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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Varro the Agronomist: Political Philosophy, Satire, and Agriculture in the Late Republic

Varro the Agronomist: Political Philosophy, Satire, and Agriculture in the Late Republic

Nelsestuen, Grant a.

Paperback

Literary CriticismAgriculture

ISBN10: 0814252214
ISBN13: 9780814252215
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Published: Sep 18 2016
Pages: 332
Weight: 1.07
Height: 0.74 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
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.

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