Mago of Carthage's treatise on agriculture
Tratado de agricultura de Magón de Cartago
- Date
- c. 250 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Carthage, Tunisia
- Credited to
- Mago of Carthage
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A work in twenty-eight books on farming, stock-rearing and viticulture, translated into Latin by order of the Senate after the fall of Carthage in 146 BC. It is the first known systematic agronomic treatise of Western antiquity, now lost.
It survives only through fragments in Latin and Greek authors. Its exact date is unknown (proposed anywhere from the 5th to the 3rd century BC) and it is debated whether it was an original treatise or compiled a Punic farming tradition.
What it led to
- direct source for Varro, Columella and Pliny, who quote it
- Roman plantation agriculture (vineyard, olive grove), with Punic influence
- a model of rationalised farm management