The Greek Amphilochus devoted a whole book to it, as have the English Walter Harte in the middle of the eighteenth century and the American Coburn at the beginning of the twentieth century, but none of them is more instructive on the subject of its culture than is Columella in a few paragraphs.

Of the other Latin writers whose bucolic works have survived, Varro and Virgil wrote at the beginning of the Augustan Age and were followed by the Spanish Columella under Tiberius, and by Pliny (with his Natural History) under Titus.

Shell ovate, fusiform, white, polished; spire conical, nearly as long as the aperture, rather blunt; outer lip somewhat inflexed; columella with four distinct plaits; axis three-twelfths, diameter two-twelfths of an inch.