Reading List: Original
Links to some relevant books.
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Original
"De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries
by Julius Caesar
Amazon.com: ""De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Julius Caesar is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Julius Caesar then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection."
See also:
Wikipedia: Commentarii de Bello Gallico
Cato: On Farming / De Agri Cultura
by Marcus Porcius Cato Maior (Cato the Elder)
Amazon.com: "Cato's On Farming is the oldest surviving example of Latin prose, dating to the 2nd century BC. It is a book of instruction about the cultivation of vines, olives and fruit, the management of slaves and contract labour, cookery and medicine. This is the first translation for over sixty years; the Latin is printed as a parallel text. The book contains an introduction and several illustrations placing Cato and his writing in context."
See also:
De Agri Cultura (full text online)
Cato and Varro: On Agriculture (Loeb Classical Library No. 283)
by Marcus Porcius Cato Maior and Marcus Terentius Varro
Amazon.com: "Cato (M. Porcius Cato) the elder (234–149 BCE) of Tusculum, statesman and soldier, was the first important writer in Latin prose. His speeches, works on jurisprudence and the art of war, his precepts to his son on various subjects, and his great historical work on Rome and Italy are lost. But we have his De Agricultura; terse, severely wise, grimly humorous, it gives rules in various aspects of a farmer's economy, including even medical and cooking recipes, and reveals interesting details of domestic life.
Varro (M. Terentius), 116–27 BCE, of Reate, renowned for his vast learning, was an antiquarian, historian, philologist, student of science, agriculturist, and poet. He was a republican who was reconciled to Julius Caesar and was marked out by him to supervise an intended national library. Of Varro's more than seventy works involving hundreds of volumes we have only one on agriculture and country affairs (Rerum Rusticarum) and part of his work on the Latin language (De Lingua Latina; Loeb nos. 333, 334), though we know much about his Satires. Each of the three books on country affairs begins with an effective mise en scene and uses dialogue. The first book deals with agriculture and farm management, the second with sheep and oxen, the third with poultry and the keeping of other animals large and small, including bees and fishponds. There are lively interludes and a graphic background of political events.
Columella: On Agriculture, Volume I, Books I-IV (Loeb Classical Library No. 361)
by Lucius Iunius Moderatus
Amazon.com: "Columella (Lucius Iunius Moderatus) of Gades (Cadiz) lived in the reigns of the first emperors to about 70 CE. He moved early in life to Italy where he owned farms and lived near Rome. It is probable that he did military service in Syria and Cilicia and that he died at Tarentum. Columella's On Agriculture (De Re Rustica) is the most comprehensive, systematic and detailed of Roman agricultural works. Book I covers choice of farming site; water supply; buildings; staff. II: Ploughing; fertilising; care of crops. III, IV, V: Cultivation, grafting and pruning of fruit trees, vines, and olives. VI: Acquisition, breeding, and rearing of oxen, horses, and mules; veterinary medicine. VII: Sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs. VIII: Poultry; fish ponds. IX: Bee-keeping. X (in hexameter poetry): Gardening. XI: Duties of the overseer of a farm; calendar for farm work; more on gardening. XII: Duties of the overseer's wife; manufacture of wines; pickling; preserving. There is also a separate treatise, Trees (De Arboribus), on vines and olives and various trees, perhaps part of an otherwise lost work written before On Agriculture."
Columella: On Agriculture, Volume II, Books 5-9 (Loeb Classical Library No. 407)
by Lucius Iunius Moderatus
Amazon.com: "Columella (Lucius Iunius Moderatus) of Gades (Cadiz) lived in the reigns of the first emperors to about 70 CE. He moved early in life to Italy where he owned farms and lived near Rome. It is probable that he did military service in Syria and Cilicia and that he died at Tarentum. Columella's On Agriculture (De Re Rustica) is the most comprehensive, systematic and detailed of Roman agricultural works. Book I covers choice of farming site; water supply; buildings; staff. II: Ploughing; fertilising; care of crops. III, IV, V: Cultivation, grafting and pruning of fruit trees, vines, and olives. VI: Acquisition, breeding, and rearing of oxen, horses, and mules; veterinary medicine. VII: Sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs. VIII: Poultry; fish ponds. IX: Bee-keeping. X (in hexameter poetry): Gardening. XI: Duties of the overseer of a farm; calendar for farm work; more on gardening. XII: Duties of the overseer's wife; manufacture of wines; pickling; preserving. There is also a separate treatise, Trees (De Arboribus), on vines and olives and various trees, perhaps part of an otherwise lost work written before On Agriculture."
