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Columella (De re rustica) often quotes him with great deference to his authority; he equals him to the most learned writers on husbandry; and when he is correcting a vulgar error, expresses his surprise that Cornelius Celsus could be misled, “who was not only skilled in agriculture, but took in the whole compass of natural knowledge[C].” I shall not recite all the passages, where he mentions Celsus, but cannot help transcribing one, it is so expressive of our author’s manner. It is on the article of bees, “concerning which (says he) it is impossible to surpass the diligence of Hyginus, the profusion of ornaments in Virgil, and the elegance of Celsus. Hyginus has with great industry collected the precepts, which lay scattered in the ancients; Virgil has adorned the subject with poetic flowers; and in Celsus we find a judicious mixture of both these manners[D].”

From Columella’s mentioning Celsus as a contemporary, but not as a living writer[E], and our author’s speaking of Themison in the same manner[F], Le Clerc infers, with great probability, that Celsus wrote towards the latter end of the reign of Augustus, or at latest, in the beginning of Tiberius; in which last period he is placed by Fabricius[G]. And that he cannot have been later, appears not only from these authorities, but almost undeniably from the purity and elegance of his style, more nearly allied to the Augustan, than any of the succeeding ages.