This title is printed to order. This book may have been self-published. If so, we cannot guarantee the quality of the content. In the main most books will have gone through the editing process however some may not. We therefore suggest that you be aware of this before ordering this book. If in doubt check either the author or publisher’s details as we are unable to accept any returns unless they are faulty. Please contact us if you have any questions.
Some six years after his narrow escape from proscription in 43 bce, Marcus Terentius Varro, the most learned of the Romans, wrote a technical treatise on farming in the form of a satirico-philosophical dialogue. Grant A. Nelsestuen argues that far from simply being just another encyclopedic entry of a seemingly aloof antiquarian or offering an escapist’s retreat into rustication, Varro’s De Re Rustica uses the model of the farm to craft an implicitly political treatise that grapples with multifarious challenges facing the contemporary Roman world. On one level, Varro’s treatise presents an innovative account of the Roman farm, which rationalizes new agricultural and pastoral opportunities for contemporary elite owners of large-scale estates. But on another level, this bold agronomical vision associates the farm’s different spheres with distinct areas under Roman control, thereby allegorizing Rome’s empire on the model of a farm. Nelsestuen argues that Varro’s treatise thus provides his contemporaries with a model for governing the Roman state, anticipates Augustus’ subsequent transformation of Roman dominion into a coherent territorial state, and offers an ancient theory of imperialism.
Shedding new light on the only completely extant work of a much-celebrated but ill-understood figure, Varro the Agronomist has much to offer to those interested in Latin literature–especially, Cicero and Vergil–as well as on the political dimensions of intellectual life in first-century bce Rome, ancient imperialism, and Roman political philosophy.
