Columella says that it was Cato who taught Agriculture to speak Latin.  Cato’s book, written in the middle of the second century B. C, was the first on the subject in Latin; indeed, it was one of the very first books written in that vernacular at all.  Of the other Latin writers whose bucolic works have survived, Varro and Virgil wrote at the beginning of the Augustan Age and were followed by the Spanish Columella under Tiberius, and by Pliny (with his Natural History) under Titus.  After them (and “a long way after,” as Mr. Punch says) came in the fourth century the worthy but dull Palladius, who supplied the hornbook used by the agricultural monks throughout the Dark Ages.

MARCUS PORCIUS CATO (B.C. 234-149), known in history as the elder Cato, was the type of Roman produced by the most vigorous days of the Republic.  Born at Tusculum on the narrow acres which his peasant forefathers had tilled in the intervals of military service, he commenced advocate at the country assizes, followed his fortunes to Rome and there became a leader of the metropolitan bar.  He saw gallant military service in Spain and in Greece, commanded an army, held all the curule offices of state and ended a contentious life in the Senate denouncing Carthage and the degeneracy of the times.

He was an upstanding man, but as coarse as he was vigorous in mind and in body.  Roman literature is full of anecdotes about him and his wise and witty sayings.

Unlike many men who have devoted a toilsome youth to agricultural labour, when he attained fame and fortune he maintained his interest in his farm, and wrote his De re rustica in green old age.  It tells what sort of farm manager he himself was, or wanted to be thought to be, and, though a mere collection of random notes, sets forth more shrewd common sense and agricultural experience than it is possible to pack into the same number of English words.  It remains today of much more than antiquarian interest.

MARCUS TERENTIUS VARRO (B.C. 116-28) whom Quintilian called “the most learned of the Romans,” and Petrarch “il terzo gran lume Romano,” ranking him with Cicero and Virgil, probably studied agriculture before he studied any thing else, for he was born on a Sabine farm, and although of a well to do family, was bred in the habits of simplicity and rural industry with which the poets have made that name synonymous.  All his life he amused the leisure snatched from his studies with intelligent supervision of the farming of his several estates:  and he wrote his treatise Rerum Rusticarum in his eightieth year.[3]