268 Relation of Columella 



quotes lines from the first Georgia, the matter of which is quite tra- 

 ditional, common property. But he speaks of Vergil (to name the 

 poet 1 was unnecessary) as a most realistic 2 bard, to be trusted as an 

 oracle. Nay, so irresistible is to him the influence of Vergil, that he 

 must needs cast his own tenth book into hexameter verse: the subject 

 of that book is gardens, a topic on which Vergil had confessedly 3 not 

 fully said his say. And yet in the treatment of the land-question there 

 is a fundamental difference between the two writers. Columella's 

 system is based on slave labour organized to ensure the completest 

 efficiency : Vergil practically ignores slavery altogether. Columella 

 advises you to let land to tenant farmers whenever you cannot ef- 

 fectivelysuperintend the working of slave-organizations under stewards : 

 Vergil ignores this solution also, and seems vaguely to contemplate a 

 return to the system of small farms owned and worked by free yeomen 

 in an idealized past. Columella is concerned to see that capital invested 

 in land is so employed as to bring in a good economic return : Vergil 

 dreams of the revival of a failing race, and possible economic success 

 and rustic wellbeing are to him not so much ends as means. The 

 contrast is striking enough. In the chapter on Vergil I have already 

 pointed out that the poet had at once captured the adoration of the 

 Roman world. It was not only in quotations or allusions, or in the 

 incense of praise, that his supremacy was held in evidence so long as 

 Latin literature remained alive. His influence affected prose style also, 

 and subtle reminiscences of Vergilian flavour may be traced in Tacitus. 

 But all this is very different from the practice of citing him as an au- 

 thority on a special subject, as Columella did and the elder Pliny did 

 after him. 



I would venture to connect this practice with the Roman habit of 

 viewing their own literature as inspired by Greek models and so tend- 

 ing to move on parallel lines. Cicero was not content to be a Roman 

 Demosthenes ; he must needs try to be a Roman Plato too, if not also 

 a Roman Aristotle. Now citation of the Homeric poems as a recog- 

 nized authority on all manner of subjects, not to mention casual illus- 

 trations, runs through Greek literature. Plato and Aristotle are good 

 instances. It is surely not surprising that we find Roman writers 

 patriotically willing to cite their own great poet, more especially as 

 the Georgics lay ready to hand. In the next generation after Colu- 

 mella, Quintilian framed his criticism 4 of the two literatures (as food for 

 oratorical students) on frankly parallel lines. Vergil is the pair to 

 Homer : second to the prince of singers, but a good second : and he is 

 quoted and cited throughout the treatise as Homer is in Aristotle's 



1 So the Greeks often refer to Homer as The Poet. 2 verissimo vati velut oraculo. 



3 Verg G IV 116 foil. * Quintil x i 46-131, especially 85-6. 