Columella: On Agriculture, Volume III, Books 10-12. On Trees (Loeb Classical Library No. 408)
by Lucius Iunius Moderatus
Amazon.com: "Columella (Lucius Iunius Moderatus) of Gades (Cadiz) lived in the reigns of the first emperors to about 70 CE. He moved early in life to Italy where he owned farms and lived near Rome. It is probable that he did military service in Syria and Cilicia and that he died at Tarentum. Columella's On Agriculture (De Re Rustica) is the most comprehensive, systematic and detailed of Roman agricultural works. Book I covers choice of farming site; water supply; buildings; staff. II: Ploughing; fertilising; care of crops. III, IV, V: Cultivation, grafting and pruning of fruit trees, vines, and olives. VI: Acquisition, breeding, and rearing of oxen, horses, and mules; veterinary medicine. VII: Sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs. VIII: Poultry; fish ponds. IX: Bee-keeping. X (in hexameter poetry): Gardening. XI: Duties of the overseer of a farm; calendar for farm work; more on gardening. XII: Duties of the overseer's wife; manufacture of wines; pickling; preserving. There is also a separate treatise, Trees (De Arboribus), on vines and olives and various trees, perhaps part of an otherwise lost work written before On Agriculture."
Palladius: The Work of Farming: Opus Agriculturae
by Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus Palladius
Amazon.com: "Palladius wrote in the 5th century AD. His is the latest of Roman agricultural texts and perhaps for that reason was the treatise most widely distributed in the medieval world, being translated into Italian, Catalan and Middle English, among other languages. Later, Palladius fell into neglect as the Renaissance preferred more classical authors (Cato, Varro, Columella) and although he was translated into English about 200 years ago (not entirely satisfactorily) his achievements are little known. Palladius is therefore an important guide to agricultural practice at the end of the Empire, and his significance is redoubled because of the sources he relied upon, including Gargilius Martialis, a major text which has not come down to us. Palladius wrote from personal experience of several parts of the Empire; his style is concise and his methods less elaborate than, for instance, Columella's. John Fitch's translation is based on the Rodgers edition of the Latin. This means it includes Book 14, on veterinary medicine, which was not discovered until the 20th century. He provides an introduction placing the work in context; some explicatory drawings, for instance of a reaping machine described by Palladius, and of a wine-pressing room; footnotes elucidating the text itself; and a full index. As the authoritative Latin edition is still available, there is no parallel Latin text in this version.John G. Fitch is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies, the University of Victoria, British Columbia. His research and publications have been much concerned with the work of Seneca, however his interest in Palladius was stimulated by his own life as a small farmer (sheep and fruit trees) on the island of Victoria in Canada."
Apicius, a Critical Edition With an Introduction And English Translation
by Sally Grainger and Christopher Grocock
Amazon.com: "Apicius is the sole remaining cookery book from the days of the Roman Empire. Though there were many ancient Greek and Latin works concerning food, this collection of recipes is unique. The editors suggest that it is a survival from many such collections maintained by working cooks and that the attribution to Apicius the man (a real-life Roman noble of the 2nd century AD) is a mere literary convention.
There have been many English translations of this work (and, abroad, some important academic editions), but none reliable since 1958 (Flower and Rosenbaum). In any case, this edition and translation has revisited all surviving manuscripts in Europe and the USA and proposes many new readings and interpretations. The great quality of this editorial team is that while the Latin scholarship is supplied by Chris Grocock, Sally Grainger contributes a lifetime's experience in the practical cookery adaptations of the recipes in this text. This supplies a wholly new angle from which to verify the textual and editorial suggestions.
This volume supplies a fully referenced parallel text (Latin and English) of Apicius and of the excerpts from Apicius done by Vinidarius. There is an extensive introduction discussing both the art of cookery in the later Empire and the origins of this text, together with a new hypothesis as to its true date. There are then long appendixes discussing the vexed question of the true nature of the Roman store sauces, garum and liquamem. There is also a full bibliography and extensive discussion of the meaning of technical terms found in the text. This book will set a new standard for Apician studies."
See also:
Apicus. Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome: A Bibliography, Critical Review and Translation of the Ancient Book known as "Apicius de re Coquinaria" by Joseph Dommers Vehling (download ebook or read full text online)
Natural History: A Selection (Penguin Classics)
by Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder)
Amazon.com: "Pliny’s Natural History is an astonishingly ambitious work that ranges from astronomy to art and from geography to zoology. Mingling acute observation with often wild speculation, it offers a fascinating view of the world as it was understood in the first century AD, whether describing the danger of diving for sponges, the first water-clock, or the use of asses’ milk to remove wrinkles. Pliny himself died while investigating the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in AD 79, and the natural curiosity that brought about his death is also very much evident in the Natural History — a book that proved highly influential right up until the Renaissance and that his nephew, Pliny the younger, described "as full of variety as nature itself". John F. Healy has made a fascinating and varied selection from the Natural History for this clear, modern translation. In his introduction, he discusses the book and its sources topic by topic. This edition also includes a full index and notes."
