‘DISCITE … AGRICOLAE’: MODES OF INSTRUCTION IN LATIN PROSE AGRICULTURAL WRITING FROM CATO TO PLINY THE ELDER

The aim of this article is to trace the development of the use of second-person imperatives and other second-person forms of instruction in Latin prose writings on agriculture from the elder Cato, via Varro and Columella, to the elder Pliny. The use of imperatives and other forms of imperatival in some Latin didactic texts has been examined in an important paper by Roy Gibson, which investigates differences between Latin didactic texts in verse and in prose in respect of the kind of imperativals or directives that they use.