Gargilius Martialis: The Agricultural Fragments

· Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries Book 60 · Cambridge University Press
Ebook
424
Pages

About this ebook

In the third century CE, the North African polymath, soldier, and provincial official Q. Gargilius Martialis (died 260) wrote a treatise on the cultivation and medical use of fruits, vegetables, and herbs. The agricultural part of this work survives in a fragmentary state in a single manuscript. Despite this impediment, the agricultural writings are noteworthy for the clear marks both of their meticulous research and of the application of independent judgement and experience. Gargilius furthermore presents his advice in a stylized and literary form that strives for elegance through the use of prose rhythm, rhetorical variatio, and figurative language. The fragments will be valuable for those interested in ancient agriculture, in Greco-Roman authorship on the technai or artes, and in the history and sociolinguistics of Latin. This volume offers a new edition and the first English translation of Gargilius' agricultural fragments as well as an introduction and full-scale commentary.

About the author

James L. Zainaldin is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University, Massachusetts in the Department of the Classics. Among other publications concerning classical antiquity, he has written articles on Ptolemy's Almagest and Seneca's Moral Letters. His dissertation studies the intellectual culture of the artes in the early Roman Empire.

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