L. Iunius Moderatus Columella was an accomplished agriculturalist. His Res rustica (RR), the preeminent agricultural treatise to survive from Greco-Roman antiquity (probably dating to the early 60s CE), has been praised across the centuries for its sound advice. In modern times, the work has often been handled as a source for the impressive heights to which Roman agriculture attained. Yet as scholars over the last 50 years have made clear, RR is also a sophisticated, multivalent piece of literature. Inter alia its eloquent and varied language; sublime philosophical set-pieces; arresting cultural and historical polemics; beautifully crafted and moving descriptions of agricultural subject matter; and didactic poem (Book X) emulous of Virgil’s Georgics all belie a modern tendency to approach this and other ancient technical works as the province of those with narrowly specialized interests. The problem remains, however, of how best to reconcile Columella’s avowed interest in communicating the elements of agricultural expertise with the many features of RR that might not seem obviously to square with this aim. Lars Mielke’s excellent new book, Spaliere für Silvinus: Charakterschulung in Columellas Werk über die Landwirtschaft, addresses this problem (cf. pp. 34–5) by offering both intensive and extensive readings of RR through the lens of Charakterschulung.
The cornerstone of Mielke’s book is the idea that all aspects of RR—not only the obviously workmanlike bits—are best construed with a view to Columella’s project of educating the would-be agriculturalist. An indispensable part of Columella’s effort (cf. esp. p. 194) is the communication of the technical contents of expertise (Wissensvermittlung) corresponding to the theoretical capacity of the art. Another, however, is the inculcation of various personal virtues, habits, interests, experiences, and so on that will orient the reader towards correct agricultural practice. These personal qualities will not only ensure the applicability of Columella’s praecepta outside the text but also move readers towards becoming independent and capable agriculturalists in their own right. Agricultural Charakterschulung names the educational process (also Pädagogie or Erziehung) whereby the various “work-virtues” (Arbeitstugenden, p. 35; cf. p. 30) germane to agriculture are instilled in the reader. A key aim of Mielke’s book is to show that many features of RR difficult to understand if its didactic ambitions are construed solely as Wissensvermittlung can be rightly appreciated by attending to their place in Charakterschulung. I briefly summarize Mielke’s book before offering general remarks.
In Chapter 1 (Introduction), Mielke problematizes the reading of RR along lines similar to those above (1.1). He introduces the theory-practice relationship, a concern central to ancient agricultural writing no less than other technical literature, to highlight the necessity of something like Charakterschulung to close the gap between the two (1.2.1). It is suggested that appreciating the dynamics of Charakterschulung will also elucidate the peculiarities of RR that have challenged readers. After reviewing earlier scholarship (1.2.2), Mielke outlines the book and offers prolegomena on matters such as the dating of RR, the relation of the liber de arboribus, the nature of the intended audience, and so forth (1.3). Spaliere thereafter divides into three long Chapters which treat various features of RR relevant to Charakterschulung in broad thematic groupings.
In Chapter 2, “Landwirtschaft und Beredsamkeit,” Mielke explores how Columella manipulates language to serve Charakterschulung. He first (2.1) argues that Columella constructs a virtual master-apprentice relationship whereby the reader will be induced to imitate the master agriculturalist’s values. Informing this virtual apprenticeship is an analogy between Landwirtschaft and Beredsamkeit, according to which the literary construction of RR itself becomes an indirect paradigm for agriculture, since the principles of eloquence embodied in RR are the same required in agriculture (cf. pp. 82–83). To strengthen the Praxissimulation that thus obtains in the experience of reading RR, Columella deploys various strategies aiming at vividness and clarity (Anschaulichkeit ~ Gk. ἐνάργεια, Lat. euidentia), virtually engaging the reader in practice. Next (2.2), Mielke compares the styles of Columella and Celsus, a near-contemporary technical author of the first rank who also wrote on agriculture,[1] to explore why Columella often breaks with the clear and restrained Latinity regarded already in antiquity as suitable to technical exposition (and epitomized in Celsus’ writing) to embark on more florid presentations. Mielke argues that the variegated style of RR which results—its stylistic Elastizität—should not be negatively evaluated as didactically counter-productive (as some ancient critics already thought, 2.2.1), but rather that its high-style passages are calculated to provoke an emotional response in the reader that will conduce to attitudes good for agricultural practice.
