[Aldine Press] [Roman Agriculture]
Marcus Porcius Cato, Marcus Terentius Varro, Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, Rutillius Taurus Aemilianus Palladius
[SCRIPTORES REI RUSTICAE] Libri de re rustica. M. Catonis Lib. I. M. Terentii Varronis Lib. III. L. Iunii Moderati Columellae Lib. XII. Eiusdem de arboribus. Palladii Lib. XIII. De duobus dierum generibus: simulque de umbris et horis. [...]
Venice: Aldus Manutius and Andreas Torresanus, May 1514.
Price: $4,200
An excellent example of the scarce FIRST ALDINE EDITION. Edited by Giovanni Giocondo, with his dedication to Pope Leo X. The edition also includes a privilege from Leo X giving Aldus fifteen years' protection of all he had printed or would print using any type he had invented or might invent.
"The Aldine edition, printed 1514, was superintended by Fra Giocondo of Verona, who, having procured at Paris some MSS. not previously consulted, introduced from them many new readings, and filled up several chasms in the text, particularly the fifty-seventh chapter. [...] The Aldine continued to form the basis of all subsequent editions till the time of Petrus Victorius..." (John C. Dunlop, History of Roman literature from the Earliest Period to the Augustan age, II, p.588-9)
The texts of Cato and Varro were transmitted together in numerous manuscripts from the Middle Ages; that of Columella was lost for a time following its truncation in an early manuscript, until Poggio rediscovered it in the early 15th century, in a 9th-century manuscript from Fulda. The first edition of the Scriptores rei rusticae, printed at Venice by Jenson in 1472, was based on a manuscript at San Marco (which is now lost). The printed editions joined to this trio the treatise by Palladius, which was preserved in a single manuscript.
The authors of this popular collection span the period from the 2nd century B.C. to the 4th century A.D. All were upper class Romans who had had experience in running farms on their estates. Together these texts form the principal source of information on Roman agriculture and rural life, treating the cultivation of vines, crops and olives, farming, beekeeping, and the breeding and grazing of livestock.
Cato's treatise - the oldest surviving complete prose work in Latin - includes much on ancient customs and superstitions, and sheds light on the transition from small landholdings to capitalistic farming in Latium and Campania in the second century B.C.
Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (4 - c. 70 AD), the most important writer on agriculture of the Roman empire, was probably born in Gades, Hispania Baetica (modern Cádiz), possibly of Roman parents. After a career in the army (he was tribune in Syria in 35), he took up farming. His De Re Rustica, dedicated to an unknown Silvinus, and divided into twelve books, has been fully preserved. It is large, systematic treatise on Roman agriculture and the rural economy in general.
The 1st book of De Re Rustica contains general instructions for the choice of a farm, the position of the buildings, the distribution of the various duties among the master and his labourers, and the general arrangement of a rural establishment; the 2nd is devoted to agriculture proper, the breaking up and preparation of the ground, and an account of the different kinds of grain and artificial grasses, with the tillage appropriate for each. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th deal with the cultivation of fruit trees, especially the vine and the olive. The 6th contains instructions for selecting, breeding, and rearing oxen, horses, and mules, with an essay on the veterinary art. The 7th discusses the same topics in regard to asses, sheep, goats, swine, and dogs; the 8th - the management of poultry and fishponds; the 9th is on the beekeeping.
Columella's 10th book, composed in dactylic hexameters, treats of gardening, forming a sort of supplement to Virgil's Georgics (taking up Vergil's statement in the Georgics 4.148 that he was leaving it to others to write about gardening). In the eleventh are detailed the duties of a villicus (farm overseer), followed by a Calendarium Rusticum, in which the times and seasons for the different kinds of work are marked down in connection with the risings and settings of the stars, and various astronomical and atmospherical phenomena. The 12th book concludes the work with a series of recipes for manufacturing different kinds of wine, and for pickling and preserving vegetables and fruits.
Also included is Columella's shorter work De Arboribus ("On trees") which is of considerable value, since it contains extracts from ancient authorities now lost.
Quarto, leaves measure 205 mm x 128 mm. Attractively bound in 18th-century speckled calf, spine with five raised bands gilt-tooled in compartments, titled in gilt in second compartment. All edges speckled red.
Foliation: [34], 308 leaves.
Signatures: *8 aa-bb8 cc10 a-h8 i4 k-z8 A-Q8.
COMPLETE, including the internal blank cc10.
Printed in Aldine Italic, Type I1:80. Capital spaces (unrubricated) with guide-letters. Three woodcut Aldine devices (on general title-page, sectional title aa1r, and on verso of the final leaf). Several schematic woodcut illustrations in text (Columella, Book V).
Preliminaries include: general title with Aldine device and a papal "copyright warning" (*1r); Privilege from Pope Leo X dated Nov.28, 1513 (*1v-*2r); dedicatory preface by Giovanni Giocondo to Leo X (*2v); two prefaces by Aldus "To the reader" (*3r-*6r); Errata (*6v-*8r); additional sectional title with Aldine device and a papal "copyright warning" (aa1r); prefatory letter from Giorgio Merula to Pietro Priuli (aa1v); glossary of obscure terms used by Cato, Varro and Columella (aa2r-bb7r); letter from Merula to Bernardo Giustiniani (bb7v-bb8v); table of contents to Cato, Varro and Columella (cc1r-cc9v).
Colophon and register on recto of the final leaf Q8 (verso blank,except for Aldine device).
Near Fine. Binding with light wear to edges; and to top of spine; harmless incipient cracking to top of rear joint. Binding still very fresh and pleasing and tight, with joints and hinges intact. Interior exceptionally clean and bright, with some light soiling to title-page and verso of final leaf. In al, a very attractive, complete, well-margined example of this scarce Aldine.
Adams S-805; Ahmanson-Murphy Collection 121; Renouard, Alde, 66:2; Schweiger II, p.1305.
