ant style which well represents the silver age, of
the cultivation of all kinds of corn and garden vegetables, trees,
flowers, the vine, the olive and other fruits, and of the rearing of
cattle, birds, fishes and bees. They consist of the twelve books of the
_De re rustica_ (the tenth, which treats of gardening, being in dactylic
hexameters in imitation of Virgil), and of a book _De arboribus_, the
second book of an earlier and less elaborate work on the same subject.

The best complete edition is by J. G. Schneider (1794). Of a new
edition by K. J. Lundstrom, the tenth book appeared in 1902 and _De
arboribus_ in 1897. There are English translations by R. Bradley
(1725), and anonymous (1745); and treatises, _De Columellae vita et
scriptis_, by V. Barberet (1887), and G. R. Becher (1897), a compact
dissertation with notes and references to authorities.

COLUMN (Lat. _columna_), in architecture, a vertical support consisting
of capital, shaft and base, used to carry a horizontal beam or an arch.
The earliest example in wood (2684 B.C.) was that found at Kahun in
Egypt by Professor Flinders Petrie, which was fluted and stood on a
raised base, and in stone the octagonal shafts of the early temple at
Deir-el-Bahri (c. 2850). In the tombs at Beni Hasan (2723 B.C.) are
columns of two kinds, the octagonal or polygonal shaft, and the reed or
lotus column, the horizontal section of which is a quatrefoil. This
became later the favourite type, but it was made circular on plan. In
all these examples the column rests on a stone base. (See also CAPITAL
and ORDER.)

The column was employed in Assyria in small structures only, such as
pavilions or porticoes. In Persia the column, employed to carry timber
superstructures only, was very lofty, being sometimes 12 diameters high;
the shaft was fluted, the number of flutes varying from 30 to 52.

The earliest example of the Greek column is that represented in the
temple fresco at Cnossus (c. 1600 B.C.), of which portions have been
found. The columns were in cypress wood raised on a stone base and
tapered downwards.[1] The same, though to a less degree, is found in the
stone semi-detached columns which flank the doorway of the Tomb of
Agamemnon at Mycenae; the shafts of these columns were carved with the
chevron design.

The earliest Greek columns in stone as isolated features are those of
the Temple of Apollo at Syracuse (early 7th century B.C.) the shafts of
which wer