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Cato: On Farming - (De Agri Cultura)

Marcus Porcius Cato,           
translated by Andrew Dalby                              

Description

This work of Cato the Elder is essential to our understanding of classical Roman domestic economy, as well as being the first extended Latin prose work to have survived to this day. This is a new translation and detailed edition composed with a mind to the culinary historian by Andrew Dalby, whose book on classical Greek cookery, Siren Feasts, was so admired when it appeared in 1995.

Cato has information for everyone: on planting and maintaining olive groves, on supervising the stag, on making various loaves or gruels out of grains, on the manifold curative properties of cabbage, on getting good prices at market, and much, much more. Although modern translations exist, this is better: more readable, more accurate, more alert.