Cato (M. Porcius Cato) the elder (234-149 BCE) of Tusculum, statesman and soldier, was the first important writer in Latin prose. His speeches, works on jurisprudence and the art of war, his precepts to his son on various subjects, and his great historical work on Rome and Italy are lost. But we have his "De Agricultura"; terse, severely wise, grimly humorous, it gives rules in various aspects of a farmer's economy, including even medical and cooking recipes, and reveals interesting details of domestic life.

Varro (M. Terentius), 116-27 BCE, of Reate, renowned for his vast learning, was an antiquarian, historian, philologist, student of science, agriculturist, and poet. He was a republican who was reconciled to Julius Caesar and was marked out by him to supervise an intended national library. Of Varro's more than seventy works involving hundreds of volumes we have only one on agriculture and country affairs ("Rerum Rusticarum") and part of his work on the Latin language ("De Lingua Latina"; Loeb nos. 333, 334), though we know much about his Satires. Each of the three books on country affairs begins with an effective "mise en scene" and uses dialogue. The first book deals with agriculture and farm management, the second with sheep and oxen, the third with poultry and the keeping of other animals large and small, including bees and fishponds. There are lively interludes and a graphic background of political events.

Columella (Lucius Iunius Moderatus) of Gades (Cadiz) lived in the reigns of the first emperors to about 70 CE. He moved early in life to Italy where he owned farms and lived near Rome. It is probable that he did military service in Syria and Cilicia and that he died at Tarentum.

Columella's "On Agriculture" ("De Re Rustica") is the most comprehensive, systematic and detailed of Roman agricultural works. Book I covers choice of farming site; water supply; buildings; staff. II: Ploughing; fertilising; care of crops. III, IV, V: Cultivation, grafting and pruning of fruit trees, vines, and olives. VI: Acquisition, breeding, and rearing of oxen, horses, and mules; veterinary medicine. VII: Sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs. VIII: Poultry; fish ponds. IX: Bee-keeping. X (in hexameter poetry): Gardening. XI: Duties of the overseer of a farm; calendar for farm work; more on gardening. XII: Duties of the overseer's wife; manufacture of wines; pickling; preserving. There is also a separate treatise, "Trees" ("De Arboribus"), on vines and olives and various trees, perhaps part of an otherwise lost work written before "On Agriculture."

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Columella is in three volumes.