Laboring in the Garden: Exhortations to Horticulture in Columella’s Garden Poem

Although echoes of the Georgics feature prominently in Book 10 of Columella’s De re rustica, the same hesitancy over the representation of laborers is absent. Such mystification is antithetical to the demands of a systematic and comprehensive treatise on agriculture. As such, this paper examines the poetics of slavery in Columella’s Book 10 and explores the reason for the prominence of enslaved laborers. I argue that the poem forms a protreptic to horticulture, part of Columella’s solution to the damaging social, cultural, and economic effects of the dependence upon enslaved labor in Roman agriculture outlined in the preface to the De re rustica. Ultimately, the poem’s emphasis on labor encourages elite participation in the agricultural enterprise. The first part of the essay examines how laborers in the poem, especially the gardener (holitor), implement Columella’s pedagogical program. The second part shows how Columella conceptually unites the garden space and agricultural estate. I argue that Columella’s reflections on the exercise of poetic labor and experimentation are a means of teaching theoretical principles of agriculture: the poem implicates the reader in horticultural labor, showing its importance over pure textualism. Finally, I argue that the pleasure derived from the garden possesses economic benefit: living in accordance with nature encouraged the presence of the master, which in turn promoted sound principles of rational management.