In Chapter 3, “Wertesystem und Werteerziehung,” Mielke explores the axiological dynamics of RR evinced in its Charakterschulung. In the secondary literature, RR has often been read as a vehicle intended to advance a larger social, political, or ideological agenda—in other words, that Columella is an “écrivain ‘engagé’,” in René Martin’s influential formulation (p. 15). Mielke argues against this conclusion (3.1), maintaining that the values immanent in RR are firmly subordinated to Columella’s ideal of achieving maximally profitable agricultural practice and that apparent contradictions in evaluative stances throughout the text can be resolved with respect to this aim. An enabling proposition of this chapter is that RR can be read through the oratorical lens of the genus deliberatiuum (3.2.1), a conceit that allows Mielke to parse the varied axiological language of RR in terms of the major partes suadendi, namely, utility (Nützlichkeit ~ utilitas), pleasure (Vergnügen ~ uoluptas), and moral decency or honorableness (Ehrbarkeit ~ honestas). A quantitative analysis of words related to these concepts, tabulated in 3.2.2 with the full data presented in an Appendix, at least substantiates the impression that Columella often appeals to the reader’s values and perhaps also tells us something about the structure of the work. Close philological analysis follows (3.3–4) to illustrate the relationships among the core values and demonstrate that utility (Nützlichkeit) is always primary. Mielke argues that apparent axiological contradictions in RR are intended to unsettle (irritierien) the reader, forcing independent reflection that ultimately helps to internalize the hierarchy of values most suited to agriculture. Insofar as Mielke concludes that Columella never seriously accedes to values that would conflict with the criteria for successful practice inherent in agriculture itself, the various social, cultural, and political attitudes mirrored in the text are to be interpreted strictly within the confines of Columella’s pedagogical mission. Columella is accordingly not an “écrivain ‘engagé’” but rather a writer who is simply attuned to or “conscious” (bewusst) of the value-laden sensibilities of his readership which must be recruited for Charakterschulung.
Chapter 4, “Wirtschaftsoptimismus und Fortschrittglaube,” considers how RR aims to inculcate in the reader an optimistic sense of control and progress vis-à-vis agriculture. Columella’s “spiritualization” (Vergeistigung) of the discipline engrains in the reader the (optimistic) conceit that success or failure in agriculture does not hang on external conditions (e.g. quality of the land) but on approaching the discipline with the right character (4.2). Columella grounds this Vergeistigung in a religious or philosophical depiction of Rerum Natura that is at times ambivalent but on the whole represents Nature as benevolent to or at least cooperative with humanity. This optimistic approach is not merely protreptic for the would-be agriculturalist but also molds their economic outlook, insofar as an “optimization principle” (Optimierungsprinzip) undergirds Columella’s resource- and labor-intensive approach to practice. Next (4.3), Mielke considers how the ambitious educational program for the farmer proposed in the preface to RR and maintained throughout the text encourages the reader to strive to improve agricultural practice, that is, contribute to disciplinary progress. Columella employs the ideal of the consummate farmer (perfectus agricola) advertised in the preface to demonstrate the high-water mark that the discipline has achieved, which could be advanced still further should other agriculturalists adopt a similarly ambitious attitude. The chapter concludes with a comparison of Columella’s optimism with the ambivalence expressed in Virgil’s Georgics, a key text for Columella (4.4).
