De Agri Cultura
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De Agri Cultura (On Farming or On Agriculture), written around 150 BC by Cato the Elder, is the first surviving work of Latin prose.
One section consists of recipes for farm products. These include:
- an imitation of Coan wine (in which sea water was added to the must);
- the first recorded recipe for Vinum Graecum, imitating the style of strongly flavoured Greek wine that used to be imported to Roman Italy.
There is a short section of religious rituals to be performed by farmers. The language of these is clearly traditional, somewhat more archaic than that of the remainder of the text, and has been studied by Calvert Watkins.
[edit] External links
- Detailed contents in Latin (in the Latin Vicipaedia)
[edit] Texts and translations
- Dalby, Andrew (1998), Cato: On Farming, Totnes: Prospect Books, ISBN 0907325807
- Goujard, R. (1975), Caton: De l'agriculture, Paris: Les Belles Lettres
[edit] Bibliography
- Watkins, Calvert (1995), How to Kill a Dragon: aspects of Indo-European poetics, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195144139
- K. D. White, "Roman agricultural writers I: Varro and his predecessors" in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt ed. H. Temporini. Part 1 vol. 4 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973) pp. 439-497.
