"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."
This is taken from a letter from Cicero to Varro (Ad Familiares 9.4). The actual Latin reads:
Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil.
Literally, this translates:"If you have a garden in a library, nothing will be lacking."
This seems to be a rather strange way of phrasing this sentiment. Why hortum in bibliotheca ("a garden in a library") rather than hortum et bibliothecam ("a garden and a library")? Did Cicero mean to suggest that you should have bookshelves surrounding the perimeter of a garden? Or did he simply mean that you should have books about pastoral themes?
At any rate, it's nice to see the Monrovia horticulture company endorsing one of Rome's greatest writers and thinkers.
