The didactic work of Columella gives, in smooth and fluent, though somewhat too diffuse, a style, the fullest and completest information on practical agriculture amongst the Romans, in the first century of the Christian era. Pliny is the only classical author who mentions him; but he refers to him as a competent authority. Columella himself informs us that he was born at Gades (Cadiz,[[1373]]) and resided at Rome,[[1374]] but had travelled in Syria and Cilicia.[[1375]] It is generally supposed that he died and was buried at Tarentum.
His work, “De Re Rusticâ,” is divided into twelve books. It treats of all subjects connected with the choice and management of a farm,[[1376]] the arrangement of farm buildings,[[1377]] the propagation and rearing of stock,[[1378]] the cultivation of fruit trees,[[1379]] and household economy.[[1380]] A calendar is attached to the eleventh book, pointing out the cosmical risings and settings of the constellations, which marked the successive seasons for various labours and other practical points of rustic astronomy. The tenth book, the subject of which is horticulture, is in hexameters. It never rises quite to the height of poetry: it is rather metrical prose, characterized, like the rest of his work, by fluency, and also expressed in correct versification. The reason which he gives for this variation from his plan is, that it is intended as supplementary to the Georgics of Virgil, and that in so doing he is following the great poet’s own recommendations. In his preface to his friend Silvinus he thus expresses his intention:—“Postulatio tua pervicit ut poeticis numeris explerem Georgici carminis omissas partes, quas tamen et ipse Virgilius significaverat posteris se memorandas relinquere.”
Sextus Julius Frontinus.
Sex. Jul. Frontinus deserves a place amongst Roman classical writers as the author of two works, both of which are still extant. The first, entitled, “Stratagematicon, Libri iv.,” was a treatise on military tactics. The form in which he has enunciated his doctrines is that of precepts and anecdotes of celebrated military commanders. In this way the necessary preparations for a battle, the stratagems resorted to in fighting, the rules for conducting sieges, and the means of maintaining discipline in an army, are explained and illustrated in a straight-forward and soldier-like style.
As the object which he had in view in adducing his anecdotes is scientific illustration rather than historic truth, he is not very particular as to the sources from which his examples are derived. It is interesting, however, to the antiquarian, if not of practical utility to the tactician, as displaying the theory and practice of ancient warfare. This subject had in early times been treated of by Cato and Cincius, and afterwards by Hyginus in a treatise on Field Fortification (de Castrametatione,) and also in the epitome of Vegetius.
His other work, which has descended to modern times in a perfect state, is a descriptive architectural treatise, in two books, on those wonderful monuments of Roman art, the aqueducts. But besides these, fragments remain of other works, which assign Frontinus an important place in the estimation of the student of Roman history. These are treatises on surveying, and the laws and customs relating to landed property. They were partly of a scientific, partly of a jurisprudential character, and are to be found amongst the works of the Agri-mensores, or Rei Agrariæ Scriptores. The difficulty and obscurity of everything connected with Roman agrarian institutions is well known; and every fragment relating to them is valuable, because of the probability of its throwing light upon so important a subject. Niebuhr[[1381]] saw their value, and pronounced that “the fragments of Frontinus were the only work amongst the Agri-mensores which can be counted a part of classical literature, or which was composed with any legal knowledge.” These fragments, therefore, may be taken as a favourable specimen of this class of writers, amongst whom were Siculus Flaccus, Argenius Urbicus, and Hyginus (Grammaticus.)
Of the life of Frontinus himself very few facts are known. He was city prætor in the reign of Vespasian,[[1382]] and succeeded Cerealis as governor of Britain. He made a successful campaign against the Silures[[1383]] (S. Wales,) and was succeeded by Agricola, A. D. 78. He was subsequently curator aquarum,[[1384]] an office which probably suggested the composition of his practical manual on aqueducts. He also had a seat in the college of augurs, in which, after his death,[[1385]] he was succeeded by the younger Pliny.
With this third epoch a history of Roman classical literature comes to a close. In the silver age taste had gradually but surely declined; and although the Roman language and literature shone forth for a time with classic radiance in the writings of Persius, Juvenal, Quintilian, Tacitus, and the Plinies, nothing could arrest its fall. In vain emperors endeavoured to encourage learning by pecuniary rewards and salaried professorships: it languished together with the death of constitutional freedom, the extinction of patriotism, and the decay of the national spirit. Poetry had become declamation. History had degenerated either into fulsome panegyric, or the fleshless skeletons of epitomes; and at length Romans seemed to disdain the use of their native tongue—that tongue which laborious pains had brought to such a height of polish and perfection, and wrote in Greek, as they had in the infancy of the national literature, when Latin was too rude and imperfect to imbody the ideas which they had derived from their Greek instructors.
The Emperor Hadrian resided long at Athens, and became imbued with a taste and admiration for Greek; and thus the literature of Rome became Hellenized. From this epoch the term Classical can no longer be applied to it, for it did not retain its purity. To Greek influence succeeded the still more corrupting one of foreign nations. Even with the death of Nerva the uninterrupted succession of emperors of Roman or Italian birth ceased. Trajan himself was a Spaniard; and after him not only barbarians of every European race, but even Orientals and Africans were invested with the imperial purple. The empire also over which they ruled was an unwieldy mass of heterogeneous materials. The literary influence of the capital was not felt in the distant portions of the Roman dominions. Schools were established in the very heart of nations just emerging from barbarism—at Burdegala (Bourdeaux,) Lugdunum (Lyons,) and Augusta Trevirorum (Treves;) and, although the blessings of civilization and intellectual culture were thus distributed far and wide, still literary taste, as it filtered through the minds of foreigners, became corrupted, and the language of the imperial city, exposed to the infectious contact of barbarous idioms, lost its purity.[[1386]]
The Latin authors of this period were numerous, and many of them were Christians; but few had taste to appreciate and imitate the literature of the Augustan age. The brightest stars which illuminated the darkness were A. Gellius, L. Apuleius, T. Petronius Arbiter, the learned author of the Saturnalia; the Christian ethical philosopher, L. Cœlius Lactantius; and that poet, in whom the graceful imagination of classical antiquity seems to have revived, the flattering and courtly Claudian.