INTRODUCTION xxxi 



book i are Cato, the Sasernae and Theophrastus, 

 for book ii Xenophon, Aristotle, Mago, and his 

 own contemporary Tremellius Scrofa ; and for 

 book iii Aristotle. Varro's own treatise soon 

 afterwards became the standard authority on the 

 subject, and is the chief source used by the later 

 writers on agriculture — Vergil, Columella, Pliny, 

 Palladius — while much of it is paraphrased or 

 translated by the compiler of the Geoponica, and 

 by Petrus Crcscentius as late as the thirteenth 

 century. 