The book concludes (5) with summary and an attempt to offer biographical insight into Columella and his interests in agriculture vis-à-vis the book’s findings. As mentioned, an Appendix follows with the data tabulated in Chapter 2. There is an Index Locorum following the bibliography but no subject or word indices—a pity, notwithstanding the careful organization of Spaliere.
On the whole, this is an impressive book. Mielke has read almost everything that has been written on Columella as well as much on the topics and authors that pertain to Columella’s work. Although the scale of Spaliere is intimidating (nearly 500 dense pages with well over 2000 footnotes, many substantial), it is lucidly written and clearly signposted with generous summary of the key arguments. It is evident that Mielke knows RR by heart, and he weighs in helpfully on almost every major question pertaining to Columella’s work excluding those which merely treat the text as a historical source. It is not difficult to predict that Mielke’s work will become an indispensable point of reference for future work on Columella.
Regarding Mielke’s project to read Columella’s text through Charakterschulung, I had some mixed feelings. On the one hand, I value the effort to treat RR as a work systematically and coherently focused on the mission of the ars at hand. Mielke convinced me that Columella sees expertise in agriculture as a function not only of possession of the right praecepta but also the right “virtues” or dispositions that would enable successful practice. His thoroughgoing application of this approach to RR sheds much light on traditional problems in the text; more generally, it appears a timely response to the old theory-practice problem (in recent literature reprised as a problem of “applicability”), with Spaliere contributing significantly to our understanding of the dynamics of this problem in Latin technical literature.
On the other hand, the imperative to construe every feature of RR in terms of Charakterschulung can sometimes feel limiting. Notwithstanding that Columella’s work is principally about and for the discipline of agriculture, why should we not also see RR as contributing (for example) to a larger conversation in first-century Rome about the character and significance of specialized knowledge (ars) as such?[2] It is not clear that taking Columella’s didactic aims seriously requires restricting the implications of his views to agricultural education, even if Mielke is right that commentators have perhaps in recent times distorted the interests of Columella’s work by relating them too much to extraneous concerns. Another drawback of the imperative to find Charakterschulung is that it can make Spaliere feel at times Procrustean, since Mielke’s own splendidly subtle readings of what are undeniably beautiful or arresting passages in RR are again and again brought to heel as it were in service of relatively simplistic points about inculcating Arbeitstugenden. Mielke’s insistence on the pervasively pragmatic character of RR, while welcome, can thus prove double-edged when carried too far.
It is ultimately to Mielke’s credit that his ambitious attempt to read Columella through Charakterschulung is controversial enough to renew conversation about Columella’s aims in RR—and this approach would likely bear fruit for other Latin technical writings, too. But Charakterschulung aside, I would be remiss not to underscore perhaps the signal strength of Spaliere, barely hinted in the summary above: Mielke’s acumen as a reader of Latin. The arguments of Spaliere are prosecuted both through faster-paced, high-level accounts supported by notes densely studded with sources and also (most impressively to this reader) through sensitive and searching close readings of key passages in RR ranging from viticulture to veterinary medicine to the garden poem and beyond, always with due attention to the intertextual settings. Mielke is alive to the contradictions and ambiguities in Columella’s writing and again and again deftly unpacks his elegant and often beautiful Latin to show just how much is going on. It might be that these readings, as much or more than the larger arguments pertaining to Charakterschulung, will prove Spaliere’s signal contribution, illustrating just how well Columella’s text repays the sort of painstaking attention Mielke has afforded it. It is thus to be hoped that Mielke’s impressive work will contribute to the increased interest in Columella that he deserves.
Notes
[1] Now known, of course, almost exclusively for his eight medical books, which in fact formed only one part of his larger work Artes handling also the art of war, agriculture, philosophy, and possibly jurisprudence.
[2] So I argue in my forthcoming book The artes and the Emergence of a Scientific Culture in the Early Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2025), Chapter Four. For “full disclosure,” I read the dissertation on which M.’s book is based (at a relatively late stage both for his book project and for mine) and offered some informal feedback.