L. JUNIUS MODERATUS COLUMELLA

RURAL AFFAIRS

BOOK ONE.

PREFACE TO PUBLIUS SILVINUS.

I often hear the leaders of our state complaining, sometimes of the infertility of the lands, sometimes of the weather, which has been harmful to the crops for many years now. Some even mitigate these aforementioned complaints with a sort of certain logic, because they believe that the soil, exhausted and worn out by the excessive fertility of an earlier age, is unable to provide food to mortals with its former kindness. These causes, Publius Silvinus, I am certain are far from the truth. For it is not right to think that the nature of the earth, which that first Creator of the world endowed with perpetual fertility, has been struck by some disease of sterility. Nor is it the belief of a prudent man that the earth, which was granted divine and eternal youth, and has been called the common mother of all, because it has always brought forth everything and will continue to bring forth hereafter, has grown old like a man. Nor do I believe that these things happen to us because of the intemperance of the weather, but rather because of our own fault, who have handed over farming to...