens see Purcell, N., ‘Town in Country and Country in Town’, in E.B. Mac-Dougall (ed.), Ancient Roman Villa Gardens: Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture 10, 1984 (Washington DC 1987), 186–203Google Scholar; and for recent studies of Roman gardens in general see the collections of Jashemski (n.13 above), MacDougall, E.B. and Jashemski, W.F., Ancient Roman Gardens: Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture 7, 1979 (Washington DC 1981)Google Scholar, MacDougall, op. cit., Cima and la Rocca, op. cit.

61. Suet. Nero 31.1; SHA Hadrian 26.5.

62. Plin. Ep. 2.17.15 (hortus alius pinguis et rusticus, ‘another garden, lush and cottagey’).

63. I borrow this motto from the cartoon no 24, ‘One Man’s Meat’, in Posy Simmonds, Very Posy (London 1985)Google Scholar.

64. 12 praef. 9; cf. 1.4.

65. 1.8.4.

66. Cf. 378–80 (dependens trichilis…intortus cucumis praegnasque cucurbita, ‘the twisted cucumber and the pregnant gourd, hanging from pergolas’).

67. Cf. 142 (ut redeant nobis cumulato fenore messes, ‘so that the harvest may repay us with dividends piled high’).

68. Plin. NH 19.19.59 (Lactucinosque in Valeria familia non puduisse appellari, ‘that a branch of the Valerian family was not ashamed to use the surname “Lettuce”’); 19.19.53–4.

69. 11.3.53; Plin. NH 19.23.64. Beard (n.60 above, 29) points out that the phrase Pliny uses at NH 19.23.64 of Tiberius’ elevated cucumber beds (pensiles hortos) is the same one he has just used of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (19.19.40 hortos…pensiles).

70. 3.8.4, 5.

71. Even Virgil dignified garden-poetry with the same canerem (‘I would sing’, G. 4.119) he had used of the other Georgics (1.5, 2.2, 3.1: Thomas [n.17 above] ad 1.5, 4.119), and qualified it with an anti-Callimachean adjective: pinguis hortos (‘luxuriant gardens’, 4.118). Columella occasionally rises to purple passages in his prose writings too: e.g. at 3.21.3, with the personification of Mother Earth, delighting in never-ending breeding, her breasts swollen with must, and Autumn, gleaming and laden with fruits of shifting colours.

72. 9.16.2.

73. de Saint-Denis, Columelle X (n.2 above), 25, sees Columella’s poem as part of a first century CE resurgence of didactic poetry, together with Ovid’s Halieutica, Manilius and Germanicus’ Astronomica, and Grattius’ Cynegetica.

74. Cf. Beard (n.60 above), 24: ‘In the literary imagination too the cabbage patch was always visible through the luxury estate…the peasant plot itself could open vistas of jewel-dripping opulence.’

75. Tac. Ann. 11.32.

76. Dallinges (n.2 above, 150) speaks of Columella’s ‘plaisir de 1’énumeration’.

77. Cf. Clarici, Paolo Bartolomeo, Istoria e coltura delle piante…con un copioso trattato sugli agrumi (Venice 1726)Google Scholar, on exotic breeds of citrus fruits: ‘built like melons, sculptured like breasts, stretched like cucumbers, compact like plums, or like chestnuts or like pears or in a hundred other shapes which are called monstrous’ (quoted in Janson, H.F., Pomona’s Harvest: An Illustrated Chronicle of Antiquarian Fruit Literature [Portland OR 1996], 273)Google Scholar.

78. Plin. AW 19.19.53–54.

79. Marshall (n.2 above), 124, and Ash (n.2 above), ad loc. (six types of artichokes are described); de Saint-Denis, Columelle X (n.2 above), ad loc, and Santoro, A. (ed.), Il libra X di Columella (Bari 1946), 44Google Scholar (the same artichoke is described in six different stages).

80. Dallinges (n.2 above), 151: ‘un verbe tout gonflé de sève et de pulpe.’ The phrase Dallinges borrows from Quintilian’s description of Livy (lactea ubertas, ‘milky abundance’, IO 10.1.32) seems particularly appropriate for this passage.

81. See Koster (n.2 above), 95f., on echoes of Parmenides and Lucretius in the first extract, and of Callimachus/Virgil in the second.

82. Although Columella ostensibly rejects the ‘sublime path’ of 216, the image he substitutes of a pruner ‘suspended in the trees’ (pendulus arbustis, 229) may be keeping open the possibility of modified sublimity at the level of the garden plot.

83. Cf. 27f. (talis humus uel parietibus uel saepibus hirtis/claudatur, ‘let this type of soil be enclosed with walls or thorny hedges’); 11.3.7 (et haec quidem claudendi horti ratio maxime est antiquis probata, ‘in fact this method of enclosing a garden was most approved of in the old days’ [on surrounding a garden with a thorn-hedge]).

84. 435f. (qui primus ueteres ausus recludere fontis,/Ascraeum cecinit Romana per oppida carmen, ‘who was the first bold enough to unseal old fountains and sing Ascraean song through all the towns of Rome’) is a pastiche of G. 2.175f. (ingredior sanctos ausus recludere fontis/ Ascraeumque cano Romana per oppida carmen, ‘I set out and dare to unseal holy fountains, and sing Ascraean song through all the towns of Rome’) andG. 3.113f. (primus Erichthonius currus et quattuor ausus/iungere equos, ‘Erichthonius was the first to dare to join four horses to a chariot’; cf. Lucr. 1.66f., primum Graius homo mortalis tendere contralest oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra, ‘it was a Greek who first dared to stare in opposition, and was the first to stand in her [religio’s] path’). Koster (n.2 above, 93) notes that Columella at 434 transfers Virgil’s sidera caeli (‘heavenly stars’, G. 2.1, of the subject-matter of Georgic 1) to elevate the older poet (siderei uatis…Maronis), and in 435 changes Virgil’s sanctos…fontis to ueteres…fontis to stress the contrast between old and new poet (cf. 10 praef. 1 ueteribus agricolis). hactenus (433) repeats Virgil’s hactenus aruorum cultus at G. 2.1; hortorum cultus, Siluine, docebam (433) answers Col. 10.1 hortorum quoque te cultus, Siluine, docebo. The entire line hactenus hortorum cultus, Siluine, docebam, with its awkward imperfect, looks like an allusion to V. G. 4.559 haec super aruorum cultu pecorumque canebam, as John Penwill points out to me. The phrase hactenus…de cultu hortorum comes again at the end of the prose gardening instructions at 11.3.65. Here Columella more prosaically offers an index as an aide-mémoire: quoniam tamen plerumque euenit, ut eorum quae didicerimus, memoria nos deficiat (‘since, however, it often happens that our memory of what we have been taught fails us’).

85. Toohey (n.2 above, 178f.) also notes a tension between exuberance and purity: ‘Columella is charting a dangerous middle course.’