Name Rutilius Aemilianus | Role Writer | |
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Books The Work of Farming (Opus Agriculturae): And, Poem on Grafting | ||
Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus Palladius, also known as Palladius Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus or most often just as Palladius, was an ancient writer who wrote in Latin, and is dated variously to the latter 4th century or first half of the 5th century AD. He is principally known for his book on agriculture, Opus agriculturae, sometimes known as De re rustica.
Contents
Biography
Since the Middle Ages, authors of agricultural treatises have referred often to Palladius. The Palladii were a prominent Gallic family, and the name Palladius is probably a family name (of Greek origin), with Aemilianus his cognomen (of Roman origin). In Late Antiquity, the convention of the tria nomina ("three names") for Roman men was no longer standard, and the greater variation in naming practice contributes to the uncertainty over the correct order of his names. Evidence for his life is scant. Manuscripts of his work call him a vir inlustris. Although Palladius relies heavily on earlier agricultural writers, mainly Columella and Gargilius Martialis, he also seems to have some first-hand knowledge of farming in Italy and Sardinia as well as experience as a landowner.
Opus agriculturae
The Opus agriculturae is a treatise on farming in 14 parts or books, written in the late fourth or early fifth century AD. The first book is general and introductory. Books 2 to 13 give detailed instructions for the typical activities on a Roman farm for each month of the year, starting with January. The fourteenth book, De Veterinaria Medicina, was rediscovered only in the 20th century, and gives instructions for the care of animals and elements of veterinary science. Most of the work is in prose, but the final part, formerly considered to be book 14, De Insitione, on Grafting, consists of eighty-five couplets of elegiac verse.
The agricultural writings of Palladius may be compared to those of Marcus Priscus Cato, Marcus Terentius Varro and particularly Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, whose De re rustica appears to have served as a model for Palladius, to such an extent that the Opus agriculturae has been described as an "abridgement" of Columella.
The work of Palladius was well known in the Middle Ages. A translation into Middle English verse survives from about 1420, entitled On Husbondrie; it can be seen as part of a genre of instructional agricultural writing that was to develop in England into works such as those of Thomas Tusser and Gervase Markham. Two notable thirteenth century works that draw on Palladius are the Commoda ruralia of Petrus de Crescentius, written c. 1305 and printed at Augsburg in 1471; and the Speculum Maius of Vincentius Bellovacensis (Vincent de Beauvais) written about 1250 and first printed in Strasbourg in 1473–76. There are a number of other incunabula or early editions.
Water-mills
The book is known for reference to a water-mill in Book 1, ch. 41, where Palladius suggests that waste water from an aqueduct should be used to drive a mill. Such mills had been described by Vitruvius in 25 BC, and there is a growing number of examples of such Roman water-mills. The most spectacular is the set of 16 mills at Barbegal in southern France, using water fed by a stone aqueduct along the line of the same aqueduct which supplied nearby Arles.
Principal early editions
The earliest editions of Palladius group his works with those on agriculture of Cato the Elder, Varro and Columella. Some modern library catalogues follow Brunet in listing these under "Rei rusticae scriptores" or "Scriptores rei rusticae".